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The Globalisation of Addiction
The Globalisation of Addiction presents a radical rethink about the nature of addiction.
Scientific medicine has failed when it comes to addiction. There are no reliable methods to cure it, prevent it, or take the pain out of it. There is no durable consensus on what addiction is, what causes it, or what should be done about it. Meanwhile, it continues to increase around the world. This book argues that the cause of this failure to control addiction is that the conventional wisdom of the 19th and 20th centuries focused too single-mindedly on the afflicted individual addict. Although addiction obviously manifests itself in individual cases, its prevalence differs dramatically between societies. For example, it can be quite rare in a society for centuries, and then become common when a tribal culture is destroyed or a highly developed civilization collapses. When addiction becomes commonplace in a society, people become addicted not only to alcohol and drugs, but to a thousand other destructive money, power, dysfunctional relationships, or video games. A social perspective on addiction does not deny individual differences in vulnerability to addiction, but it removes them from the foreground of attention, because social determinants are more powerful.
This book shows that the social circumstances that spread addiction in a conquered tribe or a falling civilisation are also built into today's globalizing free-market society. A free-market society is magnificently productive, but it subjects people to irresistible pressures towards individualism and competition, tearing rich and poor alike from the close social and spiritual ties that normally constitute human life. People adapt to their dislocation by finding the best substitutes for a sustaining social and spiritual life that they can, and addiction serves this function all too well.
The book argues that the most effective response to a growing addiction problem is a social and political one, rather than an individual one. Such a solution would not put the doctors, psychologists, social workers, policemen, and priests out of work, but it would incorporate their practices in a larger social project. The project is to reshape society with enough force and imagination to enable people to find social integration and meaning in everyday life. Then great numbers of them would not need to fill their inner void with addictions.
Scientific medicine has failed when it comes to addiction. There are no reliable methods to cure it, prevent it, or take the pain out of it. There is no durable consensus on what addiction is, what causes it, or what should be done about it. Meanwhile, it continues to increase around the world. This book argues that the cause of this failure to control addiction is that the conventional wisdom of the 19th and 20th centuries focused too single-mindedly on the afflicted individual addict. Although addiction obviously manifests itself in individual cases, its prevalence differs dramatically between societies. For example, it can be quite rare in a society for centuries, and then become common when a tribal culture is destroyed or a highly developed civilization collapses. When addiction becomes commonplace in a society, people become addicted not only to alcohol and drugs, but to a thousand other destructive money, power, dysfunctional relationships, or video games. A social perspective on addiction does not deny individual differences in vulnerability to addiction, but it removes them from the foreground of attention, because social determinants are more powerful.
This book shows that the social circumstances that spread addiction in a conquered tribe or a falling civilisation are also built into today's globalizing free-market society. A free-market society is magnificently productive, but it subjects people to irresistible pressures towards individualism and competition, tearing rich and poor alike from the close social and spiritual ties that normally constitute human life. People adapt to their dislocation by finding the best substitutes for a sustaining social and spiritual life that they can, and addiction serves this function all too well.
The book argues that the most effective response to a growing addiction problem is a social and political one, rather than an individual one. Such a solution would not put the doctors, psychologists, social workers, policemen, and priests out of work, but it would incorporate their practices in a larger social project. The project is to reshape society with enough force and imagination to enable people to find social integration and meaning in everyday life. Then great numbers of them would not need to fill their inner void with addictions.
396 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2008
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August 13, 2019
Last week Will wrote at comment on my review of Lost Connections and provided this link https://www.thesunmagazine.org/issues.... I often feel, especially when a link is to a long read, that I’m about to be getting into something that is going to be hardly relevant to the review I’ve written or anything I’m even slightly interested in. But I clicked on the link with a full measure of trepidation and started reading. It quickly became clear that I was going to have to read this book. And, if anything, the interview on the other side of that link was barely an introduction to how good this book is. You need this book. It is utterly stunning.
I think that if you get a bit bored in the first few chapters it wouldn’t hurt to basically skim and skip ahead. Move on to perhaps chapter 3 where he gives his dislocation theory of addiction. However, the rest is basically mandatory reading.
That said, there are also highlights here, and chapters that ought to be compulsory reading – in particular these are: 5 – Free-market Society Undermines Psychosocial Integration, 6 – Addiction is a Way of Adapting to Dislocation: Historical Evidence and 8 – Addiction is a Way of Adapting to Dislocation: The Myth of the Demon Drugs.
Actually, that last chapter is worth the price of the book.
We have been taught to assume that addiction is an entirely personal failing. This is seen as common sense in our society, in fact, up to the point where the idea that it could someone challenging the idea of personal responsibility for addiction seems like someone is just being perverse or contrary. If we have any sort of free will at all, and if free will means anything at all, then surely the ability to reject becoming addicted is an exercise in free will – just as becoming addicted to a substance, or to love, or to work, or to sex, or to going to the gym, or to seeking praise… surely these addictions are also an exercise of choice. If personal responsibility is to mean anything at all, then surely addiction – as sad a fact as it might be – but surely addiction is due to our own failings as addicts.
This book doesn’t argue that we are completely devoid of free will, but it does stress that we are social creatures, that addiction is a complex idea and that all of the ‘causes’ of addiction that seek to find its source in the individual have proven to be remarkably ineffective at solving addiction – something of a hint that something more complicated is going on.
I’ve really learnt so much from this book. Did you know that the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous was not only an alcoholic, but basically killed himself via his impressive nicotine addiction (something he only pretended to give up, even while dragging around an oxygen tank to help him with is breathing)? Or that he was also addicted to sex, something that made his life with his wife a misery. I’m not judging him, that’s really not my intention, but the point is that he is probably the world’s best-known exponent of the idea that addictions are due to personal responsibility and choice – you know the drill, ‘My name is Trevor and I am an alcoholic’, and the ‘twelve-step-plan’ which is almost a cliché now. That said, and as successful as these have been over the years, there were obviously other addictions in this guy’s life that were hardly making his life one of abundant joy – and yet he was unable to exercise his will power to rid himself those habits, even if he never drank again. Actually, it is worse than that still. Apparently, he begged for a drink on his death bed – he was never out of the clutches of his addiction.
There is a point in this where the author quotes some figure – let’s say it was 20% – as the success rate of religious organisations (such as temperance organisations or the Salvation Army) in curing addictions. And while he definitely doesn’t scoff at such success, he does point out that this 20% isn’t of all addicted people, but rather 20% of those who come to the organisation seeking assistance from them for their addiction. He also points out that some of those people might have just stopped anyway – I stopped smoking without a 12 point plan, for example. All the same, such success is obviously better than nothing, but it also could hardly be said to have cured the world.
Another way we have sought to cure addiction is by removing temptation – also known as the war on drugs. Does anyone think that this has been a success in any sense? I mean, you could hardly say that drug use has dropped since the war on drugs started. In fact, it has gone through the roof in that time. You could hardly say that drug use might have been higher if we hadn’t been aggressive in pursue of this war – what sort of evidence would that require? And you also can’t even say that the war has pushed up the price of drugs. It would be hard to make up a more comprehensive failure of policy to achieve its ends than this war has proven.
The author’s point is that a large part of the reason for the failure of these means to combat addiction is the simple fact that they are tackling the wrong problem. The problem of addiction isn’t a lack of will-power on behalf of the drug addict – although, as an ex-smoker, I can tell you that it certainly felt like that at the time – but rather that addiction is a rational response by humans to their feelings of social dislocation.
Like I said above, the chapter on the historical evidence for this is a very important read. The most interesting part of that was the information on China. Apparently, opium had been used in China for a very long time – but it became a major problem when western powers started shipping it into the country as a way to overcome their trade imbalance. China sought to regulate the flow of opium and Britain sent in the gun boats, since the East India Company was raising a large slice of its income from the sale of opium to Chinese addicts. Anyway, the bit to notice here isn’t just the evils of colonialism – true as that is – but that when China had been a place that wasn’t being visited by the horrors of market society, there were very few opium addicts there. And this was true despite there being opium. But once Chinese society became dysfunctional, that was when opium addiction became rampant. Opium addiction, then, can be seen as self-medication for a people damaged by the imposition of markets that destroy their more integrated mode of life.
He says that the Chinese Revolution was remarkable for almost entirely eradicating opium addiction – and it achieved this not by the severity of its punishments against addicts, but rather by the level of social integration that occurred after the revolution. He says there was a real sense that everyone was ‘in this thing together’ – and despite the horrors that were about to befall them due to the Cultural Revolution, people generally felt like they belonged within the society and this helped reduce rates of addiction. Rates that would stay low until the 1980s and the introduction of Market Socialism.
He certainly doesn’t see the introduction of socialism as a panacea for all addiction. In fact, the Soviet Union clearly had problems with alcohol addiction throughout its history. But what he certainly does do is say that the main cause of addiction everywhere is social dislocation and that capitalism could well be defined as ‘a system that dislocates people’. As such, it could best be understood as an addiction producing machine.
A lot of this book, then, is dedicated to supporting that hypothesis – that addiction is caused by our social structure and the dislocating impact it has on people. And he doesn’t exactly skimp on the evidence for this. The book has endless endnotes – at the end of each chapter – and some of these are some of the best parts of the book.
As I said, this book is full of things I knew nothing at all about – one was about the author of Peter Pan – dear god, what a terribly sad life. If you ever wanted a biographical example to go with Phillip Larkin’s ‘This Be The Verse’ (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem...) – then this be the story.
The most interesting thing was his explanation of the problems with tests that seem to show that mammals will take drugs if they are available on tap – in much the way that the mother in Brave New World kills herself with Soma. The idea is that if you put rats in a cage and allow them the choice between water and morphine, they will take the morphine in ever increasing doses, up to and beyond the point where it will ruin their lives – and this is seen as proof that mammals are drug addicts in-waiting.
But the author was involved in a fascinating twist to this experiment. What they don’t really tell you about the first experiment is that the rats are alone in the cage. Rats are social animals and being alone is traumatic to social animals, you can try this yourself if you are of a mind to. They also don’t mention that the rats might have a huge tube sticking out of themselves. That is, that these are literally lab rats – they are literally living through a Renascence vision of hell that even Dante would grimace at. That these rats might choose the pain relief of morphine if it is available hardly seems surprising.
But this is where the story gets interesting. They then put the two drinking containers in another cage, this time, rat heaven rather than rat hell. Where the rats had friends, and stuff to do, and have hopes and dreams, and novels to read, and cups of tea to drink (or whatever it is rats do in rat heaven)… and the rats then avoided the morphine. They didn’t want or need to blank out the world – rather, they wanted to experience it with their full awareness.
The author points out that too many of our addiction ‘cures’ only release you from one addiction by hooking you onto another one. Give up gin for god – or give up sex for work. He believes that the real cure for addiction – in all of its forms – is becoming socially engaged. The last chapter discusses what you can do to become socially engaged in a lot of depth and he also provides examples of what people have done and the movements they have formed for precisely that. His main point is that we are all addicted to consumer capitalism – and it is killing us, every single one of us. If we live though this time – and there is certainly no guarantee we will – then the people in the future are going to look at us as if we were walking about in a kind of madness – and they will be totally right. But as he says, we are captive to the power of those who control our media, and who make a profit from our being convinced that we always need more, and we can never have enough.
The sooner we learn that this is the insanity of our age and that the time has come to help build a more rational society, the better.
I think that if you get a bit bored in the first few chapters it wouldn’t hurt to basically skim and skip ahead. Move on to perhaps chapter 3 where he gives his dislocation theory of addiction. However, the rest is basically mandatory reading.
That said, there are also highlights here, and chapters that ought to be compulsory reading – in particular these are: 5 – Free-market Society Undermines Psychosocial Integration, 6 – Addiction is a Way of Adapting to Dislocation: Historical Evidence and 8 – Addiction is a Way of Adapting to Dislocation: The Myth of the Demon Drugs.
Actually, that last chapter is worth the price of the book.
We have been taught to assume that addiction is an entirely personal failing. This is seen as common sense in our society, in fact, up to the point where the idea that it could someone challenging the idea of personal responsibility for addiction seems like someone is just being perverse or contrary. If we have any sort of free will at all, and if free will means anything at all, then surely the ability to reject becoming addicted is an exercise in free will – just as becoming addicted to a substance, or to love, or to work, or to sex, or to going to the gym, or to seeking praise… surely these addictions are also an exercise of choice. If personal responsibility is to mean anything at all, then surely addiction – as sad a fact as it might be – but surely addiction is due to our own failings as addicts.
This book doesn’t argue that we are completely devoid of free will, but it does stress that we are social creatures, that addiction is a complex idea and that all of the ‘causes’ of addiction that seek to find its source in the individual have proven to be remarkably ineffective at solving addiction – something of a hint that something more complicated is going on.
I’ve really learnt so much from this book. Did you know that the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous was not only an alcoholic, but basically killed himself via his impressive nicotine addiction (something he only pretended to give up, even while dragging around an oxygen tank to help him with is breathing)? Or that he was also addicted to sex, something that made his life with his wife a misery. I’m not judging him, that’s really not my intention, but the point is that he is probably the world’s best-known exponent of the idea that addictions are due to personal responsibility and choice – you know the drill, ‘My name is Trevor and I am an alcoholic’, and the ‘twelve-step-plan’ which is almost a cliché now. That said, and as successful as these have been over the years, there were obviously other addictions in this guy’s life that were hardly making his life one of abundant joy – and yet he was unable to exercise his will power to rid himself those habits, even if he never drank again. Actually, it is worse than that still. Apparently, he begged for a drink on his death bed – he was never out of the clutches of his addiction.
There is a point in this where the author quotes some figure – let’s say it was 20% – as the success rate of religious organisations (such as temperance organisations or the Salvation Army) in curing addictions. And while he definitely doesn’t scoff at such success, he does point out that this 20% isn’t of all addicted people, but rather 20% of those who come to the organisation seeking assistance from them for their addiction. He also points out that some of those people might have just stopped anyway – I stopped smoking without a 12 point plan, for example. All the same, such success is obviously better than nothing, but it also could hardly be said to have cured the world.
Another way we have sought to cure addiction is by removing temptation – also known as the war on drugs. Does anyone think that this has been a success in any sense? I mean, you could hardly say that drug use has dropped since the war on drugs started. In fact, it has gone through the roof in that time. You could hardly say that drug use might have been higher if we hadn’t been aggressive in pursue of this war – what sort of evidence would that require? And you also can’t even say that the war has pushed up the price of drugs. It would be hard to make up a more comprehensive failure of policy to achieve its ends than this war has proven.
The author’s point is that a large part of the reason for the failure of these means to combat addiction is the simple fact that they are tackling the wrong problem. The problem of addiction isn’t a lack of will-power on behalf of the drug addict – although, as an ex-smoker, I can tell you that it certainly felt like that at the time – but rather that addiction is a rational response by humans to their feelings of social dislocation.
Like I said above, the chapter on the historical evidence for this is a very important read. The most interesting part of that was the information on China. Apparently, opium had been used in China for a very long time – but it became a major problem when western powers started shipping it into the country as a way to overcome their trade imbalance. China sought to regulate the flow of opium and Britain sent in the gun boats, since the East India Company was raising a large slice of its income from the sale of opium to Chinese addicts. Anyway, the bit to notice here isn’t just the evils of colonialism – true as that is – but that when China had been a place that wasn’t being visited by the horrors of market society, there were very few opium addicts there. And this was true despite there being opium. But once Chinese society became dysfunctional, that was when opium addiction became rampant. Opium addiction, then, can be seen as self-medication for a people damaged by the imposition of markets that destroy their more integrated mode of life.
He says that the Chinese Revolution was remarkable for almost entirely eradicating opium addiction – and it achieved this not by the severity of its punishments against addicts, but rather by the level of social integration that occurred after the revolution. He says there was a real sense that everyone was ‘in this thing together’ – and despite the horrors that were about to befall them due to the Cultural Revolution, people generally felt like they belonged within the society and this helped reduce rates of addiction. Rates that would stay low until the 1980s and the introduction of Market Socialism.
He certainly doesn’t see the introduction of socialism as a panacea for all addiction. In fact, the Soviet Union clearly had problems with alcohol addiction throughout its history. But what he certainly does do is say that the main cause of addiction everywhere is social dislocation and that capitalism could well be defined as ‘a system that dislocates people’. As such, it could best be understood as an addiction producing machine.
A lot of this book, then, is dedicated to supporting that hypothesis – that addiction is caused by our social structure and the dislocating impact it has on people. And he doesn’t exactly skimp on the evidence for this. The book has endless endnotes – at the end of each chapter – and some of these are some of the best parts of the book.
As I said, this book is full of things I knew nothing at all about – one was about the author of Peter Pan – dear god, what a terribly sad life. If you ever wanted a biographical example to go with Phillip Larkin’s ‘This Be The Verse’ (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem...) – then this be the story.
The most interesting thing was his explanation of the problems with tests that seem to show that mammals will take drugs if they are available on tap – in much the way that the mother in Brave New World kills herself with Soma. The idea is that if you put rats in a cage and allow them the choice between water and morphine, they will take the morphine in ever increasing doses, up to and beyond the point where it will ruin their lives – and this is seen as proof that mammals are drug addicts in-waiting.
But the author was involved in a fascinating twist to this experiment. What they don’t really tell you about the first experiment is that the rats are alone in the cage. Rats are social animals and being alone is traumatic to social animals, you can try this yourself if you are of a mind to. They also don’t mention that the rats might have a huge tube sticking out of themselves. That is, that these are literally lab rats – they are literally living through a Renascence vision of hell that even Dante would grimace at. That these rats might choose the pain relief of morphine if it is available hardly seems surprising.
But this is where the story gets interesting. They then put the two drinking containers in another cage, this time, rat heaven rather than rat hell. Where the rats had friends, and stuff to do, and have hopes and dreams, and novels to read, and cups of tea to drink (or whatever it is rats do in rat heaven)… and the rats then avoided the morphine. They didn’t want or need to blank out the world – rather, they wanted to experience it with their full awareness.
The author points out that too many of our addiction ‘cures’ only release you from one addiction by hooking you onto another one. Give up gin for god – or give up sex for work. He believes that the real cure for addiction – in all of its forms – is becoming socially engaged. The last chapter discusses what you can do to become socially engaged in a lot of depth and he also provides examples of what people have done and the movements they have formed for precisely that. His main point is that we are all addicted to consumer capitalism – and it is killing us, every single one of us. If we live though this time – and there is certainly no guarantee we will – then the people in the future are going to look at us as if we were walking about in a kind of madness – and they will be totally right. But as he says, we are captive to the power of those who control our media, and who make a profit from our being convinced that we always need more, and we can never have enough.
The sooner we learn that this is the insanity of our age and that the time has come to help build a more rational society, the better.
December 7, 2013
This book in essence: as free markets have spread across the globe, social interactions are governed less by stable communities and cultures and increasingly by impersonal transactions. As a result, governments and social institutions have prioritized wealth and efficient, unregulated markets instead of people. Because of this culture, people lose a sense of belonging, of community, of “psychosocial integration.” They become “dislocated.” People need to find a way to cope, so they turn to various forms of addiction (e.g. to drugs, to work, to gambling, to shopping, to money, to relationships.)
This is an insightful text that cites much work from other social science disciplines like anthropology, economics, history, and psychology.
This is an insightful text that cites much work from other social science disciplines like anthropology, economics, history, and psychology.
September 9, 2015
This book is terrific & should be read in conjunction with “In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts” by Gabor Mate, MD. In “Globalization” Professor Alexander delivers a very convincing case that we are manufacturing addiction by the process of economic globalization & the social dislocation that inevitably goes with it.
Addiction is a coping mechanism for “dislocation,” which can arise from certain disastrous circumstances, such as the colonialist destruction of indigenous cultures, but is a fundamental element of free market economics even at the best of times. I don’t normally buy into these types of assessments but this makes a lot of sense. Although I do think that capitalism is the better way it has its problems, mostly stemming from the selfish greed of man.
He does show how global capitalism demolishes meaningful social relationships for which addictive tendencies provide an incredibly poor substitute. One of the main things he does is dismantles the myth of powerful, impossible to resist, habit-forming drugs, instead he explains that addiction; which more often than not entails no substance whatsoever but a variety of compulsive behaviors & fixations, including gambling, sex, romantic love, money, power, zealotry, video games, and starvation. This helps to explain a great deal of what is going on in our society. Think about that again; addiction is not something confined to chemicals but spans a whole range from sex, through gambling to the quest for material possessions.
This book makes a lot of sense, & is very thought provoking
Addiction is a coping mechanism for “dislocation,” which can arise from certain disastrous circumstances, such as the colonialist destruction of indigenous cultures, but is a fundamental element of free market economics even at the best of times. I don’t normally buy into these types of assessments but this makes a lot of sense. Although I do think that capitalism is the better way it has its problems, mostly stemming from the selfish greed of man.
He does show how global capitalism demolishes meaningful social relationships for which addictive tendencies provide an incredibly poor substitute. One of the main things he does is dismantles the myth of powerful, impossible to resist, habit-forming drugs, instead he explains that addiction; which more often than not entails no substance whatsoever but a variety of compulsive behaviors & fixations, including gambling, sex, romantic love, money, power, zealotry, video games, and starvation. This helps to explain a great deal of what is going on in our society. Think about that again; addiction is not something confined to chemicals but spans a whole range from sex, through gambling to the quest for material possessions.
This book makes a lot of sense, & is very thought provoking
January 8, 2011
Having just put this book down, I may seem a bit critical, but my thoughts immediately after reading are that this book tried to take on a lot. It addresses the notion of addiction in many forms and has some valuable insights that made me grateful I'd read the book-- but I felt I did have to read a lot to get to those nuggets. The author spends a great deal of time conceptualizing the flaws of free market politics. Eventually this connects to the notion of psychosocial displacement in a clear and compelling way... on the journey to this clear connection, though, the author seems to fall in and out of his element.
The book is formatted into fifteen chapters. I found that if a chapter seemed incomplete, what I wanted to read was usually in a later chapter, which was good enough, but I think some of the jumps in continuity could have been avoided. The organization of the book made me think that the author may have had some old grad papers lying around and thought they could be aptly included. I thoroughly enjoyed reading about, say, the author of Peter Pan and his connections to addiction, or Socrates' views on a psychosocially dislocated society, but I felt that content could have been better presented as a series of essays rather than as chapters or part of chapters in the book.
Lastly (and rather insignificantly), the author did not convince me of the validity of the term "spirit" in the title. I tried to think of what I might have used instead-- identity, personal history... ultimately, I think I may have scrapped it, because it just seems like a dangly bit that will get criticized and distract from the overall merit of the book.
The theory the author presents of psychosocial dislocation is thoroughly described and illustrated, and likely to resonate with the audience. It will be especially helpful to people within the broad reach of the public health field in dispelling false claims long made about addiction, examining addiction as a symptom, creating positive solutions regarding addictions and family members affected by addiction, and promoting critical discussion about the potential impact of policy (not programs, but policy in every aspect) that could minimize the harms of addiction.
The book is formatted into fifteen chapters. I found that if a chapter seemed incomplete, what I wanted to read was usually in a later chapter, which was good enough, but I think some of the jumps in continuity could have been avoided. The organization of the book made me think that the author may have had some old grad papers lying around and thought they could be aptly included. I thoroughly enjoyed reading about, say, the author of Peter Pan and his connections to addiction, or Socrates' views on a psychosocially dislocated society, but I felt that content could have been better presented as a series of essays rather than as chapters or part of chapters in the book.
Lastly (and rather insignificantly), the author did not convince me of the validity of the term "spirit" in the title. I tried to think of what I might have used instead-- identity, personal history... ultimately, I think I may have scrapped it, because it just seems like a dangly bit that will get criticized and distract from the overall merit of the book.
The theory the author presents of psychosocial dislocation is thoroughly described and illustrated, and likely to resonate with the audience. It will be especially helpful to people within the broad reach of the public health field in dispelling false claims long made about addiction, examining addiction as a symptom, creating positive solutions regarding addictions and family members affected by addiction, and promoting critical discussion about the potential impact of policy (not programs, but policy in every aspect) that could minimize the harms of addiction.
December 12, 2009
Another book that I did not have the luxury of reading back to back - essay material.
The most informative chapter debunked the famous Skinner Box (rat becomes addicted to drugs available by dropper in cage) by creating a Rat Park. The rats in the latter do not succumb to addiction because the cage is large, has other rats and rat-friendly shrubbery and surroundings. Apparently rats are very social animals, so one rat in a cage throws off the experiment by making that one rat despondent. Thus vulnerable to addiction.
I should really pick up this book again.
The most informative chapter debunked the famous Skinner Box (rat becomes addicted to drugs available by dropper in cage) by creating a Rat Park. The rats in the latter do not succumb to addiction because the cage is large, has other rats and rat-friendly shrubbery and surroundings. Apparently rats are very social animals, so one rat in a cage throws off the experiment by making that one rat despondent. Thus vulnerable to addiction.
I should really pick up this book again.
Want to read
November 7, 2023I heard this title mentioned and recommended last night on the America first podcast.
January 10, 2015
Absolutely spot on. The first few passages had me concerned that Bruce is some sort of weird zealot.
He is not.
He is one of the only truly able people to bother putting thought into such a topic as addiction.
After finding and reading this in 2013 and showing it to a few professors and their ilk, I only wish that more universities, addiction centres and hospitals used it as RECOMMENDED COURSE MATERIAL.
Seriously, it would make a difference.
He is not.
He is one of the only truly able people to bother putting thought into such a topic as addiction.
After finding and reading this in 2013 and showing it to a few professors and their ilk, I only wish that more universities, addiction centres and hospitals used it as RECOMMENDED COURSE MATERIAL.
Seriously, it would make a difference.
May 25, 2021
A candid, unsparing, and forceful denunciation of the state of affairs regarding models and theories of drug abuse and addiction. Alexander (of Rat Park fame) proposes that the root of addiction (to drugs, gambling, video games, sex, etc...) is dislocation, which is defined as the severing of social connection with family, community, culture, and society, leading to a lack of psychosocial integration. It is not a brain disease, in need of curing, as the prominent and accepted medical model asserts. This position is not too far afield from what other more humanist clinicians and researchers have proposed.
But Alexander doesn't stop there. The gloves come off when he queries the source of dislocation in today's world, and names free-market capitalism and economics as the main, and by far, biggest reason for dislocation. He provides exhaustive historical, philosophical, clinical, and anthropological evidence to support his claim, and uses his home city of Victoria, British Columbia as a case study of the extensive damage and dislocation that unchecked free-market economics can do.
The idea is that the free market requires people to act as individual consumers who compete with one another. Therefore, social and family bonds and relationships stand in the way of this fundamental market need. In addition, free market economics are premised on neverending expansion and growth, and have come about due to the appropriation and seizure of lands and resources from native populations and poor people by colonialists and the wealthy, leading to massive dislocation. In addition, people must work to survive, and in a free market economy, the market dictates where the jobs are, and who will be employed, leading to an instability that uproots families and erases any semblance of stability and connection.
Addiction is the individual attempt to substitute the connection and community that is lacking in dislocated people's lives. Depending on the particular circumstances that lead to the dislocation, the addictive profile will differ. By profiling St Augustine, who had a sexual addiction which led to his obsession with religious purity and abstinence-based theology, to James Barrie, whose estranged and traumatic relationship with his mother led to his obsession with eternal childhood, the flavours of addiction are huge and varied. Alexander notes that there are a number of types of trauma that can also lead to dislocation in any number of societies, leading to increased susceptibilities to addiction in certain individuals. Crucially, however, he argues that free-market societies are the only societies that explicitly cause dislocation as a feature, not just as an outcome. That is why they are so damaging.
In the end, the book is a wide-ranging and fearless expose of the dangers and destruction of hypercapitalism and a survey of the addictions it leads to. Alexander claims that the only way we can save civilization and ourselves from the downward spiral is to agitate for and implement social and political changes that domesticate free-market capitalism to the needs and in the service of the health and well-being of people. Only when, as a society, we prioritize the psychosocial integration and flourishing of everyone will we be able to stop addiction at its source.
But Alexander doesn't stop there. The gloves come off when he queries the source of dislocation in today's world, and names free-market capitalism and economics as the main, and by far, biggest reason for dislocation. He provides exhaustive historical, philosophical, clinical, and anthropological evidence to support his claim, and uses his home city of Victoria, British Columbia as a case study of the extensive damage and dislocation that unchecked free-market economics can do.
The idea is that the free market requires people to act as individual consumers who compete with one another. Therefore, social and family bonds and relationships stand in the way of this fundamental market need. In addition, free market economics are premised on neverending expansion and growth, and have come about due to the appropriation and seizure of lands and resources from native populations and poor people by colonialists and the wealthy, leading to massive dislocation. In addition, people must work to survive, and in a free market economy, the market dictates where the jobs are, and who will be employed, leading to an instability that uproots families and erases any semblance of stability and connection.
Addiction is the individual attempt to substitute the connection and community that is lacking in dislocated people's lives. Depending on the particular circumstances that lead to the dislocation, the addictive profile will differ. By profiling St Augustine, who had a sexual addiction which led to his obsession with religious purity and abstinence-based theology, to James Barrie, whose estranged and traumatic relationship with his mother led to his obsession with eternal childhood, the flavours of addiction are huge and varied. Alexander notes that there are a number of types of trauma that can also lead to dislocation in any number of societies, leading to increased susceptibilities to addiction in certain individuals. Crucially, however, he argues that free-market societies are the only societies that explicitly cause dislocation as a feature, not just as an outcome. That is why they are so damaging.
In the end, the book is a wide-ranging and fearless expose of the dangers and destruction of hypercapitalism and a survey of the addictions it leads to. Alexander claims that the only way we can save civilization and ourselves from the downward spiral is to agitate for and implement social and political changes that domesticate free-market capitalism to the needs and in the service of the health and well-being of people. Only when, as a society, we prioritize the psychosocial integration and flourishing of everyone will we be able to stop addiction at its source.
May 17, 2014
A foundational text for scientific critical analysis of a topic primarily applied in political policy. Doing groundbreaking research into consequences of psychosocial deprivation, imposed by imperialism and free markets, neurologically and socially. Recommends countless other authors for further exploration of concepts. Solid starting point for discussing inherent biases in dominant intellectual culture.Will cite forever.
December 12, 2019
I loved this book and cannot recommend it highly enough. It completely changed the way I viewed addiction.
There are more than 250 million people, across all levels of society, who use illicit drugs worldwide. Yet only 8% of them ever go on to develop a drug use disorder. Of all the factors known to influence an individual’s risk of drug addiction, social determinants are the most significant. In our modern society, we pursue individualism and consumerism at the cost of connection to those around us and a life of meaning and purpose. Once your eyes are opened to it, you see it everywhere around you. The sale of community park lands, bushland and art centres by your local council to developers to build high rise apartments. Huge profits are made by businesses but our community is poorer for it. It has lost places to connect which each other and with nature. Our lives lose meaning so we look for ways to fill the void.
I think one of the most compelling arguments the author puts forward is the examination of addiction through history. From the gin dens of the industrial revolution to Skid Row in downtown Vancouver to Indigenous and marginalised populations around the world the pattern is the same. To simplify it all begins with displacement, a break down of communities, disconnection, isolation and then despair which breeds addiction.
There are more than 250 million people, across all levels of society, who use illicit drugs worldwide. Yet only 8% of them ever go on to develop a drug use disorder. Of all the factors known to influence an individual’s risk of drug addiction, social determinants are the most significant. In our modern society, we pursue individualism and consumerism at the cost of connection to those around us and a life of meaning and purpose. Once your eyes are opened to it, you see it everywhere around you. The sale of community park lands, bushland and art centres by your local council to developers to build high rise apartments. Huge profits are made by businesses but our community is poorer for it. It has lost places to connect which each other and with nature. Our lives lose meaning so we look for ways to fill the void.
I think one of the most compelling arguments the author puts forward is the examination of addiction through history. From the gin dens of the industrial revolution to Skid Row in downtown Vancouver to Indigenous and marginalised populations around the world the pattern is the same. To simplify it all begins with displacement, a break down of communities, disconnection, isolation and then despair which breeds addiction.
September 5, 2019
I got to this book as reference while reading “Chasing the scream” a couple of years ago and “Lost Connections” more recently, it kind of looks like a textbook for school so I have been procrastinating for a year…and when I finally forced myself to read it and I devoured it.
Alexander defines on of the main problems as the dislocation of our society and it has many causes in our current society, which aligns with Hari’s books; how we use addiction to adapt to this dislocation to cope with life.
He connects on topics as 12 step programs (AA, NA, etc), definitions of addictions (4 of them) how some addictions are accepted as valid over other for being “less destructive”. Also he briefly talks about the Rat Park experiment which is what brought me to this book although I was not disappointed. If you want to go over the Rat Park experiment there is material on the web but this url takes you to the core of it https://www.brucekalexander.com/pdf/R...
“The most promising way of controlling addiction is not prevention of experimentation, but prevention of dislocation” this phrase is one of my favorites in the book…spot on!
Alexander defines on of the main problems as the dislocation of our society and it has many causes in our current society, which aligns with Hari’s books; how we use addiction to adapt to this dislocation to cope with life.
He connects on topics as 12 step programs (AA, NA, etc), definitions of addictions (4 of them) how some addictions are accepted as valid over other for being “less destructive”. Also he briefly talks about the Rat Park experiment which is what brought me to this book although I was not disappointed. If you want to go over the Rat Park experiment there is material on the web but this url takes you to the core of it https://www.brucekalexander.com/pdf/R...
“The most promising way of controlling addiction is not prevention of experimentation, but prevention of dislocation” this phrase is one of my favorites in the book…spot on!
June 10, 2019
Why is addiction of all types on the rise in our society today? If the pharmacological theory of addiction is true – that demon drugs take over the minds of users after only one use – then why is it that there are other, non-drug addictions? How does that explain alcohol enslaving some people but not others? The answers, according to Bruce Alexander, are found in the fact that society is increasingly psychologically dislocated. In The Globalization of Addiction: A Study in Poverty of the Spirit, Alexander convincingly explains how we’re more disconnected from each other and our communities than we’ve ever been and how the chief actor in this play is the free market capitalism that most of the world has adopted.
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September 9, 2019
A rare reread for me. A very worthwhile book. I disagree in many places, but perhaps most significantly his theological and spiritual analysis is thin. bases just about all of his judgments on Buddhism on experience with one branch of one lineage (and a pretty extreme one at that). Writes off Buddhism and Hinduism as "eclectic spirituality". I find him much more compelling on theproblem with current conceptualizations of addiction, as opposed to his proposed solutions. Still a great book.
Read
January 28, 2016Perhaps the best research on addictions to date. Alexander's comprehensive approach to this blight on civilization provides plenty of evidence that the unintended consequences of globalized capitalism have created a world underclass.
October 11, 2017
Highly academic with references up the yin yang, but I stuck with this book because I was intrigued by the author's theory that "dislocation" (loneliness, stress, isolation, lack of belonging) is at the root of addictions of all kinds.
October 16, 2022
I think the concept of dislocation as an explanation for addiction works and I appreciate the broader inclusion of all addictive behaviours rather than just drugs and alcohol. The concept makes other explanations for addiction seem shallow and dishonest. Alienation as an essential function of the free market is the primary driver of addictive behaviour today, as it also is when caused by other social or personal events.
Some of the historical context included like the temperance movement and gin craze are useful in demonstrating the relevance of dislocation through time, and the failures of established attitudes to deal with it, while other focuses like St Augustine and Socrates rambled away from the subject at times, maybe out of a desire to create some kind of intellectual webbing that would make the theory appear more respectable. I don't think it needed that. It needed more detail in how dynamics of dislocation have caused and lessened addiction, not criticism of The Republic
However, many of the examples and anecdotes provided in support throughout the book felt weak and at times almost irrelevant to me. There are hundreds of pages of footnotes where there must have been better material to draw into the main text than what was chosen.
The final chapters don't provide anything more than wooly suggestions that we should try to domesticate capitalism and reintegrate as a society. An anecdote about a community garden which was unsuccessfully defended from a commercial developer elucidated nothing. I think it's just something that happened in the author's neighbourhood and was included in the absence of any strong ideas on how to demonstrate the potential for change.
I didn't expect much from this section because 'what next' chapters are usually weak, but it felt like the author had slipped into naivete and a lack of imagination. My opinion of the book gradually declined throughout part 2, although I still think the dislocation theory it lays out in part 1 holds up and it has developed my understanding.
I think it's a great theory and worth reading for that, but a better book could be written in support.
Some of the historical context included like the temperance movement and gin craze are useful in demonstrating the relevance of dislocation through time, and the failures of established attitudes to deal with it, while other focuses like St Augustine and Socrates rambled away from the subject at times, maybe out of a desire to create some kind of intellectual webbing that would make the theory appear more respectable. I don't think it needed that. It needed more detail in how dynamics of dislocation have caused and lessened addiction, not criticism of The Republic
However, many of the examples and anecdotes provided in support throughout the book felt weak and at times almost irrelevant to me. There are hundreds of pages of footnotes where there must have been better material to draw into the main text than what was chosen.
The final chapters don't provide anything more than wooly suggestions that we should try to domesticate capitalism and reintegrate as a society. An anecdote about a community garden which was unsuccessfully defended from a commercial developer elucidated nothing. I think it's just something that happened in the author's neighbourhood and was included in the absence of any strong ideas on how to demonstrate the potential for change.
I didn't expect much from this section because 'what next' chapters are usually weak, but it felt like the author had slipped into naivete and a lack of imagination. My opinion of the book gradually declined throughout part 2, although I still think the dislocation theory it lays out in part 1 holds up and it has developed my understanding.
I think it's a great theory and worth reading for that, but a better book could be written in support.
April 6, 2025
The author is most well known for "rat park" a fun study that was able to show that rats in nice enclosures with a community of other rats didn't get addicted to offered drugs while those in depressing isolated conditions did. This book's thesis is essentially that problems in society (largely put at the doorstep of free market capitalism) create psychosocial dislocation in people, which leads them to addiction. The solution: remake society. The problem is that the notion of psychosocial dislocation is so broad that it's really more of an aesthetic, as addiction, metaphorically, is everywhere and so we're encouraged to blur the shopaholic and the alcoholic as symptomatic of a culture in decline. Fair enough as a point, but the way this is argued is amateurish. An extended look, to take one example, at the life of the guy who wrote Peter Pan (obsessed with young boys, grossly addicted to tobacco) and pairing him with Augustine of Hippo to prove the relationship between addiction and society is more than a little idiosyncratic. Another howler is re-treading Hanna Arendt's look at Eichmann and the banality of evil only to use his colleague's teaching shortcuts as an example of the same in the 21st century! And the solutions offered in the end? The usual grab bag of leftist ideas (support your independent newspaper, put on a community play, boycotts, fund things you like by taxing things you don't). These ideas don't sound like they'll end free market society but maybe they'll decorate the cage?
October 29, 2020
This is likely the most powerful and useful book I've read on this subject. Addiction takes many forms. Alexander points out that the substance or behavior to which one is addicted is not particularly important--the symptoms and outcomes are basically the same.
Alexander explains that, according to his research and that of many other scientists, addiction is based on a lack of "psychosocial integration," or more simply, meaningful connection to a community, to other people. Addicts are ostracized, and ostracism is the basis of addiction.
Gabor Maté has made a similar argument in his "In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts," pointing out how the rejection of addicts from society only inflames the disease.
Alexander explains that, according to his research and that of many other scientists, addiction is based on a lack of "psychosocial integration," or more simply, meaningful connection to a community, to other people. Addicts are ostracized, and ostracism is the basis of addiction.
Gabor Maté has made a similar argument in his "In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts," pointing out how the rejection of addicts from society only inflames the disease.
April 23, 2024
Whew. This book is DENSE. I think his general premise is correct and actually pretty simple to understand. The rest of the book goes into historical and contemporary examples. The research is exhaustive, but I think it’s also important to note that what we know about addiction has changed even in the last ten years (and this book was published in 2008). The problem of addiction is more multi-pronged, I think, than what the author would lead the reader to believe, but I certainly think that he offers a significant piece to the puzzle.
May 8, 2020
Bruce Alexander is one of the classic heroes in Addiction research. This book contains his grand theory re: Addiction. It breaks out of the accepted brain disease model and looks more broadly at addiction as ALSO a social, political, and economic phenomenon.
Anyone looking for a more comprehensive way to understand addiction needs to read this book.
Anyone looking for a more comprehensive way to understand addiction needs to read this book.
Want to read
May 5, 2020Finally found this, even written some 20yrs ago... lets see how it applies nowadays. I'm all tingles to start reading it!
December 27, 2021
Some interesting ideas that formed my views of addictions but I found some of the writing wordy, full of privilege, and patriarchal.
January 13, 2020
There's an immense amount of information in this, and unsurprisingly, some of it is both complex (dense) and bleak. There are also many citations and references, some of which I'd like to research, as a portion are clinical data I'm not familiar with, and they strike me as perhaps potentially ambiguous, but more so complicated. I'm open-minded, and some citations are difficult to believe without my own independent due diligence and review. This is an impressively, meticulously researched book. I'm typically an efficient reader, but Chapters 2 to 3 required a slower pace from me to reflect, analyze, and do my best to understand.
February 26, 2020
An excellent book. Alexander has laid out a convincing case for an expansion of the concept of problematic addiction beyond drug use to compulsive detrimental behaviors of all types and framed them within the concept of the breakdown of psychosocial integration caused by the rise of what he calls free-market society. The limits of the book are the limits of Alexander; at times he reverts to almost Bloomberg-esc desire to regulate away the excess of market society, and his Eurocentric lens prevents him from both drawings upon African centered scholars, who made a similar analysis of addiction caused the structural oppression decades before the rise of Alexander's work, and he at times pulls from Eurocentric sources like Plato and Socrates to the detriment of his work. He thus over asserts the role of the market and under analysis the role of racism/anti-blackness; one could argue the entire War on Drugs is NOT a breakdown of psychosocial integration but in fact an attempt to create it and affirm a particular vision of the social framed by white solidarity. Untangling the deep psychological and libidinal roots of the racialized War on Drugs is a task beyond Alexanders work, but in terms of thinking about addiction, this is a good start.
April 12, 2015
Naomi Klein meets Rat Park.
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