Addiction is a disease, it should be treated as such. We shouldn't be relying on the afflicted to heal themselves. It's no different than asking someone depressed to just "think happy thoughts" and expect them to magically will their condition away.
This literally helped me with my depression. Like most depressed people I surrounded myself with depressing things. I would read existentialist books and listen to emo music. Stopping that helped a lot unsurprisingly.
For some reason you think people with a disease have no agency or ability to cure themselves? Since when has this been the case?
If you imagine yourself to have no agency, you will always be a victim and always have different "diseases" that are uncurable.
There are some diseases that can be cured by effort on the sick persons part. There are some that can't be.
A heroin addiction is very different from a reddit addiction.
I took bupropion then prozac, saw real therapists, went to a psychiatrist. Yes, the thing that ultimately led to me stop taking those drugs was changing my mindset and belief system. I stopped exposing myself that made me sad or angry and put me deeper into the hole. I would even watch shows that I knew made me laugh when I started to feel sad.
Some can (for some diseases).
The overwhelming majority can't.
>Since when has this been the case?
Since doctor became an occupation.
That's to say, for the entirety of known history.
You want to not be an addict? Recognize it, take responsibility for it, and get sober.
I would never tell my friends with depression to just "think happy thoughts". But I have suggested to some close friends that they need help and they could start by helping themselves by doing all of the things that we know to be beneficial for depression: exercise, change in diet, spend time outside, stop ruminating on social media about their mental health issues, etc. And if they can't do that a qualified medical professional can help get them to that point.
Regardless of how bad someone's depression or addiction is, no one can make the first step towards healing except the sufferer. That said, a lot of support and compassion is crucial for a lot of people.
Every time I hear someone took their life because of addiction or depression I get sad. I know what it's like to wake up everyday hating oneself and loathing life. It's not a fun place to be.
If any of you out there are going through any of this, get help. Please, life on the other side of addiction is soooo much better. And no matter what you think, there will always be people that wished you were still around.
A friend of friend took his own life this past week. He'd suffered a traumatic brain injury after falling drunk off of a deck at a party. I have no idea if he was an alcoholic or not. And doesn't matter.
I'm rambling. Carry on.
I might agree that addiction is a disease if we limit it to physical addiction. But colloquially "addiction" is used for what might be more precisely termed compulsive behavior, like spending hours on Facebook. This kind of "addiction" is more like self-medicating negative emotions, and negative emotions are generally telling us that we are "malnourished" in some area. So we might be FB-scrolling because we are bored (lack purpose, lack challenge, etc), or because we are lonely and want to feel connected. Until we figure out what FB-scrolling is doing for us and get that need met, we're going to feel "addicted" to FB.
You can't think your way out of cancer, a broken foot, or even a plain old bacterial infection. So why do we think we can do that for addiction?
To your second para, we don't know the root cause until we diagnose it. We don't know if it's physical, psychological (trauma), a hormonal/nutritional deficiency or a combination thereof. Right now society wants people to treat themselves without an adequate diagnosis and that's problematic on multiple fronts.
I love that idea. I wish I had a big enough piece of forested property to try that out. Put the kitchen in one place, bathroom in another, and bedroom in a third, all five minutes walking distance apart.
I could probably still find ways to defeat it. But maybe it would help.
Mini fridge in the bedroom and just pee outside on the forest floor. :)
In a perfect world I absolutely agree with this sentiment.
In a practical world this is an outrageously useless platitude.
> It's no different than asking someone depressed
The difference here is there is a third party with a vested interest in keeping you as addicted as possible.
I took it not as a platitude, but as a call to change the status quo.
As an industry we went from treating engagement as an art form, to treating it as an optimisation problem. Along the way we got very, very good at it, at scale. While profitable, we now know that the methods used to drive this engagement are harmful. Many countries recognise this harm and have introduced legislation to limit or ban methods used on vulnerable groups, such as children.
It is interesting that we, as an industry, do not talk more about the harm we are complicit in causing. Somewhere along the way we normalised and accepted the idea that addicting features are desirable, and that we are not responsible for the consequences.
With all said, an industry is not an individual. You and I may care about this problem, but it is not clear how to fix it. At the very least, as individuals it would be good to avoid contributing to addicting features as a matter of principle wherever the opportunity arises, lest we become the equivalent of digital drug dealers.
It's just unfortunately the case that ultimately you can bring a horse to water, at the gushing water well, surrounded by bottles of water, purified and fortified to a nutritional perfection, but if the horse itself doesn't want to drink, nothing you can do.
Until we have a mind-control shot, people have to ultimately fix their addictions themselves.
This attitude of “I have X disease, so it’s not my problem to solve” is toxic and it’s the reason for rampant obesity and type 2 diabetes.
Look, it's not my fault I ate that tray of brownies after dinner. I'm just an addict. I need medicine and government intervention to save me from myself.
Then your friend goes home and drinks alone...
Addiction is largely driven by neurodevelopmental disorders (ADHD, ASD, MDD, sleep disorders, and many more), psychological disorders (anxiety, OCD, and many more), or both in combination. Most folks don't want to be addicts. At the heart of addiction is executive dysfunction caused by the above conditions, exacerbated by stressors. You treat it like any other mental health problem: therapy, medication, support systems, and a society that cares for its populace.