We are in a ‘polycrisis’ of addiction - why?

Addiction Economy Thought for Today - are we in a ‘polycrisis’ of addiction?

Addiction is commonly viewed as either a moral failing or a disease. Rarely is it considered a function of commercial determinants and political will. Joe Woof and I are developing an 'Economic Model' of addiction (sharing soon) to be considered alongside the common Social, Psychological and Biological models to demonstrate what a critical factor this is. We are also looking at the model in the context of other ‘crises’ of addiction in history, (a fun article on ‘Gin Lane’ to come, which was a shocker!)

Then up pops the work of Daniel Hoyer this morning and this excellent article in The Conversation.

He and colleagues at the University of Toronto have developed Seshat: a ‘Global History Databank’. “The aim is to treat history as a “natural” science, using statistical methods, computational simulations and other tools adapted from evolutionary theory, physics and complexity science to understand why things happened the way that they did. By turning historical knowledge into scientific “data”, we can run analyses and test hypotheses about historical processes, just like any other science”.  We are in a polycrisis they conclude, but have been there before.

So with history in mind, we pondered the fact that currently in scope for our work are cigarettes, vapes, opioids, alcohol, gambling, social media, computer games, crypto currencies and unhealthy and ultra processed food. That’s a lot of addictions at the same time, and far more than any other time from researching the history of addiction.

It seems very much like a ‘polycrisis’ of addiction. But why?

One of Hoyler and his team’s big findings is “how extreme inequality shows up in nearly every case of major crisis...As inequality takes root and conflict among elites ramps up, it usually ends up hampering society’s ability to right the ship. This is because elites tend to capture the lion’s share of wealth, often at the expense of both the majority population and state institutions.” Sounds familiar doesn’t it.

So back to addiction. We argue that it is neither a moral failing nor a disease in the traditional sense, but primarily a function of out control elites - particularly companies and business systems.  Various industries are not just preying on the disadvantaged communities who are particularly vulnerable to addiction, but complicit in contributing to the disadvantage in the first place and perpetuating it.

We are in a polycrisis of addiction because, as is so obvious to us all, those who are seeking to addict us have all the power and influence, and those who should be curtailing that power aren’t seeing this picture as clearly as they need to. The worries are all about being a ‘nanny state’ and not enough about being a ‘negligent state’.  History, the article tells us, shows that seeing this distinction clearly will be the difference between addressing our polycrises successfully, and not.