Our Addiction Economy Project and our new website

Addiction Economy Thought For Today - is about our Addiction Economy Project and our new website - theaddictioneconomy.com.

The site is where Joe Woof and I will explore ideas, post articles and will act as the rolling record and archive of our thinking as it evolves.

"This project is not about heroin addicts in doorways or ‘the war on drugs’. It’s about the political and economic values, decision-making and corporate strategies which have made addicting one’s customers an acceptable mainstream business model - and what can be done about it.”

(The incentives that mean heroin addicts end up in doorways are much the same, but the pushers and their facilitators get knighthoods not jail sentences.)

We also want to explore how society seems so often to blame those addicted, not the addicters, and to investigate un-addiction. New research is questioning the idea of the ‘addictive personality’ or ‘addictive gene’. Is the framing of addiction as a disease empowering or debilitating or both? Are the psychological aspects of addiction far more powerful than the chemical? Is addiction a lifelong burden or is un-addiction possible without even a backward glance?

We hope to uncover new thinking about all these influences and explore how to prevent addictive products in the first place, and empower un-addiction. In scope will be cigarettes, gambling, alcohol, social media, computer games, vaping and ultra-processed foods, and who knows what else will be invented in the meantime!

Crazily broad and ambitious, but, we think, important."

A bit spartan yet, but here it is. Thanks again for the lovely work to @Marina Pla at Effusion LLP

https://lnkd.in/dsT-BjQz