Words, Worlds, and Addictions

With Latin as its semantic pedigree, ‘addiction’ derives from addictio, to give over, to surrender. If I am addicted to something, then I am given over to it. I surrender to it.

Many good things in life are well worth giving oneself over to. I surrender myself to love for my family, a passion for philosophy, the awesome beauties of Mother Nature, the intricacies of sonnets by Shakespeare, and the warmth of reminiscing about shared histories with old friends.

Of course, we persons have to be careful about both the subjects or foci and the styles or manners of our acts of surrender. ‘Addiction’ itself is a medical or mental health term with the connotation partly of, as Jesse Summers aptly points out, an addict’s valuing (or surrendering to) the wrong things or in the wrong way. I may begin drinking alcohol to enhance life’s joys or to dull its sorrows. But heavy drinking may threaten my physical health, financial stability, family, and friendships.

Depending on an addiction’s severity and my social conditions, it may not be possible for me on my own to pull back or away from the harmful consequences of an addictive behavior pattern. Why am I unable to pull away? No doubt, there are rather different explanations for different cases, people, and situations. Potent stimuli for indulging the impulse to drink may sneak up on me, despite memories of drinking’s negative consequences. Or, if significant people in my social world are drinkers, smokers, or gamblers, it may be too difficult for me to construct or maintain a healthy balance in behavior. I may fear the loss of the social capital of my friendships if I do not drink or gamble with my buddies. Other reasons or causes may also obtain.

Different contents, foci, or subjects of addiction may produce different challenges to my motivational system. Heroin. Cocaine. Alcohol. Gambling. Inhalants. Nicotine. Fattening foods. Challenges may occur at all levels: phenomenological, neurological, and social. To assume a monorail-like sameness about the causal trajectories or powers of such foci may be like assuming a deep similarity between baseball and hockey or London, England, and London, Ontario. Surface resemblances between powers should be discharged in favor of real facts about explanatory forces.

Summers is sensitive to addiction’s nuances, ranges, and intensifications. In this commentary, I add a few complementary suggestions for his analysis, ones that I hope are helpful.

Summers may wish to distinguish between different types of addiction. I mean types distinguished not in terms of the subjects or foci of addiction (heroin, gambling, etc.), but in terms of the manner or style in which an addict’s motivational system is connected with an addictive behavior pattern.

The unwilling addict who wishes and tries, on occasion, to quit but may fail or relapse offers a pattern of behavior that is an exemplar of addiction. Or so I assume (Graham 2013, 177–202; Stephens and Graham 2009). But there can be merit in referring to other sorts of addictions, such as willing, wanton, or resigned addictions, which are designations that sometimes appear in the literature (see Kennett 2013). Although these types are departures from exemplary unwillingness, they are not necessarily contradictions in terms or taxonomic aberrations, provided that the type-specific parameters for the application of such concepts are specified empirically. Each type may pose different conceptual demands on a theory of addiction and stymie certain generalizations across all types.

Take, for example, the so-called resigned addict. Someone perhaps too filled with fatigue, self-loathing, or a lack of confidence to even try to control their devotion to something that is harmful for them. Why decide that someone is a resigned addict? Perhaps, in part, this is because of the individual’s personal testimony. The addict may report his or her giving up the effort to control against their harmful behavior. “Why bother?” they may say. Such an addict’s world, as Neil Levy puts matters, may be without sufficient incentive to try to exercise “effortful self-control...