Typology of Theories of Drug Use & Addiction

2. Typology of Theories of Drug Use & Addiction Adapted from Faupel, Sociology of American Drug Use

3. ALEXANDER’S DISLOCATION THEORY • Why are so many people addicted to destructive habits in the globalizing world? • Why does addiction extend beyond drugs/alcohol to include so many other behaviors? • Why hasn't science been able to solve addiction?

4. The Globalization of Addiction – Bruce Alexander • Abundance of addiction theory, little consensus • Alexander: Insights from historical research lead to a clearer picture • Conventional addiction wisdom: • Christian theology & scientific medicine • Lies within individual, either as sin/moral failure or biochemical disease • Drug addiction is the proto-typical addiction– intrinsically addictive drugs must be rid from society  war on drug traffickers • Society is not blamed

5. DISLOCATION THEORY • Not limited to drug addiction, but accompanies every “addiction,” from shopping to religion. Applied anywhere addiction is found. • Does not medicalize addiction – does not assume that classical markers of withdrawal or dopamine depletion must be present, etc. • Does not pertain to non-destructive uses of drugs (pleasure, stress relief, ritual, recreation, etc.) • Does not explain why equally dislocated people pick up different destructive pursuits • Does not explain why some dislocated people overcome addiction and others don’t.

6. I. The Globalization of Free Market Society • Free market society produces mass dislocation as part of normal functioning. • Increasing globalization of free market imperative shapes every aspect of human existence. • Economic individualism • Model of rational, atomized, self-interested actor • Undermines devotion to tradition, community, values • Traditional forms of integration are “market distortions” or dysfunctions which must be eliminated

7. II. Lack of Psychosocial Integration • Psychosocial integration: interdependence between individual and society. The bridge between social belonging and individual autonomy. (Erik Erikson) • Belonging, community, wholeness, social cohesion, etc. • Dislocation is a lack of psychosocial integration – alienation , disconnection • Dislocation not same as material deprivation: In contrast to material poverty, a lack of psycho-social integration signals a “poverty of the spirit” • Dislocation arises from a variety of historical and social forces • Alexander: linked to spread of free market capitalism

8. Globalizing Free Market Society undermines psychosocial integration FAMILY LEISURE WORK

9. III. Addiction3 Is a Way of adapting to sustained dislocation… • Addiction3 = a narrowly focused “substitute” lifestyle functioning as a substitute for people who lack PS integration • Addictions have vital adaptive functions • Addictions cannot bring about the wholeness of PS integration, and often they work to further disrupt the addicts’ lives. • Alexander: There is no underlying disorder with addiction. It is an adaptive response to widespread suffering. • Addiction is a product of the social structure in which we live, inseparable from it.

11. The Dislocation Theory: Understanding the Spread of Addiction 1. Globalization of Capitalist Free Market System 2. Decline of Psycho-Social Integration 3. Poverty of the Spirit • Proliferation of Addiction3

12. Paradox of choice in capitalist societies  addiction3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bqMY82xzWo

13. Righteous Dopefiend – Intro Work in groups to find definitions for the following from the introductory chapter: “Moral economy” among Edgewater homeless Cultural relativism Politics of representation “theory of lumpen abuse” Symbolic violence Habitus Biopower