Drug Addiction and Drug Abuse

Do we really need rehab centers for people who spend too much time online or in stores?

Like smoking crack pulling desperately on their pipes broken, we are, lately, all become drug addicts in need. Our drugs? Addiction. The concept is certainly not new: it already has hundreds of years. He then described the compulsive consumption of alcohol, and later those of heroin and cocaine.

Today, we put all the sauce: it seems to apply to each behavior deemed unpleasant or unreasonable. Take the inordinate passion for new technologies. This summer, countless articles and reports have praised the RESTART clinic in Washington state, which seems to be the first rehabilitation center treating the “Internet addiction”. For $ 15,000, you can register for a stay of 45 nights supposed to cure you of any dangerous or unhealthy fascination for, say, the role-playing game World of Warcraft online. The Internet addiction is only one of the behavioral addictions that have recently made their debut in the pages and screens of mainstream media: see also addiction to shopping, sex addiction, food addiction, addiction to the love, etc..

Creeping medicalisation of everyday life

It causes problems or excess can now pass for a serious mental illness. The drug addiction is a serious problem and has undergone extensive medical research – unlike most of these new “behavioral addiction”, that have absolutely no scientific basis. When the extramarital affairs of Tiger Woods has come to light, the world’s media have repeated back the “sex addiction” – a concept not recognized by the world of medicine. The exact definition of “Internet addiction” (which remains the most “publicized” of these new diagnoses) is not even consensus in the research world. According to a study published this year in the journal CyberPsychology and Behavior, the term has been used in various – and inconsistent – ways by researchers. Most studies of this “abnormal behavior” is based on self-selected samples of students using a computer, and are usually subject to serious bias.

Despite the irrational nature of this argument (which would like the compulsive use of heroin and excessive love for a game like World of Warcraft are united under one banner – the addiction), it quickly made its way into our collective imagination. The fervor that we make finding new types of addiction seems to be born of an explosive mixture-based folk medicine, pseudo-neuroscience, and a misplaced compassion vis-à-vis the people suffering.

Incoming search terms for the article:

• writings about ending an addiction