Addiction Is a Meaningless Concept

It's a medical term that has been batting around our culture for a while. But what do we really know about addiction?

1) It's bad. "Addiction" is almost never used in a positive context. It is never considered to be good to be addicted to something.

2) It involves repetitive behavior. Well yes, but so do a lot of things.

3) It typically involves drugs but lately it has bled over into non-drug behavior. I am still not sure how standard that usage is.

As far as I can tell, that is all that addiction necessarily entails. Pretty thin definition, no? You might be saying but wait Alex, there's way more to addiction than that. What about tolerance, you say, what about withdrawal? What about pleasurable stimulus, and the resulting habit formation also known as "psychological addiction?" As a matter of fact, those are completely inessential to our understanding of the concept. Some "addictive" drugs exhibit all three of these properties. Some exhibit none. None of them is essential. Observe:

Pleasure, tolerance, withdrawal: Heroin
Pleasure, tolerance, no withdrawal: MDMA
Pleasure, no tolerance, withdrawal: Marijuana
Pleasure, no tolerance, no withdrawal: LSD
No pleasure, tolerance, withdrawal: Sleeping pills
No pleasure, tolerance, no withdrawal: Arsenic-eating*
No pleasure, no tolerance, withdrawal: SSRIs
No pleasure, no tolerance, no withdrawal: Dr. Phil sez, "I think tattooing is the new addiction."

You see, all the combinations are filled with a drug that some people, especially if they are dumb like Dr. Phil, consider addictive. So unless our definition of "addiction" is additive -- addiction is habitual bad use of a drug with tolerance, or habitual bad use of a drug for pleasure or habitual bad use of a drug to stave off withdrawl -- addiction has no meaning.

* I know arsenic-eating isn't considered addictive. That's because nobody does it. Wikipedia doesn't seem to have heard of it. But does anybody doubt that if arsenic eating were widespread today, Dr. Phil would have a primetime special on mothers who eat arsenic (and their families who don't know about it)? If you would prefer, you can leave that field blank. It doesn't make any difference to my point.