TED
5 HN recommenders · recommended in 6 months, 2017–2025
14:43 · 14M views · Jul 9, 2015
Johann Hari's TED talk arguing that addiction is driven largely by disconnection and environment rather than chemical hooks alone. He draws on his personal experience with addicted relatives and on research and policy examples from around the world.
HN commenters quote it for the line that the opposite of addiction is connection, and recommend it as a more plausible account of addiction than the standard model.
7 comments from Hacker News
This is my favourite addiction talk. Everything you think you know about addiction is wrong | Johann Hari this video
I'm going to chip in here as I feel I'm qualified to do so as a recovering hard drug addict (clean almost a year). Addiction like most human conditions is complex, to debate this article it helps to have a clearer understanding of what causes addiction. I'm going to state my beliefs as truth, they are after all my truth. Addiction comes in many shapes, substance misuse, alcoholism, food addiction, porn addiction, consumerism and gambling to name some. They are not caused by the substance (or object etc) per se, i will paraphrase from a talk i will link to, if your grandma breaks her hip and is given medical quality opiates to relive her pain, she doesn't suddenly become a junkie. Addiction is borne from the inate human desire to form relationships. If we cannot form relationships with people (because we are socially isolated, homeless and have no one to turn to, have issues that no one else understands for example) some people will substitute those relationship with people for relationships with "stuff". You may recognise in yourself that you do this with technology. For some people the bonds they form are with more destructive thinks that $400 juice machines or the latest apple product, they are with substances that provide temporary feelings of acceptance but simultaneously corrode your very human-ness. It's not strictly correct to say that one drug leads to another; shit, disconnected lives lead to substance abuse (rich and famous people can be isolated too) it's also not
Reminds me of this TED talk: this video "Everything you think you know about addiction is wrong" , where he asserts that addiction isn't caused by the things we typically correlate with it. I was going to try to summarize, but I don't think I can do it justice. Its not long. > I think people drink and drug for a reason. We just mostly don't bother to try to figure out what the reason is for this specific person Absolutely. This is totally in line with what that guy says in the video too. One thing he says: "The opposite of addiction is connection." I know that personally, when I have problems that I struggle with and don't feel like anyone in my life can help me with or talk to about them (sadly has happened once or twice in my life), I have a tendency to binge, with anything that provides a brief escape, be it alcohol, drugs, video games, TV series', chocolate. Of course, its never been too bad, severe or long lasting for me, so it hasn't been too much of a problem and I wouldn't claim it comes close to what an alcoholic or heroin addict goes through, but I can at least see how someone might slip into such things, as a distraction from reality. And its usually coupled with a feeling of isolation and loneliness, feeling like you're alone with problems you don't know how to solve. So you hide from them instead. That's the impression I got after thinking about my past situations at least.
If you are open to questioning the “junkies” and their “choice to be so” stereotype, you may find this TED talk useful. this video Everything you think you know about addiction is wrong | Johann Hari
There are much more plausible explanations, like the one Johann Hari gives: this video or in plenty more detail, in his book on the topic.