In medicine the word “addiction” usually indicates a physical dependence on a chemical substance or behavior that messes with your dopamine system. But, as Wikipedia admits, the word is now used much more broadly to mean any old gratifying dependency you have a tough time ending without tears. That’s the definition I’m taking home.
So, while occasionally here in “Dream On,” we’ll look at the roles that mind and brain play in the predictable dopaminergic addictions like huffing glue (substance abuse), compulsive Purex use (OCD) and designer purse collecting (shopoholia), most often we’ll focus on the addictiveness of ideas, concepts, and fantasies -- from skewed self-images and the myth of “the American dream,” to the need to pretend that your sex partner is Angelina Jolie, a black stallion or Samuel Beckett.
Apologies to my stricter readers: Using the word “addiction” to apply to illusions, delusions and habits of thought as well as mad cravings for intoxicating chemicals isn’t all that fair of me. The human mind, we are learning to our dismay, is pretty much a whirligig of habits and triggers, so that allowing habits of mind into the “compulsive” category gives me pretty much of a free pass to write about anything I like, as long as it’s pointed in the general direction of human psychology -- our helplessness in the face of ignorance and desire, our failure to see ourselves as the gods see us, our underdeveloped sense of smell compared to dogs. I tell myself I’m gaming Psychology Today’s category system this way, getting my blog category listed under “A” for “addiction” instead of “Z” for “bottom of the list,” but the truth is quite possibly that I can’t help myself. I have to consider that, far from a cunning choice cannily made, picking “Addiction” as my blog’s grouping may well be a craven need.
I’ll even have to allow the weed-toking possibility that thinking about addiction can itself be addictive. “Booze-hound” after all, has a certain louche glamour that “hamster-on-a-wheel” lacks, no? And the phrase “Man With a Golden Arm” sounds a lot hotter than “dunce,” at least to me. "Betty Ford graduate," "fake it 'til you make it," "user," "hop head," the language and concepts we've developed to confront addiction insinuate themselves into all sorts of other issues and topics, where they make hard, cold scientific information more exciting and accessible to the tabloid portion of the brain.
So, okay, I confess: I’m an addiction metaphor junkie. But so what?, Not all mental compulsions are bad for you, not unless you think that being something less than fully free or less than totally in control of yourself is intolerable. And, well, even if you do, I might try to change your opinion about the inherent shamefulness of mental autopilots.
As William James explained to a group of teachers in 1892, choosing your poisons is less a standard option than a rare privilege; people old enough to teach don’t have many choices left:
“Ninety-nine hundredths or, possibly, nine hundred and ninety-nine thousandths of our activity is purely automatic and habitual, from our rising in the morning to our lying down each night. Our dressing and undressing, our eating and drinking…even most of the forms of our common speech, are things of a type so fixed by repetition as almost to be classed as reflex actions.”
James’s point wasn’t just that everyone over twenty-five is 99% brainless robot, it was also that the right blind compulsions may promote survival. If you go through life kidding yourself into thinking you can do anything if you work at it hard enough, you may fail to make the majors, but you’ll still do better than you would have if you hadn’t stepped up to the plate with optimism, persistence and determination.
So my proposition is, that if we think about all those mental processes and quirks over which we are relatively helpless in the sensational and often hilarious vocabulary associated with addiction, we might be able to gain a hair more awareness, understanding and even leverage over them. And when these pop-sci metaphors threaten to destroy our brains and turn us into zombies? That will be interesting to notice, too.
