People Are Not Born Addicts: They Become Addicts

My grandma gave me a couple of nickels. “Go get bread”, she said. I nodded. I opened the drawer to get my sneakers. I had only one pair – dirty, torn, almost falling apart. But this would be the pair I’d wear for a long time to come. I put them on. I got out of home and walked. It was a sunny day. The store was no more than 900 feet away from our block. I got there. I looked around. It was mostly empty, like most of the time. Meet, fish, rice, flour, milk, bread. But there was something else on the counter wrapped in a colorful package… chocolate. There was only one left. It was a rare occurrence. Not only in the store, but also in my life. I had tasted chocolate just a couple of times and only on special occasions. And there was nothing special about today. I stood there motionless, staring. “What do you want?”, said the person behind the counter with a dismissive tone. It was my turn to order. I looked at the bread, then back at the chocolate. I took the coins out of my pocket. I counted them. I was sweating. I said…

Only a few years later, the stores would mutate into grotesque temples of abundance. Not only in terms of size, but in terms of goods inside of them, too. If you had told seven-year-old me there would one day be entire aisles devoted to chocolate, I’d have laughed.

In my lifetime, things have changed from a period when you had money to buy things, but nothing to buy. To the current period when you don’t have a lot of money, but you have plenty to choose from.

What did this parade of plenty bring?

More jobs. Improved quality of life. Large investments. Innovation. Yet, beneath the cheering optimism of progress, this transformation was built on credit cards debt, burnout, and beautifully packaged emptiness. All of this unleashing a new way of addictions.

Addictions aren’t new. From the down of time, humanity have always found ways to addict itself. From ancient Rome to imperial China, alcohol consumption spread faster than religion ever could. Then came tobacco, gambling, opium, heroin and cocaine. All the way down to prescription opioids and the current danger hanging over our heads: internet addiction.

Initially, people mostly got addicted to the substance itself – the liquor, the nicotine, the drug alone. The chemical hooked the body. But today, addiction has evolved. People are getting addicted to behaviors – the ritual of smoking, the experience of drinking, the social expectation to be constantly online.

But this change didn’t occur naturally. It was engineered. Slowly implanted into our brains by big organizations wanting to get bigger.

Imagine drinking and smoking in the early Modern Period. Unlike today – where drinking is often a demonstration of status, a way to boost your confidence, or just to pretend you don’t care – there was nothing glamorous about it back then.¹ You got drunk in a cloud of smoke to dull the pain of feudal life, to survive cold winters, to forget you had no rights or real control over your future.² And not only that, but the very idea of smoking for women was taboo, even scandalous in most culture.

That changed in 1929. American Tobacco, which made Lucky Strike, eager to expand its market, hired Edward Bernays to promote female smoking. He organized a public protest-like stride during the Easter Sunday Parade in New York City. A group of stylish young women lit up cigarettes and marched, calling them Torches of Freedom. The message was simple: “Smoking isn’t just smoking – it’s a symbol of freedom. If men can do it, so can we.” ³

And while this campaign was a win for gender equality. It made smoking even a greater part of our culture by selling a behavior. By selling a lifestyle. It wasn’t only a product, but a whole identity sold through ritual.

The intriguing thing here is not only why we still allow it. Why addictive behaviors are so easily accessible? Why states and governments are fundamentally indifferent to the mass dependence to a variety of substances? But also what tricks us into surrendering to sinful habit-forming. Because we are not born addicts, we become such.

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Footnotes:

1. This is not entirely true. Romans were famous for their lavish dinner parties where elites displayed their power and wealth through wine, food, entertainment. Yet, my point is that in today’s times, it’s an even more luxurious experience.
2. Martin, A.L. (2007). The Reform of Popular Drinking in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe. In: Kirkby, D., Luckins, T. (eds) Dining on Turtles. Palgrave Macmillan, London. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230597303_8
3. Torches of Freedom. Wikipedia. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torches_of_Freedom
4. Rakia. Wikipedia. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rakia
5. LeBuffe, M. Spinoza’s psychological theory, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Available at: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/spinoza-psychological/
6. Conatus. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conatus
7. Counts, L. How information is like snacks, money, and drugs-to your brain – haas news: Berkeley Haas, Haas News. Available at: https://newsroom.haas.berkeley.edu/how-information-is-like-snacks-money-and-drugs-to-your-brain/
8. Top publicly traded tobacco and cigarette companies by number of employees. CompaniesMarketCap.com – companies ranked by market capitalization. Available at: https://companiesmarketcap.com/tobacco/largest-tobacco-companies-by-number-of-employees/
9. Meta Platforms. number of employees. StockAnalysis. Available at: https://stockanalysis.com/stocks/meta/employees/
10. Phillips, P. by R., by, P. and Phillips, R. Bytedance has tripled the number of US employees in the past year, Platform Executive. Available at: https://www.platformexecutive.com/news/media-and-content/bytedance-has-tripled-the-number-of-us-employees-in-the-past-year/
11. The principles of psychology. Wikipedia. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Principles_of_Psychology