Source: Journal of Drug Issues, Vol. 17(2) (1987): 187-215.

How People's Values Determine Whether They Become and Remain Addicts

Contents

Introduction

How Do Some Groups Encourage Almost Universal Moderation and Self-Control

• What Accounts for Cultural Differences in Alcoholism?

• The Causes and Consequences of the Denial of Social Forces in Addiction

Do Human Beings Regulate Their Eating Behavior and Weight?

• Albert Stunkard and the Inheritance of Overweight

• Stanley Schachter and His Students and the Social Psychology of Obesity

• Stanley Garn and the Social Relativity of Eating Behavior

• Resolving the Irresolvable - What Does Weight Have to Do with Values?

Addiction as Intentional, or Value-Driven, Activity

Why Do the Same People Do So Many Things Wrong?

Drug Abuse as the Failure of Children to Develop Prosocial Values

The Commonplaceness of Natural Remission in Addiction

• How Do So Many Quit Addictions Without Our Help?

• Relapse Avoidance as Moral Certitude

Conclusion

• Moral Outrages

• Just Say No

References

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Contemporary theories of addiction of all stripes rule out faulty values as a cause of addiction. Yet evidence from cross-cultural, ethnic, and social-class research, laboratory study of addictive behavior, and natural history and field investigations of addiction indicate the importance of value orientations in the development and expression of addictive behaviors, including drug and alcohol addiction, smoking, and compulsive eating. Furthermore, the rejection of moral considerations in addition deprives us of our most powerful weapons against addiction and contributes to our current addiction binge. The disease myth of addiction in particular attacks the assumption of essential moral responsibility for people's drug use and related behavior, an assumption that we instead ought to be encouraging.

[John] Phillips is not altogether realistic about himself. He recalls that when he was a postman, he threw mail away because his mailbags were too heavy; as a graveyard plot salesman, he received down payments, pocketed the money and never recorded the transactions. Still, on page 297 of a 444 page book, in reporting how he skipped out on a $2,000 hotel bill, he writes, "My values were beginning to corrode under the prolonged influence of hard drugs." (Finkle, 1986:33)

Thomas (Hollywood) Henderson, the former Dallas Cowboy linebacker, who has been jailed in California since 1984 on sex charges involving two teenage girls, will be released this week and has already been scheduled for a paid speaking tour to talk against drug and alcohol abuse. Henderson was an admitted drug user. (New York Times, October 14, 1986:30)

Introduction

The scientific study of addiction has strongly opposed value considerations in addiction, regarding these as remnants of an outdated, religious-moral model. Behavior therapists, experimental psychologists, and sociologists hold this view in common with disease theorists who have championed the idea that a moral perspective oppresses the addict and impedes progress toward a solution for alcoholism and addiction. Many social scientists and others, however, believe the disease approach actually is just another form of the moral model, and that "the acceptance of the 'disease' concept ... [has] covertly intensified rigid moralizing" (Fingarette, 1985:60). It has accomplished this by embodying the evil of addiction in the use of the substance - in any use of such drugs as cocaine and in any kind of drinking by those with alcohol problems - and by urging abstinence as if it represented a modern scientific and therapeutic invention.