ABSTRACT
The alarming spread of alcohol and drug addiction in the late modern era has provoked a vast amount of moralistic and medical analysis (e.g., White 1998). However, neither the moralistic nor the medical paradigm has generated interventions that have curtailed the continuing spread of addiction. Moreover, despite loud proclamations to the contrary, neither the moralistic nor the medical paradigm has led to a compelling and robust understanding of addiction (Szasz 1973/1985; Peele, Brodsky, and Arnold 1992: 19–46; Kalant 2009; Heyman 2009; Pickard 2012; Hart 2013; Ahmed, Lenoir, and Guillem 2013; Levy 2013; Satel and Lilienfeld 2013; Helm et al. 2014; Hall, Carter, and Forlini 2015; Lewis 2015; Alexander 2016). Unfortunately, no widely accepted alternative has yet taken the place of these two played-out paradigms.
