ABSTRACT

Alcoholics and drug addicts often speak about no longer being themselves, of having lost their way, and loved ones, friends, the law, and the mental health community typically agree. The adult addict is physically continuous with some particular baby born years before, and they have an autobiographical memory of that particular individual life. Metaphysically speaking, the addict is the same person they always were. But they are no longer the person they planned, hoped, or expected to be, or who others expected them to be. The kind of identity they have lost or are in danger of losing is the kind of identity that comes from executing authorial power to align, keep aligned, and then continually recalibrate, one’s actual life in terms of one’s vision of the good. Healthy individuals in healthy ecologies normally possess this kind of authorial control.