Time Magazine’s article on addiction, July 16, 2007
I wrote a letter to the editor of Time:
Dear Editor,
Overall excellent piece on addiction. At the risk of seeming overly critical, however, it perpetuates several destructive myths. The first is Fracella’s definition of addiction, which requires “the desire to continue using something you know is bad for you.” Due to euphoric recall, the distortion every addict experiences that causes early-stage addicts to view practically everything they do or say through self-favoring lenses, they have great difficulty in seeing that it is “bad” for them. Most early-stage alcoholics are, in fact, utterly incapable of self-diagnosis.
The second includes two myths in one: Volkow’s assertion that “everyone will become an addict if sufficiently exposed to drugs or alcohol.” First, the correct phrase is “alcohol or other drugs,” since alcohol is a drug (and the primary one for most addicts). Second, most recovering addicts admit to having triggered their addiction during the first drinking episode. This suggests a predisposition to addiction. Few, if any, become addicts who are not so predisposed. I suggest that non-addict readers just try drinking addictively. They will find they not only cannot, but will be on their faces long before the typical early-stage alcoholic, who starts with high tolerance, even appears inebriated.
Finally, the article posits that evolution has done a poor job of weeding out alcoholics. Actually, it’s done an excellent job. Consider the difference in aggregate levels of alcoholism in cultures where fermented grains and fruits have been available in large quantities for 10,000 years v. those which have had such access for only 400 years. The former, such as the Mediterranean populations, have a 5-10% rate of alcoholism; the latter, including Native Americans, have a rate as high as 75%. Indeed, I would suggest the propensity to think they are invincible weeded out budding young alcoholics from injuries before modern medicine was around to save them from themselves.