ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the addiction-as-individual-abnormality approach is partial, fragmented and ultimately ineffective, and that it is so because it does not acknowledge the importance of power and therefore leaves distortions of power in place. It offers a social model of addiction in which power is the central concept. The individual experience of disempowerment at the hands of a dangerously addictive substance or activity is contagious and spreads out to those who are near at hand, most particularly close family members. Meanwhile, addiction research is fragmented, with researchers operating in disconnected silos, the largest and dominant group focused on identifying, studying and treating the deviant and powerless minority. A more subversive change to the way addiction is treated could be envisaged. Instead of seeing addiction problems as purely personal, requiring individual behaviour and attitude change, ‘treatment’ – the terminology would certainly need to change – might combine the personal and the political.
