Introduction

Abstract

What is ‘addiction’? What does it say about us, our social arrangements and our political preoccupations? Where is it going as an idea, and what is at stake in its ongoing production? These are the questions this book seeks to answer. Fuelled by recent debates about the newly published and controversial fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5 2013), by the rise of neuroscience and by the ever-increasing concern over newly defined areas of ‘compulsive behaviour’ or ‘process addictions’ (gambling, Internet and video gaming, eating and so on), the currency of the term can only be said to be growing. As Eve Sedgwick (1993) once said, an epidemic of ‘addiction attribution’ is underway. Our focus in this book will be on understandings of drug addiction. Perhaps the most feared of all addiction attributions, drug addiction occupies a key place in the logic of addiction. Potent substances are understood to cause harmful psychological or, more recently, neurobiological states and, in turn, problematic, often criminal — certainly destructive — behaviour. It follows that we must act to reduce the availability of drugs, our desire for them and their negative effects wherever we can. We must turn to science to help us understand drugs and addiction objectively and to lead the way in responding to the profound social problem of addiction.