[Addiction as a life style: on the social anthropology of addiction]

Regularly the unsolved problems of addiction- and dependence-research are discussed in the sense of the psycho-body-dichotomy, arguing that the biological mechanisms of reward-systems and their pathobiochemistry have to be confronted with the psychological and philosophical/anthropological dimensions within persons. The present paper, however, tries to demonstrate that this dichotomy is insufficient insofar as social-anthropological components of being addicted, which represent integrative constituents of a theory of addiction, are neglected within such a scheme. The developmental-psychological and philosophical-psychological aspects of socialization are considered and related to internal valuating systems and reality models regarding the problems of drugs and dependency. Herein it is shown that especially the model of René Girard, constituting "mimetic triangulation", is applicable to the understanding of the microsocialization of drug-consumers. This is also demonstrated in film-examples. It is shown that the problem of drug-addiction cannot be solved from a neurobiological/biochemical--and also a psychotherapeutic/psychoanalytic concept--without incorporating the dynamics and the value-worlds within groups which should also be considered to be therapeutically influenceable.