Addiction: the urgent need for a paradigm shift.

Area of Science:

• Social Sciences
• Sociology
• Public Health

Background:

• Severe addictions to drugs and other habits cause global harm.
• Current interventions by law enforcement, medical professionals, and therapists have largely failed to control the growing addiction problem.
• Existing paradigms view addiction as an individual disease or moral failing, which has proven insufficient.

Purpose of the Study:

• Propose a major paradigm shift in understanding addiction.
• Advocate for a social perspective on addiction.
• Challenge the dominant individual-focused models of addiction.

Main Methods:

• Critique of existing addiction paradigms.
• Application of social science theories, particularly Karl Polanyi's work.
• Analysis of addiction as a societal response to cultural changes.

Main Results:

• The individually oriented paradigm of addiction has failed to control its spread.
• Addiction can be understood as a social adaptation mechanism.
• The breakdown of psychologically sustaining culture, influenced by free-market society, contributes to addiction.

Conclusions:

• A social paradigm, rather than an individual one, is required to understand addiction.
• Understanding addiction requires social scientific perspectives over individualistic ones.
• This new social paradigm offers a framework for addressing the global addiction crisis.