Portraying addiction as a disease: A phenomenological answer

This paper stems from the concern that, in certain situations, categorization may lead to the annihilation of the subject. It attempts to answer the question whether there is a way of framing addiction without necessarily putting the addicted persons in categories that hurt them. After showing, in the first section, how stigma is part of the process of becoming (and remaining) addicted, I will turn to the phenomenological tradition in order to re-consider the main descriptive categories that have been used so far to capture addiction as a "pathological" or "deviant" experience. The second section addresses addiction as an experience of hetero-transformation of the psycho-physical unity of the individual, which presupposes a genuine sense of the power of the bodily subject, while the third focuses on the modifications of temporality in addiction, especially in the horizon of trauma. The paper concludes that understanding addiction depends on framing the experience of addiction primarily as a non-pathological form of expression and looking at it as an attempt to restore the capabilities of a vulnerable subject.