The Globalization of Addiction: A Study in Poverty of the Spirit by Bruce K. Alexander (review)

Abstract

issn 0362-4021 © 2019 Eastern Group Psychotherapy Society group, Vol. 43, No. 2–4, Winter 2019 135 1 Correspondence should be addressed to Dr. Alan Oxman, 738 Leonard Street, Brooklyn, NY 11222. E-mail: alanoxman@gmail.com. Book Review The Globalization of Addiction: A Study in Poverty of the Spirit. By Bruce K. Alexander. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010, 496 pp. Reviewed by Alan Oxman1 In his book The Globalization of Addiction, Bruce Alexander proposes a “dislocation” theory of addiction that situates the source of addiction in the environment holding the addict, depicting the addict as a symptom of larger societal forces rather than as a diseased, self-contained, unitary entity. Alexander, an addiction researcher at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, first came to prominence for his notable Rat Park experiment that advanced the theory that social atmosphere is a vital contributing factor to compulsive behavior (Alexander, Coambs, & Hadaway, 1978). Prior to the Rat Park experiment, researchers studying rats caged in Skinnerian boxes with free access to morphine found that the rats typically became addicted to the morphine, “proving” that morphine was irresistible and deeply addictive to rats, enshrining the view that addiction lay in some magical property of the drug itself (in this case, morphine). However, Alexander hypothesized that the cause of addiction was not the irresistible lure of the substance but rather the toxic effect social isolation has on rats. He designed a habitat that he called Rat Park, where the rats roamed together in open spaces with platforms for climbing, tin cans for hiding in, and running wheels for exercise. He found that in this more congenial environment, the rats did not typically become addicted to freely available morphine. Within Alexander’s conceptual framework, the addicts among us have been emotionally and physically poisoned. The cure for addiction, he argues, is not for the addict to be forced to hopelessly battle the effects of the poison. Rather, the cure is to stop the poisoning of portions of society so that we have fewer poisoned members. In the dislocation theory of addiction, the poison is the self-alienation 136 oxman immanent in individuals, families, and communities torn apart by our modern, global hypercapitalism and its “unrelenting pressures towards individuation, competition, and rapid change” (p. 3). In a free-market society, addiction is, for Alexander, “a political problem, rather than a medical or criminal one” (p. 69), and as long as this fact is ignored, many more people will become addicted. Alexander deploys a vivid metaphor, comparing the addicted individual to a fox gnawing off its own leg, which is stuck in a leg-hold trap. This self-harming behavior would only seem maladaptive to someone for whom the trap is not visible. Similarly, with addicts, their equivalent of the leg-hold trap is dislocation, and people who do not acknowledge the addict’s dislocation will often judge his or her harmful lifestyle as a pointless masochism rather than as an adaptive solution to a painful internal condition. Everywhere he looks, Alexander observes people reacting in different ways to social dislocation by devoting themselves to narrow lifestyles that function as substitutes for psychosocial integration. Individually, these substitute lifestyles have distinct names: junkie, miser, shopaholic, workaholic, crackhead, alcoholic, religious zealot, anorexic, bulimia, etc. Collectively they make up addiction. (p. 62) Despite the staggering resources spent on fighting alcoholism, drug addiction, and various other compulsions that are labeled as “addiction,” Alexander asserts that the number of addicts continues to swell. There is meager hope in dealing successfully with addiction without directly addressing its source—the perpetual motion machine of modern “hypercapitalism” that “generates enormous material wealth and technical innovation and, at the same time, breaks down every traditional form of social cohesion and belief, creating a kind of dislocation or poverty of the spirit that draws people into addiction and other psychological problems” (p. 12). This might explain why Alexander believes that the various approaches that have been formulated to assist addicted individuals have been ineffective. Neurological and genetic research, quasi-moral and religious systems such as the 12-Step programs (e.g., Alcoholics Anonymous), and, sadly, clinical therapies and interventions have not helped to stem the growing tide...