Addiction and Modernity

Part 4, Lonely People Make Good Addicts

To recap, Kent Dunnington's book Addiction and Virtue argues that addiction can be viewed as a prophetic critique of modernity. Addiction, if we pay attention to it, points us to the failures of modernity. Addiction is addictive because it gives us what we find missing in modern life.

In the last two posts we described how addiction helps us overcome the existential vacuum of modernity. Lacking a Story that gives life motivating and clarifying purpose and direction, addiction gives us a habit and a lifestyle that fills this void. Addiction makes something matter, creating a focused, unifying, consuming and motivated lifestyle.

This is not to deny the physiological aspects of chemical dependency. This is simply the observation that, even when the addict is detoxed and clean, the lifestyle of addiction remains alluring because of how it addresses the spiritual and psychological vacuum of modernity.

Consequently, if detoxed addicts cannot replace addiction with something that is as equally compelling and consuming they will remain vulnerable to addiction's allures.

And yet, as we've seen, because modern lacks a Story struggles to give us anything as compelling or consuming. Thus we remain chronically vulnerable to addictive habits and lifestyles.

Beyond filling the existential void, addiction also reduces the feeling of loneliness in modernity. As Dunnington says, "Lonely people make good addicts."

Again, loneliness is a uniquely modern problem. We are, as Robert Putnam has so ably documented, "bowling alone." The American Surgeon General has also come out and declared loneliness to be a growing public health risk, as risky as smoking. 

Addiction thrives in this social vacuum. Addiction often starts in social contexts, is sustained by circles of friends, and is maintained by a webs of connection between fellow users and suppliers. And even when addiction isolates us from others, it does so by becoming a surrogate "friend." Addicts often refer to the chemical they are addicted to as their "best friend." Addiction is a companion.

Thus, once again we see addiction filling a great void in modernity. Dunnington summarizing his case, and turning to challenge the church:

Addiction is in fact a kind of embodied cultural critique of modernity and the addict a kind of unwitting modern prophet. The church has a great stake in listening to such unwitting prophets. If the church will listen, it will be led to an examination of how its own culture contributes to the production of addiction, whether it offers an alternative culture and what such an alternative culture would require.

Can the church provide us with something more compelling than addiction? Can the church provide us with a life that overcomes the malaise of modernity? Can the church address the modern symptoms of arbitrariness, boredom and loneliness? 

These are the questions addiction, as prophetic critique, places before both the church and the modern world.