Typology of Theories of Drug Use & Addiction
THEORY
INITIAL DRUG USE or
INVOLVEMENT
Nature
Weil
Biological
DRUG ADDICTION
Biogenetic
Neurological/ “brain plasticity”
Psychological
Psychoanalytic
Personality
Psychoanalytic
Personality
Behavioral
Sociological
Differential Association
Differential Reinforcement
Becker’s Learning Theory
Social Control Theory
Strain Theory
Conflict Theory
Dislocation Theory
Differential Reinforcement
Becker’s Learning Theory
Integrated Theory
Strain Theory
Cultural Deviance Theory
Labeling Theory
Conflict Theory
Dislocation Theory
Adapted from Faupel, Sociology of American Drug Use
ALEXANDER’S DISLOCATION THEORY
• Why are so many people addicted to destructive
habits in the globalizing world?
• Why does addiction extend beyond
drugs/alcohol to include so many other
behaviors?
• Why hasn't science been able to solve addiction?
The Globalization of Addiction –
Bruce Alexander
• Abundance of addiction theory, little consensus
• Alexander: Insights from historical research lead to a
clearer picture
• Conventional addiction wisdom:
• Christian theology & scientific medicine
• Lies within individual, either as sin/moral failure or
biochemical disease
• Drug addiction is the proto-typical addiction– intrinsically
addictive drugs must be rid from society  war on drug
traffickers
• Society is not blamed
DISLOCATION THEORY
• Not limited to drug addiction, but accompanies every “addiction,”
from shopping to religion. Applied anywhere addiction is found.
• Does not medicalize addiction – does not assume that classical
markers of withdrawal or dopamine depletion must be present,
etc.
• Does not pertain to non-destructive uses of drugs (pleasure,
stress relief, ritual, recreation, etc.)
• Does not explain why equally dislocated people pick up different
destructive pursuits
• Does not explain why some dislocated people overcome
addiction and others don’t.
I. The Globalization of Free Market Society
• Free market society produces mass dislocation as
part of normal functioning.
• Increasing globalization of free market imperative
shapes every aspect of human existence.
• Economic individualism
• Model of rational, atomized, self-interested actor
• Undermines devotion to tradition, community, values
• Traditional forms of integration are “market distortions”
or dysfunctions which must be eliminated
II. Lack of Psychosocial Integration
• Psychosocial integration: interdependence between
individual and society. The bridge between social
belonging and individual autonomy. (Erik Erikson)
• Belonging, community, wholeness, social cohesion, etc.
• Dislocation is a lack of psychosocial integration – alienation ,
disconnection
• Dislocation not same as material deprivation: In contrast to
material poverty, a lack of psycho-social integration signals a
“poverty of the spirit”
• Dislocation arises from a variety of historical and social forces
• Alexander: linked to spread of free market capitalism
Globalizing Free Market Society
undermines psychosocial integration
FAMILY
LEISURE
WORK
III. Addiction3 Is a Way of adapting to
sustained dislocation…
• Addiction3 = a narrowly focused “substitute” lifestyle
functioning as a substitute for people who lack PS
integration
• Addictions have vital adaptive functions
• Addictions cannot bring about the wholeness of PS
integration, and often they work to further disrupt the
addicts’ lives.
• Alexander: There is no underlying disorder with
addiction. It is an adaptive response to widespread
suffering.
• Addiction is a product of the social structure in which
we live, inseparable from it.
1. Globalization of
Capitalist Free Market
System
4. Proliferation of
Addiction3
2. Decline of PsychoSocial Integration
3. Poverty of the Spirit
Paradox of choice in capitalist
societies  addiction3
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bqMY82xzWo
Righteous Dopefiend – Intro
Work in groups to find definitions for the following
from the introductory chapter:
1)
2)
3)
4)
5)
6)
7)
“Moral economy” among Edgewater homeless
Cultural relativism
Politics of representation
“theory of lumpen abuse”
Symbolic violence
Habitus
Biopower