{"product_id":"the-globalization-of-addiction-a-study-in-poverty-of-the-spirit","title":"The Globalization of Addiction: A Study in Poverty of the Spirit","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe Globalization of Addiction presents a radical rethink about the nature of addiction. Scientific medicine has failed when it comes to addiction. There are no reliable methods to cure it  prevent it  or take the pain out of it. There is no durable consensus on what addiction is  what causes it  or what should be done about it. Meanwhile  it continues to increase around the world. This book argues that the cause of this failure to control addiction is that the conventional wisdom of the 19th and 20th centuries focused too single-mindedly on the afflicted individual addict. Although addiction obviously manifests itself in individual cases  its prevalence differs dramatically between societies. For example  it can be quite rare in a society for centuries  and then become common when a tribal culture is destroyed or a highly developed civilization collapses. When addiction becomes commonplace in a society  people become addicted not only to alcohol and drugs  but to a thousand other destructive pursuits: money  power  dysfunctional relationships  or video games. A social perspective on addiction does not deny individual differences in vulnerability to addiction  but it removes them from the foreground of attention  because social determinants are more powerful. This book shows that the social circumstances that spread addiction in a conquered tribe or a falling civilisation are also built into todays globalizing free-market society. A free-market society is magnificently productive  but it subjects people to irresistible pressures towards individualism and competition  tearing rich and poor alike from the close social and spiritual ties that normally constitute human life. People adapt to their dislocation by finding the best substitutes for a sustaining social and spiritual life that they can  and addiction serves this function all too well. The book argues that the most effective response to a growing addiction problem is a social and political one  rather than an individual one. Such a solution would not put the doctors  psychologists  social workers  policemen  and priests out of work  but it would incorporate their practices in a larger social project. The project is to reshape society with enough force and imagination to enable people to find social integration and meaning in everyday life. Then great numbers of them would not need to fill their inner void with addictions.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44946292965429,"sku":"ByrdShop_0199588716","price":63.58,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9780199588718.jpg?v=1769934185","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/the-globalization-of-addiction-a-study-in-poverty-of-the-spirit","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}