The Opposite of Addiction is Not Sobriety

Isolation Breeds Addiction — Not Drugs - Reset.me
“The opposite of addiction is not sobriety. It is human connection.” That’s the conclusion that Johann Hari came to while writing his new book, Chasing The Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs.

Nations, particularly the United States, have been prosecuting and locking up people who struggle with drug addictions for a century now. Not only has the approach not worked, it misses the whole point of what is driving addiction in the first place, the author argues.

“Human beings are bonding animals. We need to connect and love,” Hari writes in an article he penned for Huffington Post. “But we have created an environment and a culture that cut us off from connection, or offer only the parody of it offered by the Internet. The rise of addiction is a symptom of a deeper sickness in the way we live — constantly directing our gaze towards the next shiny object we should buy, rather than the human beings all around us.”