Addiction Is Not a Disease

Addiction Is Not a Disease

It’s the symptom of a broken society

There’s a reason so many Americans are drowning in pills, booze, porn, food, gambling, TikTok, or Jesus. It’s not because we’re genetically defective or weak-willed degenerates. It’s because we’re suffering.

Dr. Gabor Maté puts it bluntly:

Addiction isn’t some mysterious brain disease afflicting the morally bankrupt. It’s what happens when people try to cope with unbearable emotional pain in a society that tells them to shut up, get over it, and keep producing.

We live in a culture that treats mental anguish like a personal failing. If you’re depressed, anxious, or traumatized, the standard American response is to medicate it, moralize it, or monetize it, anything but actually deal with the source. God forbid we admit that maybe this whole society is sick. That maybe the problem isn’t just the addict in the alley, but the system that creates millions of them.