Addiction

Peder Clark and Oisín Wall

Chapter 4 in Research Handbook on Drugs and Society, 2026, pp 33-46 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: This chapter takes the changing archetype of ‘the addict’ – not a person but a confluence of scientific, moral, religious and political discourse – as a means of tracing a history of the formation of concepts of addiction. It explores the emergence of the modern disease-concept of substance use in the eighteenth century through to addiction's establishment in the latter half of the twentieth century as the dominant paradigm for understanding drugs in society more broadly. Addiction was used to signify otherness, and the figure of the ‘addict’ was considered differently depending on their race, gender and class. While plenty of evidence, both scientific and societal, would emerge to bolster addiction as the dominant analytic of the post-war world, newer drugs such as LSD and MDMA confounded and demonstrated the limits of the addiction model. Nevertheless, the addiction paradigm has expanded exponentially in the twenty-first century to encompass gambling, sex, social media, food, exercise, as well as many other aspects of everyday life.

Keywords: Addiction; Addict; History; Disease model; Race; Gender (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
ISBN: 9781802209136
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