Audio version here:
Personal history, uncertainty, and the current social structures create many ways for destructive addictions to show up. While it is more common for us to think about addiction in terms of drugs and alcohol, talks about social media addiction, food addiction and more are becoming more common. In fact, the current scientific consensus is that there is only one single addictive process that functions in the human mind - and unless you are convinced that you are hundred percent not prone to addiction, the same process might be affecting you too.
The addictive process involves the two main "feel good" -systems of the brain, the opiate system, and the dopamine system. This means that you can become addicted to basically anything, depending on your life experiences and circumstances. Therefore you can be addicted to drugs, alcohol, pornography, food, shopping, exercising, profits, marketing metrics, and even other people.
Because by definition any addiction is harmful, it's beneficial to understand how the addictive process works - and even if you don't really care about harm and only focus on yourself, understanding the addictive process can help you exploit people. But this too carries its underlying risks, that can undermine your personal goals.
This text is about trying to understand in simple terms how the addictive process works, where it comes from, and how it affects us. Some extra time will be spent on looking at business organizations and how addiction can work in their favor or against them and how consumers, employees and the leadership of organizations can be more conscious of how the addictive process might be affecting them.
Overall, I've done my best to put together as truthful of an article as I can, without being judgemental of any specific way of doing things. The truth will set you free and all that jazz, as you might've heard... The topic can provoke emotions, so I suggest taking a deep breath and trying to remain neutral, as more and more difficult topics are discussed.
A BRIEF LOOK AT ADDICTION
There is a lot of new and interesting knowledge emerging in the field of addiction research. That's why we'll have to take a look at the addictive process itself first because things aren't quite what we might've thought before. Later, we'll get to the juicy stuff about how businesses, especially in marketing communications can hide powerful addictive loops, that in the end are most likely bound to create less success in the life of the consumers, workers, and businesses involved.
In the words of Gabor Maté, one of the leading experts on the topic, addiction "manifests in any behavior that a person finds temporary pleasure or relief in and therefore craves, suffers negative consequences from, and has trouble giving up." This is the definition of addiction. It involves short term relief or pleasure, impulsive and compulsive cravings, it's harmful and it's hard to give up. That's it. Addiction doesn't involve any specific substance or any specific external circumstance.
To put it bluntly, addiction is an internal state, and it cannot be recognized from the outside, without understanding the context. Now, drugs, or more specifically narcotics are very often the way addicted people handle their addictions, but even then, it's impossible to tell whether or not drug use is a sign of addiction. Let's look at an example.
William S. Halsted is one of the most respected surgeons of the 20th century, and one of the founders of the famed John Hopkin's hospital. He also used 180 mg of morphine every day, without which he would lose his productivity and positive mood. Was he addicted? Possibly, but you can't really know unless you would know the larger context of his life. Was harm involved? If, in what way?
In the same vein, someone jogging might mean that a person is taking care of themselves responsibly, or is in the throes of an orthorexic addiction, that is driving them deeper and deeper into exercise addiction and social isolation. Later we will see, that the same can go for business leaders making addictively driven decisions, or individuals soothing their cravings with various forms of buying and consuming.
THE SOURCE OF ADDICTION
Addiction is by and large a relatively new phenomenon, that has grown after the industrialization of the modern world took off. The strife and turmoil of previous generations have now been supplemented with broken communal structures, an ever diminishing family unit, social isolation, and an abundance of activities and substances that can soothe the related pain and longing.
At its core, addictive behavior stems from trauma. It might be tempting to think that unless there is violence or severe privation at play, trauma couldn't happen. Unfortunately, human beings - especially young human beings - need more than just physical safety and food. Their brains, emotional systems, decision-making faculties, and their growth into a whole mature human being is also dependent on genuine emotional connection.
This emotional connection is a scientifically proven, hard fact, that cannot be disputed by wishing it away or scoffing at something as soft as "emotions". The emotional systems of the brain - the limbic system - connects the deeper primal parts of the brain to the newer, cognitively more sophisticated systems. Without the support of nurture and care, these systems don't develop properly, leaving the person in question a mental cripple, or at least more addiction-prone than their counterparts.
Deprived of proper emotional bonding, a person learns to get their good feelings not from people, but from different behaviors. These behaviors then supply the brain with the precious feel-good-chemicals that make the person feel loved and purposeful. The feeling of love and calm comes from the activity of the opiate system, which can be activated most commonly by friendly touch and sex, or in the case of narcotics, heroin, and morphine. The more frisky counterpart of the opiate system is the dopamine system. It creates the feeling of excitement and purpose, and it's activated by perceived movement - physical or abstract - towards a goal. Cocaine is the most common drug that activates the dopamine system.
In non-addictive processes, the ebb and flow of these systems remains balanced and healthy. But, in the case of the addicted person, the situation can be way grimmer. In fact, what has recently been uncovered is that a person deeply in the throes of addictive craving is actually unable to make decisions for themselves. That sentence is worth reading again. Here is why:
One of the finer parts of the human brain is the prefrontal cortex, which can be called the CEO of the brain. But, it actually doesn't come up with decisions by itself. All the impulsive decisions are generated deeper in the brain, and the job of the CEO is simply to choose the best course of action out of the options presented to it. This is sometimes dubbed as having the "free won't", instead of the common idea of having a "free will". We don't have a free will to just come up with anything we like, we just choose from the options presented to us by our less conscious mind.
Amazingly and horrifyingly, if you are suffering from addiction, the pre-frontal cortex does not function properly. As the irresistible cravings start generating the impulses to action, the addicted brain shuts down the inhibitory power of the pre-frontal cortex. The CEO goes to sleep, and the employees are left on their own, without a proper long-term vision. A person in this state is as capable of rational choice as a paraplegic is able to do a vertical jump. It is impossible, and no amount of finger-wagging or berating is going to change it.
Bottom line, the addictive process is a damn powerful one, if it has taken hold of a person. With our current social and economical structures in place, this powerful driver is becoming more and more common, irrespective of your stance towards our current situation.
TRAUMA, ADDICTION AND THE MARKET SOCIETY
With addicted people inhabiting both the unpleasant looking margins of our society and also any other realm where the feeling of love and purpose can be dished out without genuine human contact (think fast food, sales quotas, and material possessions for example), it's time to look at addiction from a wider perspective.
Hardcore drug users, who spiral down into a complete bio-psycho-social mess of decaying health, mental problems, and broken relationships often have a terribly traumatic past full of abuse and torment of the worst kind. For most of us, this isn't our lot. More subtle forms of disconnection from our families and peers is common. Then, as our economic system dictates, we play a significant role in our lives as consumers.
You might've heard that women experience a dopamine boost as they purchase a lifestyle magazine. But there's nothing special about women's lifestyle magazines. It is the same effect when you go get burgers from McD., order a beer at your favorite pub, or buy a new car. The more important question is, why do so many people seek out these things even when it's detrimental to their long term well-being, be it physical, mental, or even financial.
I will later make the case that the way current marketing - the communications that urge people to buy stuff - is developing, is driven by leveraging the addictive impulse. But for now, you're going to have to accept this assumption.
So, marketing messages are constantly telling people they need to buy something or else they will have problems, not be desirable or complete, or they'll remain in some kind of pain. These messages wouldn't hit home, if there wasn't a real, experienced pain within us, that makes us hope the pain would go away. This pain is the disconnected, inauthentic relationship we have with our loved ones.
As the natural ways for our brains to get their opiates and dopamine are in shorter and shorter supply, we turn to consumption as a way to soothe our inner desire for emotional connection and genuine relationships. Leveraging this inner longing is a powerful way to drive sales, but this doesn't only concern the consumer.
In the case of people playing their productive roles, the same internal milieu can be driving them forward. Think of a mid-level manager who wants to progress in their career to get more money, status, and power. It is very possible that these desires were born through parental neglect, abuse, unhealthy pampering, or plain disconnection. As an adult, the way this manager hopes to fill this vacuum is by acquiring the status symbols the marketing messages - and the consumers - prop up to be a way to attention, admiration, and ultimately human connection.
So, just as the average consumer can be leveraged because of their internal needs not being met, the same can happen for a mid-level manager, or even an extremely dedicated C-level executive responsible for thousands of people. Make no mistake, the addiction process can show up anywhere, in the "lowly" heroine addict sleeping under the bridge and in the respected workaholic CEO fuelled by Adderall (read: amphetamine).
HOW ADDICTION IS MAINTAINED
We all are playing our part in perpetuating the addictive processes festering in our brains. Possibly the best breeding ground for keeping the addictive behaviors running is what might be best called the Sick System.
I originally discovered the concept of sick systems in a clearly well-researched and experience-based article written under the pseudonym Issendai. Unfortunately, this relative anonymity leaves the writer unable to bolster their case with any social credentials, but the message is extremely eye-opening and powerful.
In the case of the sick system, there are four key elements present:
1. The members of the system are too busy to stop and think
2. The members are constantly tired
3. The members are heavily emotionally invested
4. The members are rewarded intermittently
In the case of a hard drug addict, these conditions are more than likely to occur. The constant struggle to acquire the next "warm and loving hug" from the needle is bound to keep the person busy and tired. Then, there's no question that the emotional investment, as the trauma-based self-medication is a substitute for a basic human need of love and belonging. Finally, the uncertainty of having a stable source of narcotics creates a cycle of intermittent reward.
The power of intermittent reward cannot be understated. As discussed by the brain research legend Jaak Panksepp, intermittent reward elicits the greatest motivational boost - meaning dopamine - out of any other ways of receiving rewards. For whatever reason, all mammals seem to work the hardest for this type of reward, which is unpredictable both in size and frequency.
For anyone having had a drug addiction, the above is likely to ring true, but similarly, many executives might have experienced the rekindled vigor of the employees who have received an unexpectedly large Christmas bonus. ...and don't even ask about casinos or modern smartphone games, they are riddled with intermittent rewards to the maximum.
But, the sick system doesn't leave even those alone who are in stronger positions of power. A venture capital investor addicted to the newest and sleekest tech-startups, a party-leader dreaming of ever-increasing political power, or a superstar looking for more and more popularity... They all can be addicted to their "drug of choice", craving, harming themselves and others, unable to stop.
On a systemic level, the above-mentioned four qualities form the same environment, as the addict is experiencing within. A prime example of this was presented to me in the world of marketing, more specifically in the world of internet success gurus. So, let's look at what some of the current marketing trends can tell us about how our addictions might be controlling us.
MARKETING AND ADDICTION
Most people are able to receive marketing messages, and those who do, most likely bathe in them almost every day. Because we are bombarded with marketing messages, it is useful to be aware of how marketing is working. A special corner of marketing can be found in the internet-guru realm, where charismatic people offer to teach the secrets to success and wealth through their courses, mastermind groups, and expensive events.
The methods of these internet-gurus are currently taking root in many places. The reason for this is that they are extremely well tested and powerful - and they work, partly thanks to the way they leverage our addictive tendencies. Furthermore, there is a very addictive element for the gurus and their marketing teams too, which can help explain the ever-growing expansion of shrewd, cunning, and outright manipulative marketing messages.
An ex-internet marketer and a whistleblower of the profession called Jim Clair has written excellent pieces on the topic of the destructiveness of guru-marketing for consumers, the guru's themselves but also non-suspecting companies, who adopt these methods without understanding what they are doing.
Here's a quick look into the recent history of marketing, so we can understand what's going on. Before the internet people were often sent letters that told them to buy directly from the seller. This "direct response marketing" was often very effective and produced great sales. As the internet became popular, and a lot of people started using e-mail, direct response marketing could be done on a mass scale and super-fast.
E-mail based direct response marketing has been used now for decades, and some best practices in the field have emerged. For example, you might've noticed that with certain companies or even apps, you might receive a huge influx of marketing messages per week, sometimes even in the dozens. Furthermore, you might've noticed that the messages have started to become more cunning and that they trigger more emotions. It's way different to see an e-mail saying "New Offer from Awesome Phones" compared to "Hey X, sad to see you go..."
Both the volume and style of these marketing messages have been tried and tested in the world of e-mail marketing, a world riddled with scams and get-rich-quick schemes. And this brings us back to the topic of addictive behavior.
From the point of view of the consumer, the marketing messages have been optimized for decades so that the best possible way of triggering your emotional pain and urge to buy can be found every single time. These practices are still relatively new in more traditional businesses, but many well-meaning service providers are getting hooked on this type of marketing because it promises quick results.
For those deeper in the know, the success-gurus, and their inner circles, the issue is two-fold. Promising quick results to their audiences and desiring the same results themselves, they are forced to both over-promise and optimize the marketing strategies they use for the quickest and dirtiest gains. This leads to pissed off and burnt out audiences and an ever-increasing need for more and more.
For example, a massive player in the game is Russell Bronson, the founder of Clickfunnels. This innocuous-sounding service is one of the biggest platforms that host vast numbers of online sales-pages all too familiar for us. These online sales-pages are the same direct response marketing sales letters from years past, now cranked to the max by technology, automations, and data-driven decision making.
As services like Clickfunnels become more and more popular - partly thanks to the get-rich-quick -mentality - both big and small businesses start using these services, without even thinking about it too carefully. Why would you spend time learning coding and web design, if you can subscribe to a service where you just type in your messages and beautifully optimized sales-pages pop up in minutes?
Get-rich-quick, short-term optimizations, fast results, automations... Pay attention to these terms. Their less savory counterparts would be impatience, laziness, greed, inauthenticity, at least in my opinion. However, this is not said in a blaming tone. We live in an economic environment, where competition is tough, and it can be very hard to keep your market share (or your job).
AUTHENTICITY TO THE RESCUE
Now, here is one surprise, but also a looming disappointment. The antidote to the addiction-laden quick-results marketing is authenticity, which is also an antidote to the underlying issue of lost human connection and addiction itself. In the bigger picture, the idea of authenticity can be traced back to many spiritual and religious practices, and it has been a key topic in the existentialist philosophies of the 20th century.
"What people crave is real authenticity" is becoming a common term in marketing circles, with even the idea of "anti-marketing", marketing that doesn't look like marketing so it feels authentic having been born in recent years. So where's the disappointment?
It's in the unforgiving reality of life, that try as you might, authenticity cannot be manufactured. It is created between real human people in real interactions. But this hasn't stopped the search for so-called "authentic marketing". One can even find articles describing in detail what are the messages and mediums in which automation seems to be okay for consumers, in which it is not, and believe it or not, there are even discussions about what are the ways that authentic, human-like interactions could be automated for the best sales results.
Almost paradoxically, this search for the "optimal" and best-performing marketing systems and the attempt to automate authenticity is actually perpetuating the underlying reasons for the increasing addiction in our society.
The old idea of ends becoming means and means becoming ends could hold true here. While the stated mission could be to create better connections between humans through useful services and products, and marketing messages that help people to find these offers, the opposite is happening.
Optimization, data-based decision making, the automation of authenticity - many, if not all of the metrics are based on numerical results. How long did the person stay on the page? How long did their finger hover over the sales link? How many people clicked "Buy Now!"? These questions are answered with numbers, and then the goal, the so-called "results" are defined based on these metrics.
So, in the end, marketing teams could be driven towards using those methods that drive the metrics up, because the CEO is driven to drive the revenue up with unprecedented speed, and the employees are driven to soothe their normal, slightly addiction-prone lives with products from companies that do the same.
LEVERAGING ADDICTION
Soon we'll take a look at some new perspectives and possible solutions for an approach that could avoid the pitfalls of the addictive loops. Before that, we'll wrap up the ideas about addiction, marketing, consumerism, and business organizations.
So, a key element in addictions was harm. At first look, this seems simple enough, but with a more skeptical attitude, the concept of harm becomes hard to pin down. For example, it is one thing to say that a drug addict suffering from a foot infection is harming themselves if their drug use prevents the safe use of antibiotics. Very few would argue that losing your foot because of a two-week heroin binge is a worthwhile deal.
But with money, careers, lifelong dreams, and more on the line, it becomes a lot harder to pin down what exactly is harmful - or at least the evaluation of risks becomes more difficult. Is it okay to spend years on end working on a business, an athletic goal, or an artistic vision while sacrificing your health and relationships? These questions require detailed, personal answers, and no straightforward recommendations can capture the whole picture.
Instead, here are some general ways individuals and organizations might benefit from both a short-term and a long-term approach to addictive behaviors.
For example, if you are a C-level executive who is pressured by the investors to grow extremely fast, you might opt for a more short-term strategy. Here leveraging the possible addictive behaviors might work in your favor. Searching for those recruits who have talent and skills in the field, combined with a deep desire for attention and admiration can definitely help a company in the short term. By getting the addiction-prone admiration-seekers into positions where they can get intermittent bonuses and dream of career-progress, an immense output can be reached, at least for a while.
In the long-term, the above strategy won't necessarily work that well. As the individuals in the system can't receive the "hits" they are craving for, their sense of well-being starts to go down. Longer work hours, pent up frustration and a worsening engagement in meaningful activities outside of work will start eating up on the employees. If the person in the case is prone to addiction, this can lead to impaired, impulsive decision making and self-centeredness, pushing things deeper into the dynamic of the sick system.
As the system becomes sicker and sicker, the productivity of the system starts to dwindle. A simple concept by Jean Piaget, one of the greatest psychologists of the 20th century, helps to highlight this issue. Imagine two systems, one which functions through coercion and force, and another where individuals do their tasks voluntarily. Putting human decency and morality aside, the latter system will be more efficient just for the simple fact that it doesn't need to use resources for coercion and exerting force on its members.
This is why it is useful to understand addiction and the possibility of sick systems for anyone who is involved in business, or in any human organization for that matter - be it governments, hobby clubs, or even families. If you are okay with human welfare being short-lived, as you aim for quick returns, leveraging those prone to addiction is logical.
However, if you are looking for long-term stability in a system, avoiding the pitfalls of addictive behavioral loops might be something that saves you a lot of trouble. If you as an individual are looking for a place that can fit into your life and create meaning and good feelings, avoiding organizations with addiction-prone cultures is a good start. If you are a leader or a visionary who is trying to create a long-lasting organization, the same applies.
With this in mind, let's turn to some key concepts and hopefully eye-opening ideas that can shape your thinking towards less addiction and more human connection.
THE POWER OF GENUINE COMMUNITIES
Trauma lies at the heart of addiction. In most cases, however, it is not just individual trauma, but a multi-generational dysfunction passed from the parents to children, to their children, and so on. Privation, war, disease, uncertainty, isolation - these things ultimately affect individuals, but the individuals themselves are embedded in a social environment. As human beings, this social environment is our families, friends, elders, and youths.
Therefore, to avoid systems that worsen the addictive loops, multi-generational traumas need their more humane counterparts. The idea of intergenerational health can aid here. Just as there are ways to act that keep on adding to the trauma baggage, there are ways to act that build genuine, authentic relationships, thus giving people the connection and care they need.
One of simplest ways to improve intergenerational health is to focus on real communities. Undoubtedly the virtual communities that have emerged in the past decades have facilitated many fruitful exchanges and relationships between people. But, in most cases, a key element is missing - real physical presence. The overwhelming majority of human communication is non-verbal. Without access to other people's physical presence, an immense amount of this non-verbal information is untapped.
By focusing on smaller, real-life communities and local action, deeper connections can be built. The process is slower - and it can't be sped up by automations or data - but systems built on these types of interactions won't suffer as much from the burden of isolation, meaninglessness, and addictive escapism.
Real-life communities give the chance for authentic relationships to emerge. These relationships in turn are the foundation for purposeful action. As individuals engage in their environments, they themselves are able to become meaningful in their own eyes and experience personal fulfillment. From the point of view of short-term efficiency, this is antithetical to the wish to automate everything that can be automated. But long-term it might prove to be the way for a lasting impact.
Consider the craftsman who is deeply engaged in their work. Their attention to detail and care in their given task fosters a sense of meaning, which can be seen, felt, and appreciated by other people. These qualities then help build better connections and more trust between the individuals. This is nigh impossible in the case of automated, mass-produced products and services, handed down by bots, sequences, and faceless sales funnels.
This isn't to say automation or mass-production should be done away with. The simple point is to give another perspective on the matter, to broaden your toolkit.
TWO HELPFUL PRACTICES
So, what might be a practical way forward, where to start, if a less addiction-prone and more authentic world is one that you'd like to inhabit? Let's return to Gabor Maté's work for some insight.
First, there's the idea of paying attention to your own reactions. The concept might be familiar to you from currently popular mindfulness and meditation practices, and its roots trace back to the most ancient spiritual practices known to man. The idea is simple: before you act, pay neutral attention to the emotions you have in the situation.
By practicing this non-judgemental attentiveness, you may start to notice that what you might currently consider as your authentic and self-directed behavior is often habits and learned loops - and if you've ever noticed addictive tendencies in yourself, this is the place where you can start to understand them.
In our current world, it's very likely that you might have some addictive tendencies - or at least you might've experienced periods where something harmful in the long term has served you as your support through difficult times. By attending to these times and your inner landscape you might be able to start developing a deeper understanding of what is going on in your mind, and therefore in other people's minds.
Maté combines the idea of bare attention with what he calls compassionate curiosity. For example, if your dutiful friend is suffering from a break-up and self-medicating with prescription opiates, you might feel worried and irked. However, by asking curiously from them, or just posing the question in your head, "why is this person doing that" you might now understand that they are fulfilling a deep, human need.
The same might go for the social media addicted Instagram-junkie, always stressed sales team leader, or even the emotionally neglected leader of a country: there's a good chance they are doing what they are doing because they believe that's the only way they'll get their basic human needs met. To every one of us, it's about real or perceived survival, whether or not we think about it that way.
Even those people around you who would deserve the worst of insults - and futures - can be seen in a different light. The abusive spouse, the manipulative boss, the sly co-worker, or whoever it is that seems to be being the worst possible version of themselves... Are they being mean or evil on purpose, or are they being gripped by insatiable cravings, impaired decision making, and emotional pain stemming from a traumatic past?
The point is not to excuse bad behavior. That's a completely different topic. The ultimate point here is, that equipped with a better understanding of what might be going on in your and other people's minds, you can make better decisions.
By extending this compassion towards yourself and your local communities, you can lessen the grip that the elements of the sick systems have on us. If you are interested in a more authentic world with fulfilling human relationships, understanding the addictive process and how it shows up in our current world can help you to start creating a world of meaning and connection, instead of frustration and suffering.
