Sociology of Addiction

All Articles of Sociology of Addiction

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The Social Significance of Intoxication: Reality Construction, Ritual, and Cultural Meaning

Teaser Every society constructs its own relationship with altered consciousness—from sacred rituals...
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Beyond Enabling: A Sociological Analysis of Co-Dependency as Structural Arrangement

Teaser When families organize around addiction, they don’t just react—they construct entire systems...
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Systems Theory and Addiction: From Parsons to Luhmann—A Sociological Systems Perspective

Teaser How do social systems produce, maintain, and potentially resolve patterns of addiction? While...
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Narcissism and the Addiction to Recognition: A Sociological Analysis of Validation-Seeking in the Digital Age

Teaser In an era where “likes” function as social currency and follower counts shape self-worth,...
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Addicted to the Like: A Sociology of Social Media Validation

What does it mean when a notification triggers a neurochemical cascade indistinguishable from substance...
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Before You Choose: Brains, Freedom, and Addiction — A Sociological Reframing of the Will Debate

Teaser Do our brains decide before “we” do? Neuroscience provocations—from Libet’s...
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The Stratification of Addiction: Mapping Class, Commodification, and Compulsion in Late Capitalism

Teaser Addiction fractures along class lines. The executive microdosing Adderall, the knowledge worker...
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The Club 27 Myth: A Sociological Autopsy of Celebrity Death, Addiction, and Cultural Memory

Teaser The deaths of Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain, and Amy Winehouse at age...
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Systems Theory and Addiction: How Legal/Illegal Binary Codes Shape Drug Markets and Social Inclusion

Teaser When a substance crosses from illegal to legal status, something more fundamental shifts than...
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Class, Intoxication, and Capital: A Marxist Map of Drug Markets

Teaser I sketch a Marxist analysis of how drug markets are organized in capitalist systems—and what...
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5) Triangulation: the integrative picture — an expanded essay

What each lens adds—and why none is sufficient alone. Microeconomics tells me how constraints move...
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4) Game theory: markets, policing, and the self — an expanded essay

Back to main article Why this lens helps. Game theory asks what happens when payoffs depend on others’...
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3) Principal–Agent (PA) theory in drug markets — an expanded essay

Back to main article Core idea. Principal–agent problems arise when a principal (regulator, owner,...
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2) Pure rational choice (Braun; Coleman) — an expanded essay

Local rationality under constraints. I start with Norman Braun’s insistence that people optimize given...
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1) Microeconomics (with Robert H. Frank’s behavioral edge) — an expanded essay

Back to main article Baseline. In textbook terms, I start with choices under constraints: prices, income,...
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Sociology of Addiction — Microeconomics, Rational Choice, Principal–Agent, and Game Theory (triangulated)

[Main article with sub-articles] Teaser Why do people keep using—even when costs mount? What distinguishes...
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Addiction, Inclusion & Exclusion — With Foucault and Goffman as Guides, Parsons and Luhmann as Companions

Teaser I take today’s essay to a difficult intersection: addiction as a test of social inclusion and...
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Reactance and the Addictive Phenomenon of (Doom) Scrolling

Teaser When even our phone tells us to “take a break,” why do we so often keep scrolling? This essay...
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Addiction, Craving, and the Social Psychology of Cognitive Dissonance

Teaser Alcohol, gambling, social media, and other drugs promise relief—but they also collide with our...
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Sociology of Addiction — Addicted to Sociology: Why I Do This Blog

Teaser I’m starting this project because I can’t stop asking a simple question with complicated answers:...
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A Glass of Bordeaux with Bourdieu — Alcohol, Addiction, and the Social Space of Habits

Teaser I raise a metaphorical glass to Pierre Bourdieu and ask: What would he tell us about alcohol...
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Foucault on Addiction as a Social Phenomenon — Government, Confession, Biopolitics

Teaser Before diving into fieldwork, I’m taking stock of Michel Foucault and the governmentality tradition...
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Alcohol as Depressant, Used as Antidepressant: Why This Teufelskreis Persists

Teaser Alcohol is pharmacologically a central nervous system depressant—yet millions reach for it as...
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Introduction: Thinking Sociologically About Addiction

Addiction is often framed as an individual pathology — a matter of brain chemistry, trauma, or personal...

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