Language and Addiction

Abstract

This is one of the major issues in the book. There is particular emphasis on the use of metaphor, simile, euphemism, and personification within addiction narratives. Here, I reject the pervasive modern view that drug addiction and alcoholism are “complex” or “mysterious”. Instead, I argue that both are simple behavioural disorders, and that addicts themselves and professional commentators on the subject of addiction are mistaking the complicated and contradictory language which surrounds addiction with addiction itself. Throughout the chapter I query the common use of words like “disease”, “epidemic”, and “plague”, which are always offered as though they were neutral terms. I argue that they, along with many words drawn from a medical lexicon, are heavily loaded words which serve to encourage and maintain the dangerously mistaken view that drug addicts and alcoholics are not responsible for their own addictions.