The Antidote to Addiction

Dear Jack,

I hope I can write about this in a way that is general. Although they say the more specific you get in your writing, the more universal the message will be. So who knows.

People on the internet have a lot to say about addiction.^[1]

One of the things they say is that there’s an intense, existential sadness that comes with giving up one’s drug. They also say “if it feels good short term, it's probably bad long term”, which — and not to get too bro-sciencey here — goes to show how maladapted we are to our current environs (or rather, how far modern humans have strayed from the environment in which our nervous system developed (slowly, via evolution)). Diagram that sentence.

Again I guess I’m talking about optimization. Dopamine developed to motivate us to do useful things. But eventually we “optimized for” dopamine generation (see Goodhart’s Law), and voilá: gacha. Or whatever your thing is. And once that new circuit is in place — what do? → drug → reward — it becomes very hard to go back to e.g. what do? → find interest → set goal → work → fail → continue work → achieve result → reward(?). But it’s the latter path which actually brings meaning to life. And, you know, produces tangible things which may affect the world or outlive their maker. Plus, the former path might land you in prison. Depends on the drug.

The really tricky bit is that we have a lot of “necessary” tools in the 21st century which are already corrupted: smartphones, internet, social media, AI image generation, video games, pain meds… You can scarcely more shun all these things than you can stop being a person in modern-day America. They are the reality which, on some level or other, each of us must accept and interact with. Trust me; I live in Amish country. Even the Amish ride e-bikes and have iPhones.

But how can a person hope to interact with this shit in a purely productive and innocent way? It’s like asking how we can live ethically in a capitalist society. It can’t be done. There is only a spectrum of problematic options.

And given these truths, that 1) one must interact with a compromised system, and 2) this system is optimized to hot-wire our natural reward pathways, how can we stay on the productive/useful side of the spectrum, and away from addiction? In short, we have to recognize the trap and then do the opposite. Do something that won’t compute. Add friction. Actively avoid short-term pleasure like some kind of ascetic.

But unlike the stereotypical portrait of asceticism, a lot of this comes down to avoiding seclusion. Be social. Build things you want to share with people. If you find yourself alone and looking over your shoulder when you pursue some hobby, drop it. Build things with people. Let people see your drafts. Hell, work on the drafts with them. And also you’re a Jew; don’t forget that life is with people!

EDIT 31 Dec, 2024: Wow I really reinvented the wheel here. Today is the first time I heard the saying, “The opposite of addiction is not sobriety but community”.