[ethbr0]

Broadly speaking, I tend to think of "addiction" (rightly or wrongly) as the errosion of free will.

If someone wilfully chooses to take a substance / perform an action that has subsequent negative effects (potentially including detoxing), then that seems a fair individual decision.

If someone takes a substance that destroys or decreases their future ability to choose not to take that substance in the future... that's a completely different level of danger.

... I'm not sure which categories social media and mobile gaming fall into.

My gut says if it's not the latter yet, then that's only because we / they haven't gotten there yet. Because the latter is obviously a more lucrative business to be in.

[dalbasal]

Both, I suppose.

Once you start seeing people locking away their smartphone, because they don't trust themselves to abstain or moderate... that's very clearly an attempt to impose their own will on themselves. Call it whatever you want, but it's a lot like a scene from trainspotting.

[drooogs]

> Broadly speaking, I tend to think of "addiction" (rightly or wrongly) as the errosion of free will.

I don't claim to speak for all addicts, but this is not how I would describe my experiences, at least not under my conception of "free will".

I "wanted" to stop doing drugs in the same way a lazy person "wants" to go to the gym more. whenever the moment came to actually do it, I had to admit that I didn't want it nearly as much as I said I did. sure, I wanted the "outcome" of quitting, but in the meantime, I really wanted to keep doing drugs. so I did.

every day I had a clear goal in mind: getting money and acquiring drugs. I was fairly strategic in pursuing this goal; I was even capable of abstaining for a while (eg, to pass a drug test) if it increased the security of my future supply.

I was in and out of treatment for a while (primarily to appease others), but I ultimately stopped doing drugs because I didn't want to anymore. this happened rather suddenly, over the course of just a few months. a few areas of my life improved simultaneously, partially through my own efforts, but partially just luck. I now lead a fairly normal life.

anyways, the reason I type all this out is because I really don't like it when people describe addition this way, especially if they aren't/weren't addicts themselves (not assuming anything about you in particular). depending on what you think "free will" is, it may be more or less accurate. but it is usually a prelude to an argument about how addicts aren't competent to make choices for themselves and how society should Do Something About It, usually involving curtailing the freedoms of people unfortunate enough to be identified as addicts. addicts don't need to be controlled or disciplined (unless they are hurting others, of course). they just need to reach that tipping point in quality of life where drugs don't seem so appealing. at least that is my belief, based on my own experience and observations of others going through it.

[ethbr0]

Thanks for taking the time to write all that out and share your experience!!

I'd say my definition of "free will" is this context is more a hill's slope than a traffic light.

In that the slope is the difficulty of making (or not making) a decision. Where addiction doesn't preclude "not", but makes it harder / less likely.

I.e. the internalization of the external "10/100 non-addicts would choose to do X" vs "60/100 addicts would choose to do X"

Or to put it another way, whereas someone might be able to avoid doing something on everything except their 10% worse days, an addict might except on their 50% worse days.

Would be very curious with how that jives with your lived experience? When you made decisions (positive or negative), did it feel like the odds were tilted? Or did it feel exactly like it did before you started using?

[jl6]

Feels like you are drawing a distinction between harms, and recursive harms.

Harmful things can be analyzed; the risks can be quantified and weighed up against the benefits; the downside can be limited.

Recursively harmful things - which not only cause harm but precipitate further rounds of harm - are harder to analyze and have potentially infinite downside.

[ethbr0]

That's a good, simpler way of putting it: summing over all harms, including future ones.

For single act harms, future terms don't exist.

And for recursive, add in a probability weighting, if one wants to be pedantic about modeling.

[approxim8ion]

The problem is it's hard to classify decisions as willful if your judgement is impaired, don't you think? I might think I'm doing this consciously, but I could well be brainwashed/conditioned into making the choice.