Skeptical thinking about addiction and recovery.
In the recovery community—and in the culture at large—it’s an article of faith that an alcohol dependency is an individual problem. The causes are individual: your genes, your history, your personality, your choices, and, if the culture you inhabit gets any attention at all, it’s likely just a mention of alcohol advertising, quickly hand-waved away as a non-issue because even children have become too media-savvy to fall for it.
Fortunately, writers are finally starting to challenge this “privatization” of alcohol problems, tracing its history as an alcohol industry strategy to avoid blame for alcohol harms. Scholars, journalists and even social media stars increasingly consider how addictive behavior can be driven by environmental factors such as marketing, propaganda, and social policy—a long-overdue change. Personally, I feel much less like a heretic than I did when I started this blog five years ago!