What about those who were recreational drug users that went down a dark and dangerous path? Presumably in this case it's fair to put the blame on them. Yeah, maybe they had issues with their parents and maybe they had some other problems. But nobody put a gun to their head. They made a bad choice and paid the price. That's how life is.
You can't absolve personal responsibility either.
What about the rev users who didn’t go down the dark path?
This precisely is the difference of having genetic predisposition to addiction, trauma etc.
No, it’s not a choice more than obesity / food addiction is.
If you’re interested in expanding your thinking see the work of Gabor Mate.
I agree that obesity/food addiction and drug addiction are both on a similar level, but to me they both sound like a choice.
Mostly because if we decide to apply the same standard you use for qualifying whether something is a choice or not, then literally nothing is a choice.
A man who physically abuses his wife and children? Not a choice, he is doing it simply because he had some experiences in his life that made him that way or he is just simply genetically predisposed. Someone cheats on their partner? Not their choice, they were predisposed to do it or their partner was just not making them happy enough. Harvey Weinstein? Not his choice, he was just a victim of his own circumstance who was also genetically predisposed to do what he did.
You get the idea, but I honestly do not believe that most of those things are anything but choices, unless we decide to pretend we believe in predetermination and complete lack of free will. In which case, I would agree with you, those decisions were not choices, because choices don't exist in the context of belief in predetermination.
Mind you, I am not saying there are no circumstances in which those situations would not be a choice. There are indeed some scenarios like that. However, and that's purely subjective based on my personal observations, those scenarios are a minority.
Addiction Is a Brain Disease, and It Matters: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/278/5335/45
I don't think it is a binary choice vs. not choice. If speaking frankly, I do believe that any of those things discussed feature both a choice component and a predisposition component. The proportion of each of those two components varies heavily based on a person and a situation.
However, even with this in mind, it is difficult to say that the choice component is ever at zero.
We can discuss to which degree humans have a choice in their actions, because it is definitely debatable, since they all agree on the ground truth that there is always some degree of choice. But that discussion cannot coexist with a belief in total predetermination, since that removes any ground truth completely.
Maybe. Or maybe just the culmination of a series of bad choices.
> No, it’s not a choice more than obesity / food addiction is.
That's a choice. Nobody is making you buy the potato chips and cheesecake. Nobody is holding you back from the gym. It might annoy a lot of very fat Americans, but you've got effectively the same DNA as everyone else - but they're not as fat. It's a cultural thing and a choice.
Yes I know I'm glossing over some nuance here, but personal responsibility remains. Ignoring that seems like just resigning yourself to be blown wherever the wind takes you.
Take responsibility for your decisions, take a good honest look at where you are, what you don't like about that, make a plan to change that, and then execute it.
I think I'm familiar with the consensus views. What am I saying that you feel is unjustified?
Classifying someone as a “junky” adopts a cruel and unrealistic worldview blaming the victim and absolving a number of powerful actors of their role in contributing to addiction on mass scale.