Bruce Alexander: Globalization of Addiction...

Bruce is the author of the most important book I have read on addiction: The Globalization of Addiction: A Study in Poverty of the Spirit. He feels addiction has been overly individualized and looks at the broader cultural / social roots and maintaining that addiction is an adapting to dislocation.   

'Psychosocial Integration' is a profound inter- dependence between individuals and society. It reconciles people’s need for social belonging with their equally vital needs for individual autonomy and achievement. Psychosocial integration is as much an inward experience of identity and meaning as a set of outward social relationships. Establishing the delicate inter-penetration of person and society enables each person to satisfy simultaneously both individualistic needs and needs for community -- to be free and still belong. 

An enduring lack of psychosocial integration, which is called "dislocation” is both individually painful and  socially destructive. It denotes psychological and social separation from one's society. Dislocation could be called "poverty of the spirit."  

Global society is drowning in addiction to drug use and a thousand other habits. This is because people around the world, rich and poor alike, are being torn from the close ties to family, culture, and traditional spirituality that constituted the normal fabric of life in pre-modern times. This kind of global society subjects people to unrelenting pressures towards individualism and competition, dislocating them from social life.

I am pleased to have Bruce as a colleague and new friend. Recently I have also been attending his 6 week seminar on Tuesday evenings. Although Bruce professes to be an agnostic, he values the history and potential of the church and restoring spirituality to address dislocation and addiction. He loves to discuss theology and is quite a student of Augustine.

Another friend Barry Morris will be sharing next week at the seminar from a Christian World View and the 12 Steps of AA. Barry is a United Church minister at the Longhouse, a native ministry. 

There is much more info on Bruce's contributions on this blog, click Dislocation on the top tool bar. Bruce is a student of history and his research of Dislocation over the centuries is exhaustive. For example he demonstrates alcoholism was never a problem with Natives in Canada until they were displaced from their land and culture. Fur traders brought rum early in their exchanges with no impact on the traditional aboriginal culture.


This book is a must for students of addiction....