Addiction

Following up my post Addiction in Greenwich Village, Early Summer 2024, here are new pictures starting late summer. These Pictures Are Of Our Culture, Including You and Me, Not the People in Them As always on posts about addiction: These images are of United States and global culture, not just the people in them. Their addictions may look bad, but mainly hurt themselves, secondarily the community immediately around them with their Litter Urine Feces Influencing and scaring children Lowering property values Funding more supply Promoting more addiction The following addictions hurt people and culture more: Doof Flying Fast fashion (or buying any clothes, jewelry, make up, etc you don't need) Large vehicles like SUVs Buying unnecessary indulgent things Takeout Buying food shipped from far away…

Here is the greatest sign of addiction I commonly see, a disposable plastic cup from Starbucks, being thrown away, sweat still forming on the plastic from the ice not yet melted. Someone paid for oil to be extracted to make the plastic and cool water to make ice in 90F (32.5C) weather just to throw it all away. Below are more addicts, although these ones are mostly only hurting themselves. Starbucks customers hurt humanity (and wildlife) more, even if they put their plastic waste in trash cans or "recycling" bins. Do Starbucks customers think their plastic doesn't poison? Do Starbucks customers think they money they spend isn't going to more lobbyists? Do Starbucks customers think they money they spend isn't going to fund more extraction?…

Our culture increasingly isolates and addicts us: doof, binge-TV, social media, online gambling, and so on. We associate the most serious addiction with hard drugs, but they are just a prominent case of our culture overall. I'm not writing this post about people addicted to hard drugs. I'm writing it about modern culture. I found this fentanyl testing and overdose treatment kit while picking up litter in Washington Square Park. If people are addicted to the stuff, I'd rather they have access to such treatment, but I'd rather they didn't do it in public parks and far more I'd rather we didn't create a culture that made addiction so prevalent. I consider each person responsible for their own actions, but isolation like we have contributes…

Regular readers know I write about addiction here a lot, especially the heavy addiction in Washington Square Park, where I see syringes all the time, as well as people smoking rocks in those small glass pipes. I guess it could be crack, meth, or other stuff. As you might expect, addiction features heavily in my upcoming book. I sent a part to podcast guest and bestselling author of The Urge, Carl Erik Fisher, about the history of addiction and his personal experience with it. I hoped for his views on what I wrote, corrections if I got anything wrong, and advice in general. A big part of his advice was to read several links by and about Bruce K. Alexander's work. If you've heard of…

I notice people rarely talk about themselves and the environment. They'll express outrage, recount facts, and say what other people should do, but not about themselves. So I'm thinking more about why. Seeing the overlap between behavioral addictions like social media, binge-watching TV, and gambling, and behavior that requires polluting reveals the overlap with why talking to addicts about their addiction goes nowhere. Addicted people resist acknowledging hurting people and themselves. Polluting and depleting hurt other people and themselves. It follows that people don't like acknowledging how they're hurting people, violating their own values. Eugene, who hosts a sister This Sustainable Life podcast and the Verdant Growth blog, recently asked people who want to talk about sustainability and the environment why they don't. I never…

I recently wrote about how Trying to lead an addict to admit their addiction or that they are hurting others (or themselves) is like trying to catch a fish with your bare hands. I've been thinking about why. Generally addiction means you're acting against your own values, hurting others. An addict may say he or she doesn't see that he or she is hurting others, but likely some part of them knows, however they try to suppress or deny. In the case of addiction to behaviors that pollute or deplete, like consuming doof or buying stuff compulsively online, the addict gets the feelings of reward but others have to suffer the pollution, being displaced from their homes to get the fuel and minerals underneath, and…