Once, there were no addicts. Or at least if there were, no one could have known it. The notion of the “addict” and the corresponding concepts of “addiction” and “addictive substances” are of modern vintage. The first recorded use of addict as a noun dates to 1909. The contemporary notion of addiction is distinctly American in its ancestry. It was developed and refined in the crucible of the American temperance movement.
But if there were once no addicts, today it seems everyone is an addict. Since its formulation in the early 20th century, the addiction concept has been assimilated into public consciousness and has since been buttressed and extended to cover an ever-growing catalogue of addictions. Now, we all live in an “addicted society.” “Addiction is our way of life.” And, “major addiction is the sacred disease of our time.” Such a view of the ubiquity of addiction has become almost de rigueur in contemporary life, especially in America.
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