When I was a young teenager, the word addiction had a powerful impact on me. It was mostly used as a reference to drug addicts, a message that was regularly reinforced by my mother. She said that this was a bad thing, perhaps a hangover from the sixties, though to be honest I wasn’t often exposed to it in the eighties, even at university, so it largely passed me by anyway.
But back then lots of people smoked – my stepfather was a heavy smoker and drew my mum into it ironically, but it wasn’t just our homes, it was pubs, offices, public transport and lots of other communal spaces that were full of smoke. I soon got to learn that nicotine was an addiction too and it put me off for life, despite my probably being a regular passive smoker.
Smoking has declined hugely after several government and other initiatives, partly with the increase in vapes, but there is the ever-present influence of alcohol, which hasn’t been subject to the same controls, and you don’t have to look further than the mobiles most of us carry round in our pockets these days to realise we’re still all susceptible to other forms of addiction.
This week the horrific story in Southport and the subsequent escalation of events not only there but across the country by harmful agents exploiting people’s addiction to social media, makes you realise how easy it is to ignite hatred and social division if you let it, especially with the clever technological tools available these days and particularly during the hot summer months.
I’ve said before one of the things that I am actually quite proud of in our Merton community is our ability to embrace our cultural diversity and it forever saddens me when I see individuals distorting things to feed their own warped narrative, feeding off the discontent that they pick up off from others social media addiction and the misinformation that spreads so quickly across it.
It makes me wonder what drives us to become addicted to things. I’m no expert so don’t want to present myself as such, but I understand, from experience, the lure of computer games for example. Several years ago, I became quite obsessed for a while with a game that my son had introduced me to and saw how hours fly by seeking to achieve that next elusive level. These days the technology has moved on apace and is easily accessible on the internet, so I’m quite pleased I avoided getting dragged further down that particular rabbit hole. But I could see how easy it is to get drawn into on-line games, sometimes violent and increasingly realistic games, which might in turn feed a young or vulnerable person’s perspective of the world.
It feeds into real life through other means too. The obsession with celebrities and becoming an influencer and sometimes the wealth and status that comes with it can be a magnet for some people, desperate to improve their body image or look or crave attention or secure that wealth in some other way, for example through gambling. Addiction at its root, is defined as a strong physical or psychological urge to do something or use something.
Often this is seen as meeting an immediate short-term fix but behind it there is sometimes a longer-term need there aching to be satisfied. And perhaps that’s where we need to look more closely at how we spend our lives. It strikes me that our short-term needs have become so all-consuming that we sometimes forget to question why we’re doing them at all. We just know that, from our previous experience, it meets a requirement there and then.
But taking a step back from our busy lives, reflecting on what truly brings us happiness and joy could be the start to a new way of living. We’re all independent souls but at our core we’re also social animals, seeking love and acceptance in some form. Opening ourselves up to be curious about how we make those life affirming connections is, perhaps, an ‘addiction’ worth pursuing.