Jordan Peterson

[dukealien]

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Second, addiction is most definitely *not* an "ideation or ideology rather than a disease". Its physiological effects are just too well-established. Alcohol and opiate withdrawal can very much be fatal if not done carefully -- delirium tremens, for instance, has been acknowledged since before modern medicine.



https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4365688/

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full.../add.13512

https://www.psychiatry.org/patients-fami...-addiction



Being a psychological issue, treatment is more complicated than the mere "take other drugs" of many other diseases, but it's not something to be simply willed away. Your example even hints at this, since you started getting weaned off the drug only with the help of a medical professional.

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Thanks for the feedback.

There are many ways to understand/explain human behavior - from psychology (with some scientific aspects including a degree of repeatability) to angels and demons (with religious aspects but likewise surprisingly repeatable and accurately predictive).  Until the objective nature of disease was understood, it was plausible to blame the sufferer for smallpox or typhus; now it is not, assuming the infection was involuntary.  However, the mind is not so well understood:  it is possible to blame those displaying irrational, self-defeating behavior.  It is also possible to medicalize this behavior by treating it as analogous to actual medical conditions such as tertiary syphilis or senile dementia, but this is not a better way to understand the behavior as the germ system is a better way to understand disease.  "Mental" does not go with "disease" unless we remember it's an analogy - that is, literary - rather than an objective identity.  It's true that some irrational behavior can be suppressed with drugs, but the hypothesis that an absence of those drugs caused the behavior does not follow.

In short, those who object to moral norms because they constrain human freedom mistake Jordan's significance:  he's not saying some behavior is immoral and wrong, only that behaving in a way defined by morality and belief in standards of right and wrong is a more satisfying and successful way to live, consequently to be recommended.  The world as it is rewards pursuit of certain norms and moral principles; those who object to them, regardless of any scientific gloss, are objecting to reality.

We can also argue the nature of addiction; it is what it is, an attitude of the addict more, less, or not enforced by his drug of addiction within the context of what his contemporaries support or disparage.  It is not a generally successful life choice and we should acknowledge the harm of treating it as if it was.