Posthumanism, Addiction, and the Loss of Self-Control: Reflections on the Missing Core in Addiction Science

The core criterion of addiction is the loss of self-control. Ironically enough, however, neither the social nor the biomedical sciences of addiction have so far made any measurable headway in linking drug use to a loss of self-control. Whereas the social sciences have variously reduced addicted drug use to deviant but nonetheless self-governed behavior or discourses thereof, the biomedical sciences have failed to adequately specify, let alone empirically analyze, how we might distinguish addicted from self-governed behavior. The chapter shows how these limitations can be very easily overcome by the adoption of a posthumanist perspective on self-control and addiction. The chapter concludes with a discussion of some of the more important ramifications that follow from the adoption of a posthumanist approach for drug-policy studies.