Sometime between 1980-85 the psychologist Stanton Peele wrote (or maybe co-wrote) an important book titled Love and Addiction.
The book wasn’t as well executed as it could have been, and relied heavily on empirical data. In addition, he was trying to talk about addiction in ways no one previously had, and he was too tentative and quit too soon. Although he was sniffing around the specific addictive behaviors now described as “sex and love addiction,” it would remain for others such as Patrick Carnes to flesh that work out into a definition with more substance, and that didn’t happen for over a decade.
But what Peele DID do was to notice and document a curious fact about Vietnam war vets who came home with a monkey on their backs. And there were thousands who did so, because there was opium and its derivatives aplenty in Viet Nam…even when I couldn’t readily get weed I could always get opium. (Disclaimer: I didn’t do enough of either of them, nor of alcohol, incountry to develop any active addictions, so I’m not one of the thousands. All I brought home was a mild case of PTSD.)
So Peele noticed that these vets were coming home addicted to heroin. But to his amazement, something like 3/4 of them, after they returned to civilian life, simply stopped using. And after 3 to 5 days of being very sick with withdrawal, they just picked up their lives and moved on, and never entertained another thought of using.
His conclusion: they were addicted, but they were NOT addicts.
I’m willing to say more about this, but not if I’m preaching to an empty house.
