We have been looking at the idea that addiction is a weapon to be wielded against parents who have been judged (by their offspring) as uncaring, abusive, or demonstrably blameworthy in some other way. Here is the crux of matter, as delineated by the AddictionNews writer Steve O’Keefe:

The reward theory of addiction says people are pulled into it; the displacement theory says they’re pushed.

And, so what? How does this fit with the parental causation theory? On the one hand, it could be theorized that if people are pulled into addiction, it is more logical to assume they are pulled by something that exists out there in the environment. That could seem obvious, because the attraction of intoxication is that it feels better than the flat boring duties and routines of home. So in that scenario, the parents have little or nothing to do with the slide into addiction.

Of course, conversely, it could also be posited that parents have everything to do with their kids becoming addicts — if they have been demonstrating the lifestyle all along, and creating an atmosphere of such hopelessness and futility that no child can see beyond it. A child raised in such an environment can be pushed right up against the wall, and then pushed on through it into a hell of second-generation, seemingly hereditary addiction.

Or, worse yet, the parents might be addicted to nothing more chemically potent than their own self-righteousness, narrow-mindedness, or some other poisonous quality that successfully does the work of ruining their children.

Just to complicate matters further, O’Keefe throws in this question:

Could it be that people are attracted to addictive substances and behaviors because of the relief they provide, not because of the reward they provide?

It does make sense, that this could be true in some cases. A reward is pleasure — a positive, enjoyable quality — while relief is only the mere absence of pain. In comparison to ecstasy, that may not sound like much.

But the absence of pain is a splendid condition — just ask anyone who has been shot, stabbed, or burned. For a patient hooked up to an IV drip, when the mandatory four-hour interval has passed, and that next morphine dose finally hits the bloodstream, it is the most — no, the only — important thing in the world. “Relief” doesn’t even begin to describe it.

If only we had a dime for every junkie who has ever said, “I don’t even get high any more. I’m just trying to feel normal.” And as time goes on, greater and greater amounts of their substance of choice are required, before the person can even get back on neutral ground.

Everybody has heard of “chasing the dragon.” This is when somebody tries to recapture the overwhelming experiences they used to have at the beginning of their dope journey. There is a less-noticed phenomenon, however, that does not seem to be acknowledged or discussed nearly as much as perhaps it should be.

Namely, a lot of people experiment with substances in the first place because they just want to feel normal, or what they imagine normal feels like to people who are not so messed up in the head. The trouble is, because they are already in far-from-optimal shape, they wouldn’t know normal if it snuck up and bit them on the rear end.

Our AddictionNews publisher, Dr. Robert A. Pretlow, cites a hypothesis whereby reward “acts as the cue that triggers the displacement mechanism that leads to addictive behavior.” He goes on to say, “Reward is the cue that triggers the displacement mechanism, which then expends excess motivational energy produced by stress.”

As always, another theory exists that says, “Six of one; half a dozen of the other.” People enter the lifestyle or acquire the illness of addiction in search of both reward and relief, and probably for a lot of other reasons too.

Owen Flanagan, whose credentials are “professor of philosophy and neurobiology emeritus at Duke University,” spent quite a long time addicted to “booze and benzos.” One quotation from his recently published memoir goes like this:

Sleeping involved falling unconscious from drinking, and waking was coming to because I needed to drink…

(Intrusion from the writer of this page: When I was a teen, my best friend’s father was so hooked on caffeine, he had to set the alarm clock to get up during the night and eat some teaspoons of instant coffee, or else in the morning he would be unfit to leave for his high school teaching job.)

Flanagan has spent a lifetime listening to addict friends “of every age, ethnicity, race, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation,” hooked on every conceivable addictive substance, and then observing how the beliefs they hold about their lives tend to play out in real time. “And unlike most of the media and the addiction-treatment industry, they usually don’t think of it as a ‘brain disease.'” This writer has a lot to say about addiction in relation to responsibility and blame, which might interest our readers.

Written by Pat Hartman. First published November 28, 2025.

Source:

“People Say Addiction Is a Disease. Mine Wasn’t,” The Wall Street Journal, January 9, 2025.

Image Copyright: azmeyart-design/Pixabay.