Transcendent Kingdom

Gifty voices one of the central questions of Transcendent Kingdom: “Plenty of people drink without becoming alcoholics, but some people take a single sip and a switch trips and who knows why?” (335). One possible answer presented relates to the brain. This is connected to Gifty’s research and suggests that we understand “addiction as disease, something akin to high blood pressure or diabetes” (313). In this view, the roots of addiction are neurobiological. Like the mouse that becomes addicted to Ensure, some people’s brains are just wired or constituted in such a way that makes them prone to addictive behavior.

However, this explanation seems insufficient. While there may be elements of truth to it, it also ignores the lived experience of addiction. It ignores the way the sufferer both participates in and fights against their addiction, in a way disanalogous to someone with a physical disease. For example, one can choose to go into rehab, develop or not develop certain habits. We can also influence the way we value certain things, such as family, or a sense of self, above the pleasure of the drug. In contrast, a purely physical ailment, such as heart disease, for the most part just happens to our body.