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Addiction There's a common refrain when the subject of addiction is brought up 'It's a disease'. This is a common remark when talking about the treatment of drug addicts, alcoholism or sex. Anything that brings about pleasure can be addictive. Given a choice between the everyday world and the pleasure of the drug, the drug addict goes for the drug. After a while the drug has less effect and the addict needs more of it simply to offset the downing effect of the drug wearing off. There's an effect known to engineers called feedback. There is positive feedback and negative feedback and I've explained these concepts in 'More On Economics'. In the human condition there is a strong tendency towards positive feedback. The alcoholic drinks to forget his problems. The drinking exacerbates the problems so he drinks more until eventually he hits rock bottom. The author George Orwell in his book 'Down and Out in Paris and London' says that there is a something reassuring about being on the streets: you know you can't go down any further. This is the plight of the alcoholic or drug addict who has lost his job, his house, and his family and is buying cheap drink or drugs on the streets. He can't go any further. There is one problem and one problem only: where to get the next fix from. Nothing else matters. The problem with looking at this as a disease is that it ignores the element of personal responsibility. The drinker chooses to put the bottle to his mouth; the addict chooses to smoke the crack pipe or inject the heroin. Of course not everyone has the same pressures. Some people have to scratch out an existence in extremely harsh conditions; others have a relatively easy life. To argue, as some people do, that the harsh existence justifies the addiction ignores the fact that that many people who live in extremely harsh conditions don't become addicts and some very wealthy people do. The cause is a weakness of what used to be called 'character', 'moral fibre', or lack of self-discipline. These aren't fashionable terms nowadays and the education system makes no effort to instill these characteristics in children. We can't teach what we don't understand.