The substance I was addicted to was heroin. While I was actively addicted, it absolutely came before everything else. My life shrank around it. I kept using despite very real, very obvious negative consequences. If you’re looking for something that fits the “compulsion + harm + loss of control” model, that was it.

But what’s always sat strangely with me is what happened when that context changed.

Once my abusive relationship ended and I was no longer in an environment where it was readily available, it was shockingly easy to stop. I’m not saying it was physically comfortable. My body was pretty pissed off for a while. But psychologically, it just didn’t have the same hold anymore. I wasn’t spending my days white-knuckling cravings or constantly thinking about it. It dropped out of my life in a way that, according to the 12-step model, is not really supposed to happen.

And that’s where my issue with that framework starts.

Because 12-step ideology tends to assume that if you have ever had that kind of relationship with one substance, it reveals something fundamental and permanent about you. That you now have a generalized “addictive nature” that will attach itself to other substances or behaviors if you’re not constantly managing it. That you are, in some essential way, always on the verge of transferring that pattern onto something else.

And that just hasn’t been true for me.

I was a near-daily cannabis user for years. When it started consistently making me feel physically uncomfortable instead of good, I stopped. No drawn-out battle, no existential crisis, just “this isn’t giving me what I liked about it anymore” and I moved on.

I drink occasionally, in social or celebratory contexts, and I genuinely find alcohol kind of boring outside of that. It doesn’t have much pull for me.

I tried gambling once, got annoyed at how tedious and overstimulating it felt, and left the casino in under an hour. I have not felt remotely compelled to revisit that experience.

I use the internet a lot, and I play a handful of video games, but I can also go on a camping trip with no signal and be completely fine, unless you want to try and find something pathological about nature photography, in which case you can blow it out your ass. If anything, I generally enjoy the change of pace. There’s no sense of panic or withdrawal or “I need to get back to my computer/consoles immediately.”

So when I hear the idea that addiction is this broad, transferable trait that will latch onto anything with quick reward or low friction, I just don’t see it reflected in my own life.

What does make sense, looking back, is context.

When I was using heroin, I was in an abusive relationship. My environment was unstable, stressful, and honestly pretty bleak. The substance didn’t just exist in a vacuum. It fit into a specific set of conditions where it functioned as relief, escape, and regulation.

When those conditions changed, the behavior changed with them.

That doesn’t mean there was no dependency. There obviously was. It doesn’t mean there were no consequences. There very much were. My grades suffered. I dropped out of college. I lost my apartment because staying out of withdrawal and numbing out from the abuse felt more important than paying rent.

But it does suggest that what we call “addiction” might not always be this permanent, identity-level trait that needs to be managed forever. Sometimes it looks a lot more like a relationship between a person, a substance, and a specific environment.

When that’s the case, then a framework that assumes universality - “if this happened once, it will always be waiting to happen again, with anything” - is going to miss a lot of variation.

I’m not saying 12-step programs can’t help people. Clearly they can, or they likely wouldn’t exist in the way they do. But I do think they’re often treated as the model of addiction rather than a model that fits some people and not others, and when your experience doesn’t match that model, many people who swear by them will assume that you are misunderstanding yourself, in denial, or “not taking it seriously enough.” This paternalistic attitude only serves to make me even more skeptical of the framework.

For me, what mattered wasn’t declaring myself permanently “addictive” or treating every pleasurable behavior as a potential threat.

What mattered was getting out of the environment where that pattern made sense in the first place.

Dr Glass was only three cars back from the entry point. After pondering the problem in this unexpected pocket of leisure, he got out of the car.

The other drivers looked at him, astonished, censorious. Was this muppet just up and leaving his car? Abandoning a vehicle in congestion? Were they about to witness someone making their day WORSE?

Dr Glass walked to a pedestrian crossing, a few feet upstream, and pressed the button. He turned around and got back in his car.

Enlightenment, and a cautious hope, dawned on the faces of the other drivers in the queue.

The pedestrian sequence unrolled. The red light cut off the oncoming stream of traffic. The queue was freed. The roundabout was freed.

first of all. So many of the scenes are obviously just the actors projected in front of a green screen. Even for mundane scenes! It looks weird and bad. I genuinely don't think the actors were actually physically together on the same set for most of the movie. During a bunch of the scenes it just switches from "screen showing one character" to "screen showing other character" like their parts are being filmed completely separately and spliced together for the film.

I assumed at first that it was because it had been filmed during covid, but nope! came out in 2019!

second, there were so many fucking references to other MCU movies that it was like product placement for their own franchise. it was genuinely grating

Third. Okay so. The plot of this movie is that tony stark, after he died, gave peter parker a pair of glasses that allow him to see messages and files being sent on other people's computers/phones and additionally give him the ability to call in drone strikes from satellites in space to shoot missiles at any person Peter wants when he just. says that he wants that.

And like I really do mean "when he says that he wants that." In the scene where he opens up the glasses and learns what they do, he misspeaks and labels a guy he is pissed off at as a "target," which calls in a drone strike that almost blows up his entire class. No "confirm," no "are you sure you want to kill everyone on this bus including yourself," just "okay :)"

The main conflict of the movie is incited when Peter doubts himself and his ability to be a superhero, and hands over control of the glasses to the bad guy.

But at the end of the movie, Peter gets the glasses back.

At no point, ever, is it hinted at or considered that maybe the power to kill any person you desire by just. summoning missiles to blow them up (collateral damage be damned) by saying the word is...bad? The fact that the glasses let him spy on the private conversations of others just by looking at them while they're using their phones is bad enough.

Spider-Man is just, not Spider-Man in this movie. He has an assistant to come pick him up in a private jet. He has technology to literally 3D print him a new suit. He has all this super advanced technology and is closer to being Iron Man than Spider-Man.

Also, Nick Fury is there for some fucking reason and he is like. guilt-tripping Peter about wanting to participate in a school trip instead of, being a fucking child soldier or something?

Like, Nick Fury very much talks to this sixteen year old boy like he's selfish and immature for not wanting to be Literally Kidnapped To Go Die Fighting Space Monsters. Fury's dialogue very much comes across like he's knowingly taking advantage of an immature boy's inflated sense of his own maturity and desire to be viewed as an adult, and he is definitely using guilt and emotional manipulation to control Peter. I know Fury is supposed to be a morally gray character, but that isn't morally gray, that is straight up evil. ???

Also the movie had this whole thing about Peter being Iron Man's successor/the next Iron Man, to the point that Iron Man is basically replacing the role that Uncle Ben played in Spider-Man's story, which is. What the fuck.

Now, 5 years later, a 16 year old boy is given the power to do the exact same thing and it's fine?

Like? Is it suddenly fine to violate others' privacy and call drone strikes on people to kill them if you're a "hero?" The fuck do you think "hero" means?

its like. us military propaganda basically. meant to normalize spying and killer drones and stuff

and now peter parker isn't a regular broke kid anymore he gets handed everything he wants by a billionaire who makes military technology

tom holland spider-man doesn't even save people. He's not really even interested in like. Doing good.

if you are non-american then it can be dangerous to hold beliefs about your rights that are only applicable in the US.

i am australian and i have seen young australians have completely us-american perceptions on the rights they hold (or do not hold) in regards to protest, police officers, self-defense, medical care, higher education, debt, and legal proceedings. i am not talking about "boooo americans" i am talking about the genuine danger it might present to have us-centric assumptions in high-stakes situations