#pathologizing

Abstract

Do you know what an addiction is? Addiction isn't "you do it just out of habit because you don't think about it" addiction is "if you stop you will literally be in agony and that's why you keep turning to the thing."

We have this baked-in idea that addiction is a moral failing, that if you have a phone addiction, it really just means you need to get off your phone. Yeah, addicted to alcohol? Just stop! Don't drink it anymore! Withdrawl? What's that? If you drink alcohol, it obviously means you just don't have enough willpower! If you can't stop drinking alcohol, it means you're a bad person. You basically deserve to have liver failure at that point!

Yes some people actually believe this! They don't know that paramedics carry alcohol with them specifically because it saves the lives of people going through alcohol withdrawl, they don't care! It's something they cheer themselves up with because they aren't addicted to alcohol, and that means they're a good person.

I am so sick and fucking tired of people pathologizing and moralizing non-moral issues. Addiction, or Substance Abuse Disorder, is an actual physical health condition. It's a disease. You can't stop it with enough willpower, it's something that needs actual medical treatment. Just looking at coping mechanisms or even just things that make you feel good because they release dopamine in your brain and calling that an "addiction" does so much damage to people's understanding of real addiction and makes addicts look like evil weak cowards instead of people with a disease that needs treatment. That's fucking evil. Imagine telling someone with cancer that they just didn't have enough willpower to stop it. Disgusting.

And it's extra ironic coming from these people who think they're addicted to their phone saying "you just need to stop" and then not stopping, meanwhile I have often just forgotten I don't have my phone with me and then get confused when I don't have it. Shouldn't it be the other way around? Why is the person who "knows" it's an "addiction" (in the moral failing way) still not have enough willpower to stop whereas I have to consciously remind myself to go find my phone because I just forget it exists when I don't believe in phone addiction? Literally half the time I take my phone out of my pocket, it's just to check the time.

It's almost like "phone addiction" is just another way to make people feel guilty for doing things they like doing. It doesn't make them stop, they just feel worse about it. They don't think about it as a coping strategy that fades as their life circumstances get better.

And every single time, when you find these people who feel bad for doing things that make them happy, they grew up christian. Every fucking time. "Struggle with addiction" and it's just guilt applied to something normal.

With the spread of more language that's commonly used in psychology, so much of it is diluted and becomes a trend, to where the original meaning is lost.

Pathologizing can happen in a perceivably positive or negative way depending on the person's intentions: they suggest a diagnosis because it makes them feel more represented or makes a character more relatable to them or adds sympathy. Negatively, it's to enhance villainous traits, to make someone seem like an irredeemable monster, etc.

I don't engage with fandom culture because it is full of menial petty drama that I don't see the point in caring about. Not to mention the constant diagnosing of characters that show anything slightly different from "normal". And it is so often something like autism or ADHD, either as a self projection or a manifestation of stereotypes.

This spreads to real people. This behavior becomes so acceptable with characters that people begin to think they understand how to recognize diagnosable traits in people and armchair diagnosis friends or strangers. Not to mention characters often don't have the same complexity or depth as real people, so pathologizing their behavior is pointless.

People will misinterpret behavior and storytelling choices to better fit their perception. To preach about empathy but never approach this from a different perspective—almost always choosing autism—it's antithetical.