Addiction, Madness, Despair pt. 1: Addiction

As we emerge from quarantine and reveal to one another our many wounds, Arnold describes a recent, months-long period of psychological rupture as a narrative frame for an inquiry into the relationship between addiction, madness, despair and revolutionary social possibility. In this episode we examine the dubious origins of 12-steps programs like Alcoholics Anonymous in hallucinatory christianity, the neuroscience of addiction, and the relationship between addiction and pain. We also explore the fundamental unity of the changes to neural circuitry that result from exposure to drugs or exposure to all the other hyper-potent reward stimuli that consumer civilization has to offer.