Who, then is an addict?

Exerpt from: Love and Addiction
by Stanton Peele

"Who, then, is the addict? We can say that he or she is someone who lacks the desire—or confidence in his or her capacity—to come to grips with life independently. His view of life is not a positive one which anticipates chances for pleasure and fulfillment, but a negative one which fears the world and people as threats to himself. When this person is confronted with demands or problems, he seeks support from an external source which, since he feels it is stronger than he is, he believes can protect him. The addict is not a genuinely rebellious person. Rather, he is a fearful one. He is eager to rely on drugs (or medicines), on people, on institutions (like prisons and hospitals). In giving himself up to these larger forces, he is a perpetual invalid. Richard Blum has found that drug users have been trained at home, as children, to accept and exploit the sick role. This readiness for submission is the keynote of addiction. Disbelieving his own adequacy, recoiling from challenge, the addict welcomes control from outside himself as the ideal state of affairs."
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In: Peele, S., with Brodsky, A. (1975), Love and Addiction. New York: Taplinger.
© 1975 Stanton Peele and Archie Brodsky.
Reprinted with permission from Taplinger Publishing Co., Inc.