Customer Reviews

When Society Becomes an Addict

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Due to the pressures of modern life, many people are addicts of one kind or another.Anne Schaef shows how society as a whole behaves in addictive ways.We usually think of an addict as being someone addicted to a drug, but there are many kinds of addiction.There are substance addictions, such as to alcohol, drugs, nicotine, caffeine and food.Everyday activities can become process addictions,such as accumulating money,gambling, sex,work,religion and worry.Personal relationships can also be addictive.Many politicians behave like addicts,as they are hooked on control, promising things will get better(but they do not)denying problems and denying alternative ways of doing things.This all adds up to the Addictive System which is modern society.Schaef concludes that "we cannot allow anything to come between us and our spirituality, or between us and our living process.If we do, we shall destroy ourselves and those around us."This is a very worthwhile book, with penetrating insight into modern life.

This brilliantly innovative thinker throws back the curtains on our collective society's understanding of ourselves, and opens up possibilities for really positive solutions to what ails our society as a whole, and its individuals, in particular! Ms. Schaef addresses all forms of addiction, from chemical to behavioral, and sees within our society's gradual acceptance of its own corruptions the seven deadly sins of anger, covetousness, envy, gluttony, lust, pride and sloth. Perpetuating our malaise we see in our leaders the aspects of control, dishonesty and dualism (seeing only two alternative solutions to any problem.) It is shocking to face these at first, but once the truth of it dawns on the reader, he/she is led through the greatest assisting factors toward our collective "recovery": Process (the ideas used in the 12-step programs); Sobriety (fastest route to clear thinking); and Spirituality (not necessarily the dogmatic sort that keeps us in the submissive, non-living, non-aware state!) This book is not for the person too busy to have time to digest something wonderfully deep and enriching! Reading it is like taking a shower in the purest, cleansing water, and emerging to absorb its message like rays of powerful sunshine! It is empowering. A fantastic door opening to the possibilities of our becoming a truly free and healthy society of thinking, alive, deprogrammed individuals! Read this one before any of her other books! Her newly coined terms will become valuable assets in your vocabulary and liberated mind-set!

This is a top book. It analyses the addiction patterns of individuals from the perspective of the addictive patterns in society as a whole. Ann Wilson Schaef goes beyond analysis of the "problem" of addiction to a very encouraging vision of another way of being alive, one that is mostly forgotten in our numb modern society. If you are looking for some ways out of the cycle of addiction, this may be an important roadmap for you.

When Society Becomes an Adict goes beyond the usual books on addiction, to consider why addiction is so common in present society. Ms Schaef's observation is that society as a whole acts like an addicted individual. She also observes that the way to cure society is for the individuals in it to cure themselves.

I must point out that the negative review by an ethics student must have been written after skimming the book. Had the student read more carefully, s/he would have seen that Ms Schaef admits that in an earlier book she had written that the flaws in society were basically the fault of the males in it. Since then, however, she has realized that addiction, not men, are to blame.

This book and the others by Anne Wilson Schaef have helped me to put my own experience with family and society into a healthy perspective. I say, bravo to this lady and her work! Excellent! This work put me on the path to true emotional healing and understanding of why people act in harmful ways. I say, no less than brillant. Thanks Anne!! You Rock!

Having worked in the fields of addiction and spirituality for the past 20 or more years, I have gone back to this book again. I find it very helpful in putting a name on many aspects of society that we experience but something does not seem to fit or make sense. I liked this book by Wilson Schaef when I read it in the early 90s and I was new in this field. Looking at the changes in society in the intervening years, I find it more relevant today and speaking to much of the destruction and death we see around us. Whether it be the ecological issues; the drugs and obseity; the military and arms build-up and the failure of the Churches and organised religions, the book deals with process, the dynamics and the spirituality which is called for to support life and energy. Her naming of the characteristics of the addict as seen in society and her use of the Lincoln Logs to point out the dualism and the extremes that are so much part of the addictive system are very helpful. I like the way she deals with these to show the need for changes in behaviours and to break the addictive practices. I have not found anything better to deal with this topic and area but can recommend it for those who may be looking for some clarity to break the confusion and the sense of powerlessness that so may feel in today's world.

This and her earlier =Escape from Intimacy= were Big News to the addiction recovery field in the late '80s. Many of us in practice at that time believed that Khantzian's theory of "medicative addiction" was on the money, and some of us engaged in developing an "addiction pantheon" (e.g.: alcohol, drug, gambling, sex, romance, cause, exercise, work, shopping, etc.; later reduced to "substance" and "activity").

Bozarth gave us the neurobiological perspective at about the same time, and by the late '90s, people like Shaffer and others were developing the "syndrome model of addiction" that's little more complex than "everything leads to dopamine."

The budding addictions specialist who wants to know what it's all about will need to read all this material -- including Schaef's -- to understand =clearly= that addiction is addiction is addiction, regardless of the specific sensory channels and/or rituals.

A word of caution, however: This is not quite yet the author of =Escape...=, and by post-millennial standards this book might be viewed as unacceptably laden with black-and-white or all-or-nothing thinking. The woman saw the concepts but often overstates them, or fails to offer adequate verification for her largely accurate but occasionally over-strident assertions.

Schaef's is correct, however, in asserting that our society is becoming "increasingly addictive." I'm inclined to blame those who profit the most from making people anxious and uncomfortable in one way or another (e.g.: TV news, hyper-realistic action-adventure films, over-stimulating video games) and then offering "pseudo-anxiolytics" ranging from overpriced atypical antipsychotics like Seroquel and Abilify (obvious) to elective cosmetic surgery and crash diets (slightly less obvious) to romance-promising cruises in the Caribbean (way less obvious, but just as distracting).

What does the suddenly self-and-society-aware activity addict =do= once she's figured out she's been working two jobs to get herself high on acai berry juice and riding 200 miles a week on her 24-oz, $4,000.00, Tour de France bicycle? 1) Sit still and feel your feelings (the "drop drill" mindfulness meditation technique will work). 2) Identify, question and revise (or reject) the core beliefs, values, idea(l)s, assumptions, convictions and attitudes one has picked up from every external source immaginable. One can use CBT, REBT or SIQR for the latter.

RG, Psy.D.

The begining of the book is a little tough, being a "White male" But this a book that everyone should read! The world would be a better place if they did.

this is an important book for those interested in understanding how our culture promotes addictions and an empying of the soul.

THEY SHOULD TEACH THIS BOOK IN EVERY SCHOOL. THIS BOOK SHOULD BE IN THE TOP SELLER BOOKS, BUT IT DOES NOT SERVE THE RICH PEOPLE WELL....