The addictive society and cannabis

The addictive society and cannabis

This is the first part of a three-part series on the contextual influences that modern society has on mood disorders and addiction, 2) theBuy-in risks and 3) the possibility of soul renewal through (but not limited to) therapeutic cannabis use.

Part I: The Addiction System

"We live in a society bloated with data yet starved for wisdom. We are connected 24/7, but anxiety, fear, depression and loneliness are at an all-time high. We must correct course."~ Elizabeth Kapu’uwailani Lindsey

The “addiction system” (1) is the elephant in the living room. Mood disorders and addiction, like everything else, do not occur in a vacuum. However, we tend to miss the larger societal “space” when we only focus on individual issues like depression and anxiety or opioid and social media addictions.

What exactly is this context?

It is an invisible psychological environment, the backdrop in which people unwittingly succumb to addiction or suffer from mood disorders. The rise in antidepressants and the number of suicides highlight the growing dark side of modern society.

It is a complex, interconnected web of public (state) and private companies that rely on the media to market and promote information, products and services 24/7: a surround-sound cacophony of targeted messaging designed to shape both public opinion and an ever-increasing consumer mindset.

Some call it propaganda.

Intangible, psychological concepts are supposedly applied to marketing and salesDriveAll people: the perceived need for: social status, security, winning, the right image, the best, good looks, advantage, being ahead of your neighbor, being excellent, being first, etc. Advertising messages are then incorporated into the promise of helping the “consumer” achieve one or another of these intangible goals when purchasing their information, products and / or services. The ubiquity of these messages in modern society has become normalized and even welcomed.

How did we get here?

Edward Bernays was most likely the person who set the bar for public relations and advertising in the United States in the early to mid-20th century. He was the nephew of the noted psychiatrist Sigmund Freud and, like his uncle before him, Bernays believed in the predictability of the human unconscious when it came to the human and psychological motivations of self-preservation, security, aggression and sex.

He transferred what he learned from his uncle to launch his career in public relations and became extremely successful. Because of his efforts for the pork industry in 1915, bacon became a mainstay of the traditional breakfast. In the 1920s he made smoking fashionable for women by calling cigarettes "torches of freedom" to advance the tobacco industry, and in the 1930s he established fluoride as an essential element in dentistry (a waste product of aluminum) for his client Alcoa Aluminum. (2)

Watch this video that says it all: Be inspired

Stay tuned for Part II: Buy-in to the Addiction System at Your Own Risk

1. Anne Wilson Schaef.When society becomes addicted.Harper and Row, Publishers Inc. 1987

2. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_relations_campaigns_of_Edward_Bernays

Inspired by Susan Boskey