Junk: Overeating and obesity and the neuroscience of addiction

Fraser, Suzanne

doi:10.3109/16066359.2012.749868

Cited by 24 publications

(29 citation statements)

References 35 publications

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“…The most influential form taken by the idea of addiction recently is that offered by neuroscience. While social and cultural factors are sometimes acknowledged within neuroscientific approaches as contributing to addiction (Fraser, 2013), the 'brain reward system' is their main focus. According to NIDA scientists Volkow and Li (2004, p.163), addiction is 'the neurobiology of behaviour gone awry'.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Addiction stigma and the biopolitics of liberal modernity: A qualitative analysis

Fraser

Pienaar

Dilkes-Frayne

et al. 2017

International Journal of Drug Policy

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136

122

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Definitions of addiction have never been more hotly contested. The advance of neuroscientific accounts has not only placed into public awareness a highly controversial explanatory approach, it has also shed new light on the absence of agreement among the many experts who contest it. Proponents argue that calling addiction a 'brain disease' is important because it is destigmatising. Many critics of the neuroscientific approach also agree on this point. Considered from the point of view of the sociology of health and illness, the idea that labelling something a disease will alleviate stigma is a surprising one. Disease, as demonstrated in that field of research, is routinely stigmatised. In this article we take up the issue of stigma as it plays out in relation to addiction, seeking to clarify and challenge the claims made about the progress associated with disease models. To do so, we draw on Erving Goffman's classic work on stigma, reconsidering it in light of more recent, process oriented, theoretical resources, and posing stigmatisation as a performative biopolitical process. Analysing recently collected interviews conducted with 60 people in Australia who consider themselves to have an alcohol or other drug addiction, dependence or habit, we explore their accounts of stigma, finding experiences of stigma to be common, multiple and strikingly diverse. We argue that by treating stigma as politically productive - as a contingent biopolitically performative process rather than as a stable marker of some kind of anterior difference - we can better understand what it achieves. This allows us to consider not simply how the 'disease' of addiction can be destigmatised, or even whether the 'diseasing' of addiction is itself stigmatising (although this would seem a key question), but whether the very problematisation of 'addiction' in the first place constitutes a stigma process.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Addiction stigma and the biopolitics of liberal modernity: A qualitative analysis

Fraser

Pienaar

Dilkes-Frayne

et al. 2017

International Journal of Drug Policy

Self Cite

136

122

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show abstract

“…More than 35 years ago, it was claimed that sugar was as addictive as heroin and nicotine (Dufty 1975). A more recent claim (see, e.g., DesMaisons 2008) is that sugar consumption has a neuro-chemical effect in that, like alcohol, it triggers the release of beta-endorphins that can reduce physical and emotional pain.…”

Section: The Case Of Sugar Addictionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Self, substance, and society

Kristensen¹,

Johansen²

2018

TFSS

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The article explores the role of addictive substances, and how they constitute the experience of pleasure and categories of addictions (Garriott & Raikhel 2015). In two separate studies, one of the users in heroin-assisted treatment of addiction in Denmark and the other of consumers’ food perceptions, we became interested in the roles played by the addictive substance and the concept of addiction – as a cultural category with social, moral, and political significance (Keane 2002) – among our informants. More specifically, we focused on how pleasure is constrained, made, or enacted in societal responses and treatment practices by comparing the case of heroin and sugar. The juxtaposition of the two types of addiction serves to illustrate the relationship between a specific substance, cultural categories, and responses.Analysis focuses on the interplay between the addict, the substance, social networks, and institutions. We argue that both the addict as a subject and the effect of the addictive substance are produced by a network of actors, experiences, moral values, societal institutions, and public discourses. The two cases show the importance of attending to substance effect in this context, and to variations in a single cultural setting – ultimately demonstrating that substance use and the experience of pleasure are not simply matters of choice but rather results of embodied conditioning, whereby social forces constrain the experience of pleasure. In both cases, recovery becomes a means of finding what is perceived to be one’s inner core in a society marked by industrial interference and artificiality, manifested in – among many other objects – certain chemical substances. In some situations, however, by regaining some degree of autonomy and by getting in touch with one’s “inner core” the substance becomes a possible actant for the enjoyment of pleasure

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“…Binge eating disorder is now well-established as a clinical entity that is distinct from obesity, and its inclusion in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual . Consequently, the discussion of food addiction in the media, frequently in relation to obesity and addiction to hard drugs such as heroin and cocaine, is shaping public attitudes towards certain foods (as being on a par with addictive drugs), and to food addiction explanation for obesity 10 .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Addiction was not originally a scientific or medical term, with a traditional meaning from the Latin verb addicere In societies where drugs are deemed a social problem and are criminalised, addicts tend to be associated with criminality and addiction is often seen as social degeneracy. In this sense, addiction is a political as much as a medical concept, classed according to the prevailing moral judgement as well as clinical harm 10 . Therefore, when used in a medical sense, the term addiction implies illness, disease and the need for treatment; at the same time, the term is inextricably connected with moral disapproval towards socially undesirable drug-related behaviour.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Several major critical reviews have given detailed criticisms examining neurobiological 4,6 , phenomenological or phenotypic 7,8,75 and psychometric or diagnostic 9 deficiencies that are damaging for the concept of food addiction. Some researchers have expressed concern that the concept invites the medicalization of natural motivational needs 10,11 . Indeed, no strong evidence exists to substantiate the existence of food addiction that cannot be adequately explained through normal (biopsychological) adaptations to unhealthy lifestyles shaped by powerful socio-cultural pressures from the modern (obesogenic) 2 2 environment.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Food addiction and obesity: unnecessary medicalization of hedonic overeating

Finlayson

2017

Nat Rev Endocrinol

136

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The concept of addiction is loaded with connotations and often used for its political as much as its medical utility. The scientific case for food addiction as a clinical phenotype currently rests on its association with generic diagnostic criteria for substance-related disorders applied to everyday foods and eating-related problems. This has fused the concept of obesity with addiction regardless of whether it fits the definition. The hedonic/reward system can account for ingestion of foods and drugs, confirming that they share neural substrates that differentiate liking and wanting. These are normal processes recruited for natural homeostatic behaviours and can explain the phenomenon of hedonic overeating as a consequence of human motivation pushed to extremes by an obesogenic environment. Food addiction constitutes a medicalization of common eating behaviour, taking on the properties of a disease. Use of this medical language has implications for the way in which society views overeating and obesity.Controversy over the concept of food addiction and its viability as a distinct clinical disorder is being fuelled by misconceptions on both sides of the debate 1,2

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Junk: Overeating and obesity and the neuroscience of addiction

Cited by 24 publications

References 35 publications

Addiction stigma and the biopolitics of liberal modernity: A qualitative analysis

Addiction stigma and the biopolitics of liberal modernity: A qualitative analysis

Self, substance, and society

Food addiction and obesity: unnecessary medicalization of hedonic overeating

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