Overview
Absurdism is a tradition of existential philosophy popularized by Albert Camus that argues people should live passionately in defiance of an ultimate meaningless universe. Rather than becoming a nihilist who stops living life because they see no meaning it or creating your own meaning as a substitute, Camus argued you should accept the meaninglessness and live your life without seeking a grand purpose.
History and Etymology
Commentary
I am strongly biased towards existentialist and metaphysical concepts in just about any paradigm. If the root of an issue isn’t found within the fundamentals, the fundamentals should at least provide a steady compass to navigate the issue. In the case of substance use disorders, this means unpacking the modes of experiencing reality after consuming a substance. Our goal of treating the disorders towards abstinence, usually with some urgency, leads us to a focus on stabilizing a sober life so that the states of severe and chronic substance use are avoided altogether due to the negative consequences associated with it.
However, this tendency means we often overlook the reality experienced by those in active addiction. It’s somewhat justifiable since active addiction comes with a lot of incoherent blackouts, paranoia, delusions, hallucinations, and other experiences that are not terribly intelligible. Stil, if we wish to understand addiction existentially, we ought to try and understand substance use as a continuum of existential perspectives that span across a life which includes diverse states of mind.
An Existential Model of Addiction
In 2021, Dr. George Grech from Malta published a paper, “An Existential Model of Addiction”, which frames addiction as a coping mechanism for the existential anxieties of psychopathologies, specifically the avoidance of “existential givens” that include death, freedom, existential isolation, and meaninglessness. He then defines addiction as “being-with-drug” to reflect that one’s modes of existence and relation to others are redefined in the context of a relation to a substance or process.