We Should Praise Addiction, Not Condemn It, Says Anthropologist Elizabeth Roberts

The title of Elizabeth Roberts’ new book, In Praise of Addiction, is likely to catch your attention, maybe even set off some cognitive dissonance in your mind. But the University of Michigan’s Elizabeth Roberts doesn’t want you to be unhealthy or take up new habits that can hurt you and others, she just wants you to consider that maybe we haven’t been looking at addiction with the clearest of eyes. Why are some substances and habits tolerated and others scorned, their users told by society to abstain and isolated until they do? In her time living in Mexico, she noticed a big difference between people who drank or did drugs to cut themselves off from society versus those who used substances to connect with one another. She offers her analysis on how this was impacted by NAFTA and the War on Drugs in Mexico and puritanism and capitalism in the United States. This is a complicated issue but it’s pretty healthy to challenge assumptions and to take a look at how those assumptions came to be established in the first place.

Thank you to all our listeners who support the show as monthly members of Maximum Fun.

Check out our I’m Glad You’re Here and Depresh Mode merchandise at the brand new merch website MaxFunStore.com!

Hey, remember, you’re part of Depresh Mode and we want to hear what you want to hear about. What guests and issues would you like to have covered in a future episode? Write us at depreshmode@maximumfun.org.

Depresh Mode is on BlueSky, Instagram, Substack, and you can join our Preshies Facebook group.

Help is available right away.

The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 988 or 1-800-273-8255, 1-800-273-TALK

Crisis Text Line: Text HOME to 741741.

International suicide hotline numbers available here: https://www.opencounseling.com/suicide-hotlines

Help support this show and unlock bonus content! Become a member at https://maximumfun.org/joindepresh

Denne episoden er hentet fra en åpen RSS-feed og er ikke publisert av Podme. Den kan derfor inneholde annonser.

Episoder(305)

Cat Grief is Real. So is Human Grief. We’re Underestimating and Misunderstanding Both.

Bay Area journalist s.e. smith thinks the high school goths were right: we should be talking about death all the time. It’s underdiscussed for something that will literally affect us all. And in that ...

24 Aug 1h 4min

Oh, It’s Autism, Mary H.K. Choi Learned at 43. Okay, She Thought, That Explains a Lot.

Mary H.K. Choi compares living with her brain to just not understanding the operating system on a computer. She didn’t know if this was a result of trauma and neglect in her childhood, the experience ...

17 Aug 1h 7min

Margaret Glaspy Ends Her Instagram Addiction and Sings From Her Original Thought

Margaret Glaspy compares the experience she was having on Instagram to being lightly punched in the gut, over and over, for a very long time. Like it’s not like being hit hard, just a little tap of so...

10 Aug 1h 2min

Depression, Loneliness, and Memory Problems Are Worse In Middle Age, But Only in America

For most of the world, the advent of middle age does not make depression, loneliness, and memory issues more of a problem than earlier in life. In some countries, things actually get better. The only ...

3 Aug 49min

Codependency and Covid on a Tiny Boat in the Middle of the Ocean, with Angela Harger-Thompson

Angela Harger-Thompson had moved to Hollywood to make it big in showbiz but soon fell victim to a devastating assault. There to comfort her was her intermittent boyfriend. She really liked him and tho...

27 Jul 59min

Maybe It IS Time to Panic Over AI Chatbots and Mental Health with Maggie Harrison Dupré

This week, we take a look at a couple of acronyms that are soaring in popularity and ask what their widespread adoption means for mental health. Maggie Harrison Dupré of Futurism has been following th...

20 Jul 55min

Jo Dee Messina on Hard Times, Jesus, and Her First Album in 12 Years

Jo Dee Messina has a long career in the music industry: number one hits, platinum and gold records, many awards. She’s a country music icon. Jo Dee just released Bridges, her first new album in 12 yea...

13 Jul 51min

Best of Depresh Mode: Hanif Abdurraqib on Cultivating a Support System, Depression, Anxiety, and Basketball

Hanif Abdurraqib is a MacArthur Fellow, accomplished poet, and critically lauded author of numerous books, including There’s Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension, which is now out in paperbac...

6 Jul 50min