Affective scaffolding in addiction

ABSTRACT

Addiction is widely taken to involve a profound loss of self-control. Addictive motivation is extremely forceful, and it is remarkably hard to abstain from addictive behaviors. Theories of addiction have sought to explain how self-control is undermined in addiction. However, an important explanatory factor in addictive motivation and behaviors has so far been underexamined: emotion. This paper examines the link between emotion and loss of control in addiction. I use the concept of affective scaffolding to argue that drug use functions as a form of emotion regulation that, especially in certain psycho-socioeconomic conditions, can escalate into what I term addictive affective dependence. Addictive affective dependence is extremely motivating of drug use, and in this way contributes to the agent losing control. An upshot of the paper is that it predicts something that is known to be true about addiction treatment and recovery: strategies that address psycho-socioeconomic conditions are particularly successful in bolstering agency in addiction. Furthermore, my view explains why these strategies work. Thus, the view provides a conceptual framework for existing effective methods of addressing addiction.

KEYWORDS:

• Addiction
• affective scaffolding
• self-control
• emotion regulation
• agency
• motivation

Acknowledgments

I thank Yarran Hominh, Eric Bayruns García, Gen Eickers, Kate Pendoley, Sujaya Dhanvantari, Ian Gold, David Papineau, and members of the Critical Emotion Theory Network for useful discussion and feedback on earlier drafts of this article. For their helpful comments, I thank an anonymous referee.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The term ‘drugs’ is used here as an umbrella label for natural and synthetic substances that can become objects of addiction, but that are also used non-addictively for a range of different reasons.

2 Philosophical work on the motivational conflicts that arise in addiction has focused on, for example, addictive desires (e.g., Holton and Berridge 2013, 2017; Schroeder 2004), choice (e.g., Ainslie 2000, 2018; Heyman 2009; Pickard 2013, 2016, 2018, 2020, 2022), reason-responsiveness (e.g., Burdman 2022), habit (e.g., Lewis 2015), and intention, judgment and evaluation (e.g., Heather 2017; Levy 2014; Holton 2009), among other things.

3 See Garland et al. (2020) for a review of research on the emotional regulatory functions of drug use, and the driving effect of emotional dysregulation on addictive behavior. See also, for example, Hogarth (2020), Koob, Powell, and White (2020), May, Aupperle, and Stewart (2020), Chester et al. (2016), Berking et al. (2011), and Cooper et al. (1995).

4 A notable exception is Henden’s (2023) proposal that emotion dysregulation impairs autonomy in addiction. Henden argues that, in addiction, emotion dysregulation drives decision-making, and that over time, this shapes the agent’s value system such that the value of the emotional regulatory role that drugs play comes to crowd out other values, thus becoming central to the addicted agent’s conception of the good. Related literature addresses the role of shame and guilt in addiction (e.g., Flanagan 2013; Snoek et al. 2021), and explores the relationship between emotional dysregulation and adolescent decision-making (Weinrabe and Hickie 2021).

5 It is worth noting here that craving, or addictive desire, is the motivational state that is most often taken up in the literature to explain how addictive motivation overrides efforts at abstinence. As Kennett (2013) suggests, however, ‘while very strong desires may impede the successful carrying out of an intention, other internal factors are equally or more important in addiction and elsewhere’; for example, ‘shyness, anxiety, fear, anger, grief’ can contribute to a failure to successfully perform intended actions (151). Furthermore, I have argued elsewhere (Lavallee 2020a, 2020b) that addictive desires themselves should be rethought largely because of how they connect to the valuable emotional experiences that drugs provide. This paper does not deny the important motivational role of addictive desires, but contends that they are not the only relevant control-undermining factor in addictive psychology, and that emotions ought to be further examined, especially considering that they have received more limited attention in the literature on loss of control.

6 This paper addresses substance addictions. While the framework I develop could be extended to analyze behavioral addictions separately, I will not make the case for it here.

7 See, for example, Robbins and Aydede (2009), and Walter (2014) on cognition, and Stephan and Walter (2020) on affect.

8 I leave open the possibility of additional types of scaffolds, and complex sets of integrated material and interpersonal scaffolds, being incorporated into an extended account of addictive affectivity.

9 Coninx and Stephan (2021) develop a more extensive taxonomy of the dimensions of environmentally scaffolded affectivity.

10 Müller and Schumann (2011) describe drugs as instruments and outline a number of their functional benefits, including: improved social interaction; countering fatigue; improved cognitive performance; facilitated sexual behavior; expanded perception horizon; as well as, coping with psychological stress, mental illness, and producing euphoria or hedonia. Some of these functions are taken up by my analysis.

11 Thank you to an anonymous reviewer for drawing my attention to this relevant distinction.

12 Colombetti and Krueger themselves conclude that the boundary between cases of high reliance on a scaffold and cases of actual ‘addiction’ is ‘arguably fuzzy’ (2015, 1162). I do not regard their example of the ‘addicted’ musician as adequately outlining a case of addiction per se, but I introduce it because I draw on this example to characterize one component of what I argue is in fact a case of addictive affective scaffolding.

13 I credit Saarinen (2020, 824) for inspiring my use of the term ‘dependence’ here.

14 This analysis assumes that people attribute significant value to emotional regulation – we tend to value some emotional states over others (feeling calm rather than anxious, for example), and when we are emotionally dysregulated, we are typically motivated to try to change the way we feel – and that this broader phenomenon is implicated in the process of addiction, wherein emotional regulation needs tend to be disproportionately high and dominate decision-making. Henden (2023) offers an extended account of the value that addicted agents get from the emotional self-regulatory function of drug use.

15 There certainly may be other risk factors for addictive affective dependence that could be analyzed, be that possible genetic predisposition to stress sensitivity, or the influence of certain brain changes resulting from ongoing drug use. I need not deny additional risk factors to demonstrate the importance of psycho-socioeconomic factors.

16 While the research I cite primarily uses the term ‘mental illness,’ I offer a range of language options here to acknowledge that ‘mental illness’ is a not a term endorsed by all people who experience the kinds of psychic/emotional/mental distress discussed in the paper, nor by all researchers addressing the topic.

17 See Maté (2009) for an extended discussion of research on trauma and addiction.

18 While economic precarity can prime addiction, it is also the case that ongoing addiction can depress socioeconomic status.

19 Lack of social relationships can also influence initial drug use in cases where drugs are an available tool to perform the emotional regulatory functions that might otherwise be fulfilled through social interaction. While this does not give a full account of the pathway into addiction, on this view, it can be a contributing cause.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (grant number 756-2021-0542).