You are right that taking something once at a low dose is unlikely to make you addicted. It doesn’t make sense though to ignore psychological, situational, and genetic risk factors for addiction.
I never said that those factors should be ignored.
The point I’m making is that when people frame this as “some people just aren’t built to handle it” they put people into two groups: the easily addicted, and normal people.
People want to be part of and prove they are in the normal group. Something is wrong with you if you are in the addict group. Those in the normal group feel protected by being part of it. They think they aren’t capable of addiction that they must have gotten lucky.
I think that’s an incredibly dangerous framing of addiction. Everyone is capable of becoming an addict. Just because some never do, doesn’t mean they had some special mutation that protected them. Addiction is an incredibly social disease, and with how little we know about it we should be more cautious rather than callous when discussing it.
You are right that taking something once at a low dose is unlikely to make you addicted. It doesn’t make sense though to ignore psychological, situational, and genetic risk factors for addiction.
I never said that those factors should be ignored.
The point I’m making is that when people frame this as “some people just aren’t built to handle it” they put people into two groups: the easily addicted, and normal people.
People want to be part of and prove they are in the normal group. Something is wrong with you if you are in the addict group. Those in the normal group feel protected by being part of it. They think they aren’t capable of addiction that they must have gotten lucky.
I think that’s an incredibly dangerous framing of addiction. Everyone is capable of becoming an addict. Just because some never do, doesn’t mean they had some special mutation that protected them. Addiction is an incredibly social disease, and with how little we know about it we should be more cautious rather than callous when discussing it.