Hooked: Food, Free Will, and How the Food Giants Exploit Our Addictions

by Michael Moss

Then there was the matter of getting clean. To be sure, nine in ten of the Narcotic Farm patients had severe trouble with this. As soon as they left the facility, they’d start using again, sometimes at a bar right outside the front gate. The rate of relapse was so severe and disappointing that it led to the facility’s closure in the late 1970s for failing its core mission as a treatment center. But, as in all other areas of addiction, there were glaring exceptions. Some patients were able to quit without much in the way of exertion or willpower. This came to be known as natural recovery. A striking example of this played out during and after the Vietnam War. Most members of the U.S. military who served in Vietnam had the opportunity to use heroin there, but even among those who had become addicted, six in ten stopped using the drug when they got back home, according to a 1980 analysis done by a scientist who had worked at the Narcotic Farm, suggesting that availability was as important as the drug itself in addiction.