Over my decades of medical practice and thousands of conversations, I have learned that the first question to ask is not what is wrong with an addiction, but what is “right” about it. What benefit is the person deriving from their habit? What does it do for them? What are they getting that they otherwise can’t access? This inquiry is key to understanding any addiction, whether to substances like alcohol, opiates, cocaine, crystal meth, sniffed glue, or junk food, or to behaviors such as gambling, compulsive sexual roving, pornography, or binge eating and purging. Or to power and profit, for
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