Becoming an Addict Means Coming Home: Narcotics Anonymous and the Genesis of the Global Drug Ethic

Based on an ethnographic study of Narcotics Anonymous (NA) in Sweden and a genealogical study of NA’s concept of addiction, this study examines why people who use drugs in ways that are considered inappropriate are simultaneously recognised as culpable and innocent.

The study introduces the concept of the global drug ethic to represent the principles about when, where, how, and who ought and ought not to use drugs that emerge from the UN drug conventions, which all countries in the world have either ratified, acceded to, or voluntarily submitted to, as well as other UN recommendations.
The study shows that one particular reading of the second narrative of Genesis in the Bible is fundamental to understanding the global drug ethic. Dating to the late fourth century, the reading was the work of St Augustine, a theologian and philosopher from Roman Africa who systematised and established the doctrine of original sin, which holds that humans are born with an incurable disease that causes them to desire to act in ways that are recognised as sinful and are responsible for withholding consent to act on those desires.

The study traces the emergence of the doctrine of original sin, showing how it developed and was modified by Martin Luther, René Descartes, and John Locke, and reversed by Jean-Jacques Rousseau; the importance of the doctrine for historical conceptualisations of inappropriate drug use and for the meaning of the concept of normality; and the implications of these changes for contemporary conceptualisations of people who use drugs in ways that are recognised as inappropriate.

The study shows that the NA fellowship combines two concepts of disease. The first concept is called disease and is consistent with St Augustine’s concept of disease, which makes no distinction between health and moral status and calls for complete abstinence from drug use. The second concept is called illness and is consistent with Rene’ Descartes’ concept of disease, which makes a distinction between health and moral status and holds that drug medication for physical and mental illness is consistent with recovery from addiction.