Why are some forms of addiction ok when others aren't?

Question

More than half of america is overweight. This is maily due to overeating. Sugar is highly addictive. It is everywhere. And at the rates it is consumed it causes all sorts of long term internal damage and massive painful withdrawls when the user quits (Which is nearly impossible since almost everything now has sugar in it). So why is this so accepted when addiction to things like alcohol, heroin, meth etc is considered weak and makes you a bad person?

Answer 1

Not only is that addiction considered okay, the blame is often placed elsewhere. I can't stand the lipozene commercial where the lady basically says if you are morbidly obese, "it's not your fault." Yet, a smoker has a heart attack or gets lung cancer and everyone says they had it coming.

Answer 2

Let's get something straight right from the beginning. No form of addiction is OK. True, some are legal, and some aren't. Some are socially acceptable (usually the legal ones, but not always!) and some aren't. But addiction, by definition, means you're not just fond of something, but you actually NEED it. That's the rub. You don't just WANT to have it, you HAVE to have it. I think obesity is more an affliction than an addiction, but opinions differ on that point. In a way, we're all food junkies. Just try giving it up for any length of time and see if I'm not right! Yom Kippur is my least favorite holiday. You'd think a fast would get easier as you get older, but the opposite seems to be the case. Anyway, the point is we all have to eat SOMETHING if we're going to keep living. Addictions are about things you can live without before you get hooked.

Answer 3

Obesity is not as simple as being addicted to sugar. First off, sugar isn't actually physically addictive, and it doesn't cause any painful withdrawal symptoms provided you're still getting enough calories from other food sources. But appart from that, there are other factors besides sugar consumption, or even total caloric intake vs. exercise invovled in weight.

I eat a considerable amount of sugar and other junk food, get minimal exercise (or I did until recently - I've been working on both of those), and I'm still significantly underweight. On the other hand, there are people who eat reasonable portions of healthy food and get plenty of exercise, and are still morbidly obese due to a number of genetic disorders. So if it's social unacceptable to be overweight, does that then mean that it's also socially unacceptable to have a genetic leptin deficiency?

In addition to genetic factors directly invovled in weight, there are also genetic factors invovled in appetite. There are various genetic disorders that can impair satiety mechanisms in a manner that causes people to literally never feel their body signal them to stop eating, and to always be hungry. The most extreme example I'm aware of is also accompanied by moderate to severe mental retardation, so that would presumably fall outside your definition of culpability for that reason, but similar conditions can be present in less extreme versions, where people's physiological appetite control systems can cause them to want to eat more or less than is considered normal or healthy.

There are also socioeconomic and educational factors. In many low income families, the single parent raising several kids will work two full time minimum wage jobs, so they don't have time or energy to cook, and fast food is inexpensive enough. So that's what they eat every day. In a community where that's what everyone does, they may not even realize how unhealthy that is. But even if they are aware of the health issues, fast food marketing is deliberately desceptive. If you're going to eat at McDonalds, a salad should be pretty healthy and reasonably low calorie, right? Well, squirt on a packet of dressing, and it actually has more calories that a hamburger. Mostly fat from the dressing. Of course, the immediate response is just don't put the dressing on, but have you ever actually eaten a McDonald's salad? You really need the dressing to mask the taste of the 'greens' (that would be more accurately described as 'browns').

In the case of people who are overweight because they are simply too lazy to make an effort to control their food intake and get some exercise, then yes, it's just as self-destructive as some recreational drugs. However, 'laziness' is by no means the only cause of obesity, and it's not really valid to compare a genetic disorder to drug use on a moral level.

Answer 4

Think about this. First of all, it's not ok to gorge yourself on sugar and fat. BUT, it's legal.

Cocaine, crack, meth, opiates are ILLEGAL...so you are a criminal by taking them.

Alcohol? Well, the only reason that is legal is that there is a huge tax on it. But like those illegal drugs, it causes people to become criminals when they become addicted to it.

No one robs a store because they are addicted to pizza and M&Ms and needs a fix.

Answer 5

All forms of addiction are bad for you on some level. The reason some forms are illegal is they typically can harm others besides yourself.