WHY DA ISN’T NEWS
On January 9, 2011 CBS’s 60 Minutes repeated a previously aired segment about Gambling that fully explains how dopamine addiction has avoided detection into the 21st century.
On the surface, the story was about the growing number of states that are legalizing gambling to compensate for declining tax revenues. The underlying story is about the pathologically addictive nature of gambling, illustrating one more aspect of an explosive dopamine epidemic that is plaguing the United States.
The piece features television journalist Leslie Stahl interviewing Howard Schaffer, the Director of the Division on Addictions at Harvard Medical School, about gambling addiction. Despite the numerous stories of gamblers who blew their entire pensions and life savings to cover gambling loses, Dr. Schaffer refuses to accept the possibility that gambling is addictive, insisting that the fact that some coke abusers get addicted to cocaine doesn’t prove that cocaine is addictive.
What this “acclaimed expert” doesn’t seem to want to understand is that, in terms of dopamine addiction, just as some get addicted to crack cocaine and others to slot machines, he’s addicted to power, peer approval, and prestige.
Dr. Schaffer is a prime example of why dopamine addiction continues to be a growing pandemic. If one of the world’s most esteemed addiction experts has managed to remain in total denial of dopamine addiction’s existence, what hope is there that the average dopamine addict on the street will understand what dopamine addiction is?
The doctor’s convenient ignorance is especially egregious because his addiction to power, peer approval, and esteem has placed him in a position to misdirect and even block important research that threatens to expose his dependencies. Additionally, the combination of his distinguished position bolstered by massive self-deception and denial has proven to be a boon to the gambling industry. The doctor’s personal conviction that slot machines are not addictive and his insistence that the gamblers deserve all the blame for their addictions, has turned him into “the man the gambling industry loves to quote.”
Dopamine addiction explains how a highly intelligent man, backed by impressive credentials, has a vested interest in embracing a deceptively narrow view of addiction. His need for credentials is a blatant sign of an esteem addiction that the doctor prefers to ignore. According to the science in The Perfect Pandemic, something in Schaffer’s past created a safety, approval, and esteem addict who would spend his life scrambling for ways to gain power, gain the approval of select individuals, and establish his superiority. In the final analysis, his need for advanced degrees and impressive titles is not all that different than the gambling addicts need for slot machines that deliver the same dopamine fix.
By playing the role of ”Mary-Contrary” Dr. Schaffer reveals that he isn’t interested in understanding the true nature of addiction. Like all esteem addicts, the good doctor’s only real concern is feeding his own esteem related dopamine addiction to feel important. ”Look at me, I’m running one of the most prestigious addiction programs on the planet and I’ve come up with a brilliant theory that challenges conventional wisdom. Ain’t I the smartest little thing you ever did see?”
We don’t mean to pick on Dr. Schaffer. It’s just that he helps shine an immense floodlight on why dopamine addiction isn’t a thoroughly researched phenomenon. In the early 16th century, Cardinal Roberto Bellarmine’s dopamine addiction placed him in a position to block Galileo’s research. Bellarmine refused to look through a humble astronomer’s telescope because he didn’t want to know what he didn’t want to know. Five centuries later the same addiction to power and esteem that drove Bellarmine was responsible for placing Schaffer in a position where he held the power to block any research that threatened to reduce his esteem and cause him to suffer from dopamine withdrawal.
As long as the most self-deceptive dopamine addicts continue to control scientific research, the media, and the powerful corporations that profit by supplying addicts’ needs, the fact that dopamine addiction is in the process of destroying our species’ chances of survival is unlikely to be considered newsworthy.
To learn more, read The Perfect Pandemic.
