There is a very real brain component to addiction, and society up to now has for the most part has viewed it as failure of will.

The way it works is there are certain receptors in the brain that if we block them, can reduce the pleasurable effects associated with drinking.

This is a societal deal. We embrace instant gratification. Society is embracing its own addiction to bigger, faster and stronger and winning at all costs. We expect medical technology to give us drugs that make us perform better in everyday life.

In a consumer society there are inevitably two kinds of slaves: the prisoners of addiction and the prisoners of envy

From airplanes to lawnmowers, oil is everywhere in our society. Complex supply chains have been created to feed this addiction, and it reaches farther and deeper than most people realize. Trying to introduce a new supply chain in a short time to substitute for this massive system that's been built over 150 years is unrealistic.

Needing to have reality confirmed and experience enhanced by photographs is an aesthetic consumerism to which everyone is now addicted. Industrial societies turn their citizens into image-junkies; it is the most irresistible form of mental pollution.