Author(s): Damian Thompson

General Non-Fiction

Obsessed with your iphone/crackberry? Does your day only start when you grip your second morning skinny cappuccino tightly in hand? Are your social life and your nightly large glasses of wine prompted more by habit than by pleasure? Drugs, food, alcohol, sex and technology are all obsessions that consume our lives and that are moving beyond our control as they multiply. But how do you know whether your habits are turning a darker shade of healthy, and are you in control of them? Damian Thompson, who has himself struggled with a range of addictions, argues that human desire is in the process of being reshaped. Shunning the widely accepted model of addiction as disease, the acceleration of scientific development is producing more and more substances, objects and experiences that we learn to like too much for our own good and addictive behaviour is becoming a substitute for family and work bonds that are being swept away by globalisation and urbanisation.
THE FIX explains how capitalism and organised crime are producing a dizzying range of substances, ranging from slickly marketed iPads and blueberry muffins to illegally manufactured opiate painkillers, that are supplementing the traditional addictions to alcohol and heroin. This battle to control addiction will soon overshadow familiar ideological debates about how to run the economy, and as whole societies set about "fixing" themselves, the architecture of human relations will come under strain as never before. The Fix offers a truly frightening glimpse of the future.