Suppression, Dissociation, and Withdrawal: An Integrative Model of Addiction Maintenance
Sergei Kalutskiy
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper |
|---|---|
| Topics | Addiction |
| Key points | Argues that addiction is maintained by suppression of the impulse to use rather than by the impulse itself, and that this suppression instantiates the willpower paradox, resolved by the claim that the subject is not unified. Proposes that Wegner's ironic process creates a dissociative structure preserving the addictive impulse as a functionally autonomous position, informationally isolated from the person's values, and that this accounts for why diverse therapies each target different links of the same mechanism. |
Abstract
Current models of addiction fail to provide a unified explanation for three persistent anomalies: (1) relapse after years of sustained abstinence when no physiological dependence remains, (2) withdrawal symptoms in behavioral addictions where no exogenous chemical agent is involved, and (3) the efficacy of mutually contradictory therapeutic approaches, such as motivational interviewing, Alcoholics Anonymous, Addictive Voice Recognition Technique, Allen Carr's method, Internal Family Systems therapy, and mindfulness-based relapse prevention. The present paper proposes an integrative model in which the maintenance of addiction is driven not by the impulse to use, but by its suppression. Beginning from the well-established premises that chronic addiction is maintained by avoidance of a negative state rather than pursuit of reward (Koob and Volkow, 2010) and that ambivalence is its central psychological feature (Miller and Rollnick, 2013), the model demonstrates through proof by elimination that suppression is the only logically coherent resolution of genuine ambivalence in an acting agent. This suppression instantiates the willpower paradox (Goschke and Job, 2023)—the structural impossibility of a unified subject exerting control over itself—which is resolved by adopting their third proposed solution: the subject is not unified. The model identifies Wegner's (1994) ironic process as the mechanism of entry into this split: sustained suppression generates two parallel, opposed, informationally asymmetric lines of action—the same structural condition that Hilgard (1977) demonstrated produces functional dissociation in experimental settings. The resulting dissociative structure compensates for the irreconcilable conflict by preserving the addictive impulse as a functionally autonomous position, informationally isolated from the individual's values and decisions—producing what is experienced as “uncontrollable” behavior despite genuine efforts to stop. The model generates seven testable predictions and provides the first unified account of why diverse and seemingly incompatible therapeutic methods each target different links of the same underlying mechanism.
Comparable studies
Other theoretical and historical papers on addiction, most cited first.
| Study | Year | Design | Participants |
|---|---|---|---|
| Psychedelics as Medicines: An Emerging New Paradigm General population | 2016 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Restructuring reward processing with Mindfulness-Oriented Recovery Enhancement: novel therapeutic mechanisms to remediate hedonic dysregulation in addiction, stress, and pain. | 2016 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Ayahuasca’s entwined efficacy: An ethnographic study of ritual healing from ‘addiction’ | 2017 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Hypotheses Regarding the Mechanisms of Ayahuasca in the Treatment of Addictions | 2012 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Biosynthesis of an Anti-Addiction Agent from the Iboga Plant. | 2019 | Theoretical or philosophical paper |