>The fact that drugs that work for obesity are broadly effective against addiction suggests to be that obesity is often essentially a food addiction- e.g. possibly using food as a way to escape negative feelings or a response to emotional trauma.
Or that both addiction and obesity are downstream of dysfunctional satiety sensors, leading to a "void" that the body-mind system attempts to "fill" in one way or another.
> A surrogate activity is an activity that is directed toward an artificial goal that the individual pursues for the sake of the “fulfillment” that he gets from pursuing the goal, not because he needs to attain the goal itself. For instance, there is no practical motive for building enormous muscles, hitting a little ball into a hole or acquiring a complete series of postage stamps. Yet many people in our society devote themselves with passion to bodybuilding, golf or stamp-collecting. Some people are more “other-directed” than others, and therefore will more readily attach importance to a surrogate activity simply because the people around them treat it as important or because society tells them it is important. That is why some people get very serious about essentially trivial activities such as sports, or bridge, or chess, or arcane scholarly pursuits, whereas others who are more clear-sighted never see these things as anything but the surrogate activities that they are, and consequently never attach enough importance to them to satisfy their need for the power process in that way.
You could both be right. Perhaps addictive behaviors are just maladaptive surrogate activities that are the result of humans being intrinsically compatible with contemporary societies.
That's awfully ironic considering that spending one's time thinking about how we'd all be better off in a primitive, pre-industrial lifestyle is very clearly a "surrogate activity" enabled only by one's lack of backbreaking farm labor to do.
It would probably be best if we didn't stray too far from the original topic at hand which is prescription drugs that affect various addictions and why they do so.
I don't think the concept of a "surrogate activity" is meaningful... the whole concept seems predicated on the idea that humans should forever be stuck on the lowest level of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, and there is no intrinsic value in anything not essential for physical survival.
Kaczynski was intelligent, but also a joyless, evil, and bitter person that couldn't even comprehend why people do things like love or play, so came up with elaborate but very much off base intellectualizations of why other people do things.
He is flat out wrong about why people are motivated to do those activities he mentioned. For example, I lift weights because it feels good, its fun, and I like (and find it practically useful) to be physically strong. I do it alone in a garage- no other people or society are telling me it is important, or even noticing I am doing it. I would still do it if I was the last person on earth and there was nobody to approve or disapprove of it.
Or that both addiction and obesity are downstream of dysfunctional satiety sensors, leading to a "void" that the body-mind system attempts to "fill" in one way or another.