Can you resist all the addictions of modern life? Only if you are rich enough | Martha Gill

THey, they’re problems of success, these modern ills. Social media addiction, gaming disorders, compulsive sugar overeating and processed gloop: these are products of a society with more than enough food, free time and boredom, and without the life-or-death excitement that occupied our ancestors.

We might think of our growing addiction problems as something like a peacock’s tail or a companion parasite—the precious signal that we no longer need to strain all our nerves to stay alive. Only a species this good at surviving could afford to hack its own anti-survival neural circuits, targeting the pathways that make it more likely to die. Success problems are obviously more difficult, not easier, to deal with. You wouldn’t want to reverse the circumstances that brought us here. Releasing wolves among us is not the right policy to deal with TikTok-addicted teens. But the disturbing fact is that much of the economy now runs on addiction.

The path of incentives is easy to follow: an addicted customer is a reliable customer – and why settle for mere consumption of your product when you could end up with overconsumption instead? The academic David Courtwright calls this “limbic capitalism”: named after the part of the brain responsible for emotional processing. Global industries, he says, are starting to focus on exactly this.

In this country we are finally regulating away some of the older vices like nicotine and alcohol. It’s hard enough to do; major industries and groups of addicts have vigorously opposed it for decades. But many new vices are emerging in their place. Food companies mine and refine their products for addictive properties: ultra-processed foods, thought to encourage compulsive eating, are now putting an end to two-thirds of the calorie intake of adolescent Britons. Gaming addiction is increasing explosively. We hear less about workaholics than we used to, but perhaps only because the condition is so common. Instead, we hear about burnout, the end result.

Then of course there are smartphones, which teach us to long for the next ping of a message, or the clear notification of a retweet. These in turn connect us to the thousands of addictive products marketed by the world’s largest technology companies. There are gambling apps, gaming apps and one-click shopping apps – even addiction to fitness tracker apps is on the rise. Then of course there is social media, to which almost half of British teenagers now feel addicted.

But above this inevitable nightmare of compulsive work, compulsive eating and compulsive clicking, hovers a different kind of life. For some, it is possible to buy their way out, back to old-fashioned reality. As the modern world continues to worm its way further into our limbic systems, a new kind of luxury is emerging: freedom from desires.

The ultimate example might be the rapid growth of semaglutide drugs (originally developed for the treatment of diabetes). These are primarily used to help with diabetes and weight loss, but as they become more popular, doctors and patients are starting to notice something else: they also seem to reduces cravings for alcohol, nicotine and opioidsand perhaps even compulsive gambling and online shopping.

This makes sense to researchers, even though studies on the phenomenon are still scarce: semaglutides like Wegovy and Ozempic reduce dopamine release in the brain’s striatum, the area that motivates you to take another bite of something tasty, but also to take another puff. your cigarette. It seems that they do not act on the digestive system, but on the craving itself.

So for their users, an alternate reality beckons: you can walk through the flashing lights of modern life and your mind remains your own. It’s hard to imagine having a smartphone without having to check it and put down a tube of Pringles halfway through. Because this is the greatest battle of modern life: self-control in the face of addictive products. It’s getting harder and harder to do. But this is also a place where a class divide is forming. Of course, not everyone should take semaglutides – the side effects are still undiscovered – but most can’t afford it anyway. You can get Wegovy on the NHS, but only if you are morbidly obese, have a BMI of 35 and have a serious weight-related condition such as hypertension – although in exceptional cases only the obese, people with a BMI of at least 30, could doing. qualify. Meanwhile, Ozempic is best known as a “Hollywood phenomenon”, only available to the rich.

The income gap also exists when it comes to combating online addiction. As time away from screens becomes a scarce commodity, some companies are trying to monetize it in the form of off-grid digital detox weekends or curiously expensive dumbphones.

Just like schools. In September, a private school in Cambridge began marketing itself as Britain’s firstscreen-free school”: no cell phones, no internet, no laptops and no interactive whiteboards. (Several parents work for tech giants with research centers in the city.) This summer, Eton announced this would happen ban smartphones – instead give new students Nokia “bricks”. Meanwhile, children from lower income groups spend money on average another two hours a day on their phone than their peers.

This coincides with the fact that money protects you from many of the conditions that promote addiction in the first place. Junk food is most appealing when you don’t have the time, money or emotional energy to access healthy alternatives: in the hunt for their likely customers, fast food restaurants are springing up in underserved areas. Just like betting shops.

With endlessly long NHS waiting lists for therapy or rehabilitation, getting treatment for addiction can also be prohibitively expensive. We sometimes act as if resisting gambling, social media, sweet treats and retail therapy is mostly a matter of willpower – as if the economy isn’t built to push these things on us. Instead, it becomes a privilege that few can afford.