Meth, Method, and Methodology: The Application of a Deleuzian Ontology to Addiction

Abstract

This thesis describes a Deleuzian ontology and applies this to our current understanding of addiction. Recent decades of study in addiction have seen a wide proliferation of theories seeking to provide comprehensive aetiologies to explain the origin of addiction, yet all have limitations, and a complete theory is currently not available.

By reviewing the current major theories and the evidence supporting them, this thesis firstly argues that the reason for this inability to explain addiction is due to our assumptions of what addiction is. It postulates that the ontology of Gilles Deleuze may offer a view of the essence of things that is able to explain addiction.

It does this by examining and explaining Deleuzian ontology, describing its salient features and how they work together, and then uses these features to construct a methodology by which this philosophy of essence can be applied to addiction.

These features are then applied in a case study which serves as a small test case of what happens when this methodology is applied to an example of what has been written about addiction, with the intention of expanding the application.

This work finds that this methodology based on a Deleuzian ontology is capable of discovering new ways of looking at addiction and uncovering hitherto invisible confounding factors that exist with our current definitions and understanding of addiction. It points towards fundamental problems with our ontological construction of addiction, and promises further insights should this methodology be applied to more aspects of the apparatuses we have constructed around addiction.