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A Theory Of Relative Deprivation And Myopic Addiction, Amnon Levy
A Theory Of Relative Deprivation And Myopic Addiction, Amnon Levy
Faculty of Business - Economics Working Papers
Myopic use of mind-altering substances is proposed to be equal to the product of the user’s current levels of relative-deprivation feeling and substance-tolerance. If initially this product is sufficiently large the user is trapped in a deprivation-use-addiction vicious cycle. There may be a relatively high addiction and socioeconomic position steady state and a relatively low one. If the users are initially located in the high steady state, an increase in treatment is clearly socially desirable. In contrast, the possible improvement of users’ socioeconomic position from increasing law-enforcement or socioeconomic opportunities might be dominated by a rise in users’ addiction level.
Depression And Substance Abuse: A Rationalization Of A Vicious Cycle, Amnon Levy, J. R. Faria
Depression And Substance Abuse: A Rationalization Of A Vicious Cycle, Amnon Levy, J. R. Faria
Faculty of Business - Economics Working Papers
While a mind-altering-substance consumption alleviates current level of depression, it facilitates future depression. Our analysis incorporates this trade off and shows that the stationary state of a consistently overly ambitious sophisticated substance user is improved by impatience, and that this improvement is amplified by the ratio of the instantaneous depression-relief effect to the state-degradation effect of the substance. The analysis also shows that the existence of a supportive personal community leads to permanent cyclical substance consumption when the user is relatively patient.