What's the best book on addiction?

I want to understand why I can be so addicted to things like apps, games or even sugar.

3 recommended

7
Hooked

A book on how to build habit-forming products

Ryan Hoover44Founder, Product Hunt · Written
Ryan Hoover made this product
Disclaimer: I helped write Hooked with @nireyal. Hooked: How to Built Habit-Forming Products, is written for people building product to help equip people with a better understanding of what drives engagement. However, reading and understanding this topic can also help people combat addiction. Often, the easiest way to fight compulsive usage is to remove the trigger (the thing that reminds you to use it, like the app icon on your homescreen) or introduce more friction (Space is a handy tool for Twitter/Facebook-addicted folks).
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2
The Biology of Desire by Mark Lewis

Malcolm OceanFounder, Complice · Written
This is a book written by a neuroscientist who used to be a drug addict, and it makes a compelling case for thinking of addiction as a kind of neural development or learning, as opposed to as a moral problem, a disease, a coping mechanism, or failure of willpower. I found it helped me make sense of the addiction I was experiencing in relation to a particular video game at the time I read it.
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2
The Globalization of Addiction by Bruce K. Alexander

Malcolm OceanFounder, Complice · Written
Where my other recommendation, The Biology of Desire, is focused on the internals of addiction and explains it via 5 case studies, this book focuses on the external factors and talks about how capitalism and economics play a role in how addicted basically everybody is these days, in one way or another. So a much more macro-view. I've only read part of this one, but what I read was solid and my colleagues recommend it highly.
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