Professor Bruce ALexander, at Simon Fraser University points out that addiction is discontinuity. Discontinuity is the loss of psychological, social and economic amalgamation into family and culture. It is a sense of exclusion, isolation and powerlessness. Only chronically and severely dislocated people are vulnerable to addiction. They have no sense of self, they are totally immersed in their sense of loneliness and abandonment. Within out recent history, native children have been torn from their homes and forcibly estranged from their families and detained in civilizing institutions.
