Growing up in a big Irish Catholic family, Professor Owen Flanagan was surrounded by a culture where drinking was simply a way of life. Family gatherings always included alcohol and drinking was woven into the fabric of his family’s daily routine. “Every day, at the end of the day, was a cocktail hour,” Flanagan says. “My dad would come home around 6:15pm and he would make a martini or two. My mother would sometimes have a drink with him… it was a time that was just magical for my family. We would gather together at cocktail hour, we would laugh, and we would joke before dinner.”
Alcohol, Flanagan learned at a young age, made him feel more comfortable and “less tongue-tied.” As he transitioned into adulthood and began his professional life, Flanagan’s consumption of alcohol continued and began to show signs of being problematic. However, Flanagan felt he was in control and imagined himself, “as a kind of a high functioning social drinker.” He noticed others around him with similar habits and naturally “gravitated to them.” “I aspired to be like them, Flanagan continues, “thinking that might be my sort of way through the maze that I did realize I was in.”
As a philosopher, Flanagan dedicated much of his work to exploring the intricate mind-body problem — examining how the mind influences the body and, conversely, when the body takes control of the mind. The reality was that, as an alcoholic, Flanagan expended an overwhelming amount of mental energy each day grappling with self-doubt and fear, constantly worrying about what he had become and dreading the possibility of others discovering his drinking problem.
What sets Owen Flanagan’s experience with addiction apart from many others, is his ability to reflect on both its personal and philosophical perspectives. As a renowned philosopher, Flanagan is able to offer significant insight into how his addiction meshed with his intellectual pursuits. He challenges the prevailing classification of addiction as a brain disease, instead steering the conversation toward the deeper questions of agency, identity, and what it truly means to recover. “No addicts that I know of think that they're not responsible for their addiction, nor does anyone ever think that they're not responsible for seeking help to get out of it. They might be finding it really hard to get out of it, but addicts think that they've got to leverage something about their own behavior, that it's not going to happen to them.”
In his new book What Is It Like to Be an Addict? Understanding Substance Abuse, Flanagan shares his personal experiences with alcohol addiction through the lens of philosophy and offers a broader insight into the human condition.
Owen Flanagan, pictured here, says: “There was a lot of guilt and shame, there was a lot of strategizing. There was a huge amount of mental energy spent every day wondering and worrying about what I had become, whether I was going to be discovered by people I didn't want to discover that I was having a drinking problem.” Photo courtesy of Owen Flanagan Jr.
Professor of philosophy Owen Flanagan describes his experience with alcohol and addiction in his book What Is It Like to Be an Addict? Understanding Substance Abuse.