This chapter critiques the “official view” of addiction: that addiction is a chronic, relapsing, but manageable disease wherein congenitally vulnerable individuals lose much of their free will after exposure to an intrinsically addictive chemical substance. Alexander argues this official view provides neither an adequate understanding of addiction nor a basis for effective intervention. He offers a radically different perspective, “dislocation theory,” which is holistic on both the personal and social levels. He also argues that the official view has maintained its status largely because its narrowed, reductionist biomedical understanding of addiction protects the modern status quo, by focusing on the need for individual correction rather than for societal reorganization, and by confining the global addiction problem to a relatively small group of “deviants.”