Empowerment and new technologies. New challenges for the prevention and rehabilitation of addiction

Abstract

The concept of addiction is undergoing considerable evolution in meaning and now covers the phenomena of unbalanced and depersonalise relationships between the individual and a system of substances, other people and situations which are quite removed from traditional narcotic substances. Today we speak of addiction to the Internet, food, work and the market among others. In this context the historical association of addiction and deviance is missing and in a reality where everyone is at risk of developing addictions, the focus of intervention have been moved from therapeutic-rehabilitative action to prevention. Starting out with a brief analysis of this new situation, this article describes a pedagogical course of action from an empowerment prospective which is able to stimulate the capacity for self-help in cases of serious addiction, but before reaching this stage, anticipating, taking strength from individual and social qualities in one’s existential styling. A project of this nature requires the activation of a network of relationships to accompany the subject in his or her choices, to construct that rich proximal environment within which the individual can develop autonomy and the capacity for supporting oneself. The new tools of communication that characterise the so called “knowledge society potentially represent as many tools for the qualification of communication itself in the direction of empowerment. In the current social reality these are revealed mainly as producers of high risk toxic depersonalisation and as stimulators of situations fro new addiction. In theory and in some experimental practices we can and should project a use for the development of the individual and the community.