I'll start by noting just how much of this argument relies on ridicule and ad hom attack:

- I guess you are not very familiar with addiction?

- Ok, kind of funny

- should only be said as a punchline

- To be blunt, the story itself is speculative Freudian subconscious schlock which is why I believe I hear something similar from those fresh from therapy.

Once that's distilled away, the substance of the argument turns out to be a false dichotomy: I.e. it's not the subconscious mind trying to achieve the outcome it perceives is best for survival, it's just addiction. There's no examination or even apparently much contemplation of what an addition actually is, from a physiological and psychological perspective. Addiction is asserted as the final answer, rather than the deeper question it really is.

Why is it that some people are addicted to eating "too much" food, whereas others are "addicted" to eating "too little"? Why do some people get addicted to drugs and not others in the same social group/class who experiment with the same drugs?

I've seen that up close, in social groups where there has been recreational use of stimulant drugs, with most people managing to keep it a recreational thing and grow out of it, but a minority, sadly, ending up in a downward spiral of addiction and dysfunction. I saw two of my closest friends from the mid 00s end up in prison that way. Another died in his 30s from alcohol-related illness, the only one of his social group who had a drinking problem even though all were routine social drinkers. Those guys were every bit as capable and privileged as everyone else in their social circles, but were carrying a lot of trauma and showing patterns of self-sabotaging behaviour, observable for the whole decade-or-so I knew them.

I know there's a lot of pop-sci claptrap around on the internet. I totally get that and understand the impulse to push back on that.

But I've been exploring this topic for almost 20 years in some ways, and I'm not beholden to the theories of any particular authority figures from the past or present; everything I understand is based on my own experience and experimentation and in what I observe in others close to me.

I've been going deep on subconscious work for over 12 years, and have demonstrable evidence of significant changes in behavioural patterns and impulses over that time. I've seen others achieve far better life outcomes from subconscious healing work than I've seen anyone achieve from conventional therapies and health treatments, including with fertility issues.

And yes I know this is all self-reported anecdata, without the backing of any large clinical trials - but who is even trying to research this stuff?

This 2018 paper [1], and other works by its authors [2,3,4] seem to be orbiting the topic.

But most of the health industry and broader society continues to handwave away the topic with dismissals like "it's just addiction", thereby avoiding the work of exploring more deeply what addiction really is and what opportunities there may be to discover and popularise more effective approaches for recovery.

[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S23521...

[2] https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=XrBcghcAAAAJ&hl=en

[3] https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=9bqE-hsAAAAJ&hl=en

[4] https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=RGBSG7EAAAAJ&hl=en