It also depends which direction you are approaching addiction from, as lox points out above.

If you are a cognitive behavior therapist, you are going to talk about addictions differently than a substance abuse therapist talks about addictions.

To me, the great danger of putting anger in the addiction column, is that people with substance abuse addictions will lose out on getting treatment, because there are only so many slices in the resource pie.

As it is, untreated substance addiction, domestic violence, untreated mental illness--all three of which end up making a lot of people victims of violence and/or make them homeless, is at unprecedented levels in the US, because of budget cuts that date back to the Reagan era.

Now, anger is a component of all of the above. However, you can't realistically isolate the anger as the problem in alcoholism or autism, just as a couple of for instances, you still wouldn't get to the root of the problem.

So I'm not in favor of trying to isolate these compulsive behaviors, and then equate them with the more severe illnesses, like cocaine addiction or bipolar disorder. I know it sounds awful, but we do have to pick and choose where to put the resources these days, because greedy jerks have forced the budgetary hands.

Also, both substance addiction and mental illness have come to be viewed as "criminal" behavior in most peoples' minds these days, which makes it even harder to get more resources going their way. Same has been true for AIDs treatment.

I sincerely hope that all this will change under the new Congress, but I'm deeply cynical that it will. I don't see the Democrats having any stronger will to do what is right than Republicans when it comes to substance addiction, domestic violence, AIDs, mental illness, homelessness. It's as if no one in power thinks our society owes people who suffer a fucking thing.

When you work with and/or love and are related to people who suffer from any of those things, these are very, very dark times.

I know there are a lot of raging assholes out there. Road rage is out of control. I know all that. I too know some people who engage in those behaviors. But still, it isn't as bad, as desperate a need as someone with untreated bipolar disorder, or a cocaine addict spiraling out of control and taking the people they come in contact with down with them.

Or the mentally ill going into Quaker elementary schools, and murdering little girls.

You know what I mean?