ORIGINAL PAPER Chronic Automaticity in Addiction: Why Extreme Addiction is a Disorder Steve Matthews Received: 30 January 2017 /Accepted: 16 March 2017 # Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2017 Abstract Marc Lewis argues that addiction is not a disease, it is instead a dysfunctional outcome of what plastic brains ordinarily do, given the adaptive processes of learning and development within environments where people are seeking happiness, or relief, or escape. They come to obsessively desire substances or activities that they believe will deliver happiness and so on, but this comes to corrupt the normal process of development when it escalates beyond a point of functionality. Such ‘deep learning’ emerges from consumptive habits, or ‘motivated repetition’, and although addiction is bad, it ferments out of the ordinary stuff underpinning any neural habit. Lewis gives us a convincing story about the process that leads from ordinary controlled con- sumption through to quite heavy addictive consump- tion, but I claim that in some extreme cases the eventual state of deep learning tips over into clinically significant impairment and (so) disorder. Addiction is an elastic concept, and although it develops through mild and moderate forms, the impairment we see in severe cases needs to be acknowledged. This impairment, I argue, consists in the chronic automatic consumption present in late stage addiction. In this condition, the desiring self largely drops out the picture, as the addicted individual begins to mindlessly consume. This impairment is clin- ically significant because the machinery of motivated rationality has become corrupted. To bolster this claim I compare what is going on in these extreme cases with what goes on in people who dissociate in cases of depersonalization disorder. Keywords Addiction . Marc Lewis . Disorder . Automaticity . Dissociation . Depersonalization Introduction and Main Claim Marc Lewis describes the case of Johnny, a former alcoholic he interviewed for his 2015 book. During a period of personal stress Johnny had progressed from being a regular drinker to being a serious drinker. Initially most evenings he would attend his local hotel, but as his drinking increased, and the drunken incidents mounted, the shame of it all grad- ually led Johnny to spend more time alone in his apartment where his drinking might continue unscrutinised. Within this environment Johnny’ s al- coholism deteriorated rapidly, so much so that his waking hours consisted solely in mindless consump- tion. As Lewis remarks, ‘I’ve heard many stories from people whose addictions reached the red zone, but I was astonished by the extremes [Johnny] de- scribed’ (p118). Neuroethics DOI 10.1007/s12152-017-9328-5 S. Matthews Australian Catholic University (ACU), Sydney, Australia S. Matthews (*) St Vincent’ s Hospital (Plunkett, ACU), 390 Victoria Street, Darlinghurst, NSW 2010, Australia e-mail: Stephen.Matthews@acu.edu.au