Addiction as Directed Self-Destruction: Partial Collapse, Internal Determination, and the Difference from Suicide

This paper argues that addiction and suicide are not two degrees of the same self-destructive process. Addiction is a form of directed self-destruction governed by a partial internal determination that remains structurally tied to the continuability of the larger self that bears it. It therefore degrades the self without seeking its immediate abolition and is intrinsically allied with repetition, survival, and renewed enactment. Suicide, by contrast, is destruction ordered not to continuation but to extinction: the end governing it no longer operates within the continuability of the self as a sustaining bearer. The paper argues that addiction is not total collapse but a directed form of collapse under an internal destructive asymmetry, whereas suicide belongs to a different structural configuration. More broadly, self-destruction is shown to be a non-uniform category differentiated by governing ends and by relation to self-continuability.