The human problem
Addiction is described as captured navigability: one route to relief becomes disproportionately available while alternative rewards, identities and futures lose force.
Core sentenceAddiction hijacks flow when relief becomes easier to reach than the rest of life.
What this adds
The new move
It integrates reward learning, wanting, habit, allostasis, cue gain, shame and social narrowing in one dynamical account.
Publication briefing
Transparent status
The canonical structure is live. The full web edition is the next editorial layer.
This page does not use filler or pretend the source manuscript has already been converted. It holds the lecture question, contribution, novel concept, practical translation and visual model so the full edition can enter without changing its URL, navigation or design system.
Captured navigability
The problem is not only a strong desire; it is a landscape in which fewer competing states remain executable when relief is needed.
Practical translation
For reflection and conversation
Three moves that return the idea to the field.
- Map what the substance changes fastest.
- Build alternatives across body, relationship and environment.
- Reduce cue access while alternative routes are still weak.
Educational translation only. Not a risk assessment, treatment plan or individualized medical advice.
One visual model
How many routes can change the state?
Repeated low-latency relief can turn one path into the default controller of the whole field.
Lecture poster
FLOW HIJACKED · 32
Addiction as Hijacked Flow
Addiction hijacks flow when relief becomes easier to reach than the rest of life.
Research anchors
Lineage, evidence and limits
Sources this page is thinking with
This is a focused set of sources doing conceptual work on the page, not a systematic review or exhaustive bibliography. The Research Library adds summaries, themes and cross-lecture links.
- Koob, G. F. & Volkow, N. D. (2016).Neurobiology of addiction: A neurocircuitry analysis.The Lancet Psychiatry, 3(8), 760–773.DOI ↗
- Volkow, N. D., Koob, G. F. & McLellan, A. T. (2016).Neurobiologic advances from the brain disease model of addiction.New England Journal of Medicine, 374, 363–371.DOI ↗
- Robinson, T. E. & Berridge, K. C. (2008).The incentive sensitization theory of addiction: Some current issues.Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 363, 3137–3146.DOI ↗
- Everitt, B. J. & Robbins, T. W. (2016).Drug addiction: Updating actions to habits to compulsions ten years on.Annual Review of Psychology, 67, 23–50.DOI ↗
Citation does not imply that a source validates the complete Flow Hijacked synthesis.
Full editions
A complete web edition, built to be read here.
This lecture is published here in its web edition; no PDF link is offered.