Addiction, Control, and the Wisdom of Recovery | Kent Dunnington

We have more control over our surroundings than any people in history. We set the temperature, choose from fifty kinds of ketchup, and wear watches that grade our sleep. So why does addiction seem to be a distinctly modern epidemic?

Host Susan Smetzer Anderson sits down with Kent Dunnington, professor of philosophy at Biola University, to talk about his recent Comment essay, “Addiction, Control, and Recovery in the Modern World.” Kent defines addiction as compulsive use that persists despite harm, and he argues that it is usually a strategy for coping with pain, anxiety, and isolation, not a hunt for thrills. Addictive substances and behaviors promise a predictable inner life, which makes them one more attempt at control.

From there the conversation moves to the Enlightenment, Immanuel Kant, and what was lost when trusting our lives to God came to look immature. Kent finds the alternative in Alcoholics Anonymous, which he teaches as a wisdom tradition: do not simply learn to live out of control; give control to a power greater than yourself. He shares his own story of nicotine dependence, the AA group that took him in, and how its honesty, grace, and mundane practices opened him to the gratitude at the center of his new book.

IN THIS EPISODE

•  A working definition of addiction, and why a coffee habit does not qualify

•  Why addiction is better understood as self-medication than pleasure-seeking

•  How endless choice and the expectation of total control make modern people vulnerable

•  What a medieval peasant understood about providence that Kant’s heirs forgot

•  The first three steps of AA and why surrender is different from giving up

•  Why relapse is met with welcome instead of shame

•  “90 meetings in 90 days,” the coffee cart, and acting your way into new thinking

•  What churches and small groups might learn from recovery communities

•  Why gratitude to God is harder, and stranger, than ordinary gratitude

ABOUT THE GUEST

Kent Dunnington is professor of philosophy and chair of the undergraduate Department of Philosophy at Biola University, where he teaches and writes on virtue ethics, the philosophy of religion, and the philosophy of addiction. He holds a PhD from Texas A&M University and an MTS from Duke Divinity School. He is the author of Addiction and Virtue, Humility, Pride, and Christian Virtue Theory, and Gratitude to God: The Heart of Christian Formation. He lives in Southern California with his wife, daughter, and English bulldog.

RESOURCES MENTIONED

•  Kent Dunnington, “Addiction, Control, and Recovery in the Modern World,” Comment (September 2026): comment.org/addiction-control-and-recovery-in-the-modern-world

•  Kent Dunnington, Gratitude to God: The Heart of Christian Formation (Baker Academic, 2026)

•  Kent Dunnington, Humility, Pride, and Christian Virtue Theory (Oxford University Press, 2019)

•  Kent Dunnington, Addiction and Virtue: Beyond the Models of Disease and Choice (IVP Academic, 2011)

•  Kent Dunnington, “Small Groups Anonymous,” Christianity Today (2019): christianitytoday.com/2019/04/small-groups-anonymous

•  Anna Lembke, Dopamine Nation and Radical Surrender: Letting Go in a World Addicted to Control (Dutton, 2026)

•  Hartmut Rosa, The Uncontrollability of the World

•  Kent Dunnington’s faculty page: biola.edu/directory/people/kent-dunnington