The Syndrome Behind the Symptoms

Modern civilization doesn’t just run on oil, information, and food—it runs on stimulation. The systems that power our world—fossil fuels, industrial food, digital media, financial markets, and mass consumerism—act not just as infrastructure, but as stimulants. They trigger chemical responses in our brains and bodies, keeping societies in a state of artificial alertness, growth, and distraction. Petroleum fuels hyper-speed logistics and 24/7 productivity. Ultra-processed foods flood our systems with sugar and caffeine. Social media hijacks attention with dopamine spikes. Financial systems demand constant novelty and profit. These aren’t just tools or trends. They function biologically, manipulating our nervous systems the way addictive substances do.

But now, these systems are breaking down. Fossil fuel dependence is being exposed as fragile. Energy returns are shrinking. Food chains are disrupted. Burnout has become normal. Digital fatigue is widespread. Climate instability, economic inflation, and political extremism are just symptoms of a deeper collapse in the underlying stimulant systems we relied on. Like an addict cut off from their supply, civilization is beginning to show withdrawal: panic, aggression, anxiety, apathy, confusion, craving, volatility.

What’s more dangerous is that we’re mistaking the symptoms for the causes. We look at geopolitical instability, civil unrest, or economic crashes and blame politics, ideology, or mismanagement. But underneath is the nervous system of a civilization reacting to the loss of its fix. As with individual addiction, removing the stimulant reveals the underlying pain, and that pain becomes behavior—erratic, angry, fearful. Dr. Gabor Maté says addiction is not the problem, but a response to it. Remove the substance, and the unresolved pain surfaces. That is what we’re seeing now—not just dysfunction, but deep withdrawal.

The symptoms of this syndrome are everywhere. Mass protests, rising authoritarianism, mental health crises, social fragmentation, and extremist movements are all expressions of a dysregulated collective nervous system. Dr. Stephen Porges’ Polyvagal Theory explains how under chronic threat or stress, humans shift into defensive modes—fight, flight, or freeze. Scaled to the level of nations, this explains polarization, conspiracy thinking, and political violence. Nora Bateson calls this “warm data”—the felt, lived human experience that systems analysis often ignores. People are not just responding to events. They are reacting biologically to the collapse of familiar stimulation.

And yet, because we don’t see it this way, we continue the same cycles. We reach for new stimulants: AI as the next savior, psychedelics as the next dopamine frontier, nationalism as the next identity fix. The loop repeats. Without the right framing, we will continue mistaking the chaos for coincidence, or blaming enemies, instead of seeing the shared condition.