What hard liquor, cigarettes, heroin, and crack have in common is that they’re all more concentrated forms of less addictive predecessors. … the process that created them is accelerating. … When the thing we want is something we want to want, we consider technological progress good. … When progress concentrates something we don’t want to want—when it transforms opium into heroin—it seems bad. … No one doubts this process is accelerating, which means increasing numbers of things we like will be transformed into things we like too much.
Most people can coexist with alcohol; but you have to be careful. More things we like will mean more things we have to be careful about.
Source: The Acceleration of Addictiveness, by Paul Graham