Sam Smith.

Rethink is a personal project, exploring the idea of challenging norms and shifting societal perceptions. Rethink Addiction is specifically focused on provoking thought about the nature of addiction, and how we should address it.

This work was a reaction to the prevailing thinking that seems to rest on the simplified idea that some substances will, if injected/inhaled/consumed by someone, cause that person to become addicted. This idea breaks down quite quickly with the application of a little rational thinking. You only need consider the people who are given morphine in hospital, and do not suffer from addiction as a result. This notion of stopping to rethink what we take as a given, I find an interesting idea to explore. In this instance, the idea was for a fictional campaign depicting a collection of people, along with snippets of information about various facets of their lives. All would have “opiate use” in common, but only some “addiction”.

Initially I thought this could be reinforced with facets that may lead to addiction, such as “abuse” or “isolation”, but I rejected this idea, to avoid asserting my own conjecture. Principally for these two reasons:

• It would detract from what lead me to this subject - to encourage the viewer to think for themselves.
• Even if I had personally reached a conclusion on what I believe are the likely major causes of addiction, I am not, nor wish to claim to be, an authority on this.

I adapted the idea to present these potentially contributing facets as redacted, or unknown. In an attempt to encourage the viewer to fill in the blanks.

The (re)think identity was developed as part of this work, and expanded into a collection of "sub-brands".