On the other hand, massive descriptive evidence indicates that individuals often make choices to abandon addictive conduct or abstain from drug use permanently or temporarily. Moreover, authorities observe that narcotic addiction often involves little in the way of chemical or biological influences. Yet it may provide an important individual or group identity for many who lack socially approved skills or are socially alienated. Popular beliefs about the chemically induced "hell" of withdrawal agony or the insatiable craving for ecstatic pleasures are at odds with the facts, even though they have colored the thinking of the courts. All this information forces abandonment of the argument that drug addiction and acts associated with it be regarded as legally involuntary. For the courts to assume that addictive drug use or addiction-related conduct is involuntary and to build such an unproven assumption into constitutional and common law doctrine would be a serious error. 143 notes