Yes, it's important for newcomers at the beginning of the recovery learning curve to understand that isolation can be detrimental to recovery, and yes, healthy social functionality and a "happy environment" can serve a role in both avoiding addiction and recovering from it. This article at least serves the purpose of bringing these points to light.
However, it seems to me that otherwise, it falls into the usual old trap of oversimplification and black/white, either/or thinking.
Being a loner doesn't mean you're sentenced to become an addict. Nor are you exempt from addiction just because you're a social animal; social people get addictions too.
Not all loners who become addicts are destined to fail at recovery unless they become more extroverted and socially involved. Not all recovering addicts succeed solely because they increase their social involvement.
The connection between social involvement and addiction avoidance or recovery is only a general trend with plenty of exceptions. Isolation is not the sole "likely cause" of addiction as this article implies.
To say that "everything we have been told about addiction is wrong" is untrue and misleading. Addiction is a complex and nuanced condition with many facets, the physiological facet (the "chemically hijacked brain") being as valid and important a facet as any other. It doesn't follow that just because one facet is true, all the others must be false.
Ugh, sorry to get so pedantic in the newcomer’s forum, but it helps my own recovery to understand these ideas and try to articulate them (even if I don't do it very clearly), and perhaps it could help someone else’s too.
Thanks to EndGameNYC for posting the article.