Massive Draft asks: How do you define “want” vs “need”?

Playwright Zayd Dohrn’s Want will be staged as part of Steppenwolf’s 2011 First Look Series.

In Want, A group of former junkies and sex addicts gather in a California beach flophouse to overcome their desires with an aggressive dose of “tough love” group therapy.

Throughout Want, David, the leader of the flophouse, tells those who stay there to try to ”understand what we need. Separate that from what we think we want. And stop looking for something we’ll never find.”  In its insistence that substance abuse is a choice that addicts can opt out of, David’s mantra seems a far cry from philosophies like that of Alcoholics Anonymous, which maintains that alcoholics “cannot control their drinking because they are ill in their bodies and in their minds.”

So, Massive Draft wants to know: What is your definition of “need” versus “want”? Does thinking about a desire as a need or a want change the way you act on or treat that desire? And have you ever run into a situation where this distinction really mattered?