I’ve debated whether I should write something about this since shortly after Philip Seymour Hoffman died. To some readers, it may seem childish to complain about an editorial in a competing publication. But this is still bugging me, so here goes.
The subject is an editorial that ran in the D&C shortly after Hoffman’s death. Titled “What’s Fueling the Drug Culture?” the piece worries that we’ve become too accepting of drug abuse. Fair enough, I guess. Many people do seem to accept – even glorify – a lot of stuff that is harmful. It’s not prudish to warn against society’s embracing the abuse of any substance – alcohol, tobacco, you name it.
But the D&C’s editorial jumps from that to a suggestion that the roots of drug addiction lie in the desire to flee from ordinary problems. (“Boss looked at you cross-ways? Go pop a pill in the restroom.”)
I’ve got to assume that nobody in the D&C editorial writer’s family has suffered from drug addiction. My mother did. Her drug of choice was alcohol, and she fought her addiction for much of her adult life. Unsuccessfully.
She didn’t drink because somebody looked at her cross-ways, or because she didn’t fit in or needed to relax. She drank because despite her desperate desire to stop, despite repeated stays in hospitals and clinics, despite her promises to our family, despite her anguish over the havoc she caused in our home, she had an addiction that she simply could not beat.
I have no idea how she started down the path to that addiction. But I do know that it was linked to depression, as alcoholism often is.
Drug addiction is a disease – in the words of the National Institute of Drug Abuse, “a disease that affects both brain and behavior.”
Drugs and alcohol do not, of course, jump out and grab people. The addiction begins with a voluntary decision to take a drink or use a drug. And obviously, if you never take that first step, there’s no chance you’ll become addicted. But not everybody who drinks or uses drugs becomes addicted. Legal and illegal drugs are in plentiful supply, and our attempts to legislate them away, preach them away, and Madison-Avenue-advertise them away have failed, miserably and expensively.
Young people who, like Hoffman, take that first step don’t always act responsibly. For mature adults suffering from emotional or physical pain, the hope of relief may override the awareness of addiction’s danger.
And for recovering addicts, as its sufferers and their families know, the disease lies in wait, ready to come roaring back, as it did with Philip Seymour Hoffman.
In an important, moving New York Times article published a few days after Hoffman’s death (weirdly, in the Style section), writer Jacob Bernstein noted the concerns of recovering drug addicts and alcoholics and their “rarely distant fear of relapsing back into the throes of active addiction.”
Bernstein quoted from an essay in Slate by journalist Seth Mnookin, sober after years of addiction but worrying almost daily about relapse. Hoffman’s death, Mnookin wrote, frightened him. “There’s a lot we don’t know about alcoholism and drug addiction,” he wrote, “but one thing is clear: Regardless of how much time clean you have, relapsing is always as easy as moving your hand to your mouth.”
As a child, I used to pray nearly every day that somebody would discover a cure for the disease that was crippling my mother, breaking the heart of my grandparents, and traumatizing my father, my sister, and me. To this day, nobody has.
The D&C editorial suggested that rather than launching a new War on Drugs, “scheduling congressional hearings or demanding answers from the surgeon general,” we might focus on “personal coping mechanisms.”
“Life isn’t all about feeling good all the time,” said the D&C. “Sometimes the struggles can make you stronger.”
Buck up!
If only overcoming this disease were that simple. It is not. And sadly, editorials like that one may add to the pain.
This article appears in Feb 19-25, 2014.
Your article is moving and all too real. I do believe that many people do use drugs as a form of self medication, but it is only a fraction of initial users. Probably a greater fraction of those who are already recreational users begin to use in this way. Whatever the intial reason, we have proven that that which that which alters brain function can all too often also end up controlling it.
Also, there is frequently no bright line separating prescribed drugs and illicit drugs with respect to abuse and dependancy, they are frequently part of one slippery continuum.
These treatments for drug addiction are inhuman treatment as addicts perpetuate until death usually with these regimes..
The problem with all western governments is that they are overridingly influenced by the ultra-financially powerful pharmaceutical giants. So much so that they control government policy on hard drug treatments and where of course they supply methadone et al that provides billions of dollars in revenues. But they don’t care about the harm that this treatment does and only look at the bottom-line. That is why this maintenance treatment policy goes on infinitum as it creates vast profits for big Pharma. Indeed governments go out to suppress all information concerning a ‘cure’ for these terrible treatment drugs that enslave addicts for life through dependency. There is no humanity in this form of treatment only profits as addicts spend a lifetime on treatments that are more addictive than the drugs they purportedly try to eradicate. But wouldn’t it be good for once that a western government did something out of the ordinary and stopped supporting big Pharma and introduced a ‘cure’ that is available at a cost of a mere 10% of present treatment regimes. Then addicts would come off hard drugs for good and thereafter lead a normal life in society and give something back. But will a single western government rebel against the powerful pharmaceutical cartel, I very much doubt it as they have our politicians and leaders in their back pocket. That is what is called democracy where big business rules supreme. For an introduction of what is going on and the ‘cure’ that is available readers should visit – http://worldinnovationfoundation.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/what-successive-governments-and.html
Dr David Hill
Chief Executive
World Innovation Foundation
It isn’t drug addiction that kills addicts, it’s drug prohibition. Addicts who get a steady supply of pure morphine or heroin at a known level of potency and clean hypodermics, can live long, happy productive lives.
Some high functioning addicts – Charles Dickens, Frank Sinatra, Florence Nightingale, the great surgeon William Halstead, Irving Berlin.
ON DRUG “ADDICTION”
Drug “addiction” is not a disease. A disease manifests itself as a breakdown of one or more of our organs due to any number of internal or external factors. Drug addiction may seem to manifest itself as a disease because continued use of certain drugs is damaging to our organs: for example, the harm done directly to the lungs by cigarette smoke or to the liver by alcohol.
The term “addiction” simply implies a biological change of brain connectivity. This new connectivity causes the drug addict’s brain to behave differently than someone whose brain has not been modified by addiction. Furthermore, addiction does not imply a simple cause-and-effect relationship between the drug and the resultant behavior: if it did, intervention by other drugs or behavior modification therapy would be much more predictable and successful.
In fact, the addict’s brain as an organ is working just fine, doing what it has been reprogrammed to do: create a demand for the drug of choice, and release large amounts chemicals that induce pleasure to the user when the drug is used – dopamine, epinephrine, and norepinephrine, in particular.
This is not to deny that some drugs act directly on our organs, such as the heart, as in the case of amphetamines. Their impact on the brain is less of a rewiring than to create a sudden increase in neurochemicals that stimulate existing brain functionality.
The rewiring process in the brain continues with continued use of the drug or drugs that cause the rewiring. The rewired brain remains rewired even after the drug user ceases to use drugs. This explains “relapses.” All the therapeutic treatment in the world is not going to cause the brain to return to its original, unmodified state, in a matter of weeks, months or even years.
As a result, the rewired brain continues to create a craving for the substance that created the intense pleasure so familiar to the user long after drug use ceases. Resisting is a matter of willpower generated in other higher-level brain functionality. However, the lower-level brain functions usually win this battle of wills, as they have a much more powerful impact on behavior.
You experience this sort of battle yourself whenever you find yourself in a situation where your brain is demanding that you urinate, and you are in a situation that doesn’t allow it, at least in an unembarassing fashion. If you can’t extricate yourself from this situation, you are going to pee your pants, regardless. And drug users will eventually find themselves in a situation from which they cannot extricate themselves.
One solution for the addict is to find activities that are pleasurable, but do not have harmful side effects, either on themself or others. Falling in love with someone is a good start; mountaineering is another; caring for other people will work too. Anything that produces a lot of good feelings to replace those that were being generated by the drugs. Our body doesn’t care how they are generated, but we do.
Garrett A. Hughes
“It isn’t drug addiction that kills addicts, it’s drug prohibition. Addicts who get a steady supply of pure morphine or heroin at a known level of potency and clean hypodermics, can live long, happy productive lives.”
The argument against this, of course, is that alcohol is legal and highly regulated, and it is the most abused drug, and has destroyed very many lives.
A requirement of my office cleaning job is that I clean the restrooms. Not long ago, I found a pill on the floor in a restroom. I wondered what it was, so I took it home and identified it. I don’t remember the exact drug name, but the purpose given was to relieve anxiety and to help prevent panic attacks.
Personally, I had to give up taking an anti-depressant because after several years it didn’t really work, yet the side effects continued.
These types of drugs are not addictive like alcohol and we would all be better off to just “buck up” and not be on them.
To the person stating addiction is not a disease because of lack of organ involvement?! I gather you also feel mental illness is not an illness? Why therefore is there such a high genetic disposition for alcoholics? Why is it from day 1, when an alcoholic takes that drink, it initiates a craving for another, & another, whereas a non alcoholic can drink a half of a drink and leave it? You might want to read the AA Big Book.