Reducing Addiction

Reducing Addiction
The addiction industry loves to talk about recovery and percentage of success of those who completed the program and are still sober is really brainwashing language of the industry and the last thing they want to do is solve the addiction problem as it only makes them more money.
Edgewood in Nanaimo, BC is $40,000 for two months and if you leave early, you don’t get your money back. Instead you fail meaning you need treatment even more now. The Orchard on Bowen Island is $50,000 for one month! Again, no money back if you leave early. In Edgewood, they can keep you until they say you are ready to go also charging you more and more money for you stay. It was rumored one person was kept there for over a year and paid well over $100,000.
In the words of Stanton Peele in the Diseasing of America, “What is this new addiction industry meant to accomplish?” It tells you first that you have a disease and that you are not in control and that you need this type of treatment otherwise you will die. Yes this is the main gist of the 12-step program and it is a blatant lie!!
Firstly, “treatment” consists of a spiritual approach even though they in the same breath says it is a biological and a disease. How can praying to god cure this disease? Yes of course, there is no cure, you have it forever and the only cure is to stay away from the drug of choice. Again, if you consider it to be biological, how can the absence of something cure your illness?
When an individual is diagnosed with cancer one thing they always have to do it have hope and they will continue to fight but for those diagnosed with some arbitrary label of alcoholic or drug addict (no concrete way of deciding you have this disease aside from culturally defined ones - at one time even smoking tobacco was illegal). It has nothing to do with actually helping the sick but rather labeling them in society as deviants and putting them in programs to stop them from engaging in that deviant behaviour rather than actually getting to the route of the problem.

The current treatment industry is harming more than helping in addiction and it must stop. Stanton Peele began to speak out against the use of 12-step programs back in 1975, that was when I was born. These ideas are not new however, they are not spoken of. It is similar to that inability for those in the SS party during the Nazi Reign not able to speak out against the dictator Hitler. That might seem a bit extreme to some but really it isn’t.
The temperance movement which fueled the AA and 12-step recovery programs that currently dominate our addiction treatment system was fueled by intolerance, judgement, discrimination, prejudice and violation of fundamental human rights such as the right to autonomy which includes the right to put whatever we want into our bodies as long as we don’t harm others. These programs assume that any use of substances is fundamentally wrong and it doesn’t distinguish between use and abuse or addiction which of course are entirely different.
These so called “treatment” programs insist that simply removing the substance and recovery will occur but this is drastically incorrect. Often people are using these drugs as a way of self-medicating and it is now being more recognized that this drug use is keeping these sick people alive and prevents them from committing suicide or doing other very impulsive actions to escape their internal brain pain. Those who abuse drugs are literally experiencing pain due to an unhealthy brain. This unhealthy brain is often only being further harmed due to traumatizing and forceful treatment that is the only available possibility.
Addiction is really a result of pain, brain damage and trauma. It is being more recognized that healthy people use drugs but they don’t abuse whereas unhealthy people do use drugs and may proceed to potentially develop addiction. The prescription medications that are pushed on these people often have worse side-effects than most of the recreational or psychoactive substances available on the street, what would you choose to use?
In addition, the idea that addiction is a disease and thus you are out of control of it only leads to a believe that once you start using, it is an excuse to let all responsibility go out the window, “well sorry officer but I blacked out and didn’t know what I was doing” is commonly heard in the courts and this is absolutely your fault as you got yourself to black out in the first place and it is only up to that person to not do it again.
Back in the early 1800s, it was generally accepted that drinking was fine but intoxication causing harm to others wasn’t. What ever happened to this idea? Why can’t we apply this to all drugs at all times? Why are drugs so culturally defined? Up to this point, we have had very little understanding of the brain, drugs and the effects of the drugs on the brain and our behaviours. But with the advents of neuroscience (study of the brain), we are beginning to understand that addiction is really just a symptom of the an unhealthy brain that has been harmed through trauma.
This trauma rewires the brain and sadly, our brain is wired to avoid pain. It uses drugs to achieve this avoidance strategy and at the beginning it works but due to being unsupervised by professionals and the products being of unknown quality and quantity, harm begins and the use becomes abuse. Those who are trying to escape the pain in their brain are unable to get proper services to help deal with this thus turning to street drugs or alcohol. Some use the prescription medications such as benzodiazepines and pain killers to avoid this pain in the brain and too become seriously addicted. Even the anti-depressants and anti-psychotics are used for its intoxicating or sedating effects.
In a newspaper article about the President of Mexico wanting to decriminalize drugs, the DEA acting director, Michele Leonart said that legalization “would be a failed law enforcement strategy for both the USA and Mexico”. Well of course it would be as legalization isn’t a law enforcement strategy but rather a health strategy and it also makes you wonder, what is the current law enforcement strategy then? A success? How is it leading to a reduction of drug use or abuse and addiction? It is only preventing those who really want to help people from the harms of addiction to not be able to except for putting them into jail for their so called “criminal” activity?
Sadly, decriminalization isn’t going far enough. How does it make sense to legalize half a business transaction? It would be like allowing cars to be only available for purchase but selling it would be still illegal. What do you think a car salesmen would do to sell their product? This is how prostitution is, half there but still harmful to the person selling the sex (aka the women). If a behaviour is going to be legal to engage in (buy and consume drugs), the selling of the drugs is going to have to be legal and regulated as well. You still can’t have the cartels and monopolies running and distributing harmful impure substances to people. It makes no sense.
So the harm of addiction can only be reduced if we begin to look into having a pragmatic way of regulating and distributing psychoactive substances in a respectful in following the fundamental rights set out by the United Nations.
For people to really get better from addiction, we need to stop telling people they have no control and rather that they can reestablish control back into their lives as that is what needs to happen if one it to get better. It requires the desire to get better as well as the belief that one can get better and has a reason to. We all deserve this obviously but trauma can distort these beliefs in people.

Thanks Colleen