Brief aside: The Obama administration classified it as a disease and now you can't throw a rock in Orange County without hitting a sober living home. Almost all of them are for-profit centers, with a minimal emphasis on rehab, and a maximal emphasis on making money. They have no incentive to actually help people, because anyone that relapses can just go back into 'treatment'! Thanks Obama! Signed: A 2x Obama Voter
Recently a eulogy for a pretty white girl that died of a drug overdose went viral. There's a lot to unpack here. First, there's the wide range of very empathetic and very useless writeups about the eulogy itself, custom designed to tug at your heartstrings. Add all that digital ink to the ever-expanding list of useless responses to the eulogy that explain how the woman who died is 'in a better place' or 'with God now', which is just more lies people tell themselves so that they feel better about something bad.*
The woman appeared to have had every opportunity to stop doing drugs: an infinite number of second chances from her enabling family, resources for repeated stints in rehab, even support from the system, based on the fact that she "befriended and delighted cops, social workers, public defenders, and doctors, who advocated for and believed in her till the end." (The outcome suggests that their limited energies and resources would have been best allocated elsewhere.) On top of that she had a son, who was the light of her life or some shit, and she could not stay clean even for him. Getting high was the most important thing in her life, and eventually it killed her.
The thing about a 'disease' like drug addiction is that you can cure it simply: stop doing drugs. I do not suggest that this is easy - many things that are simple are not easy (like making biscuits, or dunking a basketball). But as solutions go, it does not get much more simple than that. Consider a different disease, such as lung cancer. How do you cure lung cancer? After decades of intensive research, no one knows! They just poison you until the cancer gives up and hope you don't die in the process. Even this 'success' is a postponement, since the cancer usually comes back and kills you later on. So good luck quitting cancer.
What about a mental illness like depression? You cannot quit being depressed any more than you could quit having a cold. You either wait it out, or you get treatment, or both. Drug addiction has more in common with depression than it does with cancer, but is it a disease?
Sam Harris (and others) assert that there is no such thing as free will. You are beholden to the exceedingly complex circuitry of your brain. It might make you feel depressed, or happy, or make you eat too much, or exercise too much, or commit acts of violence, or acts of kindness, or it might make you do absolutely anything to feel that sweet, sweet feeling provided by the opiates. If addiction is a disease, then it is a disease of the brain, and no part of the current justice system is treating it the right way. I doubt very much that there are many rehab or treatment centers that are doing much tosolve the problem cure this disease either.
Armed with that knowledge we can infer that addiction is a disease, and we can also stop making excuses for the people that are afflicted. There has to be some way to treat addicts that will help them stop hurting other people. However, even in the absence of a cure there is no need to feel sympathy for people that fail to get their shit together over and over and over again. Maya Angelou said it well: When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.
* E.g. 'Everything happens for a reason' - yes, it does, and sometimes the reasons are random and bad, because the universe is cruel and unforgiving and someday everyone and everything you have ever loved will die, including you.
The woman appeared to have had every opportunity to stop doing drugs: an infinite number of second chances from her enabling family, resources for repeated stints in rehab, even support from the system, based on the fact that she "befriended and delighted cops, social workers, public defenders, and doctors, who advocated for and believed in her till the end." (The outcome suggests that their limited energies and resources would have been best allocated elsewhere.) On top of that she had a son, who was the light of her life or some shit, and she could not stay clean even for him. Getting high was the most important thing in her life, and eventually it killed her.
The thing about a 'disease' like drug addiction is that you can cure it simply: stop doing drugs. I do not suggest that this is easy - many things that are simple are not easy (like making biscuits, or dunking a basketball). But as solutions go, it does not get much more simple than that. Consider a different disease, such as lung cancer. How do you cure lung cancer? After decades of intensive research, no one knows! They just poison you until the cancer gives up and hope you don't die in the process. Even this 'success' is a postponement, since the cancer usually comes back and kills you later on. So good luck quitting cancer.
What about a mental illness like depression? You cannot quit being depressed any more than you could quit having a cold. You either wait it out, or you get treatment, or both. Drug addiction has more in common with depression than it does with cancer, but is it a disease?
Sam Harris (and others) assert that there is no such thing as free will. You are beholden to the exceedingly complex circuitry of your brain. It might make you feel depressed, or happy, or make you eat too much, or exercise too much, or commit acts of violence, or acts of kindness, or it might make you do absolutely anything to feel that sweet, sweet feeling provided by the opiates. If addiction is a disease, then it is a disease of the brain, and no part of the current justice system is treating it the right way. I doubt very much that there are many rehab or treatment centers that are doing much to
Armed with that knowledge we can infer that addiction is a disease, and we can also stop making excuses for the people that are afflicted. There has to be some way to treat addicts that will help them stop hurting other people. However, even in the absence of a cure there is no need to feel sympathy for people that fail to get their shit together over and over and over again. Maya Angelou said it well: When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.
* E.g. 'Everything happens for a reason' - yes, it does, and sometimes the reasons are random and bad, because the universe is cruel and unforgiving and someday everyone and everything you have ever loved will die, including you.
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