Pubdate: Thu, 27 Aug 2015
Source: Orlando Sentinel (FL)
Copyright: 2015 Orlando Sentinel
Contact:  http://www.orlandosentinel.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/325
Note: Rarely prints out-of-state LTEs.
Author: Cameron Settles
Note: Cameron Settles, 28, of Orlando is a graduate student in public 
administration at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

HUMAN LINK HELPS ADDICTION RECOVERY BUT IT'S NOT PANACEA

When I was 13 years old, I decided to never touch drugs or alcohol 
due to my family's history of addiction. And I stuck to it.

But if I trust author Johann Hari's recent TED Talk, "Everything you 
know about addiction is wrong," I should feel free to experiment. In 
the talk, Hari argues that the sole root of and cure for addiction is 
human connection, but there are some dangerous flaws in his argument.

Hari's thesis is that there is no physical component to addiction, 
only a psychological one that is specifically an attempt to fill the 
void of human connection. The evidence he provides to illustrate 
this, though, is a study on lab rats that showed they would not drink 
cocaine water if they had friends, Portugal's decriminalizing of all 
drugs, and a professor who proposed calling addiction "bonding."

He then tries to tie all these pieces together to explain that the 
war on drugs has failed, and we must overhaul how we treat addiction. 
I agree with most of that, but none of it proves his central 
argument, which he so poignantly summarizes at the end of his TED 
Talk: "The opposite of addiction is not sobriety. The opposite of 
addiction is connection." No. Human connection is vital in recovery, 
but the opposite of addiction is still sobriety.

In his brief explanation of what we think we know about addiction, he 
gives three examples that he thinks disproves the physical and 
chemical connection to addiction: (1) that if the people sitting in 
one row in the TED audience all used heroin every day for 20 days, 
they would not all be addicts at the end; (2) the fact that not every 
single person who is prescribed painkillers becomes an addict; and 
(3) that the majority of Vietnam veterans who used heroin while 
deployed did not continue using it when they came home without even detoxing.

However, Hari fails to mention that: (1) no addiction expert would 
attest that every person who used heroin for a period of time would 
become an addict; (2) prescription-painkiller addiction is a very 
real problem and a huge gateway into heroin use; and (3) many Vietnam 
veterans went through heroin detox in Vietnam before returning home.

If you throw out his silly notion that telling drug addicts you love 
them will magically cure their very real physical addiction to a 
drug, all Hari is really saying is that human connection is helpful 
in recovery. Well, that's basically what support groups like 
Alcoholics Anonymous are built on.

That's why shows like "Intervention" advocate for families showing 
their willingness to support their loved ones through recovery. 
That's why James Frey's go-it-alone attitude in his now-infamous 
"memoir" was so dangerous. Human connection's importance in recovery 
is undeniable. In fact, no one is trying to deny it.

I agree with Hari on a lot of things: The war on drugs has failed; 
the stigma of addiction must be lifted; addicts need love and 
support; and public policy needs to reflect these realities. However, 
his assertion that addiction exists and persists only out of a 
longing for human connection is dangerous.

This idea implies that people who have solid relationships should 
feel free to experiment with hard drugs. They shouldn't. It implies 
that addicts may be able to use "socially." They can't. It implies 
that the loved ones of addicts are somehow at fault for not supplying 
adequate human connection. They aren't.

It implies that I should feel free to experiment with drugs and 
alcohol despite my heritage of addiction. I won't.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom