poledriver
Bluelighter
- Joined
- Jul 21, 2005
- Messages
- 11,543
Drug addiction is a disease — but a curable one
Over the past decade, I’ve met hundereds of people in agony because of their own or their loved ones’ addictions. I can often tell before they say a word. Their faces show me the hell they’ve endured. Some can barely get out a syllable before they break down in tears. As best they can, they tell their stories. I’ve also heard from thousands by mail and e-mail, and more write every day. In a typical week, a mother described her son as “the latest sacrificial lamb”; drunk and stoned, he was killed in a head-on collision. Another mother wrote: “We knew K. smoked a little marijuana, but that was the extent of it as far as we knew. The coroner said there was marijuana, cocaine and heroin in her system. She went from the most loving child to someone I didn’t recognize, and then I lost her.”
“My 19 year old daughter died last month,” her father wrote. “I loved her with every ounce of me. The world lost an angel. My life is shattered.”
“My precious son died of a drug overdose eight months ago,” wrote Kathleen Kelly, a professor at Colorado State University. “He was 24 years old. He got addicted to Oxy and when he couldn’t afford it anymore, he went to a less expensive opiate — heroin … He hated being an addict.” Kathleen sent photographs of her son, Austin. In one, he was pictured with two friends. All three boys in the photograph are dead of overdoses. “First Ben, then Jackson, and now Austin.”
Not all of the letters are from parents whose children have not survived. One man described the vigil that many parents know too well. “It’s only a matter of time. I can barely breathe as I write this. Every time the phone rings, my heart stops. ‘This is it,’ I know. ‘This is the call. He’s dead.’”
A mother said, “My daughter started with abusing inhalants, then marijuana, and has confessed to taking pills — Adderall, Valium, and ones I haven’t heard of. She is 14 years old. My husband and I placed her into a treatment center … She came home and was okay for two months, then she didn’t come home one night when she was supposed to be here. We got a call from the hospital. She had overdosed and is in a coma. I’m writing from her room in the hospital. I look up at her blank face. Her chances are 50-50.”
A father wrote about his “beautiful, intelligent, talented, and charismatic” son, who was, he said, “on his third attempt at staying clean. He tricked us, snuck out, and scored, and we don’t know where he is. Is he alive or dead? All I can do is worry. My son’s addiction has destroyed my marriage and estranged me from the rest of my family. I live, pretty much, in isolation. All I want is my son back.”
Children write, too. One letter began, “I was my parents’ beautiful girl. I’ve taken pills since I was 15. I tried to kill myself by taking 20 Valium, but it didn’t work. You’d think that would get me to stop [using], but not me.”
Another woman wrote of her addicted husband: “He’s not the man I married. He won’t even stop for our three- and seven-year-old children. He’s a good man, a good husband and father. But he goes on benders and we don’t see him. I know he tried crack at least once. He’s been in rehab three times. They say to throw him out and close the door, but he is the father of my children.”
A letter from a 37-year-old woman addicted to heroin, written in tiny, shaky script on tissue paper, came in the mail: “If not for the curse of addiction,” she wrote, “I would not have a heart locked up tight in my chest, afraid of opening it for anyone. My children have been taken from me, to be raised by someone else, and I have to live with that agony every day of my life. I suffer through the knowledge that I caused them immense pain, and caused them to be fearful of trusting and loving, and that I took from them the one thing that all children deserve, a feeling of security and knowing that no matter what is happening in the world, there is one place of safety and that is their home.” She concluded, “I am so sorry for the things I have done, and I live with so much regret — sometimes so much that I feel like I can’t face another day.”
These letters communicate an infinitesimal fraction of the suffering that millions endure every day. If this were a problem that couldn’t be solved, I’d be devastated but resigned. Instead, I’m filled with rage, because the suffering and death can be prevented. How? It begins with an understanding of the precepts that underpin my book.
Most drug use isn’t about drugs. It’s about life
Our prevention and treatment efforts have failed mostly because they’ve focused on dealing with drugs themselves, but drug abuse is almost always the result of kids starting to use early, genetics, and other problems — stress, trauma, mental illness, or some combination of these factors. The new paradigm is rooted in recognizing that drugs are a symptom, not a cause, and whatever problems underlie them must be (and can be) addressed. Until they are, our prevention and treatment systems will continue to fail most people.
Addiction is a disease
No one chooses leukemia, heart disease or depression. Abusing drugs, however, appears to many to be a choice, and a reckless and selfish one. It’s not. The new approach is based on the fact that addiction is a disease. Blaming the afflicted for their condition has led to decades of flawed treatment and policy. But the evidence clearly proves that addicts aren’t morally bereft or weak-willed. They’re ill.
This disease is preventable
Given the scale of illicit drug use and abuse, the ineffectiveness of decades of anti-drug campaigns, and the failure of a war on drugs that has cost the United States more than $1-trillion, most people assume that it’s impossible to prevent drug abuse. Parents, schools, communities and the nation itself have initiated campaigns to stop drug use, but they’ve failed. However, we now know that prevention initiatives failed not because it’s impossible to stop people from using and abusing drugs, but because our efforts were misguided.
This disease is treatable
On their own or with help, sometimes by relying on the traditional Twelve Step program, some people have learned to manage their addiction and stop using. But many more haven’t. Many of those who had successfully stopped using relapsed, often repeatedly. Some early research indicated that addicts could never fully recover because drugs caused permanent brain damage. We’ve since learned that traditional treatments often failed not because of intractable brain damage, but because they were inadequate. (In fact, some were useless, and some were harmful.) However, a host of recent findings about how addiction works have led to the development of effective treatments, and more are coming. Adding to this promising news is evidence that most brains damaged by drugs can recover. Sufferers of addiction can be restored to health.
The prevention strategies most likely to work are based on science
To date, prevention strategies have failed because they’ve relied on scare tactics and best guesses of what might work. When these efforts fail and drug use begins and escalates, desperate people who need treatment often wind up in the hands of charlatans, rip-off artists, or well- intentioned but incompetent practitioners. Once we understand that addiction is a disease and that it’s preventable and treatable, our course becomes clearer. And just as patients with other serious illnesses pursue the most effective treatments developed by science and tested in clinical trials, so too can addicts and their families.
Drug abusers can achieve mental health
As it’s defined by the National Academy of Sciences, mental health “is more than the absence of disorder.” Usually those with addiction, particularly those who’ve used drugs since they were teenagers, live their lives in pain and confusion. Drugs impeded their emotional growth at the very time when they would have been learning to navigate the world, to develop close relationships, and to mature in other ways. With sobriety comes the opportunity of transformation and a fulfilling life.
**
Drug use, addiction, and mental illness are as complicated as people are. There are as many permutations as there are people, so there’s no one-size-fits-all solution. And yes, the lives of those with addiction can transform, but it can take time, and forward progress can be interrupted by setbacks. Still, healing is almost always possible.
Confusion and despair can make way for clarity and hope. Addicts can lead full lives free from the pain that plagued them and the disease that controlled them.
National Post
http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2013/05/15/sheff-book-excerpt/
Over the past decade, I’ve met hundereds of people in agony because of their own or their loved ones’ addictions. I can often tell before they say a word. Their faces show me the hell they’ve endured. Some can barely get out a syllable before they break down in tears. As best they can, they tell their stories. I’ve also heard from thousands by mail and e-mail, and more write every day. In a typical week, a mother described her son as “the latest sacrificial lamb”; drunk and stoned, he was killed in a head-on collision. Another mother wrote: “We knew K. smoked a little marijuana, but that was the extent of it as far as we knew. The coroner said there was marijuana, cocaine and heroin in her system. She went from the most loving child to someone I didn’t recognize, and then I lost her.”
“My 19 year old daughter died last month,” her father wrote. “I loved her with every ounce of me. The world lost an angel. My life is shattered.”
“My precious son died of a drug overdose eight months ago,” wrote Kathleen Kelly, a professor at Colorado State University. “He was 24 years old. He got addicted to Oxy and when he couldn’t afford it anymore, he went to a less expensive opiate — heroin … He hated being an addict.” Kathleen sent photographs of her son, Austin. In one, he was pictured with two friends. All three boys in the photograph are dead of overdoses. “First Ben, then Jackson, and now Austin.”
Not all of the letters are from parents whose children have not survived. One man described the vigil that many parents know too well. “It’s only a matter of time. I can barely breathe as I write this. Every time the phone rings, my heart stops. ‘This is it,’ I know. ‘This is the call. He’s dead.’”
A mother said, “My daughter started with abusing inhalants, then marijuana, and has confessed to taking pills — Adderall, Valium, and ones I haven’t heard of. She is 14 years old. My husband and I placed her into a treatment center … She came home and was okay for two months, then she didn’t come home one night when she was supposed to be here. We got a call from the hospital. She had overdosed and is in a coma. I’m writing from her room in the hospital. I look up at her blank face. Her chances are 50-50.”
A father wrote about his “beautiful, intelligent, talented, and charismatic” son, who was, he said, “on his third attempt at staying clean. He tricked us, snuck out, and scored, and we don’t know where he is. Is he alive or dead? All I can do is worry. My son’s addiction has destroyed my marriage and estranged me from the rest of my family. I live, pretty much, in isolation. All I want is my son back.”
Children write, too. One letter began, “I was my parents’ beautiful girl. I’ve taken pills since I was 15. I tried to kill myself by taking 20 Valium, but it didn’t work. You’d think that would get me to stop [using], but not me.”
Another woman wrote of her addicted husband: “He’s not the man I married. He won’t even stop for our three- and seven-year-old children. He’s a good man, a good husband and father. But he goes on benders and we don’t see him. I know he tried crack at least once. He’s been in rehab three times. They say to throw him out and close the door, but he is the father of my children.”
A letter from a 37-year-old woman addicted to heroin, written in tiny, shaky script on tissue paper, came in the mail: “If not for the curse of addiction,” she wrote, “I would not have a heart locked up tight in my chest, afraid of opening it for anyone. My children have been taken from me, to be raised by someone else, and I have to live with that agony every day of my life. I suffer through the knowledge that I caused them immense pain, and caused them to be fearful of trusting and loving, and that I took from them the one thing that all children deserve, a feeling of security and knowing that no matter what is happening in the world, there is one place of safety and that is their home.” She concluded, “I am so sorry for the things I have done, and I live with so much regret — sometimes so much that I feel like I can’t face another day.”
These letters communicate an infinitesimal fraction of the suffering that millions endure every day. If this were a problem that couldn’t be solved, I’d be devastated but resigned. Instead, I’m filled with rage, because the suffering and death can be prevented. How? It begins with an understanding of the precepts that underpin my book.
Most drug use isn’t about drugs. It’s about life
Our prevention and treatment efforts have failed mostly because they’ve focused on dealing with drugs themselves, but drug abuse is almost always the result of kids starting to use early, genetics, and other problems — stress, trauma, mental illness, or some combination of these factors. The new paradigm is rooted in recognizing that drugs are a symptom, not a cause, and whatever problems underlie them must be (and can be) addressed. Until they are, our prevention and treatment systems will continue to fail most people.
Addiction is a disease
No one chooses leukemia, heart disease or depression. Abusing drugs, however, appears to many to be a choice, and a reckless and selfish one. It’s not. The new approach is based on the fact that addiction is a disease. Blaming the afflicted for their condition has led to decades of flawed treatment and policy. But the evidence clearly proves that addicts aren’t morally bereft or weak-willed. They’re ill.
This disease is preventable
Given the scale of illicit drug use and abuse, the ineffectiveness of decades of anti-drug campaigns, and the failure of a war on drugs that has cost the United States more than $1-trillion, most people assume that it’s impossible to prevent drug abuse. Parents, schools, communities and the nation itself have initiated campaigns to stop drug use, but they’ve failed. However, we now know that prevention initiatives failed not because it’s impossible to stop people from using and abusing drugs, but because our efforts were misguided.
This disease is treatable
On their own or with help, sometimes by relying on the traditional Twelve Step program, some people have learned to manage their addiction and stop using. But many more haven’t. Many of those who had successfully stopped using relapsed, often repeatedly. Some early research indicated that addicts could never fully recover because drugs caused permanent brain damage. We’ve since learned that traditional treatments often failed not because of intractable brain damage, but because they were inadequate. (In fact, some were useless, and some were harmful.) However, a host of recent findings about how addiction works have led to the development of effective treatments, and more are coming. Adding to this promising news is evidence that most brains damaged by drugs can recover. Sufferers of addiction can be restored to health.
The prevention strategies most likely to work are based on science
To date, prevention strategies have failed because they’ve relied on scare tactics and best guesses of what might work. When these efforts fail and drug use begins and escalates, desperate people who need treatment often wind up in the hands of charlatans, rip-off artists, or well- intentioned but incompetent practitioners. Once we understand that addiction is a disease and that it’s preventable and treatable, our course becomes clearer. And just as patients with other serious illnesses pursue the most effective treatments developed by science and tested in clinical trials, so too can addicts and their families.
Drug abusers can achieve mental health
As it’s defined by the National Academy of Sciences, mental health “is more than the absence of disorder.” Usually those with addiction, particularly those who’ve used drugs since they were teenagers, live their lives in pain and confusion. Drugs impeded their emotional growth at the very time when they would have been learning to navigate the world, to develop close relationships, and to mature in other ways. With sobriety comes the opportunity of transformation and a fulfilling life.
**
Drug use, addiction, and mental illness are as complicated as people are. There are as many permutations as there are people, so there’s no one-size-fits-all solution. And yes, the lives of those with addiction can transform, but it can take time, and forward progress can be interrupted by setbacks. Still, healing is almost always possible.
Confusion and despair can make way for clarity and hope. Addicts can lead full lives free from the pain that plagued them and the disease that controlled them.
National Post
http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2013/05/15/sheff-book-excerpt/
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