Russell Brand: Addiction is an illness not a crime

[Mr Smokes Blunts.]

you removed one then you added it back, anyway it doesn't matter.


What do you mean, take into account? Determinism is (supposedly) how the world operates. We don't take it into account. It happens within us and around us. Deterministically.


Why not? If a slave trader trades me I will blame them for making me a slave. What is your alternative? I blame myself for being in the wrong place at the wrong time? In your world, everything is MY fault! fuck you!



It seems to me we can have conversations (and engage in other social behaviours) which affect each other's opinions and behaviours. So we seem to have some kind of influence over other people's actions at the social level.

Therefore, no I disagree with you.

When I say take it into account, I mean that personally speaking I have more sympathy for people who end up in fucked up situations who were never given a chance in life than I do for people who were born into an amazing life and managed to turn it on it's head.

Your slave trader analogy isn't applicable here. The fact you have found a situation in which we definitely don't have free will, does not mean we have no free will in other situations. That's like saying that an Eastern European sex slave has just as much choice as any random woman who chooses to bed hundreds of men in a year. Sure the random woman might have daddy issues which have resulted in this behaviour, which explains her behaviour marginally more than the next girl who sleeps with hundreds of men despite growing up in a stable family. (No i'm not saying such behaviour is wrong, just illustrating a point). You see there are varying shades of determinism there, ranging from absolutely zero self determination (the sex slave), to actively going against the assumed place determination should take you (the stable family girl). If the girl from the stable family catches a disease because of the risky behaviour, she is much more at fault than the sex slave. I'm sure you would agree?

If the government has been pumping the media with anti-drug messages, has been teaching kids at a school level that drugs are wrong/bad, punishing people who choose to go against their will heavily, and yet still drug use is rising, how do you explain that in your world where you assume we can affect each other's behaviours?

 

[knock]

My slave trader example is applicable in so far as it demonstrates that sometimes it is fully appropriate to blame external factors for our situation. I use it to prove this point. I think it succeeds. The general point it makes can be simply extrapolated by degree to other less extreme situations.

I have not claimed we have no free will. I have said quite clearly I am uncomfortable making any definitive statement about free will. It seems we have some but I can't explain how that might work. That's as far as I'll go.

Just because the government has tried to affect people's behaviour using one set of methods and failed, doesn't mean that it's not possible to affect people's behaviour. Their methods might be shit. People might be more complicated than to be easily susceptible to crude propaganda.

 

[Mr Smokes Blunts.]

Well, obviously sometimes it is applicable. But it doesn't transpose itself into what we're talking about. Few addicts were pinned down and forced to inject heroin, or drink alcohol regularly. If anything all you've done is show us what somebody who genuinely has no free will looks like, so it can be seen that most addicts had at least some free will early on in their addiction. Many addicts of a whole range of substances go on to get clean, and that's a prime example of them using their own free will, grit, and determination, to stop using.

But the government also effectively employs your method of influencing people's behaviour - conversations. They have many advocates out there in the world, and none of them have convinced us away from our assumation of the situation. So you haven't established that we have the direct or indirect ability to manipulate each other, in any way but force (i.e. slavery).

 

[knock]

You're being obtuse.

EDIT I wanted to make a point, not get into an hours-long debate. I think I've made it If you can't see it, fine, I give up.

 

[Mr Smokes Blunts.]

How so? We are just back to the original discussion. The majority of people can only effect their own behaviour, so they cannot go blaming others for their own actions.


EDIT- Fair enough. I wasn't trying to start anything. I always enjoy our back and forths.

 

[knock]

This is just a game to you isn't it? I actually want to make progress. Bye!

 

[Mr Smokes Blunts.]

This is just a game to you isn't it? I actually want to make progress. Bye!

Make progress in what? Of course it's just a game... it's the internet. All i'm doing is bouncing ideas between us to try and find a position on this topic.

 

[knock]

I have never understood the "it's the internet" clause. The internet is just another medium for communication to take place.

I am trying to communicate but I don't feel you're engaging with what I'm saying beyond knee-jerk opposition.

EDIT I too enjoy our back and forths. Sorry. I'm being a dick. People want me to do boring work for them and I better go and do it. My exasperation is partly due to the fact I do not want to go and do it

 

[Mr Smokes Blunts.]

I have never understood the "it's the internet" clause. The internet is just another medium for communication to take place.

I am trying to communicate but I don't feel you're engaging with what I'm saying beyond knee-jerk opposition.

Yes, of course the internet is just another place to communicate. But it's not like i'm communicating with people I know in real life, or anything I say has any ramifications unless I start slagging off near dead black football players

I felt like my responses to you were appropriate and inline with the discussion we were having about who should or shouldn't take account for addiction. The fact slaves have no free will, does not logically refute what Charlie was saying. It isn't knee jerk.

 

[knock]

read my edit ;p

 

[Mr Smokes Blunts.]

Ok mate, hopefully by the time you've got a spare minute Charlie will come in and give us some clarification.

 

[dr-ripple]

Brits just can't handle the fame.

 

[Cornishman]

The Beatles managed better than Charlie sheen though.

 

[Mr Smokes Blunts.]

I just had to post this picture for our discussion knock:

 

[StoneHappyMonday]

True enough. Yet I don't see how it follows that all (or at least most) victims of the physically and psychologically detrimental aspects of addiction are suffering solely because of the establishment's negative attitude to drugs and drug users, which is what you seem to believe.

I never said that. What I said was I believe the majority of suffering of all drug users, be they labelled addicts or not, is caused by illegality and prohibition.

Your argument falls down pretty hard when you consider there are thousands and thousands of people suffering legal opiate/benzo/alcohol addiction.

I am not saying it is universal, I am merely using it to refute SHM's universality statements...

I never made any universality statements. I've been careful to use words like 'the majority of' and not 'exclusively'. Please don't put words in my mouth.

I am not doubting the thousands who suffer legal addictions too. My argument is that their suffering is minimal when compared to the additional sufferings heaped on addicts and users of illegal drugs via prohibition. There are not 40000 addicts of legal substances in our prisons. Legal addicts generally do not have to go out robbing for their drugs. Legal addicts generally do not have to worry about the impurities of their substances. Legal addicts aren't treated like vermin in their villages and housing estates becuase they are addicted to the 'wrong' drug.

 

[charlie clean]

There is a school of thought that holds we have no 'free will' at all and our lives are happened just like the weather but that wasn't what I meant. I was rather pointing out the futility of looking at things in terms of 'fault' or 'blame'. Sure, the slave may blame his master for the system of slavery but it will provide him with no more than false and rather unsatisfactory comfort. Similarly, when an outrage occurs, arguing about the degree of punishment for the culprit distracts from understanding of how it happened and how to stop it happening again. Once you're blaming, it's too late. If you hadn't blamed previously, perhaps you may have understood and prevented the blameworthy action. Blame gets in the way of useful thinking, that's all. Like the Waldheim translation of the I Ching recommends, no blame, perseverance furthers,

 

[knock]

Charlie, I agree that blame is not a very useful concept. Maybe I read too much into what you said. I get annoyed when I read or hear people expressing the opinion that "all we have to blame is ourselves" or "we make our own beds" or anything along those lines, because clearly it's not the case. But perhaps you were not saying that

 

[Shambles]

Blimey. For an EADD thread this borders on proper debate

Only just saw this thread and only watched the first few minutes of that Russell Brand vid but will espouse ponderings willynilly nonetheless. Tis my way...

Quite like Russell Brand as it happens (possibly the only person here who does that doesn't want cocked by him it seems) but he's annoyed the shit outta me within the first five mins of speaking there. Banging the drum for abstainance-based therapy? More funding for abstainance-based therapy? Fuck right off. Abstainance-based therapy is essentially NA/AA. Which is a total waste of time. Success rate is all of 4-5%. Guess what the success rate of plain ol' cold turkey with no support or help of any kind is? (That'd be 4-5% for the Spadeys amongst us.). Combined with the crucifix meltdown thang (ironic crucifix meltdown or not) I may defect to the "Russell Brand is a twat" camp after all...

That aside, on the addiction/disease thing, have always been (and still am) not a fan at all. However, I can kinda see where folks are coming from sometimes. The case has been made by one or two folks here rather well actually. Forced to reconsider long-entrenched views by an EADD thread?!? Only just a tad but more of a tad than expected. Can kindasorta see the arguments for it suggested by Ms Eff... But still tend more toward symptom over disease if anything. Can a symptom become a disease? Dunno. Possibly. Maybe. Ish.

I think addiction is (for the most part) a mishmash o' many a thing. I'm sure there must be a few folks who got caught out purely unawares just by using whatever a bit too frequently but the vast majority had reasons for taking the whatever in the first place other than pure hedonism. Not that I have owt against pure hedonism, just that it rarely - if ever - ends up as addiction.

Of the ex/addicts around and about the place, y'all have a reason(s) or underlying causething you think laid the foundation? Or just had too much fun then woke up one day and it was considerably less fun? See addiction as a problem in an of itself at all? Does that depend on what you're addicted to? Is it simply a lifestyle choice? Or a choice at all?

Ponderings rather than answerings. Will go back to my normal state of semi-alcoholic semi-interest again now.

 

[effie]

^ I really enjoyed this debate I must say :D

I'm sticking to my disease thing but.. yeah. Can a symptom be a disease? They can be near enough the same thing I think.. drug addiction has too many facets to it to just be a symptom in my book. Symptoms/signs (symptoms are self-reported, signs are things the doctor elicits) would be the cravings, or withdrawal, or repetitive drug intake, or emotional consequences of the addiction. It's borderline though, because it doesn't start as a disease for me, that comes later. So it's a very interesting one and doesn't really fit into our neat medical model categories. Which I like, as I don't really agree with them for most psychiatric illnesses anyway

 

[monstanoodle]

I just had to post this picture for our discussion knock:

Natalie Dee rocks %)

Those lizards in suits at the ~30mins mark are so fucking detached from those who consume substances that it's tragic.
Peter Hitchens is terribly hypocritical - He's going to go home and have a glass of Vino. Go to jail for consuming a "terrible substance" you cunt

I don't see addiction as a disease, but as an outcome of tragic circumstances that the individual has / is gone / going through.
It's an escape from what they feel as a shit life.

Urg.... Fucking dinosaurs... Law shouldn't come into it, as we can see with Ethyl Alcohol.