What Vietnam Taught Us About Addiction (and change in general)

[RainDog]

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2012/01/02/144431794/what-vietnam-taught-us-about-breaking-bad-habits

This article talks about personal behavioral changes for things much less difficult than heroin use and the response to a war environment - But the larger story is about assumptions about behavior and the way in which toxic or even habitual ENVIRONMENTS exercise control over our actions.

In May of 1971 two congressmen, Robert Steele from Connecticut and Morgan Murphy of Illinois, went to Vietnam for an official visit and returned with some extremely disturbing news: 15 percent of U.S. servicemen in Vietnam, they said, were actively addicted to heroin.

The idea that so many servicemen were addicted to heroin horrified the public. At that point heroin was the bete noire of American drugs. It was thought to be the most addictive substance ever produced, a narcotic so powerful that once addiction claimed you, it was nearly impossible to escape.

In response to this report, President Richard Nixon took action. In June of 1971 he announced that he was creating a whole new office — The Special Action Office of Drug Abuse Prevention — dedicated to fighting the evil of drugs. He laid out a program of prevention and rehabilitation, but there was something else Nixon wanted: He wanted to research what happened to the addicted servicemen once they returned home.

...Those who were addicted were kept in Vietnam until they dried out. When these soldiers finally did return to their lives back in the U.S., Robins (a psychiatric researcher) tracked them, collecting data at regular intervals. And this is where the story takes a curious turn: According to her research, the number of soldiers who continued their heroin addiction once they returned to the U.S. was shockingly low.

What interests me about this article is the question - how could people in poverty change their lives if they were not in an environment geared toward replicating poverty, or drug use among those who have lost hope, or physical abuse among those who take out their anger on those who are also stuck.

Since we have this data, why doesn't it have any bearing upon policies to deal with social problems?

[mopinko]

1. i think there is an obvious explanation.

addiction counselors recommend breaking with the people and places that were part of their addiction. shipping someone to another continent would prolly qualify as that.

i don't think much can be extrapolated from this data.

[MindMover]

2. I do not understand your answer....your understanding about counselors recommendations is naive.....

at best and dangerous at the worst; to say that shipping someone to another continent is something that any counselor would sign off on is ridiculous......

as a matter of fact there was a lot extrapolated from the data and it is generally true that Vietnam service men and women who were users and sometimes abusers in country came back to the states and stopped using......

I was there and I know first hand what I am talking about.....do you?

[mopinko]

3. i can see you don't understand.

what i am saying is that this was an accidental experiment in the utility of completely removing a user from their environment. when i said you couldn't draw conclusions, it was because i don't think it is something that could or should be replicated.

it is an uncontrolled accidental experiment. it is of no use in the real world.

[MindMover]

4. This was not an experiment.....it was war.....and people who go to war....

sometimes use substances available to them.....

in Vietnam those substances included heroin, cannabis, alcohol, and several other substances.....

those that used were not necessarily users in the states....

they used in country for there own individual reasons........

and when they came home they stopped using.................

and you are definitely right on one thing you said......that war should not be replicated........because war is certainly an uncontrolled experiment.....

[GReedDiamond]

9. To this point: "those that used were not necessarily users in the states...."

...back in 1974 I knew a guy who, when I first met him, was in his last few months of Army service, having previously completed two tours of duty in Vietnam, in the later part of the conflict.

Before he joined the Army (he was not drafted), he had been an Alabama State Trooper. He was a true gung-ho-kill-em-all-and-let-god-sort-em-out kinda guy, a real commie-hatin' 'mercan Patriot.

Over the course of his Nam tours, he had started smoking cannabis, and then, tobacco mixed with heroin. He had a behind-the-front-lines office duty assignment, and would sit, he said, at his desk, working while smoking the heroin-laced cigs.

By the time he completed his two tours of duty, he was a complete "hippie freak," so to speak, but he looked/acted like a military guy, he still loved his guns, and, he was a competitive skydiver who occasionally dropped acid when he jumped (his skydiving team was called "The Roachpile," I kid you not - they had a bong in their airplane).

Anyway, he lived in the same apartment complex as me, and I would hang out with him and we'd smoke tons of weed and have interesting conversations.

By 1976, I moved out of state and lost contact with him, although I later heard through mutual friends that he had married a skydiving woman and moved back to Alabama.

His personality changed dramatically - for the better, I believe - after he began using "drugs." He also had no apparent trouble adjusting to life post-army, as an acid-dropping, pot-smoking skydiver.

That's my anecdotal tale of the day, and I swear on a stack of US Constitutions that it's all True.

On edit: I forgot to address this point in your post - "and when they came home they stopped using................."

My friend, upon return to the US, did not continue doing heroin, but he, as I've already stated, continued smoking cannabis and occasionally, took psychedelics.

[MindMover]

11. and this sounds like thousands of other guys and gals who served in Nam's experience with substances

thanks for your post......

[GReedDiamond]

12. I have no doubt about that, but I've met no other like my long lost pal...

...the ex-Alabama State Trooper/Army vet/acidhead/skydiver. And I've lived in and around Hollywood and known a lot of unique individuals since 1976, some very famous and/or notorious. But none like my ole pal Cass.

I think it's the combining LSD with Skydiving that I've always been, I guess you could say, "impressed" with. Well, that, and also, he used to be a cop.

Although, I'm thinking, if you knew the correct dose (probably a low end dose?), and its likely resultant effects, LSD could make you a better skydiver. It really helps one to focus on a level not otherwise normally accessible.

However, I do not, recommend taking LSD and jumping out of airplanes.

I suggest sticking to the "set and setting" concept.

[MindMover]

13. Yes, I agree, leave the jumping part out of that surreal experience......and.....

I have also known several Cass's in my lifetime.....

here is one of those songs they liked.......

[RainDog]

5. and yet this article talks about use in the real world...

by putting such information in other contexts.

[mopinko]

6. from the article-

It's important not to overstate this, because a variety of factors are probably at play. But one big theory about why the rates of heroin relapse were so low on return to the U.S. has to do with the fact that the soldiers, after being treated for their physical addiction in Vietnam, returned to a place radically different from the environment where their addiction took hold of them.

"I think that most people accept that the change in the environment, and the fact that the addiction occurred in this exotic environment, you know, makes it plausible that the addiction rate would be that much lower," Nixon appointee Jerome Jaffe says.

_________


iow, not an situation that can really be recreated.

[RainDog]

7. and yet this article talks about use in the real world...

in simple contexts for smaller issues

[MindMover]

10. you know the goofy words used to describe a soldiers journey is more than often laughable if..

you are in a good mood and downright disturbing when you are in a rotten mood......

tonight I am laughing at big theory and exotic environment.......

I do not know what world many of you are living in but the treatment of us grunts when we came home from Nam is just about the same as now....nim to none...

treatment for physical addiction my arse....you were lucky not to get spit on at the airport as you got off the plane from Nam......

[Warren DeMontague]

8. The "idea that so many servicemen were addicted to heroin horrified the public."

I guess the idea that they were getting maimed and killed in a stupid war for no good reason at all, however, wasn't any big deal.