7 Facts About Drugs and Addiction That Will Make You Question Everything You Know

[ghostsinthemachine]

There’s no subject in our culture where the conversation is dominated by myths and misconceptions so much as drugs. We are frightened to talk about it. We are tempted to fall back on stock-phrases and mental spasms — Just Say No, and all its more modern twists.

I have always been sympathetic to more compassionate drug policies, and I thought of myself as pretty enlightened. But when I spent over three years researching my book Chasing The Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs, I was startled to discover — time and again — that I too had fallen for a shelf-load of myths.

Here are seven facts I learned along the way that startled me — and I think force us to think differently about the drug war we have been waging now for one hundred and one years.

Fact One: 85 percent to 90 percent of people who use even heroin, crack or meth don’t become addicted.

If you go into a crowded bar tonight and look around you, you might see some alcoholics (who need our love and support) — but we all know they’re a small minority.

But this isn’t true of most other drugs, is it? We all know that most people who use heroin or crack or meth become addicts.

This question has been carefully studied by leading social scientists — and it turns out this belief is a myth. As I learned from Professor Carl Hart at Columbia University, it turns out 85-90 percent of people who use any drug do not become addicted.

Even the UN Office of Drug Control — the main drug war body in the world — admitted that 90 percent of all currently banned drug use doesn’t harm the user — although they’ve pulled the link from their site.

More here."7 Facts About Drugs That Will Make You Question Everything You Know" - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari/7-facts-about-drugs-that-will-make-you-question-everything_b_9484744.html

[MH1]

1. It's a difficult social challenge.

(I have been well aware for a long time of Fact One.)

Since I seem to have relative low susceptibility to addiction (just let's not talk about caffeine, please ), it might seem unfair to me to that I can't basically do what I want.

On the other hand, if you allow easy availability of certain relatively highly addictive or harmfully addictive substances, you pretty much automatically condemn a certain percentage of the population to succumbing to addiction.

Ok I'll admit I didn't read the full article - I have to get back to work real soon, sigh - and the author is probably smarter than me, this paradox has always struck me as the crux of the issue. To protect a minority of the population you have to make rules that limit the freedoms of the majority who can probably handle those freedoms. But for the overall benefit of society we usually choose to do that.

All that is theoretical and very general. I am NOT a drug warrior - I believe in compassionate policies and treating addiction as a medical issue more than a crime. I think marijuana needs to be legalized but regulated. I think opiates need to be tightly controlled but more flexibility for people who really need them, than where we seem to be headed.

It's a tough issue and not everyone who disagrees with me on this subject is evil or uncaring.

[Major Nikon]

3. People who do succumb to addiction are much better off under a doctor's care

The problem with driving drugs underground is many of those who do succumb to addiction are pretty much given a death sentence.

[Major Nikon]

2. The problem with a drug policy that relies on irrational fear is people figure out it's bullshit

All drugs should be decriminalized and legally available for recreational use.

[ghostsinthemachine]

4. I hate the term "recreational use"... Sounds like you are going skiing or something

I much prefer "personal use".

[OriginalGeek]

5. I personally used them for recreation

Smoking weed was fun. It still is I imagine but I have too much to lose if I get caught.

Will keep voting for recreational use until I no longer have that worry.

[Major Nikon]

6. They don't call it tripping for nothing

[surrealAmerican]

9. Skiing might be as good a metaphor as anything else.

Some people ruin their lives skiing. Some use it as healthy exercise.

It's not a term I like that much either, but that doesn't mean it's more wrong than "personal use". For some people drug use is social rather than personal.

[Victor_c3]

7. I wish I could rec this more than once

Fact 6 (addiction is caused by distress) is so completely true. The drug addicts that I interact with on a very regular basis started their drug addiction after returning from combat. When stress increases in their lives, their PTSD symptomology increases and they turn to drugs to numb the pain. That in turn makes everything else more difficult and creates an insidious feedback loop that is almost impossible for then to break out of.

[ghostsinthemachine]

8. Yeah that one hit me as well

When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose....

[cwydro]

11. Off topic here, but how is the friend you posted about?

The one in the abusive relationship. I hope she's doing better.

[ghostsinthemachine]

19. Well

She keeps going back. Got the cops involved last week, but is back this week. Probably call me later todat to deal with another situation that is going to surely arise.

[cwydro]

23. Well damn, sorry to hear that.

I was hoping no news was good news.

At any rate, keep yourself safe.

[ghostsinthemachine]

24. Yeah

It is getting old. Last week I had other things to do instead of dealing with her, and she isn't returning my mssges since. But I know the next time she needs me she will call.

[ghostsinthemachine]

25. Ding a ling. The phone just rang...

"I'mm homeless". She is getting her stuff from his house right now (again) after something happened. I am meeting her for lunch and will know more later.

[Else You Are Mad]

12. The problem is that...

Addicts will be addicts. The reason why the statistic of drug users and alcohol drinkers that don't become addicts is so high because most drug users are doing so in a social setting for a good time they aren't looking for the high, they are looking to feel good. That is the difference. Once that party or situation is over, most people can walk away from it. Think of the Sunday following a Saturday frat party. You had a good time yet moved on to other things. You did the same a few times for four years then never did it again. For the small percentage that are inclined to addiction, just one time will be all it takes. Their life is overtaken by an insatiable need that can never be quenched and that becomes their life. They don't do it to feel good, they do it for the high. To non-addicts that may seem like a ridiculous statement.

Why am I saying this? Because that statistic makes it seem ok to do drugs because statistically you won't get addicted. Sadly, most people don't know they are inclined to be addicts until it is too late.

Don't get me wrong, I am for the legalization of drugs. People are free to put whatever they want into their bodies. But, using that statistic to fight for the legalization of drugs is dangerous and disingenuous.

Just my two cents.

[SheilaT]

13. Interesting article.

I recently had a brief discussion with a woman who was totally convinced that pretty much everyone who used marijuana went on to harder drugs. I told her that the true gateway drug is cigarettes, and she (a former smoker in case it matters) got very hostile at that suggestion.

Another woman I knew many years ago would want Prohibition back because she thought that everyone who drank alcohol inevitably became alcoholics.

And while alcohol certainly has its down side, at least adults can get it (and cigarettes) legally.

[valerief]

14. If we all lived in Rat Park, nearly no one would be an addict.

http://www.brucekalexander.com/articles-speeches/rat-park/148-addiction-the-view-from-rat-park

Of course, the prison profiteers and illegal drug profiteers wouldn't be as rich either, and that's the point of making drugs illegal, isn't it?

[ghostsinthemachine]

20. I love that. I posted it here a while ago

And so true.

[ananda]

15. Good. This adds even more credence ..

.. to the way the War on Drugs was a ploy to oppress
and incarcerate minorities and the poor.

[Punx]

16. All the individuals with substance abuse problems

That I have known, and it includes a couple of good friends from high school, have had mental health issues that went hand in hand with their substance abbuse problems.

Good medical and mental health treatment for those that need it,and acceptance that many can use without ill effects, instead of incarceration, job loss, and all the negative punishments we come up with as a society would really benefit us. Mostly I want to advocate for mental health treatment for those that need it.

[hollowdweller]

17. I'm old and have done most drugs at one point or another.

Really the only drug I'm addicted to is caffeine and the only other one I use very often is pot.

Speed is great if you have to stay up but makes you too edgy otherwise.

Heroin makes you feel like everything is right with the world but it's a false sense of serenity and is hard to function on.

Psychedelics are nice but not something you can do every day.

Coke...worst one. You don't feel like you are messed up but it impairs your judgement worse than alcohol. Also one thing that always made me nervous about coke is you snort it and then you can feel your heart speed up almost immediately. I always worried if you had some sort of conduction disturbance or arrhythmia undiagnosed it could throw you into cardiac arrest. Sort of put me off.

Benzos, ludes, downers, for me they numb me to the point I'm too detached from real life. Plus there's like a hangover.

The people I've known that got seriously addicted to stuff either it was due to pain and overprescription of opioids for chronic pain or they had some sort of personality flaw they were self medicating.

[ghostsinthemachine]

22. "Being addicted to psychedelics is like having

The shit kicked out of you everyday". Ken Kesey

[mountain grammy]

18. Chasing the Scream is an excellent book.

[Tsiyu]

21. great post, thanks for sharing

With all of our advanced knowledge and technology, we still treat "the other" as they did in the Dark Ages.

Are you mentally ill? Addicted to a specific drug on a cherry-picked list? Unable to afford a doctor to treat your painful condition so you buy black market painkillers?

By Gawd, to the prison with you. We don't have time to deal with your weakness. We'll let our police and courts get you off the streets and lock you away where nobody has to try to help you.

The result: It's easier in some places to get narcotics in prison than anywhere else. And addicts and mentally disabled people in those prisons are treated worse than fighting dogs. They often don't get any counseling, treatment, prescribed medications or learning opportunities.

"We're going to throw you in this prison to teach you how wrong you are because you didn't fit in. But we are going to show you the very worst side of humanity while you're here. We won't support you or model appropriate human behavior. We'll make your problems grow and add a few more."

This nation is mired in malevolent yet oh-so-pious imbecility befitting the 1300's.

[Skittles]

27. excellent post

yes indeed

[Warpy]

26. I would act fact 8

Most people want their brains to work right. Even in the hospital after the gnarliest surgeries you can imagine, patients wanted to stop taking narcotics after the first 3 days or so because they just wanted their brains to work right again. We really had to push the drugs on them so they'd be able to get out of bed and move enough to avoid things like blod clots and pneumonia.

I've been trying to tell people this stuff ever since Nixon decided declaring war on drugs would give him a peachy way to circumvent civil rights in general and the Civil Rights Acts in particular. It's certainly worked out well for his bunch, hasn't it?

What it hasn't done is decrease addiction. In fact, it's increased it as we get more stressed and isolated. It hasn't decreased the amount of drugs out there, it's increased them as high black market prices have funded gangs worldwide and caused a lot of chemists to devise easy to make but deadly bathtub chemistry drugs like krokodil. It hasn't made us safer as those black market drug prices have driven street crime.

Just stop it. The drug war is the worst failure of a boondoggle this country has ever endured. Stop it.