Recent Rants On Legalization

While I am totally in favor of full legalization of all drugs, I don’t talk about it much here because I’ve generally figured it’d be a distraction from my main mission (which is to show people that addiction is not an involuntary behavior but a fluid pattern of choices which can be changed at any given moment).  Nevertheless I was confronted with 2 great pieces on legalization yesterday, which I absolutely must share with my readers, and which I think are relevant to my goals here (which I’ll explain later).

First, Penn Jillette rips into the President about drug prohibition – astutely making the point that he wouldn’t be president today if he had been caught with the marijuana or cocaine he admits to having used in his younger days.  He also touches on the ‘treatment vs jail’ false dilemma:

Next, there’s this piece about the irrelevance of prohibition from Australian writer Kate Holden.  Even though I suspect Holden might hold those more conventional recovery views which I find so troublesome, I still have to hand it to her – on this piece she nailed it.  She just hammers home the point that when someone is dedicated to using substances, the law will do very little to influence their choice.  Here’s an excerpt:

For five anguished, exhausting and educative years in the 1990s I, like thousands of ordinary Australians, was addicted to heroin. And I can honestly say that during that time the thought that heroin was illegal was very far from the top of my mind.

I was focused on protecting myself from violence, hoping to avoid overdose, battling overwhelming messages of shaming and hostility from society and simply getting through each day without collapsing. In this way, although I was never actually charged with using heroin, the criminal penalties attached to the drug would inevitably propel me further and further into a dark, unhappy, alienated and criminal world.

When society already hates and fears you, what is your interest in observing a law that seems so arbitrary (alcohol is legal) and unjust (addicts are the most vulnerable in the drug supply chain)? Everything has already been lost. What’s a criminal conviction to someone whose body is screaming in pain and has nothing further to forfeit?

Read the full piece at The Sydney Morning Herald: Addicts know many fears, but the law is least among them.

Holden’s point brings me to why I’m sorta breaking my informal “no legalization rhetoric” rule today – she talks about being propelled into an ever darker world due to the law, and that really resonates with me.  People start using substances simply because it offers a measure of pleasure/happiness, and of course they continue for this same reason, but somewhere along the line their tastes may change, and they may start to think they can find greater levels of happiness elsewhere.  This is how I believe everyone (treated or not, conscious of this fact or not) changes a substance use habit.  This is a natural process, much in the same way my nieces lost interest in teeny-bopper singers and moved on to 90’s grunge and classic rock!  Things get old, especially when they lack depth (the cheap thrills of drug use are about as deep Disney’s latest teen heart-throb).

To make my point perfectly clear- people change their habits when their desires change, they change their desires when they change their perception of what they believe will bring them the greater amount of happiness (in the Cognitive Behavioral Education program I teach, we call this basic idea The Freedom Model Philosophy).  This is a magnificently simple explanation for substance use, and logically presents a path for changing the habit – re-evaluate, explore and weigh your options, then make a choice based on getting yourself the greater amount of happiness.  Again, this is what I think everyone naturally does anyways, but I’m afraid they become distracted by other people’s judgments, a battle of wills between family members trying to control them, guilt, fear, shame, nasty self-defeating beliefs such as the disease model of addiction, and drug prohibition does a lot to help people dig their heels in.  As one gets deeper and deeper into drug use, they eventually develop total disrespect for the law, and depending upon how zealous their local law enforcers are, they may enter into a battle of wills just as the rebellious teen does with their parents, and they may develop a deeply entrenched self-image as an outsider – rejecting society.

While all of this nonsense is going on (including being caught in the legal system for the commission of victimless non-crimes), the substance user is completely distracted from the most important question we all face at every moment of our lives:  what will make me happiest? or, what is in my best interest?  Less interference from the state (more freedom) would allow people to freely ponder such questions.

Also, if you think state-sponsored treatment is the solution, I must vehemently disagree.  First of all, treatment doesn’t work, but second of all – you should see the bewildered institutionalized people I see – those who’ve been through tons of state mandated and/or sponsored treatment programs – they’ve given up any ownership of their own choices – they’ve given up their entire identity as an individual, and they’re waiting for a treatment to work and a counselor to micromanage their lives.  The sad part is that even when they find such counselors, they don’t listen, because they’re still human, and as much as they try to substitute someone else’s choices for their own, they’re still driven by the selfish (in a good sense) pursuit of personal happiness – so they end up living a torn confusing and disastrous life.