Drug abuse is a habit. Some habits are trivial, but other habits are complex--they require time and concerted effort. Drug habits are the latter kind. So is mastering a musical instrument.
To develop a complex habit one must have a passion for it. Drug addicts don’t wake up and make a simple choice to consume drugs; they consume drugs because it is their passion. They arrange their lives around drugs, they hang out with other drug users, and they cut themselves off from respectable society. When they experience craving and withdrawal symptoms they simply do more drugs. They always do. Drugs haven’t overtaken them; they’ve overtaken drugs—passionately.
All habits change the brain.
Whether you practice the piano or deliver cocaine to your brain, the human
brain adapts to the demands that are placed on it. The changes are predictable
and consistent. Stop practicing a habit and those changes are dismantled.
Shawn Vestal of the Spokesman-Review interviewed me about my book, Blowing Smoke: Rethinking the War on Drugs without Prohibition and Rehab (Rowman & LIttlefield), which is scheduled for release later
this month. In his column he accurately reflected my criticisms of the disease model of substance abuse and he captured the fears most people
have about drug legalization. He interviewed one Grace Creasman, director of
addiction studies at Eastern Washington University. As if on cue to any
criticism of the disease model, she assumed the only other position was that
drug abuse is a choice: “Why would someone deliberately ruin their lives? Why
would anyone do that to themselves? Why would they lose their jobs, their husbands
or wives, their whole lives, unless there was something more to it?”Indeed, there is something more to it. Passions are not driven by choices, passions drive choices. Addicts don’t make choices to ruin their lives, their passions ruin their lives. Passions change only through pain. Becoming a drug abuser is a long, dark road. One comes out of it only through deep, personal pain.
This is why drug rehab doesn’t work, a topic I cover in Blowing Smoke. The rehab industry uses the disease model to market itself, but rehab is really little more than subtle appeals to addicts to make better choices. Thought-experiments, though, are not capable of changing passions. Passions change only with pain. Only when addicts hit bottom, and hit it hard, do they begin to change their ways.
My solution to the drug problem is to accept responsible drug use as a cultural norm (legalize), but let irresponsible users experience the pain of there passions. In most cases this can be done with a simple laissez faire approach--quit rescuing addicts from the consequences of their behavior.
