ddiction is not an objective term, it is a political term. It is another Drug War invention designed to pathologize the victims of prohibition.
To see this, let's first consider the way that the term is defined in Webster's Dictionary.
addiction: "The quality or state of being addicted -- specifically : the compulsive uncontrolled use of habit-forming drugs beyond the period of medical need or under conditions harmful to society."
Now let's consider four problems with that definition:
1) It's a little "rich" to pathologize the "compulsive uncontrolled use" of drugs with the pejorative label of "addiction," given that we live in a world where multibillion-dollar agencies are tasked with the job of making drug use as dangerous as possible. If, on the other hand, drugs were re-legalized and users had a smorgasbord of psychoactive options from which they could choose freely and were taught to use them safely, this "compulsive uncontrolled use" would arguably not exist. A drug that caused undue compulsion would be replaced by other less compulsion-causing drugs. (Obsessive use of a contaminated Fentanyl supply could be replaced, for instance, with a relaxing nightly session of uncontaminated opium smoking.) But this is something that the Drug Warrior cannot imagine, of course, because their puritanical presumptions make it unthinkable to fight drugs with drugs.
2) "beyond the period of medical need." This qualification ignores the whole reason for USING psychoactive drugs in the first place: they are not used for medical purposes but rather for the very human purpose of attaining self-transcendence in life. By defining addiction in terms of "medical need," we put scientists and doctors in judgment of a decision about drug use that only the user is competent to make. Only the user can decide if use of a certain psychoactive drug can be justified by a cost-benefit analysis given the user's own priorities in life, given what they personally consider to be the "summum bonum," a good life. The scientists and researchers may advise the would-be user about physical risks of a given drug, but they cannot decide whether that risk is worth taking because they do not know what the user most values in life. (Perhaps the user is like the opium-loving physician Avicenna, who was said to have valued "a short life with width to a narrow one with length.") Sure, the scientists and doctors can say that such illegal use would be wrong, morally speaking, as most would probably do these days, but that is not medical advice, that is legal and/or religious advice.
Even the determination of the amount of pain relief required in a given medical case is not a medical decision, except insofar as the doctor ensures that the dosages in question are not going to prove palpably injurious or lethal to a patient. Assuming that the patient's comfort is the goal of pain relief, then the decision about proper dosage must be informed by the patient's subjective experience of pain. This experience is in turn shaped in various ways and to various extents by social norms, as Ivan Illich discusses in Medical Nemesis. In other words, the patient is the expert when it comes to the amount of pain relief they require for a certain situation. It's barbarous that his or her preferences would be overruled by bureaucrats who intimidate doctors into prescribing niggardly doses of medicine in conformance to some supposed "objectively correct dosage" based on a supposedly average patient. Such politically correct dosing ignores the obvious fact that every patient is both different and unique in how they tolerate and even define "pain." They should not be punished for having outlier reactions to pain based on a Bell's curve depicting statistically typical reactions.
3) "under conditions harmful to society"? Who decides what is harmful to society? This is a subjective judgment. The Christian Scientist believes that any drug use is harmful to society, as do most politicians. The typical politician will also point to open-air drug markets and the mis-called "opioid crisis" as signs of harm, but this is a mere political charge in a world in which the harms of prohibition are never acknowledged, let alone discussed. The Drug Warriors blame drugs for the downsides of prohibition in order to divert attention from the real culprit: prohibition itself, which limits choices, contaminates the drug supply, and refuses to even speak about safe use.
4) The definition implies that there's something wrong with habit-forming drugs. But this is not an obvious truth. Coffee is habit-forming and use is encouraged. Alcohol is habit-forming, cigarettes are habit-forming. 1 in 4 American women use SSRIs every day of their life. And we don't even call that a habit. To the contrary, we call that "responsibly taking care of one's mental health!"
Author's Follow-up: October 28, 2023
Drug warriors will no doubt point to the case of hospital patients who are given a substance for pain relief and then become psychologically and perhaps even physically dependent on that drug. I have just three comments to attempt to pacify these statistically-challenged worrywarts.
1) The world is not perfect. We can never save everybody. Horse riding kills hundreds every year. Thousands of people die every year after taking aspirin. We have to put these things in perspective. It's cruel and unusual idiocy therefore to outlaw the use of time-honored godsends merely because they pose dangers to the unwary and thereby make children suffer in hospice. Even as I type this, there are many hospitals in India that do not stock morphine because of the Chicken Little fearmongering of puritanical American demagogues. Just think of all the terminal patients that are going through hell right now thanks to the irresponsible idiocy of stateside politicians. The Drug Warrior's answer is to deny adequate pain relief and relaxation (and spiritual quests, etc.) to billions and billions in order to save a handful of cases that can be portrayed on 48 Hours to a sound track of sobbing violins. This makes as much sense as denying food to your family because junior once choked on a chicken bone. It's also Christian Science gone mad.
2) When all drugs are legal and we have pharmacologically savvy empaths (instead of pill peddling psychiatrists), then such "addictions" are not going to be the end of the world for anybody. If anything, they may lead the supposed "addict" on a voyage of self-discovery with the responsible and guided use of empathogens and psychedelics. This is common sense -- but it's something that the Drug Warrior cannot imagine, for their puritan mindset renders them incapable of even thinking of fighting drugs with drugs. So much for the psychological aspects of so-called 'addiction.' The physical aspects can be treated by sleep cures of the kind that Jim Hogshire mentions in Opium for the Masses, and such cures can be expanded and perfected once we dump the anti-drug mindset that discourages such progress. In short, addiction need not be hell -- but Drug Warriors actually want it to be hell. Why? So that they can parlay the addict's pain into morality tales about the supposed evils of drugs.
3) Finally, as Carl Hart reminds us, the vast majority of drug users use drugs safely, despite the fact that their government is spending billions of dollars for the purpose of putting them in jeopardy.
Fearmongering
The drug war is the ultimate case of fearmongering. And yet academics and historians fail to recognize it as such. They will protest eloquently against the outrages of the witch hunts of yore, but they are blind to the witch hunts of the present. What is a drug dealer but a modern service magician, someone who sells psychoactive medicine designed to effect personal ends for the user? They are simply providing an alternative to materialistic medicine, which ignores common sense and so ignores the glaringly obvious value of such substances.
Classic prohibitionist gaslighting, telling me that "drugs" is a neutral term. What planet are they living on?
Now the folks who helped Matthew get Ketamine must be sacrificed on the altar of the Drug War, lest people start thinking that the Drug War itself was at fault.y
There are no recreational drugs. Even laughing gas has rational uses because it gives us a break from morbid introspection. There are recreational USES of drugs, but the term "recreational" is often used to express our disdain for users who go outside the healthcare system.
Drug warriors are full of hate for "users." Many of them make it clear that they want users to die (like Gates and Bennett...). The drug war has weaponized humanity's worst instincts.
Over 45% of traumatic brain injuries are caused by horseback riding (ABC News). Tell your representatives to outlaw horseback riding and make it a federal offence to teach a child how to ride! Brought to you by the Partnership for a Death Free America.
If we encourage folks to use antidepressants daily, there is nothing wrong with them using heroin daily. A founder of Johns Hopkins used morphine daily and he not only survived, but he thrived.
The FDA tells us that MDMA is not safe. This is the same FDA that tells us that "shock therapy" is safe.
Drugs that sharpen the mind should be thoroughly investigated for their potential to help dementia victims. Instead, we prefer to demonize these drugs as useless. That's anti-scientific and anti-patient.
My approach to withdrawal: incrementally reduce daily doses over 6 months, or even a year, meanwhile using all the legal entheogens and psychedelics that you can find in a way likely to boost your endurance and "sense of purpose" to make withdrawal successful.
"There has been so much delirious nonsense written about drugs that sane men may well despair of seeing the light." -- Aleister Crowley, from "Essays on Intoxication"
Buy the Drug War Comic Book by the Drug War Philosopher Brian Quass, featuring 150 hilarious op-ed pics about America's disgraceful war on Americans
You have been reading an article entitled, Four reasons why Addiction is a political term published on October 28, 2023 on AbolishTheDEA.com. For more information about America's disgraceful drug war, which is anti-patient, anti-minority, anti-scientific, anti-mother nature, imperialistic, the establishment of the Christian Science religion, a violation of the natural law upon which America was founded, and a childish and counterproductive way of looking at the world, one which causes all of the problems that it purports to solve, and then some, visit the drug war philosopher, at abolishTheDEA.com. (philosopher's bio; go to top of this page)
ddiction is not an objective term, it is a political term. It is another Drug War invention designed to pathologize the victims of prohibition.
Drug warriors will no doubt point to the case of hospital patients who are given a substance for pain relief and then become psychologically and perhaps even physically dependent on that drug. I have just three comments to attempt to pacify these statistically-challenged worrywarts.
You have been reading an article entitled, Four reasons why Addiction is a political term published on October 28, 2023 on AbolishTheDEA.com. For more information about America's disgraceful drug war, which is anti-patient, anti-minority, anti-scientific, anti-mother nature, imperialistic, the establishment of the Christian Science religion, a violation of the natural law upon which America was founded, and a childish and counterproductive way of looking at the world, one which causes all of the problems that it purports to solve, and then some, visit the drug war philosopher, at abolishTheDEA.com. (philosopher's bio; go to top of this page)