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.
New article in Scientific American: "New hope for pain relief," that ignores the fact that we have outlawed the time-honored panacea. Scientists want a drug that won't run the risk of inspiring us.
What is the end game of the drug warrior? A world in which no one wants drugs? That's not science. It's the drug-hating religion of Christian Science. You know, the American religion that outsources its Inquisition to drug-testing labs.
"When two men who have been in an aggressive mood toward each other take part in the ritual, one is able to say to the other, 'Come, let us drink, for there is something between us.' " re: the Mayan use of the balche drink in Encyc of Psych Plants, by Ratsch & Hofmann
In an article about Mazatec mushroom use, the author says: "Mushrooms should not be considered a drug." He misses the point: NOTHING should be considered a drug: every substance has potential good uses.
How would we even KNOW that outlawed drugs have no positive uses? We first have to incorporate them in a sane, empathic and creative way to find that out, and the drug war makes such a sensible approach absolutely impossible.
The Cabinet of Caligari ('62) ends with a shameless display of psychiatric triumphalism. Happy shock therapy patients waltz freely about a mansion in which the "sick" protagonist has just been "cured" by tranquilizers and psychoanalysis. Did Robert Bloch believe his own script?
Materialist scientists are drug war collaborators. They are more than happy to have their fight against idealism rigged by drug law, which outlaws precisely those substances whose use serves to cast their materialism into question.
Someone should stand outside Jefferson's estate and hand out leaflets describing the DEA's 1987 raid on Monticello to confiscate poppy plants. That raid was against everything Jefferson stood for. The TJ Foundation DISHONORED JEFFERSON and their visitors should know that!
Being a lifetime patient is not the issue: that could make perfect sense in certain cases. But if I am to be "using" for life, I demand the drug of MY CHOICE, not that of Big Pharma and mainstream psychiatry, who are dogmatically deaf to the benefits of hated substances.
Our tolerance for freedom wanes in proportion as we consider "drugs" to be demonic. This is the dark side behind the new ostensibly comic genre about Cocaine Bears and such. It shows that Americans are superstitious about drugs in a way that Neanderthals would have understood.
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)