Focus on the addicts not the drugs!

Why we get alcohol and hard drug use so badly wrong

The Drinkers Jean Beraud (1908)

Greetings,

Or perhaps I should say

“Hi, my name is Nick, and I am alcoholic.”

Or I used to be at any rate until I went clean a decade ago, and broke out of the active phase of the addiction. I am writing about it today in the hope I might help a little if you or family or friends are addicted to alcohol, or any other hard drug, or, indeed, food.

When I went clean, I promised not to become a born-again prude who went on about breaking free, like an evangelical preacher recounting the sinful life he left behind.

I confess that I have found it far harder to stick to that promise than to stay off the booze. The ritual debates in the media between libertarians and prohibitionists demand a corrective. They have become as phony as the battles of a civil war reenactment society. They do not begin to engage with the problems addiction brings.

The phony wars were set off again in January by Vivek Murthy, the US surgeon-general, who announced that he wanted health warnings on alcohol, because drinking increases the risk of cancers.

He was right. It does.

Murthy was recommending a novel policy in the rich world. Most European countries do not demand that drink manufacturers warn of the dangers not only of cancer, but of strokes, heart attacks and liver disease.

The omission is pretty incredible. You cannot open a pack of aspirin without finding several closely typed pages on the potential risks. But you can buy a bottle of whisky, which could push you over the edge, without receiving the briefest of reminders that it may not be a great idea to down it in one sitting.

The Economist, true to its classical liberal beliefs, argues against the type of prohibitionism that has led the World Health Organisation to say flatly that there is “no safe level” of alcohol consumption whatsoever. It points out that doctors never calculate the happiness alcohol brings:

“If you fancy a pint or two with friends every now and then, you will be trading a tiny risk of harm for an evening of warmth and good company. That is a trade many rational people will be happy to make.”

And that is also true and also beside the point

The first step towards any kind of sensible policy is to remember that what matters is the addict not the drug.

Alcohol is a hard drug and it’s only our history and culture that prevents us from saying so. But, even if we accept that truth, so what?

Most people can handle hard drugs including heroin and cocaine in moderation. What causes the most grotesque illnesses, premature death, poverty, murder, rape, needless accidents and endless grief is addiction.

All effort ought therefore to be concentrated on understanding why some people become addicts while others don’t, and why some people can beat their addiction and go clean when others cannot.

Yet, and I may be missing something, in decades of listening to the political talk shows I have never heard a serious discussion on the need to fund drug and alcohol rehabilitation services. They were slashed during the Tory years, despite the Tories swearing that they would not do that, and still remain on a feeble footing.

I won’t start by blaming politicians, however. The greatest difficulty is tackling addiction, as I well know, is getting addicts to admit that they (we) are addicted.

Before the booze killed him, Dylan Thomas cried