Drugs

People use drugs to alter their internal states (their subjective experience of the moment), so the key question regarding alcohol and drug use (and abuse) is why people have such a need to change their subjective experience.  Is life not OK without the drugs?  Why not?  Using a substance, most often alcohol, at the point each day when we transition from the intensity of work to a more relaxed “at-home” state has been with us for a long time and does not have to have negative consequences, but going beyond this—using drugs to escape from one’s life—almost always has very serious negative consequences.  We need, therefore, to examine why so many lives are so unpleasant as to need this artificial escape (hating one’s job, hating one’s family, hating oneself, feeling no closeness or support from others, seeing only lying and cheating around one, seeing no alternatives).  Why isn’t real life good enough?

Yes, some people seem to have a genetic predisposition or vulnerability to overuse, but drug abuse is not a disease but rather a condition, and we can alter our conditions if we have the insight to understand what can happen to us (and what is happening to us) and the determination to choose the best overall course of action for our lives.  (A physical predisposition or vulnerability does not cause a person to take that first drink or use that first line of cocaine.)  Avoiding overuse often rests on having the foresight to see how substance use/abuse leads so often to a worse life for abusers, and having the self-love to avoid those negative consequences.  (Psychologically this requires making those negative future consequences as “real” in one’s imagination as the immediate pleasure of escape or “feeling better” from using the substance, so one can fairly weigh them and decide on what is best for one.)

Here we see one of the unsolved psychological problems for our species—that we have no built-in limits for what is enough.  If we pay attention to them, we have built-in limits for assuaging hunger and thirst, but we have no such built-in limits for how much is enough in terms of possessions, love, or security.  Many times people feel driven to go so far in trying to feel secure and feel good about themselves that they harm themselves and/or others in so doing (taking more for themselves when others truly don’t have enough for survival, kidding themselves that adulation or obedience are evidences of love, believing that having millions of dollars will make them happy).  Many, many people would be happier in our society if they sought genuine and deep connections with others and the joys of benefiting others, while also having sufficient physical resources to maintain life.

I will support reality-based treatments for alcohol and drug abuse, without expending resources on people who may be in crisis but are not ready to actually change themselves.  “Rehab” is too often just a period of respite while people gather themselves for the next period of drug use.