- Professor Alexander argues this discovery is a profound challenge both to the right-wing view that addiction is a moral failing caused by too much hedonistic partying, and the liberal view that addiction is a disease taking place in a chemically hijacked brain. In fact, he argues, addiction is an adaptation. It's not you. It's your cage.
Oh no! gasp Not change....ourselves! But seriously..this is a pretty good article, albeit a bit over the top in some instances. This makes 100% sense. Addiction is partially due to routine and routine of the reward centers of your brain. It's the reason I can't seem to stop smoking cigarettes when I'm driving in LA traffic but have literally no issues going without a cigarette for for weeks in Sri Lanka / Costa Rica. If you change the location, daily routine, whatever that revolves around the addiction, it's much easier to stop. It wasn't that I was loving Sri Lanka so much more than LA traffic (although I was). It was that my body has become conditioned to expect and desire a cigarette when I hop in my car. Without that trigger, it's much easier to not smoke. Whenever I have friends that are dealing with addiction I tell them to take whatever money they will spend on drugs in the next 3 months and see where in the world they can go. No one seems to take me seriously, which is a shame. They could get sober and have a fucking epic adventure. The hard part is staying clean when you get back to your normal routine. I know a guy who did six weeks inpatient for alcohol, loved it, did great, was so stoked to have his life back, and picked up a bottle of scotch from his corner store on his way home from rehab. Routines, man. Another ridiculous, over-simplified line. >.< Seriously, this is like HuffPo is remaking Crash. I agree with the sentiment of the author. The war on drugs doesn't work. It doesn't tackle nor cure the issues that need curing. It most likely makes things worse, not better. But telling people to love each other, or politicians to make amendments and laws around love & connection is just about as ridiculous as the war on drugs –– plus it has heaps less data to back it up. Sentiment doesn't make it very far when it comes to politics. I caught a story not too long ago about solving homelessness. Surprisingly, it was literally as simple as: give the homeless people homes. – The Shockingly Simple Solution to Homelessness, Mother Jones Whoa.If we truly absorb this new story, we will have to change a lot more than the drug war. We will have to change ourselves.
But in fact some 95 percent of the addicted soldiers -- according to the same study -- simply stopped. Very few had rehab. They shifted from a terrifying cage back to a pleasant one, so didn't want the drug any more.
So the opposite of addiction is not sobriety. It is human connection.
Human beings are bonding animals. We need to connect and love.
The results were remarkable. After five years, 88 percent of the clients were still in their apartments, and the cost of caring for them in their own homes was a little less than what it would have cost to take care of them on the street. A subsequent study of 4,679 New York City homeless with severe mental illness found that each cost an average of $40,449 a year in emergency room, shelter, and other expenses to the system, and that getting those individuals in supportive housing saved an average of $16,282.
I agree. The author does sound a bit hurried or desperate to make his point, but it's a very important point nonetheless. As I come to understand it: "Addiction is not a moral failing or an inability to exert willpower, though it may have characteristics of both. It is a social disruption." As for your point that politicians can't legislate love and connection, I agree it's kind of a ridiculous concept, but I don't think it's equivalent to the war on drugs. And now that I think about it, it only sounds ridiculous when you say love & connection. But what if instead of legislation that incentivized hugs and hi-fives, there was compulsory national community service for two years when you turned 18. Or, as you suggested, services that provided homes for the homeless, help for the mentally ill, decriminalization of drug use, etc. That would get my vote.But seriously..this is a pretty good article, albeit a bit over the top in some instances.
I am hoping that as more research is done about giving people homes or no-strings-attached cash money, we will start realizing that all the crazy charity and legislative work could be far more simple and productive. As it stands now so much of the money and time is spent on talking and organizing rather than the actual help. My point, which I didn't make very clearly, is that a lot of politics is "facts" - numbers and data that back up people's stances. Until we have a way to measure the effect hugs & hi-fives have or how many hi-fives were given last year vs this year, its going to be hard to legislate. Saying "we got 10 billion dollars off the street, which was 120% more than last year" with photos of cops standing in front of heaps of money, guns, and drugs is "proof positive" that the laws are "working". Nevermind the fact that the facts are manipulated heavily, a pile of money and drugs doesn't say anything about improvements to poverty-stricken areas, or the laws are working in the sense that they are actually curbing violence and drug use and improving communities. Big dollar signs and percentages = success. We can't repeal something so "successful".