Is it infallibly true that some drugs should be illegal?

[TimeEntrance]

@CopticChristian
Hmm while you don’t classify it as a disease, would you agree with the idea that some people are more predisposed genetically to fall into addiction?

I don’t believe this. And I’ve expressed my disagreement about the genetic heritability of alcoholism and addiction with educated counselors at the VA.

From my experience most counselors - and most alcoholics and addicts - purchase into this popular hypothesis of genetically inheriting either “addiction” broadly, or their specific addiction to whatever substance.

It follows the course of homosexuality whereby it is believed that is genetically heritable it is an amoral issue. But that does not follow even if it were (homosexuality, addiction etc.) genetically heritable. It’s also a way trying to lessen responsibility.

I have my own hypothesis. But I had to taken into account the high rates of alcoholism within the population of Amerindians - which suggests that population has some biological susceptibility to alcoholism.

My own hypothesis is that substance addictions are not genetically heritable, but that in the case of alcoholism, due to the long use of alcohol among many human populations for thousands of years, a number of human populations have passed down genetically heritable alleles that have a greater (not total) resistance to alcoholism.

Of course my hypothesis could be totally wrong.

But I think the more liberal definition of dis-ease carries more truth about substance addiction than genetic heritability does.

I know your question was not directed at me but I thought I would express my opinion anyways.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disease

A disease is an abnormal condition affecting the body of an organism. It is often construed to be a medical condition associated with specific symptoms and signs.[1] It may be caused by external factors, such as infectious disease, or it may be caused by internal dysfunctions, such as autoimmune diseases. In humans, “disease” is often used more broadly to refer to any condition that causes pain, dysfunction, distress, social problems, or death to the person afflicted, or similar problems for those in contact with the person. In this broader sense, it sometimes includes injuries, disabilities, disorders, syndromes, infections, isolated symptoms, deviant behaviors, and atypical variations of structure and function, while in other contexts and for other purposes these may be considered distinguishable categories. Diseases usually affect people not only physically, but also emotionally, as contracting and living with many diseases can alter one’s perspective on life, and their personality.

 

[interestedman]

I don’t believe this. And I’ve expressed my disagreement about the genetic heritability of alcoholism and addiction with educated counselors at the VA.

From my experience most counselors - and most alcoholics and addicts - purchase into this popular hypothesis of genetically inheriting either “addiction” broadly, or their specific addiction to whatever substance.

It follows the course of homosexuality whereby it is believed that is genetically heritable it is an amoral issue. But that does not follow even if it were (homosexuality, addiction etc.) genetically heritable. It’s also a way trying to lessen responsibility.

I have my own hypothesis. But I had to taken into account the high rates of alcoholism within the population of Amerindians - which suggests that population has some biological susceptibility to alcoholism.

My own hypothesis is that substance addictions are not genetically heritable, but that in the case of alcoholism, due to the long use of alcohol among many human populations for thousands of years, a number of human populations have passed down genetically heritable alleles that have a greater (not total) resistance to alcoholism.

Of course my hypothesis could be totally wrong.

But I think the more liberal definition of dis-ease carries more truth about substance addiction than genetic heritability does.

I know your question was not directed at me but I thought I would express my opinion anyways.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disease

You think that all people started as alcoholics and that some groups of people developed a resistance to it? Really? Is that really what you are saying?

 

[CopticChristian]

@CopticChristian
Hmm while you don’t classify it as a disease, would you agree with the idea that some people are more predisposed genetically to fall into addiction?

Nate,

I muse at the hmmm…ask yourself the question…

Disease

What kind of disease is this addiction disease…

The answer

A Spiritual Disease

A what? Yup that is what is touted…A Spiritual Disease…

Genetics. There is no genetics for addiction. There may be some sort of genetic sensitivity to one thing or another ie alcohol, drugs…but ultimately you make the choice in using that substance…

 

[CopticChristian]

It’s apparent you have an agenda, Coptic.

You prefer to war over it’s Protestant origins. I prefer not. In this case the Protestants did something extraordinarily remarkable for Christian history.

most in AA and most (if not all) in the Veteran Hospitals that deal with addicts would disagree with me and have.

Your problem is you need to read the Serenity Prayer and come to terms with the fact this is 2012 and a secular run world (at least in the West).

I’m on no jihad to make all non-Christian and non-religious people of the world believe what I believe about sin or Satan or demonic oppression (or even possession). With respects to alcoholism, drug addiction, or HIV the treatment of non of them requires any mention of sin. I was shot 3 times due to my drunkenness which was due to my alcoholism and the doctors, surgeons, and nurses patched me up and took care of me. No mention of the sin. Except maybe… one nurse in the ER or wherever I was when I awoke after several days of having my stomach on the outside. She kept implying they should let me suffer and die.

But as I always say 99% of the hospital staff treated me awesome! And as I always say… whether they were atheist, Jews, agnostic, Protestant or whatever… it was my first time experience real Christian charity.

No… AA does not hammer away on the subject of sin or eternal damnation in hell. They don’t go into politics or economics or banking scandals either. They are united for one purpose and they have too many people from to many different backgrounds to be engaging in issues that are essentially divisive issues. There are active homosexuals, atheists, conservatives, liberals, Catholics, and transsexuals in AA.

And none of those acronyms you mentioned work any better than AA, NA, or CA. If you had no education in the sciences - which employs mathematical statistics - I would just chalk it up to ignorance with no malevolent agenda. But the ability to come up with accurate statistical data on addiction with recovery is notoriously difficult. What’s recovery? One year? Five years? Thirty years? Does one slip negate that or not? How about twenty slips? I are the subjects of the survey being honest?

I’ve personally known plenty of addicts that have said they were clean while still actively using.

Actually, of every veteran I went through VA rehab with the last time, every single one of them has gone back to using.

The best success rates - we have been repeatedly told - as far as can be inferred from the data our therapists have said, come with those that stay connected to some sort of support group be it AA or something else.

And alcoholism and drug addiction can be considered a disease - dis-ease - depending on how one wants to define that. Like I said it is similar to the controversy over biological race. Anthropologist, biologists, and sociologist say only one race exists among humans, and therefore our categorizations of different races is a social construct.

Which is true… if one defines races as a concept of subspecies. If one uses a more liberal definition of races as a concept denoting populations that share similar phenotypes, then one can speak of the “black race” and the “white race” because those separate races would be coherent with the little genetic difference between the two populations as well as the Out of Africa Theory.

So, “disease” is similar to that. It’s predicated on how one defines that term.

Time,

So you want me as a physician to accept from you that the definition of disease is arbitrary. That certainly does not sound like any kind of science to me. You believe that my problem is understanding the serenity prayer? How about all the prayers.

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.
Living one day at a time;
Enjoying one moment at a time;
Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace;
Taking, as He did, this sinful world
as it is, not as I would have it;
Trusting that He will make all things right if I surrender to His Will;
That I may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with Him Forever in the next.

Amen. --Reinhold Niebuhr

Seventh Step Prayer

My Creator, I am now willing that you should have all of me, good and bad. I pray that you now remove from me every single defect of character which stands in the way of my usefulness to you and my fellows. Grant me strength, as I go out from here to do your bidding. Amen

Alcoholics Anonymous pp.76, Copyright © Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc.

The Third Step Prayer

God, I offer myself to Thee — to build with me and to do with me as Thou wilt. Relieve me of the bondage of self, that I may better do Thy will. Take away my difficulties, that victory over them may bear witness to those I would help of Thy Power, Thy Love, and Thy Way of life. May I do Thy will always!

Eleventh Step Prayer

Lord, make me a channel of thy peace–that where there is hatred, I may bring love–that where there is wrong, I may bring the spirit of forgiveness–that where there is discord, I may bring harmony–that where there is error, I may bring truth–that where there is doubt, I may bring faith–that where there is despair, I may bring hope–that where there are shadows, I may bring light–that where there is sadness, I may bring joy. Lord, grant that I may seek rather to comfort than to be comforted–to understand, than to be understood–to love, than to be loved. For it is by self-forgetting that one finds. It is by forgiving that one is forgiven. It is by dying that one awakens to eternal life.

This is for the Spiritual Disease of Addiction…

You are correct about my agenda…I am addicted to the truth

 

[CopticChristian]

I propose that in the absence of a cure addiction requires an arrest or the fate of the addict is almost certainly death, institutionalization, or jail.

And why does you mode of reasoning as it pertains to medical science remind me of the logical fallacy known as the God of the Gaps Theory?

A future cure for one, two, three or possibly all addictions may come about in the future by biochemist in collaboration with neuroscientists and medical research hospitals. I know my university - a tier 4 ranked university - has carried our research a number of times on cocaine addicts. Just because something is not known today does not mean it won’t be known tomorrow.

A cure for alcoholism would result in the vast majority - if not all - alcoholics being able to once again drink socially.

Why do you reference the Church? It’s obvious you don’t know what you are talking about. The Church has word on morals (or vices) but not on the bio-chemical workings of the brain or the full bio-chemical and neurological phenomena of substance addiction.

The problem with alcoholism and something like crack addiction goes beyond vice. It goes beyond vice because it’s usually an issue of once a person begins to consume *X *substance they can’t stop unless either they run out of money or something outside themselves stops them.

Or put it another way… something like crack addiction defies the economic law of… what is it called… The Law of Diminishing Returns?

Most crack addicts smoked crack and were not addicted to it (only a vice). But at some point they became addicted to it (more than just a vice). It’s this latter part that is associated with what some term a “man-made disease.”

And addiction is usually progressive or that is to say it gets worse. So, my alcoholism is in early phases relative to my other substance addiction. And I drank for years - first got drunk at age 13 - and I drank heavy. I could always stop whenever I wanted it and rarely if ever had even a slight craving for alcohol. I rarely had blackouts too. All that began to change 2 or 3 years ago. But I think likely due to the toll my other addiction had physically or chemically on my brain. “Weakening” my brain if you will.

Time,

You are steeped in the brainwashing of the 12 step/disease model of Addiction. This information is all propaganda and not true.

From The Truth About Addiction…

Progression is not inevitable—it is the exception.

If the majority of people give up addictive habits, then the idea of “inevitable progression” doesn’t hold water. Calling addiction a “progressive disease” comes from looking at the few who have progressed to severe addiction and tracing the path by which they got there. The progression of addictive problems only seems inevitable after the fact. For example, the great majority of college overdrinkers, even those who black out at fraternity parties, become moderate drinkers in middle age.6 When you consider that even most of the people who use narcotics and cocaine do not end up addicted, you can see that drug-and-alcohol use patterns are many and varied, even when a person uses a substance abusively for a time.

 

[CopticChristian]

I don’t believe this. And I’ve expressed my disagreement about the genetic heritability of alcoholism and addiction with educated counselors at the VA.

From my experience most counselors - and most alcoholics and addicts - purchase into this popular hypothesis of genetically inheriting either “addiction” broadly, or their specific addiction to whatever substance.

It follows the course of homosexuality whereby it is believed that is genetically heritable it is an amoral issue. But that does not follow even if it were (homosexuality, addiction etc.) genetically heritable. It’s also a way trying to lessen responsibility.

I have my own hypothesis. But I had to taken into account the high rates of alcoholism within the population of Amerindians - which suggests that population has some biological susceptibility to alcoholism.

My own hypothesis is that substance addictions are not genetically heritable, but that in the case of alcoholism, due to the long use of alcohol among many human populations for thousands of years, a number of human populations have passed down genetically heritable alleles that have a greater (not total) resistance to alcoholism.

Of course my hypothesis could be totally wrong.

But I think the more liberal definition of dis-ease carries more truth about substance addiction than genetic heritability does.

I know your question was not directed at me but I thought I would express my opinion anyways.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disease

Time,

You are wrong. Wikipedia is no source for accurate medical information. While in medical school and since Wikipedia was never consulted.

From the Truth about addiction…

No biological or genetic mechanisms have been identified that account for addictive behavior.

Even for alcoholism, as the following chapter will show, the evidence for genetic inheritance is unconvincing. By now, probably every well-informed reader has heard announcements that scientists have discovered a gene that causes alcoholism. In fact, as one of us wrote in The Atlantic, this is far from the case, and the study that prompted these claims has already been refuted by another study in the same journal.1 Moreover, if a gene were found to influence alcoholism, would the same gene cause drug addiction? Would it be related to smoking? Would it also cause compulsive gambling and overeating? If so, this would mean that everyone with any of these addictions has this genetic inheritance. Indeed, given the ubiquity of the problems described, the person without this inheritance would seem to be the notable exception.

How could an addiction like smoking be genetic? Why are some types of people more likely to smoke than others (about half of waitresses and car salesmen smoke, compared with about a tenth of lawyers and doctors)? And does believing that an addiction like smoking is genetic help the person quit (are all those smokers who quit not “genetically” addicted)? Returning to alcohol, are people really predestined biologically to become alcoholics and thus to become A.A. members? Think about the rock group Aerosmith: all five members of this group now belong to A.A., just as they once all drank and took drugs together. How unlikely a coincidence it is that five unrelated people with the alcoholic/addictive inheritance should run into one another and form a band!

The idea that genes make you become alcoholic cannot possibly help us understand how people develop drinking problems over years, why they choose on so many occasions to go out drinking, how they become members of heavy-drinking groups, and how drinkers are so influenced by the circumstances of their lives. Genes may make a person unusually sensitive to the physiological effects of alcohol; a person can find drinking extremely relaxing or enjoyable; but this says nothing about how the person drinks over the course of a lifetime. After all, some people say, “I never have more than one or two drinks at a time, because alcohol goes straight to my head.”

 

[CopticChristian]

It’s apparent you have an agenda, Coptic.

Atheists and others often ask, “What has Christianity ever done good for the world.” One of my first responses is they created AA which has helped Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, agnostics and atheists

You prefer to war over it’s Protestant origins. I prefer not. In this case the Protestants did something extraordinarily remarkable for Christian history.

As for the sin and disease thing it’s evident you have zero clue what it is I believe. Yes I believe active alcoholism and drug addiction are sins and consequences of that sin result. I go even further - and like more than one addict - believe and publicly assert drug addiction opens the door to demonic oppression. I’ve felt an evil spirit standing over me as I’ve laid in bed alone. Like a dog can sense a predator and danger nearby under the dark night sky in a wooded area. And yes… most in AA and most (if not all) in the Veteran Hospitals that deal with addicts would disagree with me and have.

Your problem is you need to read the Serenity Prayer and come to terms with the fact this is 2012 and a secular run world (at least in the West).

I’m on no jihad to make all non-Christian and non-religious people of the world believe what I believe about sin or Satan or demonic oppression (or even possession). With respects to alcoholism, drug addiction, or HIV the treatment of non of them requires any mention of sin. I was shot 3 times due to my drunkenness which was due to my alcoholism and the doctors, surgeons, and nurses patched me up and took care of me. No mention of the sin. Except maybe… one nurse in the ER or wherever I was when I awoke after several days of having my stomach on the outside. She kept implying they should let me suffer and die.

But as I always say 99% of the hospital staff treated me awesome! And as I always say… whether they were atheist, Jews, agnostic, Protestant or whatever… it was my first time experience real Christian charity.

No… AA does not hammer away on the subject of sin or eternal damnation in hell. They don’t go into politics or economics or banking scandals either. They are united for one purpose and they have too many people from to many different backgrounds to be engaging in issues that are essentially divisive issues. There are active homosexuals, atheists, conservatives, liberals, Catholics, and transsexuals in AA.

And none of those acronyms you mentioned work any better than AA, NA, or CA. If you had no education in the sciences - which employs mathematical statistics - I would just chalk it up to ignorance with no malevolent agenda. But the ability to come up with accurate statistical data on addiction with recovery is notoriously difficult. What’s recovery? One year? Five years? Thirty years? Does one slip negate that or not? How about twenty slips? I are the subjects of the survey being honest?

I’ve personally known plenty of addicts that have said they were clean while still actively using.

**Actually, of every veteran I went through VA rehab with the last time, every single one of them has gone back to using.

The best success rates - we have been repeatedly told - as far as can be inferred from the data our therapists have said, come with those that stay connected to some sort of support group be it AA or something else. **

And alcoholism and drug addiction can be considered a disease - dis-ease - depending on how one wants to define that. Like I said it is similar to the controversy over biological race. Anthropologist, biologists, and sociologist say only one race exists among humans, and therefore our categorizations of different races is a social construct.

Which is true… if one defines races as a concept of subspecies. If one uses a more liberal definition of races as a concept denoting populations that share similar phenotypes, then one can speak of the “black race” and the “white race” because those separate races would be coherent with the little genetic difference between the two populations as well as the Out of Africa Theory.

So, “disease” is similar to that. It’s predicated on how one defines that term.

Time,

If every Veteran using this method went back to using that should tell you something. If you want to believe the counselors then this is tantamount to telling a Fundamentalist to read history and then hear that they have talked to their pastor that denies what you tell them.

 

[fakename]

Fake,

What you have asked is a good question.

Here are some things to consider.

Who classifies what is and is not a drug? Not the magesterium.

Are there substances that are not classified as drugs that are drugs and substances that are not drugs classified as drugs?

Once a substance is classified as a drug then the magesterium says that it should be done morally correct. I agree.

OTC drugs and herbs can be consumed with harmful effects and the magesterium is saying that these things should be used prudently as well.

This requires a formed conscience and a conscience that is in tune with health. Health is in keeping with the magesterium and then the question is who defines what is healthy?

Well people and institutions don’t normally comment one what is outside their authority. Therefore if the definition of a drug or the proper effects of drugs were outside the Church’s authority, it seems that the Church would not have promulgated what it did in the part of the CCC that I quoted.

So that’s precisely my problem: I don’t know exactly what a drug is -is there something in its definition that renders it essentially a matter of faith and morals and essentially a subject of legitimate Church commentary?

 

[CopticChristian]

I don’t believe this. And I’ve expressed my disagreement about the genetic heritability of alcoholism and addiction with educated counselors at the VA.

**From my experience most counselors - and most alcoholics and addicts - purchase into this popular hypothesis of genetically inheriting either “addiction” broadly, or their specific addiction to whatever substance. **

Of course my hypothesis could be totally wrong.

But I think the more liberal definition of dis-ease carries more truth about substance addiction than genetic heritability does.

I know your question was not directed at me but I thought I would express my opinion anyways.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disease

Time,

There is always a disparity between empiricism and reason. You appear to be an empiricist. While I accept some empiricism it has to be balanced by reason. Your sources are your experience and what you hear from the devotees. My sources include experience, devotees and reading and studying both sides of the argument. I am not alone in this endeavor. There are many people that have looked at and studied this and you should broaden your view.

You may want to look at the work of Reid Hester found here…

I would imagine you would agree he has satisfactory credentials

behaviortherapy.com/rkhvita.pdf

then click on his link on behavior therapy found here

behaviortherapy.com/

then half way down the page on what works found here

behaviortherapy.com/whatworks.htm

Brief interventions
Motivational enhancement
GABA agonist (Acamprosate)
Community Reinforcement
Self-change manual (Bibliotherapy)
Opiate antagonist (Naltrexone)
Behavioral self-control training

and then if you want to believe it is a disease then look at the ranking of the disease model approach and the effectiveness down at number
37 & 38…

In other words having your doctor tell you, hey you better cut back on your drinking, lets get some liver tests and we will talk next week…is the most effective

Motivational enhancement is next best

Community reinforcement is 3rd
Self Change is 4th
Behavior self control training is 5th

Community reinforcement is when your family is involved and tells you that you might consider changing your behavior

Sounds like a habit to me and not a disease

 

[CopticChristian]

Well people and institutions don’t normally comment one what is outside their authority. Therefore if the definition of a drug or the proper effects of drugs were outside the Church’s authority, it seems that the Church would not have promulgated what it did in the part of the CCC that I quoted.

So that’s precisely my problem: I don’t know exactly what a drug is -is there something in its definition that renders it essentially a matter of faith and morals and essentially a subject of legitimate Church commentary?

Fake,

How does the law define a drug?

Usually a drug is something that is used to diagnose, treat or prevent a disease.

The FD&C Act defines drugs, in part, by their intended use, as “articles intended for use in the diagnosis, cure, mitigation, treatment, or prevention of disease” and “articles (other than food) intended to affect the structure or any function of the body of man or other animals” [FD&C Act, sec. 201(g)(1)].

Now then that leaves the question open to alcohol. Is it a drug too? Does it diagnose, treat or prevent disease? Some would say that it does aid the heart and prevent. Alcohol is a depressant and an antiseptic. It is also a beverage used for social consumption. So it requires a formed conscience to understand and know how to adhered to what the Church would say use or misuse of something that is legal.

Those drugs that are illegal should be easy to discern.

 

[CopticChristian]

I can tell you one thing…marijuana is FAR less dangerous than prescription pain killers. Two of my best friends are in rehab right now primarily for pain killers. My sister in law is in recovery because of pain killers. Saying that marijuana shouldn’t be used medically when things like Oxycontin are available is like saying we should ban coffee because it is dangerous but alcohol is fine.

Interested,

I don’t believe that this is a fair comparison. Marijuana is a different type of drug than the Narcotics mentioned. Many people use Oxycontin and stop using it. Many people have tried marijuana and stop using it. It is the person and not the drug.

There is one exception and this is based on observation. Methamphetamine is a manufacured drug that as far as I know has no medical use. It is one of the most addictive substances that causes someone to continue to use. I maintain that Nicotine is the most addictive substance on the planet however smokers do quit on their own.

It is the person and not the substance that is the problem.

 

[CopticChristian]

I don’t believe this. And I’ve expressed my disagreement about the genetic heritability of alcoholism and addiction with educated counselors at the VA.

I have my own hypothesis. But I had to taken into account the high rates of alcoholism within the population of Amerindians - which suggests that population has some biological susceptibility to alcoholism.

My own hypothesis is that substance addictions are not genetically heritable, but that in the case of alcoholism, due to the long use of alcohol among many human populations for thousands of years, a number of human populations have passed down genetically heritable alleles that have a greater (not total) resistance to alcoholism.

Of course my hypothesis could be totally wrong.

But I think the more liberal definition of dis-ease carries more truth about substance addiction than genetic heritability does.

I know your question was not directed at me but I thought I would express my opinion anyways.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disease

Time,

Contrast your hypothesis with the following facts…from The Truth About Addiction…Drinking is a social cultural phenomenon…learned behavior…

Groups with High Rates of Alcoholism

People in different ethnic groups vary tremendously in their likelihood of developing a drinking problem or becoming alcoholic. This statement can hardly be disputed; it is repeated in every piece of research, even by disease proponents themselves. For example, research inevitably finds that Irish and Native Americans (Indians and Eskimos) have very high alcoholism rates, and that Slavs, the English, and some other American Protestant drinkers are also at high risk for alcoholism. The Italians, Jews, and Greeks (and those from other Mediterranean cultures) and the Chinese have exceedingly low rates of alcoholism. In a book he wrote expounding that alcoholism is a disease, George Vaillant discovered that Irish Americans were seven times as likely to become alcoholics as Italians and other Mediterranean ethnic drinkers he studied in Boston.8

The Italians, Jews, Greeks, and other low-alcoholism cultures, on the other hand, teach youngsters to drink at meals and religious celebrations within the family. In these ethnic groups the whole outlook and atmosphere connected with drinking are different—it doesn’t carry the emotional baggage that drinking does for groups with a greater susceptibility to alcoholism. In the homes of low alcoholism ethnic groups, alcohol is usually served at home very early to children, who see drinking occur as an ordinary part of family celebrations. What they don’t see occur when people drink is violence and drunkenness. According to a sociologist who studied the drinking of Chinese Americans in New York:

They [Chinese Americans] drink and become intoxicated, yet for the most part drinking to intoxication is not habitual, dependence on alcohol is uncommon and alcoholism is a rarity. . . . The children drank, and they soon learned a set of attitudes that attended the practice. While drinking was socially sanctioned, becoming drunk was not. The individual who lost control of himself under the influence of liquor was ridiculed and, if he persisted in his defection, ostracized.14

1. W. R. Miller and R. K. Hester, “The Effectiveness of Alcoholism Treatment: What Research Reveals,” in W. R. Miller and N. K. Heather, eds., Treating Addictive Behaviors: Processes of Change (New York: Plenum, 1986), pp. 121–74.
2. G. E. Vaillant, The Natural History of Alcoholism: Causes, Patterns, and Paths to Recovery (Cambridge,Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1983).
3. Ibid., p. 293.

 

[interestedman]

Interested,

I don’t believe that this is a fair comparison. Marijuana is a different type of drug than the Narcotics mentioned. Many people use Oxycontin and stop using it. Many people have tried marijuana and stop using it. It is the person and not the drug.

There is one exception and this is based on observation. Methamphetamine is a manufacured drug that as far as I know has no medical use. It is one of the most addictive substances that causes someone to continue to use. I maintain that Nicotine is the most addictive substance on the planet however smokers do quit on their own.

It is the person and not the substance that is the problem.

All of the people that I mentioned were marijuana addicts before moving to pain killers. But if they stuck to just marijuana they wouldn’t be in rehab right now…they would probably be productive members of society with jobs and apartments.

 

[CopticChristian]

All of the people that I mentioned were marijuana addicts before moving to pain killers. But if they stuck to just marijuana they wouldn’t be in rehab right now…they would probably be productive members of society with jobs and apartments.

Interested,

This is a suggestion that sticking with one drug makes the difference and as I said it is the person that makes the difference not the drug. Who knows why anyone goes to rehab?

Many don’t know that they are going to rehab because they think that they have a disease and if they don’t think they have a disease now when they leave rehab they will be taught that they do.

Many go to rehab because they think that this is the only way and it is not.

Many go to rehab because they were coerced, ie intervention and many that do not understand the nature of the 12 step paradigm/religion of AA inadvertently contribute to the disease notion because they get brainwashed into thinking that this is the only way.

There is no way to know why someone went to rehab unless you have access to their decision making.

The sadness of rehab is two fold. It is a revolving door. Just look at how many celebrities are in and out of rehab. Secondly it is ludicrous to believe that you need a 12 step program for every drug, ie NA, AA, CA or whatever…

If you had a spiritual awakening in the 12th step…how many more do you need to stay off the stuff?

If you believe, as I do, in habit, vice, sin and salvation…then we constantly seek salvation and avoid sin, strengthening our habits with virtue by human effort to avoid sin, form our conscience and seek grace…no steps…just a continuous journey…come follow me…

 

[interestedman]

Interested,

This is a suggestion that sticking with one drug makes the difference and as I said it is the person that makes the difference not the drug. Who knows why anyone goes to rehab?

Many don’t know that they are going to rehab because they think that they have a disease and if they don’t think they have a disease now when they leave rehab they will be taught that they do.

Many go to rehab because they think that this is the only way and it is not.

Many go to rehab because they were coerced, ie intervention and many that do not understand the nature of the 12 step paradigm/religion of AA inadvertently contribute to the disease notion because they get brainwashed into thinking that this is the only way.

There is no way to know why someone went to rehab unless you have access to their decision making.

The sadness of rehab is two fold. It is a revolving door. Just look at how many celebrities are in and out of rehab. Secondly it is ludicrous to believe that you need a 12 step program for every drug, ie NA, AA, CA or whatever…

If you had a spiritual awakening in the 12th step…how many more do you need to stay off the stuff?

If you believe, as I do, in habit, vice, sin and salvation…then we constantly seek salvation and avoid sin, strengthening our habits with virtue by human effort to avoid sin, form our conscience and seek grace…no steps…just a continuous journey…come follow me…

I don’t really know what you are trying to get at here. I don’t think rehab is necessary to get sober, but I do think it can help people that are accepting of it. I do think that there are problems with the 12 step program though. My main one is that you have to claim you are powerless to your addiction. I just think that once you proclaim this it gives you a reason to rationalize relapsing…“well its not my fault, I’m powerless.”

And I don’t really know what you mean by its the person not the drug. Yes, some people are more prone to addiction than others, but comparing someone addicted to marijuana to someone addicted to meth is absurd.

 

[CopticChristian]

I don’t really know what you are trying to get at here. I don’t think rehab is necessary to get sober, but I do think it can help people that are accepting of it. I do think that there are problems with the 12 step program though. My main one is that you have to claim you are powerless to your addiction. I just think that once you proclaim this it gives you a reason to rationalize relapsing…“well its not my fault, I’m powerless.”

And I don’t really know what you mean by its the person not the drug. Yes, some people are more prone to addiction than others, but comparing someone addicted to marijuana to someone addicted to meth is absurd.

Interested,

It is “I am powerless over Alcohol”…I believe that some may translate this as addiction and if that were the case then there would be no need for NA, CA, AA or any other A…there would be one Addiction Anonymous…but that just is not the case…the Anonymous is substance specific as are the groups that meet for that substance. This of course makes no sense.

I am powerless over Carbon, Hydrogen and Oxygen linked to make a liquid…no you’re not?

I agree that it does cause someone at the end of the disease spectrum to say…“I have a disease…I can’t help it” and that is the dilema with all man made paradigms that are not true…there is the catch 22.

People get addicted and the issue has nothing to do with the substance. There are some lives detroyed by just about any substance and although some are worse than others…it is the person not the substance that is making the choice.

 

[Bill_7154]

Bill,

you can find a discussion here…

angriesout.com/grown20.htm

The perpetrator is the persecutor and this is perceived by the victim. All these roles are perception and are dysfunctional. They are not necessarily concsious.

Alcohol.

The Alcoholic is the victim. Whoa is me. You don’t know what I have been through

Perpetrator can be a person or more than one person or an imagined set of circumstances. I go to Church…Just look at you. you are a miserable drunk. Why can’t you be like me. I am what you should be. This can be perceived of and spoken of by the victim as a person, society, whatever it is for the victim to remain victimized and not take responsibility. If it wasn’t for my mother…if it wasn’t for my marriage…this is percieved but real.

Rescuer/Enabler…let me help you, poor dear…you are drinking because of the way they treat you or let me help you…let me rescue you from this dismal dilema of a life that is not your fault.

The way the triangle works is between the victim and the rescuer. The rescuer is unknowing and does not play the game well. The victim plays the game very well and is intent on remaining a victim. The rescuer/enabler puts forth effort believing that they are helping and when they continue the victim turns on the rescuer and enabler and they switch roles…

The rescuer/enabler becomes the victim and the victim persecutes the rescuer/enabler and since the role of victim is not known to the rescuer as well as the victim role is to the victim in turn persecutes/perpetrates on the persecutor/victim and then victimizes the former victim and the victim assumes that well known role.

The only way out of this dysfunction is to be constantly seen as the persecutor once the roles switch and leave the victim to their own demise, not trying to switch roles.

This is interesting because from what I have learned, and from what I have seen in both my personal life and in my professional life, is that the rescuer and the enabler are two separate and distinct roles.

The ‘enabler’ makes excues for the alcoholic, often the spouse, calling in sick for the alcoholic and is also co-dependent on the alcoholic, effectively shifting their psychological/emotional problems into the backround and focusing on the alcoholic as a means of unhealthily coping with their own issues.

And the rescuer is one who will not enable the alcoholic. They will do various things to promote the person to get off of alcohol, but won’t enable. They will take the person to treatment, etc, they will be a person who the alcoholic will confide in, but will be a person who gives the alcoholic the ‘straight dope’ when it comes to their drinking. They may acknowledge that the alcoholic has a lot of problems in their life, and acknowledge that this could very well lead them to drinking…but they will not allow the alcoholic to view these as excues to drink. They will essentiall say “yes, you have it hard” but drinking is making those things worse. I will help you insofar as your getting away from alcohol but wont’ support your use of it at all.

This is part of the psychological model I learned re: alcoholism and believe that those working to reform in AA are moreso resuers and not enablers. They may have small traits of enabling but don’t fit that role like the spouse of an alcoholic typically does, giving money for alcohol, continuing to make excuses for the alcoholic etc…while the rescuer will only work with the alcoholic around stopping drinking, not giving them money for ‘this is the last time’ 100 times in a row, giving them a place to stay dispite their continued use, etc the way enablers do.

God Bless,
Bill

 

[Bill_7154]

Time,

You are wrong. Most doctors including me know that addiction is not now or ever been a disease. You can do a search for yourself on the number that accept this garbage and those that do not.

The religion of 12 steps/AA/disease model has no better than a success rate of 5-10% and is not the best we have. It is no better than spontaneous remission.

There is a thread “is addiction a sin”…I will look for it. There you will find that the religion of 12 steps/AA/disease model is not the best solution. What works, published in a book by Reid Hester, PhD…points out that the following have the best success rates…

Brief Intervention
Self Help
CRAFT
CBT

If you accept and believe that the religion of 12 steps/AA/disease model is the best we have for an amputated arm short of a bionic arm then you are not aware that there is a bionic arm available that is better.

I agree with CopticChristian,

And while I might not take as hard a line as he against AA (as I have benefited from it) I am also someone who is a very light social drinker now, whereas in the past if you put an ounce of alcohol in me I could not stop drinking.

There were the underlying issues that I faced that I worked on (inside aa and outside of aa) that helped me be a non alcoholic, recovered from that ailment. And it took additional help outisde of AA to get me there (self help, studing cbt, et). I don’t recommend those in AA start to drink, I think that most can’t drink in safety even after decades, but those who truely commit to addressing their spiritual/psycholigical/emotional problems and make this a priority and do so for years may find that they wind up with other ways to cope with their issues and the negatives associated with alcohol far outweigh the benefits (and I’m talking as little as having 2-3 drinks and it making me very tired).

I can have a sip and stop. 3 sips, 1/2 glass, 1 glass…it’s all the same. Alcohol to me, now, is like swiss cheese or something. I don’t particularly care for it but do have a little once in a great while. But after eating 1/2 piece I have NO desire or compulsion to have more.

Again, I don’t suggest those in AA try and drink, more often than not I think disaster will happen. But that does not negate what CopticChristian is saying.

If one in or not in AA choose to involve themself in CBT, smart, rational recovery, all of those, they may find different results where they are not compulsed to go to AA meetings and work with ‘newcomers’. Again, I think AA is a net positive for those involved, but it can be benefitial to look at alcohol and other substances from a perspective different than the disease model.

Again, I don’t recommend anyone with a current or past issue with alcohol to drink as the results can and usually are disasterous. But by using a different (or several models) to work towrads recovery one may find greater freedom from alcohol than one finds in AA alone.

God Bless,
Bill

 

[Bill_7154]

I can dismiss it because of my background in biology. I’m not opposed to psychology but physics and chemistry are arguably more of sciences than biology and biology more of a science than psychology.

I say this due to the level each fields relies on deterministic laws and each fields ability to accurately make predictions.

Perhaps this is why some call into question if psychology ought be categorized as a science.

What I regard as “cures” in the sense of science… concerning biological organisms… are treatments using chemicals to deal with a chemical problem. And those chemical reactions being largely deterministic and contingent on laws.

How do the deterministic sciences address childhood trauma, etc? effectively?

God Bless,
Bill

 

[Bill_7154]

Bill,

Heroin in and of itself is harmless

What % of the population do you think believes this or understands this or would even agree if a doctor explained it to them?

God Bless,
Bill