The Last Days of the Drug Wars: The Real Truth About Drugs, Addiction, and Treatment 

I started taking drugs when I was five years old, but I didn’t become an addict until I was thirty. My story is not unusual, but you’re not likely to have heard it. I want to share it with you for the first time. I hope others can learn from the lessons that have saved my life.

The day I turned five was special. My mother didn’t have to work that day. She stayed home and baked a cake. My father took me to the park and I felt joyful riding on his back as he told me stories he was writing for a television show for children. In the evening we sat down for our regular Friday night dinner. For the first time I was allowed to have a little taste of wine that was a tradition in my Jewish family.

I continued having alcohol after that first evening. You might be able to guess the rest of the story. But you’d probably be wrong. Alcohol was never a problem. I never became an alcoholic. Like most kids who begin drinking as part of a regular family ritual, I never drank too much or had problems with alcohol. The idea that drugs (whether alcohol, marijuana, cocaine, heroin, or any other drug you can name) cause addictions is a myth. I’ll explain in a moment.

My addiction, which began when I was thirty, was related to sex and romance, which I described in my book, Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places: Overcoming Romantic and Sexual Addictions. At the time few people believed that addiction could apply to something as natural as sex and romance. One who did was psychologist and attorney Stanton Peele. In his book Love and Addiction he says, “Many of us are addicts, only we don’t know it. We turn to each other out of the same needs that drive some people to drink and others to heroin. Interpersonal addiction—love addiction—is just about the most common yet least recognized form of addiction we know.”

Like many people I had numerous adverse child experiences including my father’s attempted suicide when I was five years old and the subsequent dislocations when my mother had to go out to work and I was often left alone to take care of myself. Increasingly we live in a world where the family and societal connections that sustain us are breaking down. Drug use is a natural response to the pain and suffering from these childhood traumas and social dislocations.

What We Are Told About Drugs, Addictions, and Drug Wars is Not True

I began writing about what really causes addiction in the 1970s. In a 1973 article, “Our Anti-Drug Abuse Programs, Pathologies of Defense,” I detailed the way I saw the current war on drugs:

“The drug problem in his country continues to get worse, and the programs that we have developed to combat the problem are actually adding fuel to the fire. The laws that have been developed over the past 60 years have done nothing to discourage the use of drugs. Their effect has caused the criminalization of millions of otherwise law abiding citizens. Legal restrictions on mind altering drugs have produced a new industry that has proven extremely profitable to legal drug manufacturers and salesmen as well as the illegal drug entrepreneurs. The huge profits to be made in the drug business have caused corruption in large segments of society.”

In the article I also offered a story to illustrate how long it takes our attitudes and policies about drugs to change:

Once upon a time there was a goat who ate some berry-like fruits off an evergreen bush and proceeded to prance around the countryside all night. The goat herder had found that if he, too, at the berries, he could stay up all night and commune with the Almighty.

Well, the bush was grown in other places, and pretty soon everybody was getting the benefit of the berries, by this time having found that they could be made into a brew to drink. Then, a tremendous controversy arose as to whether it was proper for people to be taking the stuff. Laws were passed against it sue. There were persecutions against those who used it and rebellions against those who were in authority who would deny the use of it. The conflicts lasted for 2,000 years until it was finally resolved. The substance, the most widely used of all mind altering drugs, is caffeine.

Things do change slowly in the world of drugs, but to quote Dylan, “the times they are a changing.” In his highly researched and very engaging and readable book, Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs, journalist Johann Hari offers compelling evidence that supports my own research over the years:

• Drugs are not what we think they are.
• Drug addiction is not what we have been told it is.
• The drug war is not what our politicians have convinced us to believe is necessary.
• There is a very different story out there waiting for us when we are ready to hear it.

Drugs Don’t Cause Drug Problems: Abuse and Social Isolation Do

I first became aware that drugs don’t cause addiction when I was asked to develop programs to treat addicts returning from the Viet Nam war. The government was concerned about the thousands of soldiers who had become hooked on high grade heroin while in Viet Nam. It was assumed that there would be a major drug problem when so many addicts came back to the U.S.

The expected need for massive drug treatment efforts never happened. When the soldiers got out of the dysfunctional environment of a war zone with the constant fear of death, most “addicts” gave up their drugs quite easily and never used them again. The ones who did need treatment suffered from PTSD. They were not addicted to drugs.

This is what Johann Hari found when he interviewed Gabor Maté, M.D. who had a very different approach to treating addicts. Rather than taking a medical approach he listened to their stories and learned that most all the addicts he treated had horrendous stories of abuse that they suffered as children. Drugs weren’t the cause of the problems. Using drugs was the best way the person knew to do to deal with the pain of living with the trauma. Heal the trauma and the addictions were often healed.

Hari also learned about the work of Bruce Alexander. Alexander demonstrated that we are more prone to addictions of all kinds when our social connections are broken. He sees this as the primary cause of the world-wide increase in drug trafficking. “Global society is drowning in addiction to drug use and a thousand other habits,” says Alexander. “This is because people around the world, rich and poor alike, are being torn from the close ties to family, culture, and traditional spirituality that constituted the normal fabric of life in pre-modern times…People adapt to this dislocation by concocting the best substitutes that they can for a sustaining social, cultural and spiritual wholeness, and addiction provides this substitute for more and more of us.”

If we want to prevent drug abuse and end our endless wars on drugs, we need to address these interpersonal and social issues. We need to stop isolating and punishing addicts. That just makes the problem worse. Even compassionate treatment that focuses on the ways drugs impact the individual misses the mark. People like Johann Hari, Gabor Maté, and Bruce Alexander are demonstrating that there is a better way. Are we ready to embrace it?

I look forward to hearing your thoughts and responses in the comments section below.

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