As someone who struggled with cocaine, heroin and prescription opioid addictions throughout my teenage years, this resonates with me quite a bit, but I'm not sure if I agree with the conclusions the author is drawing. I got clean with no help either - and yet, many years later, I still consider myself "in recovery." I view my recovery as a never-ending process; even though I haven't touched the substances themselves in ages, I'm still dealing with the consequences. Just hearing someone mention one of the drugs in a conversation is sometimes enough to make my mood plummet if I'm taken by surprise. I don't really hang out in environments where they're easy to obtain anymore, but if I ever find myself in one, even though I know on some rational level that I'd never touch them again, part of me is in great distress because I'd have a hard time saying no if they were offered to me.
I think these types of articles tend to ignore the longer-lasting, psychologically debilitating consequences of addiction. It doesn't just end with going cold turkey. You need to be able to look at your thought process and identify where you go wrong, and I think programs like AA and NA give you the tools to do that. Obviously, they don't work for everyone, and they aren't foolproof, but I'm of the opinion that they still have some merit.
During my high school years, I suffered a bad accident. My right forearm was pretty much shattered, almost amputated. For about a week after all the surgeries, I was on Vicodin 24/7. Just from that, I was addicted. The withdrawal was miserable, and obviously came at the worst possible time.
That one week with Vicodin continues to have profound effects on my life, even now that I'm in my 30s. My fear of addiction convinced me to stay away from all drugs and even drinking. I socialized with people who didn't drink, and found activities that didn't involve partying. All of my social groups and hobbies, to this day, are the legacy of my total adult sobriety. I can't even imagine who I'd be if I didn't have that awful experience with Vicodin.
Okay, I have long wanted to know this about alcoholics and alcohol relapse sufferers:
Do one-time alcoholics - functional or otherwise - who have sought treatment and then completely quit drinking for a fair number of years, ever manage to go back to moderate & responsible alcohol consumption?
or
Is it pretty much a life of teetotalism, for them, after that?
Do you know of any friends or family who have recovered and enjoy alcohol responsibly?
My experience has been that almost all such people I know, resort to drinking non-alcohol fizzy drinks, fruit juices and other replacements, but never any booze, not even non-alcoholic beer.
As an expert in the subject, having stopped for 8.5 years, started, stopped again for almost 10, and started, and now stopped for another 8... um, nope.
I'm addicted to substances that haven't been invented yet... and my brain really enjoys being wasted... the Ramones "I wanna be sedated" pretty well sums it up.
So for someone like me, mind altering substances are dangerous because I have no brakes... even after years of being stopped... because I really don't want to "enjoy alcohol responsibly".... I want to enjoy alcohol irresponsibly.
But don't take my words for it. I'd like to quote from a blog post of Nic Sheff:
"Going into it, I figured that most of the stories would be like mine. But in interviewing these different addicts —addicts that have worked with some of the top addiction specialists in the country— I was surprised to find that quite a few of them have now, after an extended period of abstinence, been able to go back to drinking or smoking pot casually without spiraling out of control again.
It was a baffling revelation to me.
[...]
Take the example of the crystal meth addict I mentioned above. His drug use really skyrocketed around the time he was diagnosed with HIV.
[...]
There was a direct connection between his environmental circumstances and his using, a concept that I’d never actually experienced. I used for no reason at all. But he had a reason."
I don't think there is something like having no reason but he probably knows himself the best. You should check him out if you don't already know him, he wrote 2 books about his teenage meth addiction and his struggle for recovery.
I was heavily addicted to first alcohol and then drugs from ages 14-17. In those three years I went from stealing liquor from my parents to ultimately shooting up IV oxycontin, doing cocaine and any other drug I could find. In those days (mid-late 90s) the internet drug market was just starting, so I would steal money and buy things like ketamine and lots of "research chemicals" (untested hallucinogens) online. I ended up in the ER with severe self-inflicted woulds all over my face and body (I believe I literally pulled my skin off with my bare hands while blacked out on oxycontin--I have no memory of it).
I'm now in my 30s, have a family and haven't touched a drug like that since. I tried smoking marijuana a few times in my 20s but no longer enjoyed it--all it did was make me extremely paranoid and withdrawn, and I felt hung over the next day.
These days I drink moderately. I have a glass of wine with dinner but never get drunk (nor have any desire to). I never go out to bars, never drink hard liquor, etc. A couple beers or glasses of wine is as far as it goes.
I believe my drug addiction was primarily caused by a miserable, unstable and abusive home life growing up. I had no way of coping other than escape and self-destruction. Once I was independent and out the house there was no longer a need for any of it. I'm profoundly grateful I lived through that period and I have a lot of empathy for children and teenagers who go down the road of addiction. I believe firmly that it is a failure in parenting, although not necessarily intentional on the part of the parents. Children need stability, love and structure.
> Do one-time alcoholics - functional or otherwise - who
> have sought treatment and then completely quit drinking
> for a fair number of years, ever manage to go back to
> moderate & responsible alcohol consumption?
There's just not a single answer to this, so here are some thoughts:
* Been a long time since I gave up smoking. I think I could smoke every day for a month, and then stop again with it only being a medium-sized deal. Smoked for 7 years, ending up about 30 a day by the end.
* I gave up drinking just a few years ago. I have been given alcoholic drinks without knowing it on three occasions (and found out later), and it just wasn't a big deal at all. If I chose to have a drink, I think it'd take me many years to stop again. I am unsure if I will be able to sensibly drink again - I have a vague goal that I'll attempt it again in 10 years' time. I LOVE non-alcoholic beer
Watch it with the smoking one. I smoked for about 8 years (ages 19 to 27, minimum 12 cigs a day) then quit for a year and a half. Quitting was so easy. Then something bad happened in my life and I started smoking while stressed. I was only smoking for about a week and it took me months of repeated effort to quit the second time.
Part of the problem was that the first time I quit I was mentally happy, part of the problem was I knew "how easy" it was to quit the first time and this excuse makes it easier to spark up while you drink.
Now that I'm off them for good again I'm much more scared of them than I was before.
"Do one-time alcoholics - functional or otherwise - who have sought treatment and then completely quit drinking for a fair number of years, ever manage to go back to moderate & responsible alcohol consumption?"
I did, but I've no idea how common that is. I had a fairly bad drinking problem in my early 20s. Very much the functional alcoholic. Once I kicked that (with a year or so of pretty close to abstinence — through personal choice, no programme) I went back to social drinking fine. Not had a problem since, which is about 20 odd years now.
I have a few rules of thumb (I generally don't have alcohol in the house past a decent bottle of whisky every month or so, and I don't drink alone) but sticking to them has never been hard, and the times I don't stick to 'em haven't cause a relapse and slide into doom.
I don't think there is an easy answer to this... It depends so much on the individual and their life. However, I think there are some general guidelines that work in a "most people, most of the time" kind-of-way.
With that said, I think that most severe alcoholics can never go back to drinking. The damage has been done, and they will always have that vulnerability. They may be able to control it for a while, even a surprisingly long time, but, if they go back to drinking or using then they will be thoroughly screwed.
There are people who may have issues that look like alcoholism, but are really different, like ADHD or depression. As those other issues get better, then the alcoholism will become less of a problem. For example, people with ADHD tend to have problems with impulse control. As people live their lives they learn that poor impulse control is, indeed, a real problem and they learn how to get it under control more-or-less on their own. That same lack of impulse control is disastrous when combined with alcohol. But, as their impulse control gets better, their problems with alcohol get easier, too.
Some people simply have had a crappy childhood, and, as they get more distance and grow out of those issues, then their tendency to addiction gets less.
From a couple of people I know who used to be alcoholics none of them touches alcohol any more. It’s like they’re afraid that if they drink even a glass of wine they might roll back to old habits.
As a side note, most alcoholics I’ve met advised me never to drink while at home. I never had any problem with drinking in my life, actually I can’t even understand how people get addicted to it in the first place since if I drink a lot I can’t function in a proper way, but I’ve followed that advice like it’s a small pearl of wisdom.
On the other hand, as someone who was addicted to nicotine I totally concur with the article. One morning I decided to quit it cold turkey and aside from the fact that the withdrawal phase was quite severe, I never looked back after it. I’m 8 years now free from cigarettes and I don’t miss them at all.
Even if we assume that most alcoholics are capable of going back to alcohol in moderation I would expect most of them to be cautious enough to not try it. The advantages of alcohol consumption are small while the detriments of relapsing are high so one must be extremely certain that they can handle it before trying alcohol again is a rational choice.
You don't have answer this but I have to ask, did you find some other less severe addiction to cope - like marijuana for example? I ask because, well, your username.
No, I was completely sober for a few years after kicking all the hard stuff. I acquired a taste for marijuana relatively recently, and while I do smoke quite a bit nowadays, I don't think of it as a coping tool, just something I do for fun when I have time to kill.
Interesting, I myself vaporize (I don't like smoke) but it is mostly for medical reasons (I live in California) as I refuse to take hard pharmaceuticals. My doctor agrees.
Getting a vape has been high on my list of priorities ever since I've become more invested in my health, which incidentally wasn't a concern until after I began smoking regularly.
I would definitely consider myself being 'addicted' in that sense when I smoked pot.
I didn't get any joy out of recreational activities I was engaging in unless I was high first. I always felt like like the buzz wasn't as good as it could have been if I were high.
A few months after quitting that went away though.
Weed also made me lazy and paranoid after a while, so it was actively damaging to me.
Every one will have a different experience, and some people will need more help than others. I was a meth addict (but was also a frequent abuser of a large variety of other substances) and quit cold turkey during a cross country bus ride to the east coast. Ever since then I have been clean, and only take part in drinking alcohol. That first year was insanely hard, and the mere thought of meth would make my hands clammy, as if my body was still wanting it. I have no problems now with restraint, and I can be around people doing drugs and can easily sit back with no temptations. I didn't need NA or AA, but as you said, they still have some merit and may be the necessary crutch that some people require to get out of the hole.
Yes, that was more or less my point. I'm wary of analyses of addiction that try to conflate every survivor's experience into a single, monolithic thing. There are similarities, to be sure, but it's more complex than most people realize.
I was a hardcore IV heroin and cocaine addict for 10 years. Contracted Hep C, did 2 years in jail, and ruined every relationship that I crossed paths with.
After dozens of detoxes, jail, prison, several rehabs, and a year of homelessness on the streets of NYC for an entire winter, I had had enough.
I moved to Cali and got back to my roots, computers. I picked up HTML / CSS and started learning Javascript. I started doing websites for people eventually I started a consulting business I later sold for a nice chunk. I now have a profitable start-up and was recently offered a CTO position at a Fortune 100 company.
I grew out of it. I don't want to get high anymore. It has been 10 years. I don't drink or smoke weed, and have no desire to. I still have addictive behaviors, but it just isnt an option anymore. Posting from a throwaway obviously this is not something I am ready to share at this point in my life but just wanted to relate for a brief moment.
Did I read it? No, but I read the abstract and intro. Study was about adults addicted to nicotine, alcohol, cannabis, or cocaine. 43k people total, about 12k people with a real DSM-IV diagnosis of addiction to one of these substances. Eventual remission rates for these things were over 90% (except nicotine, which was 88%).
The study is interesting, so let's start there. The results of the study surprised me, personally. I wouldn't have guessed the remission numbers were that high. I would have liked to see heroin, meth, or, far more pervasive in this day and age: prescription opiates.
It's certainly nice to see good news, and I do consider the study a kind of good news. The study obviously doesn't overstep its bounds or draw any big conclusions. I'm sure the people who actually did the study knew and experienced how damaging drugs CAN be in those 15-25 years before remission.
However, then we get to the article. The author runs the site substance.com and has published a book and several articles with a strong point of view about 12 step programs and the way young people with drug dependence are treated in today's society. I do think she's bending the study a little to her own aims, but I do appreciate her call towards sanity. It's a stretch, but I don't think she's being unfair to use this study to support her approach.
I don't think soft-selling the total life destroying danger of drug abuse is wise, and obviously it would suck if someone started taking drugs because they read an article or study like this, but it's possible.
Isn't it possible that the issue is in the difficulty in classifying people as "addicts" instead of concluding that most addicts just grow out of it? The alcoholics in my family do not grow out of it. To a man (or woman) they just deteriorate over the years and it is a very sad thing to watch. It seems possible that what the author had and what my family members have are two different afflictions.
>Moreover, if addiction were truly a progressive disease, the data should show that the odds of quitting get worse over time. In fact, they remain the same on an annual basis, which means that as people get older, a higher and higher percentage wind up in recovery. If your addiction really is “doing push-ups” while you sit in AA meetings, it should get harder, not easier, to quit over time.
Clearly the author is questioning the progressive nature of addiction but not considering the well known issue of defining addiction. Furthermore, to my understanding the "progressive nature" of the disease is not referring to the difficulty in quitting but rather the severity of the abuse of the substance.
It is always very dangerous and misleading to argue about abstract categories as if they were real things outside of the minds that make them. "Addiction" the label we use for a category we impose on the objective reality we observe. The OP is questioning the utility of that categorization based on more extensive observation of that objective reality.
In particular: there is evidence that the population we now group into the category "addicts" may in fact include two sub-populations, one of which "ages out", one of which does not. We currently have a "lumped model" of addiction, which associates certain additional features with the phenomenology we use to assign something to the category.
For example, if we find a person who is a chronic user whose use is negatively impacting their lives and who seems unable to stop, we are going to label that person an "addict". But the members of that category also get assigned other attributes for free. In particular, the current model of "addiction is a disease" says that anyone who fits the external phenomenology is also never going to get better without "treatment", or at best is very unlikely to do so.
But that association of "uncontrolled harmful use" and "its a disease" is a purely theoretical construct that may be wrong.
For comparison: I once worked on the genetics of a particular type of cancer that had two very distinct outcomes but which presented identically in a clinical setting. A physician I worked with described it as being incredibly frustrating, because she could literally see two patients in the same day who were apparently in the same condition based on histology, stage of the disease, everything, but ten years later one would be watching his daughter graduating from high-school and the other would have been dead for nine years. Simply because the diseases looked the same by some measures did not mean they were the same thing.
So it could well be that the same external phenomenology is present in two quite different conditions. It would be extremely silly to argue that one is "really" addiction and other is not, because "addiction" is just an abstract category we created to subsume different instances of similar phenomenology. We could call one grue and the other bleen, for all the difference it would make.
The possibility of two quite different underlying conditions presenting similar symptoms is one that has been realized often enough to be worth taking seriously, and when it occurs in things like the cancer described above no one ever makes the argument 'well X sounds like it is really cancer type Y to me'. Yet when the question of addiction comes up, many people say precisely that, and I am at a loss to understand why.
Extremely well-said. I've observed different kinds of addictions in people, and I'll be damned if I'd ever think of classifying them in the same way, even if that's what a typical psychologist would do.
Epidemiologcially, similar symptoms that progress to different outcomes is one of the key tools in understanding the underlying mechanisms of a disease, so to say "you can't reliably classify based on outcomes" is incorrect. Sometimes you can, sometimes you can't, and it is always worth asking the question "how come?" when you get very different outcomes from the same disease-causing agent.
In the general case there are four possibilities:
1) the different outcomes arise because of a difference in the individuals involved (this is useful for exploring treatment options: is there any way to make people with bad outcomes more closely resemble people with good outcomes?)
2) the different outcomes arise because of a difference in the disease-causing agent (this is useful when allocating treatment resources and preparing patients if the outcome is likely to be bad.)
3) some interaction between the first two factors
4) some other external factor is at play (you're a smoker, another patient is not.)
As I mentioned in another comment, I've done work on cancer genetics where the goal was to find out why some patients with what appeared to be the same disease "simply fell apart" (in the words of one of the physicians) while others lived relatively long and healthy lives). There certainly was a belief that we could classify the disease based on the outcome, and that belief motivated some fairly difficult research, but no one called it unreasonable because we had similar examples in the literature (Kahn's work on small round blue cell carcinoma being a famous case in point: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1867426/)
So: when you have populations with different outcomes, it is both reasonable and routine to ask if you have different conditions, despite superficial similarities in clinical presentation.
Yes, I agree this is an important point that author missed out on. There is a wide belief that there is physical addition which will affect anyone who makes a mistake of using too much of a powerfully addictive substance, then separately there is a mental disease of addition, which doesn't require an addictive substance. The main study this is linked to only addresses abstinence of a single drug. Abstinence != recovery is a very widely held belief.
> Clearly the author is questioning the progressive nature of addiction but not considering the well known issue of defining addiction.
'[I]t is hard to argue that we “weren’t really addicted.” I don’t know many non-addicts who shoot up 40 times a day, get suspended from college for dealing and spend several months in a methadone program.'
From my experience and observations, most people don't grow out of being addicted, they simply shift their focus of addiction.
This often goes unnoticed because there are many people who are addicted to things that the majority of society wouldn't consider an addiction. One might give up an "unhealthy" addiction for a socially acceptable one. Or their unhealthy addiction may simply shift, from one substance to another, or one activity to another, or one interest to another.
The more I've observed addiction the more I've realized that we are all addicts. I am addicted to water, yoga, meditation, HN, reddit, coding, etc. I've even come to realize that we are actually addicted to certain types of thoughts or ways of thinking. Addiction to "negative" thoughts is what results in "unhealthy" behavior.
I am currently addicted to observing myself for potential patterns of addiction and have gone so far as to create a simple app [1] that in a way takes control of the decision process away from myself. It produces a simple "yes" / "no" response and I'll ask it throughout the day if I realize I have a choice to make. "Do I go to yoga today?" -> "No".
The process of giving up control of my decisions was unnerving at first, but the more I practice it, the more peaceful I have become.
That's actually unbelievably eye-opening for me. I'm dealing with a family member who, for the last three years, has slid into alcoholism head first. We've not been able to put an identifier on when or why it started, but it started. Looking at it now, though, he has always been the kind of person who has a 'project' going at home that he is unbelievably tied up in; woodworking, singing, hunting, metalworking. Always something. We've always assumed it was some kind of high-functioning autism or some other kind of tic caused by his childhood.
Looking at it with your lens, though, it's just an addictive personality. He's always gone full-bore into everything. Always. Now, instead of a socially acceptable 'hobby,' it's drinking.
I am glad that perspective helped, it has helped me tremendously. If you are more curious, I'd suggest investigating the book called A Course In Miracles. It clearly defines the addictive thinking patterns and the way through them.
I think you're misusing the term "addiction". Addiction is destructive compulsive behavior.
I don't think it's very helpful in this conversation to talk about addictions as being Buddhist-like "attachments"--that is a completely separate topic. Addiction treatment isn't necessarily about controlling compulsion, it's about controlling destructive compulsion.
While I agree that the normal connotation of addiction is something that is destructive, I've expanded my definition of addiction to something that is a "mood altering dependency".
Previously, if I didn't meditate regularly, I would get irritable and become less harmonious. I became addicted to meditation as a way to prevent myself from becoming moody. I have found that yoga, swimming, and other "healthy" activities have the same effect on me. Ultimately all they do is alter my mental state and I would become edgy if someone interfered with my practice.
While I realize this a logical stretch for most people, I can see the addictive quality in my need for many seemingly healthy activities in my life. I am saying this as a person whom for many years has identified most closely with Buddhism.
The coin flip decision making is an interesting and fun experiment. Sometimes when going out with friends we'll leave all decisions for the night up to the coin. It is freeing and irksome when a choice does not go the way you want.
I totally agree. I actually started out using a coin, but I got too embarrassed walking around the store, standing in front of a bunch of choices, and flipping through options. The was one of the motivations to create the app, since it is much more socially acceptable and easier to use, than catching a quarter over and over.
FYI: I don't entirely agree with this article. But I posted it in part because I seriously loathe the AA "disease" model.
My dad drank heavily when he was in the army. He fought in the front lines of two wars. I think he did it at least in part so he could sleep because alcohol helps suppress dreams (and, thus, also nightmares). About four years after he left the army, he swore off alcohol and basically never touched it again.
I loathe the taste of alcohol and, for most of my life, rarely have touched the stuff. But I did have a nightcap almost every night for a year at a time when I was very ill and doctors didn't really know what to do for me. At some point in there, it was not unusual for me to have two doubles with dinner -- the equivalent to four drinks. So I imagine I could have been classified as an alcoholic at that time. But when I got some answers and started getting healthier, I was happy to stop drinking. Like my father, I never attended AA, never wrestled with trying to resist temptation or whatever, etc.
In my father's case, I think it helped with psychological trauma. In my case, it helped me survive illness at a time when I didn't have good answers and wasn't getting adequate medical treatment. I have read or heard plenty of other stories that look to me like they fit one of those categories.
So I think the article oversimplifies things in suggesting it is just a developmental disorder, but I am thrilled to see a piece talking about the reality that most folks drink less as they get older, without getting any treatment. I really, really dislike the AA model.
It sounds like you and your father weren't addicted - that sounds great for you! I currently know a number of people in 12-step programs (Christian and secular), ages ranging all over the place, who struggle with it in an entirely different way. For them, waiting for some indeterminate time at which they "grow out" of their addiction is hopeless because they and those around them suffer in the meantime. 15 years is a very long time to wait as you destroy your family and your body.
> At some point in there, it was not unusual for me to have two doubles with dinner -- the equivalent to four drinks. So I imagine I could have been classified as an alcoholic at that time. But when I got some answers and started getting healthier, I was happy to stop drinking.
2 glasses of whisky a day is not healthy but it's not alcoholism.
This is a bit tricky to describe but I'll do my best: let's assume you had two US doubles per day. Wikipedia says that 89 ml per drink. Let's round that up to 100 ml each drink. English public health has a concept of "units" to describe drinking amounts.
200 ml * 40 (the ABV of spirits) = 8 units per day.
Recommended safe limits are 3 to 4 units per day (without saving up to binge). You should try to have a couple of drink free days each week.
So, 8 units per day is over that level and increases the risks of harm.
> The definition of harmful alcohol use in this quality standard is that of the World Health Organisation (WHO) The International statistical classification of diseases and related health problems (ICD-10): "a pattern of psychoactive substance use that is causing damage to health. The damage may be physical (for example, hepatitis) or mental (for example, depressive episodes secondary to heavy alcohol intake). Harmful use commonly, but not invariably, has adverse social consequences; social consequences in themselves, however, are not sufficient to justify a diagnosis of harmful use".
> In ICD-10 the 'dependence syndrome' is defined as: "a cluster of behavioural, cognitive, and physiological phenomena that develop after repeated substance use and that typically include a strong desire to take the drug, difficulties in controlling its use, persisting in its use despite harmful consequences, a higher priority given to drug use than to other activities and obligations, increased tolerance, and sometimes a physical withdrawal state".
Looking at the English guidelines for treatment we see that medically supervised withdrawal starts when you're drinking 40 units per day - that would be a one liter bottle of 40% whisky every day.
That's interesting. If you or anyone else wants to do the math, the only thing I tolerate okay is Kahlua. So I was generally having either mudslides at Applebee's or Kahlua Cappuccino at Red Lobster (often with an extra shot -- two drinks with an extra shot each is four shots of alcohol).
Since 2004, the alcohol content of Kahlúa is 20.0% (21.5% alc. is still available only in Ohio[citation needed]); earlier versions had 26.5%.
This would have been around 2001-2002 in California. So, you should use the 26.5% figure. I don't know what a "shot" is considered to be. I mean as a standard measure. I assume there is a standard measure of "shot" though. So what would 2-4 shots of Kahlua a day be? Is that "alcoholic"?
Just curious. I never thought of myself as an alcoholic. I was clear I did this because it knocked back the extreme physical pain I was in at a time when pain killers did little or nothing for me and doctors weren't being especially helpful. I just wanted to hurt less and I wanted to SLEEP. So, I would have a drink with dinner or before bedtime, because nothing else was doing a helluva lot for me.
I was using Wikipedia to get the size of a US shot of 89 for a double and 44 ml for a single.
The sum to get UK units is:
Serving size in litres * ABV value
So 44 ml * 4 shots * 26.5 abv / 1000 conversion from ml gives 4.5 units per day.
A doctor (and obviously I am not a doctor) might ask you to cut back a bit, but that level of drinking is normal.
Did you feel urges to drink other than those shots? Did you experience bad things from alcohol but continue drinking? Did you find it hard to stop? I think some of these things would have been used to assess whether it was problem drinking or not.
Like I said, I wasn't struggling with alcohol. I was struggling with a health crisis. I never thought of myself as alcoholic. But I was drinking daily for a while there, which is part of why I say I think some folks would view it as alcoholism.
It was a long time ago. I was also sometimes on medication, I was in a whole lot of pain, horribly sick, etc. So my memory of the details isn't exactly perfect here. Thus, I can't say how often I had the equivalent of four drinks per day vs 1-3 drinks or how long the 4 drinks level lasted (in terms of weeks/months). I do know it started at one drink and went up over time, which is another thing that would make a lot of folks go "Yup! Alcoholism!" I just know that for about a year, it was relatively rare for me to not drink alcohol at some point during the day because when I didn't, I was in tremendous pain and could not sleep. I did try different things, including vodka, and I vaguely recall getting seriously drunk at one time with some ... liqueur of some sort. (Again, I imagine that would look damning to some folks.) But what ended up working for me was Kahlua, usually with dinner.
I don't dispute the article's thesis, but a significant part of the reason why addiction is skewed so heavily to the young could be because the most severe addicts die from it before reaching an older age. As in, you don't "age out", you "survive".
That doesn't add up. By all estimates there are many millions of people addicted to drugs or alcohol in the US alone (as many as 20+ million). If we are to assume that the article's premise that addictions tend to have a lifespan of about 15-20 years or so is due to the fact that the addicts are dying then that would correspond to something like a million deaths per year. In the sub-45 year old population that would absolutely swamp every other cause of death.
Well, the cause of death for someone dying from their addiction is not always "drug overdose", but things like accident, murder, or suicide, which in fact are the top three causes of death for young adults.
Heart attack, respiratory failure, and other organ failure to boot.
Tthe math of determining these "average" lengths of addiction are also troubling. When accounting for individuals that may have been addicted for three years, but died at the end of those three years, are we factoring in 3 years as the length of addiction? Are we weighting it in some other way along a point scale? The very title of that statistic is troublesome too: the length of addiction - it is unclear as to whether the lengths being measured and averaged share the same initial and final endpoints: The length of time elapsed between having no drug problem and recovery? Or, having no drug problem and death? Or, as I suspect a combined average, which renders the statistic useless.
I find troublesome that the author of the article (renowned neuroscientist and addiction journalist as cited) suggests that addiction is akin to a habit. The behavior itself is certainly habit, but the addiction lies moreso in the etymology and function of the habit than the actual repetitive behavior. For some, the addiction is distraction, for some escape, for others a sense of identity, and so on and so forth. To prescribe "outgrowing the addiction" as a solution is awfully simplistic, almost suggesting that if an addict could only replace that habit with something else, then all would be hunky dory. Well, in theory, sure. Maybe we can start designing rehab centers like they used to do traffic school - Improv Traffic School, Comedy Traffic School, Bikers' Traffic School - maybe Knitters Rehab: "We'll help you put down that needle, and pick up this one!" or Foodies Rehab: "Stop smoking that joint, and learn to smoke these ribs!" The possibilities are endless. But not likely.
This shows drug deaths as comparable to motor vehicle accidents.
(This includes both legal and illegal drugs, and poisoning from prescribed medicine, but I doubt that the rise in recent years is due to worsening quality of healthcare.)
The numbers still don't add up. Remember that mortality among 25-44 year olds is still incredibly low, and even so drug deaths are only one among several causes of death, not the majority cause of death. If you dig into the data you see that around 15k people die a year from drug related deaths in that age range. That's a big number but orders of magnitude too low to explain where the addicts seem to go as people get older.
According to the mortality data there would need to be much fewer than 1 million addicts in the 25-44 age range in the US for a majority of them to be dying before they get out of that age group, or even a sizable minority. And everything we know on addiction statistics puts that number much higher, at 10-20 million or more.
The data just isn't there. Addicts aren't going away because they are dying, period.
I think growing out of it is a big part, though. I knew a number of people who shot up in their late teens/early 20s who quit when they got older. The methheads I knew had a harder time, but a lot of them quit too. Of the people I knew who were hardcore drug abusers, very few died, and most grew out of it, which is what the numbers suggest. The ones who and the worst time of it were the ones who bought into NA/CA dogma, and took on addiction as a personality, rather than seeing it as a phase they grew out of. They also had the highest mortality rate, predictably. Tell someone they have no self control, and they'll binge the worst.
Some people who get hooked by drugs die, but addiction isn't nearly as deadly as it would need to be for the numbers to drop like they do, and statistically spontaneous remission is the most common way for people to kick the habit. Normally people grow out of it.
Here is one addiction I wish I could grow out of: benzos and other benzo like drugs such as Ambien (zolpidem). I've been on them for almost 9 years, and they are unbelievably hard to quit. I take them for my insomnia. I don't have to take much (10mg of Ambien for example), but without them I'll lay awake in bed for 8 hours not getting any sleep. I've done all the sleep hygiene stuff such as CBT or forced sleep deprivation, but it doesn't seem to work.
I've been through various doctors, and I'm seeing a psychiatrist right now to deal exclusively with the sleep issue. Apparently my GABA receptors are shot from taking these drugs for so long. Unfortunately I have but two real choices: taper quickly from the Ambien and deal with 3-6 weeks of little or no sleep, or do a slow taper with Valium which only has a 20% success rate.
I was on benzos for about 7 years myself before tapering off. I eventually tapered off. I think if you taper off at a slow enough pace you should be able to do it, though not without some discomfort. However, it doesn't have to be horrific as some people say if you don't go too fast. I used cannabis to help sleep during the taper. Never switched to Valium, but it all really depends on your body chemistry. My taper was rather rapid, but it was not too bad. Insomnia and some minor panic attacks were the worst of it. I definitely recommend checking out http://www.benzobuddies.org/ for information and support.
Regardless, without going through the withdrawal process, that is one addiction you will not grow out of as stopping suddenly can be quite dangerous.
Have you tried getting an allotment and digging it? All of it, two feet down? Working it from dawn to dusk with three short breaks?
Better still, hard manual labour on shifts in a factory where slacking off stops production and is therefore not possible? Maybe in a hazardous environment where you have to be alert to avoid getting burnt or injured by machinery.
Seriously, put yourself through a few weeks in some industrial job and you will not have sleep problems after that.
I agree, I've seen it time and again, people taking multiple medicine for sleep disorder and nothing works. What works is taking a manual job or if you cannot take such a job, put yourself on treadmill and keep going till you fall off, I mean an hour or two. And see how you sleep after that.
I've tried Remeron (Mirtazapine) which at low doses is a sedating H1 antagonist like Seroquel. It worked for about 2 years and then like an idiot I started playing around with the dosages and it stopped working completely.
Thanks for the suggestion though, much appreciated.
I really feel for you. I have experienced bouts of insomnia when I've been really stressed. I got laid off twice last year in a three month span, and even after I found a better and steadier gig, the stress persisted for a few months. Additionally, my wife was pregnant with our first child as I was starting the new job. Over the span of a few months, I would have week long stretches where I might sleep 2 or less hours a night, sometimes not at all.
I managed to work through it without using any medication, but it was only time and learning to trust that my body knew how to do the right thing (sleep), without my mind interfering, that eventually righted the ship.
As a sober addict I really can't comprehend the "flavor" of addiction the author describes. Most of my addict friends and acquaintances either worked at sobriety or died from using. Actually most died.
If someone can just stop, most would simply say the person wasn't actually an addict.
I've seen this comment about "wasn't actually an addict" or "not really an addiction" in every discussion of this story, here and elsewhere.
I'm very curious as to why people say this, because it doesn't seem to add anything to the discussion or take it in any useful direction. I'm not trolling here: I really don't get it, and it bugs me a bit because it seems to distract the discussion from things that might be useful (and I've contributed to that distraction here, likely... sorry.)
Consider a similar case: small round blue cell tumours (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1867426/). These present identically in routine histology done on biopsied tissue, but in fact consist of four different types of underlying disease.
Neuroblastoma was identified in the 1800's. Non-Hodgin lymphoma wasn't fully classified until the 1960's. At no time did anyone say, "That's not actually a small round blue tumour" because that would have contributed nothing to the discussion.
If we treat "addiction" as a name for a set of symptoms that may arise from several underlying conditions, some of which can be corrected adequately by an act of will on the part of the individual and some of which cannot, we can start to ask interesting questions like:
1) How do we identify each type of underlying condition?
2) Are there more than two underlying conditions? Is there a more complex, more useful taxonomy?
3) Given the existence of a population that ages out or chooses to stop, are there ways that we can intervene to help them that exploit the specifics of their underlying condition that are different from what has proven to be effective in the population that does not age out and is not able to choose to stop?
And so on. All of these are useful, important, valuable things to say. "Then it's not really an addiction" is not.
That sounds a bit "no true Scotsman". Just because someone grew out of it after a few years, does not mean that they did not struggle with the addiction in the midst of those years.
I've noticed that articles like this almost always fall back on implicit "brain as computer" metaphors: "systems involved in love and sex are coming online," "impact of the drugs on the developing circuitry itself." Anyone know of an article that discusses this? It seems to be everywhere in writings about the brain but rarely acknowledged. As for the article itself - I think it has a valid point but is overly flippant about the risks of addiction and relapse later in life. Just because it's statistically less likely than in youth doesn't mean addiction is a "developmental disorder" as the author suggests.
My take is that it's that people 'understand' how computers work on the broad scale, but don't have any idea how electricity and chemicals can make our brains work. Also, to most people, computers are just our attempt at making brains.
Thanks for the link - although I'm referring more to the (potentially false) analogy with present-day digital computers as opposed to the claim that the brain is a type of computational instrument, which is hard to find fault with. It's interesting how different eras apply their own en vogue technologies to understanding the mind. (I.e. Descartes and other late 17th and 18th c. thinkers visualized mental functions as clockwork-like mechanical interactions, the 20th century witnessed lots of "brain as factory" imagery, and now we're stuck on the brain as a network of computers).
Humans best understand systems by analogy to systems they already understand. We best understand systems we have built ourselves. It ends up limiting how we think about problems and which problems we can understand. For example, to model the circulatory system we needed experience with plumbing. You see the same kind of thinking in electronic circuit models.
Brains aren't computers but some aspects are analogous to computers. Some day we may create new systems that further our understanding of the brain and the mind
> It's interesting how different eras apply their own en vogue technologies to understanding the mind. (I.e. Descartes and other late 17th and 18th c. thinkers visualized mental functions as clockwork-like mechanical interactions, the 20th century witnessed lots of "brain as factory" imagery, and now we're stuck on the brain as a network of computers).
And each era got better and better models, and closer to the truth. The future eras' models of the brain will look much more like 'a network of computers' than an immaterial soul...
I don't think these analogies really go that far. It's more along the lines of switches and wires, which as far as I'm concerned is a simpler model than clockwork, or the hydraulics gmarx mentioned.
The analogy doesn't really go into mechanism, it just talks about routing and activation.
Unfortunately 12-step dogma has persuaded a lot of people that addiction is an inescapable fate, an innate disease/magical curse that can only be managed by joining their religious program for life. The worst part of this is that the 12 step myth of powerlessness creates a self-fulfilling prophecy. It's so colored the popular imagination of what addiction is and how to treat it that when the fact that the majority of people who are addicted to some substance do so by spontaneous remission, it seems surprising, even though that's what's normal.
I feel the same way about the 12 steps. I sat in on a number of meeting when I was younger and it was clear to me at the time that a many of the people there were really involved with the scene because they enjoyed wallowing in self pity and powerlessness. NA/AA gives people an excuse to be weak, and it's often used as a crutch that further enables the "powerless" in avoiding real responsibility.
Researcher Bruce Alexander of Simon Fraser University conducted an experiment called Rat Park, in 1978. From that wikipedia page:
Alexander's hypothesis was that drugs do not cause addiction, and that the apparent addiction to opiate drugs commonly observed in laboratory rats exposed to it is attributable to their living conditions, and not to any addictive property of the drug itself.
To test his hypothesis, Alexander built Rat Park, an 8.8 m2 (95 sq ft) housing colony, 200 times the square footage of a standard laboratory cage. There were 16–20 rats of both sexes in residence, an abundance of food, balls and wheels for play, and enough space for mating and raising litters. The results of the experiment appeared to support his hypothesis. Rats who had been forced to consume morphine hydrochloride for 57 consecutive days were brought to Rat Park and given a choice between plain tap water and water laced with morphine. For the most part, they chose the plain water. "Nothing that we tried," Alexander wrote, "... produced anything that looked like addiction in rats that were housed in a reasonably normal environment." Control groups of rats isolated in small cages consumed much more morphine in this and several subsequent experiments.
That's what happened with me. I'm an ex-heroin addict, clean for two years as of August 30th, after being addicted for 7 years prior. I just had enough... Luckily, Australia has a great support network for my situation, and I can't thank Biala enough for their help. Now I'm kicking ass and taking names :)
My only disagreement is that I still think I'm recovering. I think I always will be, and I've accepted that. No rest for the wicked, I suppose. In addition, I took advantage of opiate replacement therapy, as cold-turkey was just too painful at the time (struggling with depression meant that the emotional side of withdrawals was dangerous for me). I'm finishing my taper in two months, after starting on 28mg of suboxone :)
People grow out of it? Seriously? I don't like seeing addiction only in the traditional way of hardcore drugs, alcohol, etc. There are loads of addictions that aren't even recognized by doctors as such, but are quite far spread. Most of all cigarettes (I don't know any person who gets treated for cigarette addiction), sugar, gambling, virtual realities like tv shows or digital games. In Germany I feel over 50% of the people around me smoke. In nerd circles around me over 80% of people are addicted to either sugar, caffeine, or gaming. In my family I even have 2.5 cases of serious alcohol addiction that is neither treated nor recognized by the addicted. And I live in a middle class family. In lower class families it might be much worse. Maybe I misunderstand the article, but I think saying that most people grow out of addiction is way off reality. I'd argue most people on this planet are hooked to at least one thing, and nearly nobody drops their addictions.
I personally are certainly addicted to sugar. If I don't get my coloa/chocolate/icecream, I feel tired, hungry, sad, and am sometimes in pain, can't think about something else but sugar, and sometimes even walk long distances in the middle of the night in the worst of weathers to get to a 24 hours shop to buy something, if I don't have something at home. Telling this to doctors just yields them saying I'll get diabetes (or might already have it) if I don't change my behaviour, which is pretty much what I already know. Requesting general addiction treatment or food advisory training is not covered by my health care, they say.
The author asks rhetorically why this is a contentious theory - but it seems like wording alone has quite a bit to do with that. A claim like "many people with addictions simply grow out of them" is already much easier to accept than "most people". Of course, there do seem to be some sorts of addictions, like alcoholism, that if anything correlate more strongly with late adulthood, which makes them resistant to this explanation.
> This is one of many reasons why I prefer to see addiction as a learning or developmental disorder, rather than taking the classical disease view.
I always thought that myself but is the first time that I see an article on it.
Most, if not all, addiction studies/reports/data/whatever doesn't count the people that overcome their addiction on their own, or at least on their own without causing major problems.
I would be really glad if this was discussed more often.
I think the author has an important point to make, which could be helpful for those struggling with addiction and find that the model of the disease and total abstinence suggested by 12 step groups doesn't fit in some.
Anecdotally it seems to square with my observations of long time friends.
That said, I do think that there "a thing" that has aspects of a disease. The belief structure was created by folks from e early part of the 20th century, so there concept that the disease was a permanent affliction was probably just not correct.
I tend to look at addictions as a subset of obsessive/compulsive disorders, which has an additional chemical feedback loop enhancer.
Overall, our understanding of mental illness is woefully undeveloped. Most cases are diagnosed by interpretations Of subjective and self reported symptoms. The last time I looked at a discussion of this related to the new DSM, the very low interrator reliability I the diagnosing of mental illness was scandalous. Doesn't mean it's not a real thing though.
I smoked a lot of marijuana since I was 23 till about 26.
I experimented with cocaine, heroin, MDMA, crystal meth for about a month when I was 25.
Heroin was scarily addictive. I remember smoking from tinfoil turned black and mixing other drugs.
I stopped because I got asthma and started coughing up blood. It was opiod withdrawl is the worst but I never touched drugs again.
Anytime I think about my experience, it sends cold sweat, thinking how I could've done it. This is also good because I know the cold sweats keep me away from every repeating this. Its bad because I constantly think about the health implications of smoking heroin, crystal meth for about one month, and the rest of year smoking marijuana that smelled like febreeze.
I hope I'm okay I haven't gone to check with a doctor tho.
I wonder how much this phenomenon varies from one addictive substance to another. For example, obviously there are a lot of people who remain addicted to tobacco long past their mid 20s.
Also, is it possible that some of these people who are considered to have grown out of their addiction, simply substituted one addiction for another? I've heard that the rate of tobacco use among recovering alcoholics is very high. It's true that they're probably better off being out-of-control smokers than out-of-control drinkers. OTOH, I wouldn't say such people have really grown out of their addiction.
> But although I got treatment, I quit at around the age when, according to large epidemiological studies, most people who have diagnosable addiction problems do so—without treatment.
Looks like he's not claiming that no-treatment was his particular path.
I think it is useful to separate out the concepts of substance abuse from substance addiction. If the article just dealt with who experience powerful cravings and withdrawals (the most common definition of addiction, and the most useful as far as I can tell) then it would be much more insightful. Instead it seems to equate addiction with heavy use and recklessness.
Interesting point: "The data supports this idea: If you start drinking or taking drugs with peers before age 18, you have a 25% chance of becoming addicted, but if your use starts later, the odds drop to 4%. Very few people without a prior history of addiction get hooked later in life, even if they are exposed to drugs like opioid painkillers."
I'm not a psychologist but I've had a pretty fucked up mental state for many years. The same can be loosely said mental illness - for it is just that, an illness.
Having said, I'm still waiting on the day that I don't need to reach for my bottle of Vyvanse (Adderall, only exponentially less shitty and more amazing) every morning.
Many people I know that suffer from addictions have carried them through to their later life and continue to function as part of society and generally keep their habits to themselves. I do wonder if they have accounted for this in this study. I am not saying they are incorrect but it is just a thought. =D
If you grow out of an apparently addictive behavior, doesn't that -- by definition -- mean it was not an addiction?
OK, I know the definition of an addiction is that the behavior is having a significant negative affect, but there must be some notion of lack of control too, I would think.
I know plenty of my friends in college drank quite heavily. Afterward it tapered off. And some of had quite bad grades during that time. But no off us ended up as alcoholics after college. This was 20+ years ago, so one would assume real alcoholism would become apparent in this timeframe.
Do you just read headlines and then comment? I mean the author addressed your point within the first few paragraphs, yet you don't seem to be incorporating any of that into your post.
I read the article last night when it came up on /r/skeptic. The author describes a sort of adolescent addiction due to underdeveloped inhibitions of those who having reach their mid-20s. The thesis seems to say that some addictions are situational, like the distinction between a normal situational depression and a clinical depression (one that does not trace to a person's current life situation).
To restate my question: is what the author describes actual an addiction? Perhaps only those addictions that don't resolve themselves are addictions.
So instead of describe the situation as the author does -- some addictions resolve themselves -- perhaps the definition of addiction needs to be refined.
Actually nicotine is apparently not the addictive part of smoking, rather other chemicals in tobacco are.
Anecdotally I can confirm I've smoked e-cigarettes quite heavily for a few months then stopped cold turkey and had zero withdrawal or cravings, but I occasionally feel a desire for smoking a cigar quite strongly despite having them at a rate averaging a few a year.
EDIT: Not majorly addictive, rather than not addictive at all.
By age 35, half of all people who qualified for active alcoholism or addiction diagnoses during their teens and 20s no longer do
And half don't. That's still a huge number, and they're not "simply growing out of it" two decades later. "Just wait a couple of decades, you might get better" is a crappy position to take.
And "chronic" means "recurring", not "permanent for the rest of your life". You can have a chronic problem that goes away after a while.
Mental illnesses also have this stigma of permanence, and it's also inaccurate and damaging. Plenty of people "snap out" of schizophrenia, or stop having bipolar symptoms, or have a few depressive episodes over a decade and then never again. We don't know why remission happens to some people and not others, but it definitely happens. We just don't understand these diseases very well. (I tend to think of depression and bipolar, for example, as symptoms common to multiple diseases.)
Time of diagnosis has a major effect on how your disease is modeled (the term I would use instead of "diagnosed"). Technically speaking, if you've ever had a manic episode, you're considered to have Bipolar I, the most severe version. If you're 28 and had one at 17 and never again... you probably don't have Bipolar I. That could be cyclothymia aggravated by a hormonal or sleep disturbance. It could be a one-off. Perhaps out of a fear of getting it wrong, the medical assumption is that a person who's had one episode is prone to having more. That might be a good policy for doctors (i.e. don't prescribe certain medications to people with histories of depression, or (hypo|)mania) but it's not a great model of how mental illness actually works. Some cases get better with age, and some get worse, and we really don't know why.
As addiction is a mental illness with behavioral complications, I'm not surprised. An episode of addiction is something one has to be aware of for one's life, but the treatment (don't use the drug) is something that, evidently, many people follow perfectly.
I couldn't agree more. The myth that addiction always needs some sort of intervention or treatment is quite false, yet it is constantly perpetuated by the media, doctors, and groups like AA/NA. There is a huge interest (and sometimes profits) on behalf of these groups to perpetuate this myth, of course, to the detriment of the people who suffer from addiction. I'm glad to see that the conclusions based on data differ from the uninformed propaganda that typically dominates this topic.
I take issue with the headline, and I didn't see any support for it in the article -- that people simply grow out of addiction. Treatment or not, we can call that process of reducing one's addictive behaviors growth, but I don't think you can find any addicts -- former or otherwise -- their families, or addiction treatment specialists, who would call that process simple.
Actually, speaking as a former addict, I would call it simple.
Damned hard, fucking painful, betimes hopeless, ..., but the most consistent memory from my early recovery was the simplicity of the process. There really was only one thing important: stay clean.
In my own case I aimed for staying clean for 2 years. And for those two years that was not "the most important thing", it was the only thing that mattered. Other factors helped too (supportive family was next most important), but I think I would not now be clean without the simplicity of that bright line rule of 2 years.
Rules may be simple, but adherence to them is not. For some, it may be impossible. Consider the first 2 rules of dating:
1. Be attractive
2. Don't be unattractive
The rule for winning is simply to score more points than the other team. Immortality is governed by the simple rule: Stay alive
None of these are simple processes, and it diminishes the discourse to treat them as such. I am thankful for your counterexample to my challenge, but I'm not convinced that, if asked sincerely about how you have managed your recovery from addiction, you could possibly sincerely respond: I simply grew out of it.
In that case, it is entirely the wrong expression to use. To simply grow out of something is to primarily yield to natural processes. Babies simply grow out of breast feeding. Toddlers simply grow out of putting random things in their mouths. Children simply grow out of name-calling and toy-hoarding. Adolescents simply grow out of feelings of invulnerability.
If an addict primarily yields to natural processes, he simply behaves in complete accordance with addiction.
You don't solve a problem by demonizing it and giving people unrealistic information. You solve a problem by studying the root cause and the effects, and turn that understanding into a sustainable plan.
Should we reject any research or analysis into drug problems just because some people struggle with drug problems? Or should we just reject the parts that don't agree with our view of the subject matter?
The article is not trying to minimize the perception that drugs can cause harm. Rather, it is suggesting that we can reduce the harm caused by drugs by understanding addiction in a different way.
I don't think the point was to minimize the negative impact of drugs. The point was that our understanding and treatment of addiction is flawed, and we need to change that perception so we can really help those with addiction.
I disagree, this author is clearly trying to make the case that the idea that addiction being "progressive" is wrong. That is definitely minimizing addiction.
A perfectly reasonable counter to his arguments is the possibility that the data isn't terribly accurate. The data concerning people "classified as addicts" vs the hypothetical set of data for "actual addicts" might look very different (could we actually obtain this). The problem of classifying addicts or even really defining the term is very open as of now. Using datasets for addicts with the same confidence as datasets concerning those suffering from breast cancer for instance is foolish. The gray area as to whether someone does or does not have breast cancer is very small when compared to that same gray area with addiction.
My own experience shows that there are addicts who never get better, progressively get worse and tend to die very sad deaths. My family is riddled with this type of addict. The possibility that the author is not suffering from the exact same condition that my family members are afflicted with is not really considered. He spends one or two sentences describing how bad his addiction was as proof to the contrary but this is just shirking the real issue of identification. So yes, I think through the author's narrow-minded approach they are indeed treading dangerously on minimizing addiction and the "negative impact of drugs."
False dichotomy. Recreational drugs (such as cocaine and heroin) are dangerous. If 95% "grow out" of the addiction and 5% die (I made those numbers up) then the drugs are very dangerous, but the "growing out" premise is true.
LSD might cause a bad trip (if used under sane circumstances, such as with a non-tripping sitter) less than 1% of the time, but the medical establishment has good reason even still to be nervous about it. (It probably shouldn't be illegal to research it. It's also not "safe" in the recreational context; not even close.) If aspirin seriously hurt 1% of the people who used it, it'd be off the market.
Also, losing 3-5 years of your life and career to a stigmatized health issue is a Big Fucking Deal even if you remit fully.
The OP may be taken to under-report the long-term psychological and neurological damage that can occur even when the addiction itself (and the use) goes away. For drugs like cocaine and methamphetamine, the "graying" (the loss of the ability to feel pleasure due to dopamine floods) can last for at least a decade. Then there's all the heart damage, which is not to be taken lightly. Plenty of people die from drug-related damage in their 50s and 60s even when they haven't used in years.
Damage by cocain and heroin are well known to the our medicine, while LSD is NOT. There is still an huge grey/dark area when it comes to damage caused by entheogens such as LSD. All we have is little bits of data, some little experiment here or there.
No, I'm not saying LSD is fun nor safe, but the propaganda out there about it is pure bs.
The author equates "not seeking professional help" with "growing out of it", which I don't think is right. However, he gets a lot right, and links to studies. My personal two biggest problems with 12 step: insistence on believing in a godlike thing and it's dogmatic unchanging nature which ignores science.
Demons don't exist, and their mythical properties are ascribed to real addictions. Addictions may not be incurable, they may not be uncontrollable, they may not require exorcism by an expert, they may not have been induced by sin or fed by it, Jesus may not be the answer, etc.
edit: really? Happy to accept the downvotes on this one.
Agreed. Historically this "evil spirit" metaphor has been a symbol used to deny accountabilty for everything from battery to rape and murder. It also includes religious baggage.
A homunculus didn't do it; I am it and I did that.
I've seen some ministries report a 50% success rate re curing addiction for people who join. So social recovery forms of drug treatment are very successful and might include things like exorcism and whatnot as part of belonging to the flock, I suppose.
Sure, we know from science and Occam's razor that devils and gods probably don't exist, but that doesn't mean participating doesn't show proven benefits. Although the studies that show the benefits of religion tend to find attendance means more than believe, so it is more of a network and support effect than anything actually spiritual.
> I've seen some ministries report a 50% success rate re curing addiction for people who join.
Ministries are not known for their careful scientific rigor in defining and measuring success rates. That 50% could be coming from any of a number of biases ranging from blatant to subtle: "How to have a high success rate in treatment: advice for evaluators of alcoholism programs", Miller & Sanchez-Craig 1996 http://slatestarcodex.com/Stuff/addiction.pdf is a semi-humorous paper from some frustrated researchers describing how these bogus numbers come about (discussion: http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/01/02/two-dark-side-statistic... ).
The problem with using Occam's razor to disprove the existence of some sort of god or spirit of the universe is that there isn't any explanation. Remember it's "the simplest explanation is usual correct." We really don't have any explanation, ultimately as to origins or what is really happening at a fundamental level. What are photons? What are electrons? What is space-time? This pesky big bang thing. And then you have Goedel's incompleteness theorems which basically tell us that no amount of math or logic will ever fully explain this universe. While there may not be some old fella with a big white beard floating around in the upper reaches of the atmosphere, I tend to think the actual "truth" is far crazier.
BTW, I feel like I always come across as a crazy person when I say this stuff but I really don't see a flaw in this. The basic premise is that there isn't going to be a logical explanation of "the universe." So, that seems to lead to the conclusion that any complete explanation will have to contain some illogical portion. I feel like once you accept that, all bets are off as far as feeling comfortable in our cozy little science bubbles.
edit: and everything that you said is true. Don't be discouraged by the downvotes. People are downvoting facts that they don't that don't accord with with their prejudices, rather than people participating in bad faith or spreading misinformation.
