“Alcoholism” Antisocial Personality Disorder, and Homelessness

In my experience it seems that the people who engage in highly destructive behaviors related to substance use always have a dual diagnosis of substance abuse AND antisocial personality disorder.

When these people fall into the hands of the chemical dependency treatment industry they are virtually always given a single diagnosis of “addiction” and their antisocial personality disorder goes unrecognized.

Yet the junkie on the street who will rob you for ten dollars is NOT representative of junkies in general–there are a lot of white collar junkies that fly under the radar.

The same is true of boozehounds.

In self righteous American society we always talk about “alcoholism” causing homelessness and never the reverse.

Yet I often wonder if most of the alkies living on the street were driven to drink like that BECAUSE of the fact that they had to live on the streets.

I would like to see some evidence of whether drunkenness is more likely to cause homelessness or homelessness is more likely to cause drunkenness.

Copyright © 2009, The HAMS Harm Reduction Network

Calling People Bad Names Never Solved Anything

It is quite amazing to me how so many people who consider themselves liberal and enlightened go around calling other folks bad names like “alcoholic” or “addict”. These same people would never think about calling others bad names based on their race, ethnicity, religion, IQ, sexual orientation or even sanity.

It seems that even most of the liberals in American society need a scapegoat and people who like to engage in recreational intoxication or other vices such as gambling or even promiscuity are now subject to getting labeled as an “alcoholic” or an “addict” by every uneducated un-degreed yay-hoo on the street.

The fact is that the words alcoholic and addict do not even occur in the DSM-IV and even if they did then you would still be diagnosing folks without a license if you used them to label people.

The simple fact is that “alcoholic” and “addict” are merely dirty words that some people use to make other people feel bad about themselves. If you use them, then shame on you–you oughtta have your mouth washed out with soap.

Copyright © 2009, The HAMS Harm Reduction Network

Let’s Get Rid Of The Stigma For Real

It is just as wrong for the segment of society which does not use drugs or alcohol to attempt to impose their value system upon people who choose to engage in recreational intoxication as it is for the heterosexual majority to impose their value system and sexual practices on the homosexual minority. We no longer lock homosexual men in prison for the practice of consensual sodomy. Nor do we send them to therapists to “treat” their “mental illness” of homosexuality. In 1973 the American Psychiatric Association voted that homosexuality was no longer a disease and removed it from the DSM.

We are told by many people that homosexuality is genetic and inherited and that since people cannot choose to be other than what they are that we should accept it and not blame them for who they are–they cannot help it.

Yet we are also told that people who choose to engage in recreational intoxication by using drugs or alcohol are diseased. Why are they diseased? Because they are born that way and they cannot help it and therefore they must be treated until l they change whether they like it or not.

Homosexuality is NOT a disease. This is because it is genetic. Recreational intoxication IS a disease. This is because it is genetic. HUH???!!

What an outrage it would be to take all the homosexuals in America and lock them up in religiously oriented brainwashing camps and to tell them that every time they engaged in homosexual sex it meant that they had “relapsed” into their “disease” and that their only hope was to admit that they were powerless over their homosexuality and to ask a “Higher Power” to give them a daily reprieve from their homosexual behavior.

Yet this is exactly the sort of gross and repellant violation of basic human rights which is accorded to those in America who choose to engage in recreational intoxication. Just get caught even once in possession of a joint and you will be locked up in a religious brainwashing camp and be told that that which you like to do is a disease and that the only cure for your disease is to spend every day for the rest of your life sitting around some godawful religious meeting. Good grief–it is enough to drive one to drink!

Calling something a “disease” or a “mental illness” does not remove stigma. Calling it a personal lifestyle choice is what removes the stigma.

No gay person of my acquaintance has ever said to me “Let is put homosexuality back in the DSM and call homosexuality a mental illness instead of a lifestyle choice so that we can remove the stigma.”

Classifying things as crimes or diseases stigmatizes them. Classifying them as lifestyle choices removes the stigma. The NIAAA wants to refer to recreational alcohol intoxication as “binge drinking” in order to stigmatize it and to force people to stop engaging in it because the NIAAA feels that it has an inalienable right to force its value system upon others against their will.

From my perspective forcing one’s values upon others against their will is a far worse addiction than is engaging in a bit of recreational drug or alcohol use. So is locking someone up in a religious brainwashing camp and forcing your conception of a “Higher Power” on them against their wills.

I do not believe that G.O.D. stands for Group Of Drunks. I don’t believe in creationism in the first place–but even if I did I would not believe that a group of drunks created the universe. Nor do I believe that AA created the universe. Group Of Drunks = G. O. D. indeed!

Let us recognize that engaging in recreational drug or alcohol intoxication–just like homosexuality–is a lifestyle choice. Yes–drug or alcohol use can be a high risk behavior–but so can homosexuality. Both call for personal responsibility and good harm reduction practices to reduce the accompanying risks.

Just as safe sex is good sex–safe intoxication is good intoxication.

How about doing away with abstinence-only programs for drugs and alcohol and teaching kids about safe drug and alcohol use instead?

And how about doing away with abstinence-only programs for sex and teaching kids about safe sex whether it is straight sex or gay sex?

The life you save may be your child’s.

Copyright © 2009, The HAMS Harm Reduction Network

Let’s Put An End To Discrimination Based On Treatment Goal

The following is a true story: A short time ago I was under a tremendous amount of situational stress involving leaving an old job and starting a new venture. Not only was I leaving an old job behind, this new venture also entailed leaving many close old friends behind. I was depressed and stressed from all sides from emotional to financial. I needed someone to talk to so I sought out a mental health professional.

I filled out an intake questionnaire which asked if I had any problems with drugs or alcohol. Since I currently had no problems with drugs or alcohol, I truthfully answered “No”. Then it came time for my intake interview and the interviewer asked if I had ever been in a chemical dependency treatment program. I truthfully replied yes that I had checked myself into such a program many years before. I was then asked if I had been perfectly abstinent from alcohol and all other recreational drugs (except for nicotine and caffeine) for the past six months. I truthfully replied that I was not totally abstinent from alcohol because I was drinking within NIAAA approved guidelines for moderate drinking.

I was told by the intake person that I would not be allowed any mental health services until I had been totally abstinent for all addicting drugs (except for caffeine and nicotine) for six months and that I would have to enroll in their chemical dependency treatment program for six months before I would be allowed access to any mental health services to deal with my stress and depression.

I tried to explain that my previous experience with chemical dependency treatment had been damaging and had caused me to drink more and that it had taken me two years to recover from the treatment and establish a non-problematic relationship with alcohol. I was still refused necessary mental health treatment unless I was willing to undergo a chemical dependency treatment which was not only unnecessary but which was in violation of my religious beliefs and which had proved harmful in the past.

It is a total outrage and morally reprehensible to deny client needed mental health services which might save their lives simply because the client’s goal vis a vis alcohol or drug use might be moderation or harm reduction rather than total abstinence. It is a violation of the most basic principles of humanistic psychotherapy for the therapists to force their goals and beliefs and values on the clients against the clients’ wills.

The time has come to eliminate discrimination against clients who are successfully pursuing treatment goals of moderation or harm reduction. The evidence from the NIAAA itself shows that people are just as likely to resolve and alcohol problem with a goal of moderation as with a goal of abstinence and that most problems with drugs or alcohol are resolved successfully without recourse to any sort of formal chemical dependency treatment at all.

People like Patt Denning and Andrew Tatarsky have clearly demonstrated that drug and alcohol users respond to psychotherapy even while they are still actively using drugs and alcohol and that giving them access to mental health treatment while actively using can actually help them to resolve drug or alcohol problems successfully via harm reduction, moderation or abstinence.

The time has come for the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene of the City of New York and the New York State Office of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse to insure that no active user of drugs or alcohol is refused access to mental health services for refusing to undergo chemical dependency treatment. Let us put an end to this sort of discrimination once and for all.

Copyright © 2009, The HAMS Harm Reduction Network

Addiction Genetics and Nazi Race “Science”

The politics of genetics has been used throughout history to create scapegoats and to oppress various segments of humanity. Tremendous efforts were made in Nazi Germany to establish Rassenwissenschaft–race science–as a legitimate science. Tremendous efforts were made to prove that Jews, Gypsies, and others were genetically different, subhuman, and curable only by extermination. All these efforts failed because they had no basis in reality–they were nothing but political artifacts intended to satisfy hate.

The more things change the more they stay the same. Today’s political forces have decreed that the drunkard and the drug addict are somehow fundamentally different from other human beings. These hate mongers have declared that the drug user and the drunkard comprise a subhuman, racially inferior underclass whose basic human rights are not protected under the Constitution of the United States of America.

The “addiction gene” or an “alcoholism gene” is such a hot political prize that its discovery has been announced with great hoopla at least a dozen times in the past couple of decades. The problem was that in every single case the scientists announcing this great discover had to recant–for the simple fact that the evidence did not back up their extravagant claims. Most serious geneticists know that the “addiction gene” is a chimera, a will-o’-the-wisp which does not exist–but an innocent public still sits and awaits the discovery of the mythical “addiction gene”.

The simple fact is that there is no such thing as a “disease” of “addiction” or “alcoholism”. People use what means they have to cope with difficult situations. Sometimes the only means that they have is drugs or alcohol; sometimes it is the case that drugs and alcohol are just so readily available. Anyone can adopt a maladaptive coping strategy under difficult enough circumstances. Genetics has nothing to do with it. Period.

The really sick and diseased people in the United States of America today are the ones who promote the Nazification of science by promoting the idea that drunkards and drug addicts are genetically different from the rest of us. These people are doing nothing short of what the Nazis did in Germany–giving the general public a scapegoat to blame their troubles on–and setting up a new race science and a new racially inferior subhuman subset of humanity–all based on a tissue of lies.

One of the worst results of this new scapegoating has been the consistent stripping of this supposedly “genetically diseased” group of people of their most basic and fundamental human rights under the Bill of Rights of the Constitution of the United States –to wit:

The Eighth Amendment to the Constitution protects people in prison in the United States from “cruel and unusual punishment”. However, people in treatment programs for “addiction” or “alcoholism” are not given the same protections as criminals. Therapeutic Communities and “tough love” programs based on Synanon often force adults to wear nothing but diapers and call them big babies. Men are forced to dress as women for weeks at a time for the “crime” of saying hello to a woman. Occupational therapy includes things like scrubbing toilets with toothbrushes for 8 hours a day.

The First Amendment right to freedom of religion is respected in prisons–prisoners in the United States are not forced to believe in God or attend religious services against their will.

However this is not true in drug and alcohol “treatment” programs where inmates are browbeaten and threatened with a horrifying death from drug or alcohol use unless they accept a “Higher Power”–and not just any “Higher Power”–but one that fits the steps of AA. Can a door knob be a higher power? Only if you can make conscious contact with a door knob like step 11 requires. Inmates in 12 step treatment programs are also forced to attend AA meetings against their will–a violation of the first amendment rights of anyone who feels that AA meetings violate their personal religious freedoms.

Then we have the Salvation Army which as a part of their “occupational therapy” makes the inmates in their treatment programs work eight hours a day in their thrift shops and pays them two dollars for the whole day. And I thought slavery was ended with the Emancipation Proclamation. I guess the laws against slavery don’t count if you are one of those “genetically diseased” alcoholics or drug addicts. Like the sign hanging over Auschwitz said “Arbeit Macht Frei”–work will set you free.

It is long past time that we start treating human beings as responsible adults with the basic unalienable human right to decide what they want to put into their own mouths. “No more drug war” means “no more war on drug users”.

No one should be considered subhuman because of what they choose to put in their mouths. No one should be stripped of their unalienable basic human rights based on what they choose to put in their mouths.

The war criminals are those who wage the drug war–not the drug users who are the innocent victims of the war on drugs.

Copyright © 2009, The HAMS Harm Reduction Network