TIME TO TRY A NEW WAY TO DEAL WITH DRUG ADDICTION

Godspeed to the Victoria Crystal Meth Society, and to any other
community group trying to do its part to shake us awake before things
get any worse. We need it.

But I do sometimes fear that yet again, we risk losing the
opportunity to talk about addiction overall by getting distracted by
the latest "most terrible" drug. As awful as crystal meth may be,
we'll never get around to tackling the larger problems of a truly
terrible health disaster if we keep up this flavour-of-the-month approach.

Those of you who remember the 1930s film Reefer Madness, which became
popular again as a cult favourite in the 1960s, will know what I
mean. After that came LSD as the worst drug ever, and later PCP.
Crack cocaine had a good run throughout the 1990s. These days, it's
crystal meth.

If only it really was as simple as wiping out a certain drug. Put
some really heavy enforcement into something like that and it might
even be possible to squelch a particular drug right out of existence.

But for someone who was addicted, it would make no difference
whatsoever. They'd just find something else to use. The problem isn't
the drug, it's addiction.

Putting all our efforts into eradicating a specific drug
unfortunately doesn't get us any further toward dealing with the
beast that is addiction. One drug less? A dozen more in waiting.

Or, as happened in Iowa recently when that state cracked down very
successfully on sales of ingredients for crystal meth, a new way
emerges of finding the drug in question. In that case, the meth
started coming up from Mexico, at a higher cost. The result:
Meth-related crime rates in Iowa went up.

There's a poem by Portia Nelson, Autobiography in 5 Short Chapters,
that beautifully explains the five stages human beings go through
when making changes in their lives. The process starts at the point
where you don't even know you have to change -- that's Stage One. As
Nelson so nicely puts it:

"I walk down the street.

There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.

I fall in.

I am lost ... I am helpless.

It isn't my fault.

It takes forever to find a way out."

As the poet slowly makes her way down the same potholed street while
the stages of change unfold, she eventually starts walking around the
hole, and then down another street entirely. The change is complete.

It's a process that's particularly apt for people with addictions,
and for the people trying to develop services to suit the various
stages. But it strikes me that B.C. overall -- and really, all of
Canada -- is stuck in Stage One of the progression, failing to see
that deep hole in the sidewalk and tripping time and again into one
more fruitless crusade against some drug of the moment.

The issue is not drugs; virtually all of us use drugs. The issue is
that terrible combination of genetics, environment and life
circumstance that sets a person up for addiction. Studies have found
13 to 15 per cent of all recreational drug users end up addicted. Of
course, people who end up addicted have no idea on the way in how
very hard it's going to be to get out, or that many will die without
ever making it.

If addiction was being seen for what it is -- a mental and physical
health problem of heartbreaking proportion -- then maybe something
would have happened by this point. Maybe there wouldn't be a
terrified young Victoria woman holed up with her family in Chilliwack
right now wondering how she's going to keep her addiction at bay for
almost three more months while she waits for a publicly funded
treatment bed somewhere in B.C.

Instead, we just keep falling into that hole on the street, and
looking around for some new drug to blame it on. The truth of it is
that we're barely doing anything about addiction, and certainly have
nothing that looks like a long-term strategy.

Thousands of British Columbians are mired in a miserable, stigmatized
existence because there are simply no services for them.

Inhumane, yes. But it's also costing us dearly in terms of emergency
health spending, court costs, policing and deteriorating community
standards. Sick people with no help and little hope don't always make
the best of parents, either, and their children -- and theirs in turn
-- are at risk of becoming the next generation of lost souls.

From all accounts I've heard, crystal meth is indeed a terrible
drug, most particularly because you don't have to use it for very
long before you're addicted. But it's just the latest symptom of a
disease that we've been refusing to do anything about for nigh on 60
years now, when the first B.C. studies started popping up urging action.

We've been falling in this same old hole for long enough. It's our
fault, and we really do need to find a better road.