SELF-MEDICATION AS KEY TO "DRUG EPIDEMIC'

My Smacked-Up Readers:

We are fortunate to have with us today the ongoing "Horse vs. Horses"
correspondence between myself and the altruistically candid Ms. Maia
Szalavitz, kick-ass journalist and forerunner of some of the most
groundbreakingly positive, forward-thinking ways of regarding That Old
Devil Heroin that I have ever been exposed to.

Dearest Cintra: Let me explain why I quit (doing heroin). For one, I was
using both heroin and cocaine, and though I tried methadone, it only served
to increase my cocaine use. As a result, I believed the anti-methadone
propaganda - that it's only a substitute for real recovery, that it doesn't
help the poly-addicted, that it's government mind control.

Anyway, my drug use got to a point where I recognized that I was going to
have to violate my principles in order to continue it - and that I was not
improving my life or helping myself with drugs, but that I was dying, and
was indeed addicted. I entered drug-free treatment the next day and have
been clean since.

However, my experience is the exception, not the rule. The research shows
that the vast majority of addicts relapse, and that methadone is the most
successful treatment for opiate addiction. Unfortunately, in the U.S., the
system amounts to chemical probation and is so highly restrictive that I
have a hard time recommending it, even though I know that the drug itself
could save many a life.

I have a close friend in England, however, who is on methadone and whom I
cannot say is any less spiritually evolved (though he's an atheist),
emotionally available (he's more so than any American man I've known) or
intellectually impaired (the man learns programming languages for fun).
When he tried quitting methadone, he became completely dysfunctional and
emotionally impossible. That might have passed in time - but who would want
to go through years of that when continuing on maintenance harms no one?

In my seventh year of recovery, I fell into a deep depression for which I
needed Zoloft to recover. I suspect that I might never have become a junkie
had I known about that medication earlier - because it helped mediate the
oversensitivity for which heroin was so helpful. Is my Zoloft better than
his methadone? Only in the sense that I can travel freely and don't have to
see myself as being presently "addicted." Yes, his withdrawal is worse, but
I'm not sure if I could function if being without medication meant being
permanently depressed, so we may be equally dependent. Research finds that
opiates do have anti-depressant effects for some. It's just not black and
white.

The most common definition of addiction is compulsive use despite negative
consequences - if your life is better on drugs than off, you don't meet the
definition! It turned out for me that heroin wasn't the answer. We should
judge people by how their lives work for them - not by what drugs they do
or don't take. American drug policy and attitudes obscures this all by
making the life of a heroin addict by necessity a life of compulsion and
fear. There is nothing pharmacological about that, however. - Maia
Szalavitz.

Dearest Ms. Maia: When many of the "out of control" heroin-users that I
have known and loved started really fouling up their lives, they were also
using coke; the "Speedball" was always the quickest route to lifestyle
disaster. Self-medication is, most likely, the key to most of the "drug
epidemic" (a ridiculous term - there has always been rampant drug-use in
every culture in the world; it is the only thing on our planet as or more
culturally pervasive than the subjugation of women). I learned when I was
prescribed Ritalin as an adult with Attention Deficit Disorder why I was so
infatuated with crystal meth as a teenager; it helped me feel "normal."
Studies in this area would undoubtedly render addicts with pre-existing
conditions "curable" by expensive psychiatrists and over-the-counter meds,
who have simply never had access to such.

Perhaps a responsibly maintained heroin habit could be a harmless advantage
for some; but until America crawls out of the witch-burning phase of its
drug enforcement policies, a heroin addict must slink around the fringes as
both slave and fugitive. It really boils down to just another way our
reactionary puritan Uncle Sam punishes and imprisons the poor and mentally
unstable. The true murk, as usual, is the righteous ignorance that trickles
down from the top.

Anybody screwed-up on heroin alone? Please write to : CINTRA WILSON FEELS
YOUR PAIN, San Francisco Examiner, P.O. Box 7260, San Francisco, CA 94120,
or e-mail the Psychic Supergenius at zintra@aol.com

©1998 San Francisco Examiner