EXTREMISTS DIG IN, THE ADDICTS RAGE ON

In a footnote to recent annals of indulgence, Robert Downey Jr. got out of
jail. Ooh, but it was tempting to say "got out of jail free." There's
that urge to get in that dig for the commoners. To rail at the way
criminals get treated when they're celebrities.

Of course, before the celebrity was an inmate, he was an addict. And
before he was an addict, he was a troubled child. Maybe this is why there
was also the temptation, throughout Downey's incarceration, to wonder how a
judge could see any good in having someone which such obvious emotional
problems do hard time.

I thought of Downey the other night, watching Bill Moyers' series on
addiction on PBS. As Moyers interviewed one struggling 12-stepper after
another, I thought: So much talk, so many headlines. So why am I not
buying this?

Over the years, the drug debate has boiled down to approximately two
viewpoints: Addicts are either helpless victims of a lifelong illness or
weak-willed slackers who won't straighten up without punishment. If you
know an addict, you know that neither version is more than about half true.
But this hasn't slowed the resulting debate between "just say no" and
recovery-speak.

Into this fray come suffering people like Robert Downey Jr., a casualty of
the confusion if there ever was one. Perhaps you have read about the
fiasco that was his 113-day incarceration: Sent up for violating probation
on cocaine and heroin charges, Downey's stint was a high-profile hassle,
during which inmates beat him, guards kissed up to him, and the sheriff
sought to make an example of him, grandstanding all the way.

Reared in the drug and show-biz cultures of the 1960s and '70s L.A., the
sad-eyed actor has said he began using drugs when he was 8. Now 32, his
run-ins with the system are a tabloid TV staple. Couch potatoes will
recall that funny-sad news clip of him from a while back, Charlie Chaplin
trying to sneak out of yet another drug rehab facility.

But people who know what it is to live with a compulsive drinker or drug
user will nod at the predictable trajectory of Downey's tale: the promises,
the failures, the con jobs, the interventions, the anguish of those who
stood by him and those who finally bailed.

"I find myself defenseless," he told the judge. "I don't know why . . . the
fear . . . of you, of death and not being able to live a life free of drugs
has not been enough to make me not continually relapse."

This is what a lot of people with substance abuse problems will tell you.
They don't know, really, why they can't quit. All they know is that there
seems to be this thrumming rage of fear or inhibition or sadness inside
them, and the booze and drugs medicate it.

Their yearning is for that thing that will make them feel equal, normal.
It is like a will to live, it is that powerful. This is why, when the
going gets tough, it's so hard not to resume using. The human spirit will
do almost anything to feel whole.

Given this, it always suprises me that so little of the talk, so few of the
headlines, are ever devoted to that thrumming feeling, that bedrock shame.
I liked that PBS series, just as I felt sympathy for Downey and the judge
who hoped jail would help him hit bottom and go straight, but in neither
case was there more than a nod to the fact that the problem of addiction is
a problem of psychological pain.

Clear away rage and fear of inhibition and there is always the germ of
self-respect. Cultivate the self-respect, and you don't need an altered
state to feel alive. Any psychotherapist can tell you that, with the right
mental health care, you don't need to be "defenseless," that there can be
more to life than "one day at a time."

But mental health hardly seems to figure into the back and forth on
addiction. In a national drug contol budget of $17 billion, only 20
percent goes for treatment; in a nation of 14 million alcoholics and 6.7
million drug addicts, only 15 percent of the people who need it get help.

And, as cases like Downey's illustrate, that help tends to be limited -- by
managed-care restrictions, by the stigma attacthed to both addiction and
mental illness, by the wild disparity in the quality of therapists, by the
popularity of progams that say the best a person can do is to replace the
compulsion to get loaded with the compulsion to stay clean.

It's tempting to wonder why addiction couldn't be treated as successfully
as any other emotional ailment -- why a stint with a good therapist
couldn't root it out along with its psychological origins. True, drugs and
alcohol change brain chemistry, but so does good long-term counseling.
(Please don't misunderstand me, 12-steppers: Your program has worked for
millions. I'm only wondering.)

It's just so sad and frustrating, from Downey on down. There's that urge
to indulge yourself by getting in a dig on behalf of the weak. To rail at
the limitations in the way we have dug in on this problem. To remember
that half the truth only sets you halfway free.