MORALISM AND JUDGMENT

National Addictions Awareness Week begins today (Nov. 18-24).
Everybody -- informed or otherwise -- has an opinion on addiction and
how to treat it, so the subject never fails to generate animated
public debate.

The literature on addiction is voluminous. Any amateur researcher
trying to get a handle on the constant outpouring of medical,
governmental and ideologically-tuned advocacy literature (both for and
against legalization of drugs) will find it a daunting and confusing
business. I have tried, so I know.

In the end it's pretty simple. Everyone agrees addiction takes a
terrible human and societal toll. It's what to do about it that
polarizes us. Opinion invariably drifts toward one of two basic camps,
depending on one's view of human nature.

According to the Tough Love (TL) school, human beings are endowed with
moral agency and can control their choices. In this view, however
painful the circumstances driving the flight into the oblivion drugs
provide, nobody is beyond redemption if he chooses -- and even if he
doesn't choose, but is forced into -long-term community-based
rehabilitative therapy.

According to the Romantic school, summed up in the philosophy of Harm
Reduction (HR), addiction is a chronic disease, like rheumatoid
arthritis, that befalls victims. The best we can hope to do, from this
perspective, is palliate the misery and mitigate the spread of disease
and crime, while enabling the addiction's perpetuation more
hygenically.

For the ultimate Romantic approach, read Gabor Mate's 2008 book, In
the Realm of Hungry Ghosts. Dr. Mate, a sainted icon of the drug
legalization movement, ministers full time to hard-core substance
abusers. An admittedly neurotic personality with multiple manias and a
hunger for both celebrity and vicarious suffering, the spiritually
restless doctor found his bliss in his identification with the
inhabitants of the Portland hotel, home to Vancouver's most
unregenerate human wreckage ( "I saw the cockroaches and fell in love").

Mate sees all of humanity as more or less addicted to something. For
himself it is classical CDs; Conrad Black is "addicted to status"; and
perhaps you are addicted to chocolate cake. Oh yes, and that emaciated
parody of a human being lying spaced out in his own vomit is addicted
to a "substance." It's all one, you see. And therefore: "Addiction can
never be understood if looked at through the lens of moralism and judgment."

After wading through Mate's hagiography of junkiedom, you may, as I
did, yearn for nothing so much as a heavy dose of moralism and
judgment, not to mention assurance you are not an addict, even if,
like me, you tend to buy a lot of books you may never read. You will
find compelling abundance of both moralism and judgment in the
Emmy-award winning TV series about addiction, Intervention. I have no
use for reality shows in general, but this one I'm addic -- er, I
really like.

At the end of every Intervention segment, the addict -- of alcohol,
cocaine, heroin, gambling, oxycontin, you name it -- is surprised with
an intervention by his loved ones, facilitated by one of three
plain-spoken ex-addicts.

You would not believe the tears that flow on this show, or the
outpouring of love -- real, passionately felt, unconditional -- the
parents and siblings and friends feel for the addict, love the addict
accepts as an entitlement or shrugs off with indifference.

Unlike the co-suffering, romanticizing Mate, the ex-addict
facilitators are pragmatic, cool, been-there-done-that realists. They
are unmoved by the addict's narcissism, self-pity and
grievance-collecting.

The format of the intervention capping the addict's documented
downward spiral is invariable: The addict is seated in the midst of
those whose lives he or she is ruining. Up to now they have been
enabling the addict out of helplessly protective love.

The intervention begins with family members reading their own texts,
enumerating the enabling behaviours they will no longer endorse
(money, free accommodation, etc.), all ending with, "Will you accept
this gift [of 90-day community rehabilitation therapy]?"

Usually the addict breaks down, as each of the addict's victims makes
clear the devastating scope of addiction's consequences on others,
especially children. They accept the rehabilitation, with varying
degrees of gratitude or reluctance. Some succeed at it; some don't.

The dramatic televised difference between the addicts in the grip of
their grotesque enslavement and their mature acceptance of
responsibility for their lives 60 days later is remarkable and inspiring.

In a nutshell: HR thinks shaming and blaming addicts is cruel and
unfair. TL thinks shaming and blaming addicts is the only way to open
their eyes wide enough to their own selfishness and degradation to
push them into recovery. Read the "compassionate" Mate book, then see
the "tough" Intervention, and then tell me: Which would you choose for
someone you love?