FAMILY, SOCIAL AGENCIES OFFER BEST ADDICTION TREATMENT

To be human is to be addicted. Americans are culturally addicted to sex,
drugs, work, money, video entertainment, sugar, alcohol, fatty foods,
cigarettes, and caffeine. On individual levels, we are addicted to power,
praise, vanity, violence, shame, blame, self-pity, ideals, status and
hypocrisy. Those who claim no addictions are addicted to denial.

Addiction is the natural desire to escape pain, in deference to pleasure.
Problems arise when addiction transgresses on the basic well-being of one's
self or another individual. The trick to "curing" addiction is not to
repress it, but to redirect it into less self-destructive behavior.

Maui Police Chief Tom Phillips correctly identified despair as a major
emotional ingredient contributing to self-destructive addiction. Social
services help to prevent despair by providing aid to the psychologically and
materially impoverished. When friends and family fail to redirect an
addict's slide into the abyss, social services often provide the last safety
net for those tumbling on a path of no return.

A Hopi elder once said, "America is a culture of individual rights, without
individual responsibility." While we respond to our neighbor's addictions,
let's make sure we take responsibility for our own. Until we individually
assume responsibility for practicing healing values, we can expect cultural
epidemics of self-destructive addiction. Meanwhile, to add extra repression
though law enforcement, without providing greater outlets for "curing"
addiction through the healing agency of social services, is not only
hypocritical, but also ineffective. Our social agencies of healing need more
funding, not less.

James Miner

Haiku