Why Not Take a Drug Class?

As a counselor for both in-class and online drug classes I can tell you there is nothing funny about addiction. That said, I want to start this blog entry with a joke: "How can you tell an addict is lying? Her lips are moving."

The human brain is a powerful organ. It can convince the rest of the body to what it wants and when it wants. Deception and denial are sentinel features of active addiction.

Addiction leads people to commit crimes and to lie to loved ones and practitioners -- not to mention to themselves -- in order to satisfy the illness's obsession with chemicals or behaviors that deaden or otherwise alter feelings.

Think You’re Safe?

You may think just because you smoke a joint now and again for pop a Percocet here and there you are ok. Guess again! It's not just people addicted to the "hard stuff" who are in denial. There are millions of people equally addicted to legal substances, including but not limited to alcohol and nicotine.

If you think you are drinking, smoking or using drugs too often, I encourage you to take a drug class. Drug classes will not only educate you about the drugs and their effects on the human body, but help you gauge the nature of your use patterns. If you prefer to maintain total anonymity, there are online drug classes too.

Lung cancer kills 160,000 Americans each year, more than prescription painkillers and, despite the fact that it kills far more women than breast cancer, it gets much less attention. My mother, who died at 58 of lung cancer, never had to lie or commit crimes to buy her drugs, but the illness drove her to deception in myriad ways, not the least of which was to ignore her health. She smoked until the last weeks of her life and hid her cigarettes the way an alcoholic hides bottles or an addict hides a stash.

Those outside of the illness of addiction see the crimes and lies and conclude that "these people" must be morally depraved: thus the long-standing and persistent cultural conviction that addiction is a failure of willpower and morals. It can be tempting for physicians to take the lies personally and turn against their patients in anger.

Having lived with many people addicted to various drugs, including both my parents, I understand this temptation. After all, if we addicts respected you, wouldn't we tell you the truth?

Well, hell -- in active addiction, we can't spot the truth if it falls on us, which it often does. Distortion of reality is part of addiction. As the late author David Foster Wallace, himself a recovering alcoholic and nicotine addict, once said, addiction is the only illness that tells us we're not sick.

Social stigma throws up additional disincentives for an active addict to face the truth. For several years I was reluctant to admit to my physician that I was having a terrible problem with my medications: I knew if I mentioned the A-word I would be kicked out of the practice into a psychiatric hospital -- thus being forced to deal not only with the complications of drug withdrawal but also with I didn't know how much debilitating pain. Call me proud, but I also couldn't bear to see the look in the clinic staff's eyes when my chart was labeled with the Scarlet A.

In the end, after seeing my father die at 68 of gastrointestinal cancer that was untreatable because of his severe alcoholic cirrhosis, I decided I had to get help. I was able to hire a physician to manage an outpatient detox for me. I was lucky -- not everyone is so fortunate.

Facing the Truth

Dr. Capretto of Gateway told me it's hard to tell how many Pennsylvanians need addiction treatment and can't get it, but, according to a report from the Pennsylvania Recovery Organizations Alliance, in 2009 more than 800,000 people in our state couldn't get treatment because of financial constraints. Those who want to get sober who have neither the cash nor insurance to cover medically supervised detox and those on Medicare -- which, unbelievably, does not pay for treatment centers -- have to sweat it out on their own, a dubious and sometimes risky proposition, especially if they've been taking popular sedatives such as Xanax or Ativan, or even alcohol, withdrawal from any of which can cause life-threatening seizures if not monitored.

I'm not suggesting that society tolerate dishonesty or criminality. My point is that those caught up in addiction usually can't recognize that they're being dishonest. Instead of censure and punishment they need help healing from "this problem." Those who love people who are addicted also need help understanding addiction, so they can learn to protect themselves and to recover from the prolonged damage it can cause in families and communities.

Finally, we need to learn how to talk sensibly with our children about addiction prevention. Regina Labelle, chief of staff in President Barack Obama's Office of National Drug Control Policy, told the summit audience, "It's hard to talk to kids about prescription drug abuse."

But why? Kids are imaginative and intelligent creatures, and metaphor and story always work well to explain tough subjects. In my experience, speaking to them about addiction is a matter of letting them know that an internal switch exists inside the body and mind that gets flipped once we're exposed to chemicals or behavior that change or suppress one's feelings. With greater and more frequent exposure to drugs and alcohol, people with a genetic predisposition to addiction run the risk of flipping that switch permanently. Once the switch is soldered to "On," it can never be turned off. So it's important for kids to learn to deal productively with feelings and to be extremely careful about their exposure to these substances and behaviors.

I've been talking to my son about this disease that runs in his family for three years. He understands that when he goes to high school this month, he needs to be especially alert about drinking and drug use.

I'm not too worried. He's a competitive soccer player who, when injured, is vigilant even about how much ibuprofen he takes. He knows substances and behaviors can change feelings. He knows addiction can kill. So far, he wants to experience life as it is.

And this part of the message is equally important, and often forgotten: If the switch gets flipped, it's important to get help, no matter what it costs, and sooner rather than later. Effective help exists, and it saves lives.


Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/opinion/perspectives/addicts-are-not-low-lifes-649550/#ixzz246n3kAG3