The likely cause of drug addiction - good read

[Original_Intent]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann...b_6506936.html

This gives us an insight that goes much deeper than the need to understand addicts. Professor Peter Cohen argues that human beings have a deep need to bond and form connections. It’s how we get our satisfaction. If we can’t connect with each other, we will connect with anything we can find — the whirr of a roulette wheel or the prick of a syringe. He says we should stop talking about ‘addiction’ altogether, and instead call it ‘bonding.’ A heroin addict has bonded with heroin because she couldn’t bond as fully with anything else.

[tod evans]

I was skeptical but this is a well reasoned article....

[Original_Intent]

I was skeptical but this is a well reasoned article....

Yeah, and in the Huffington Post, no less.

[Working Poor]

Oh you mean people don't get addicted because they are bad people? I have been a big advocate for looking into the cause rather than the result of addiction I have long believed addiction is about disconnection. I know that throwing people in prison because they are addicts is not working because it further isolates and disconnects.

[Anti Federalist]

Not really an earth shattering conclusion, to me:

People take drugs to escape/cope with a miserable existence.

[Anti Federalist]

This isn’t theoretical. It is happening. I have seen it. Nearly fifteen years ago, Portugal had one of the worst drug problems in Europe, with 1 percent of the population addicted to heroin. They had tried a drug war, and the problem just kept getting worse. So they decided to do something radically different. They resolved to decriminalize all drugs, and transfer all the money they used to spend on arresting and jailing drug addicts, and spend it instead on reconnecting them — to their own feelings, and to the wider society. The most crucial step is to get them secure housing, and subsidized jobs so they have a purpose in life, and something to get out of bed for.

This I agree with. (The concept, not the subsidization part)

I wonder if we are seeing the first wave of obsolete humans dying off because of automation and technology taking that "something to get out bed for" incentive?

No...on second thought, I don't wonder...makes perfect sense, especially considering the demographic of who is dying.

[catfeathers]

Good article. I work in a rehab as a counselor and I've met a lot of good people there who happen to be addicts. It seems like most of them got started by trying to drown some type of feeling with drugs or alcohol.

[Ender]

Everyone has addictions- some are considered OK- others are "illegal". Many like to point fingers at the illegal stuff, while ignoring their own "legal" addictions.

Facing that is the first step in becoming whole, personally as well as a community.

[Jamesiv1]

This is not a new concept.

In AA meetings you hear a lot about being disconnected.... "Apart from, instead of a part of".... "Standing in a room full of people, I still felt alone.".... "I always suffered from a case of terminal uniqueness", etc.

Working thru the AA steps will fix that - pretty much every time if done fearlessly and thoroughly.