‘Romancing opiates’ - the nature of addiction

Heroin is one of the most addictive drugs, no? Wrong. Nor is the weepy “withdrawal process” a medically serious affair, according to Dr Theodore Dalrymple.

Yet, for decades, chardonnay socialists have pontificated about society’s “poor” drug addicts and their “painful” rehabilitation trials.

As if that weren’t enough, former heroin users are the new Holocaust survivors. Heroin is the Nazi. Society is the camp. And, of course, therapist SWAT teams are the helpful liberators.

To be sure, to use heroin is to invite many negative health consequences - but is treating opiate addiction as a disease helpful?

States Dr Dalrymple in Romancing Opiates: Pharmacological Lies and the Addiction Bureaucracy: “Sport is now one of the principal causes of injuries in the western world, but, however fatuous a sport may be, it is not a disease.”

He adds: “And to conceive of opiate addiction as a disease seems, after my experience with thousands of drug addicts, to me is to miss the fundamental point about it: that is a moral or spiritual condition that will never yield to medical treatment, so-called.”

Nanny state rules rule. To any suggestion that the opiate addict is not a blameless patient, the self-praising enabler will wax lyrical about understanding the “complexities”, period. Little wonder then that social welfare busybodies adopt mother-nurturing roles.

Typically, the enablers’ narrative is artful. Apparently, the junkie, like a toddler, just happens to stumble upon his illegal drug. The drug feels good. Then, one day, he comes back for more. In this context, the seeds of addiction are planted. The addict, they say, is at the mercy of heroin, and, of course, must resort to a life of crime. Nor can he work. Oh, but he has time to (a) make ingenious stories up; (b) plot crimes and (c) carry out really good home invasions.

But how serious is Joe Addict’s addiction? Dalrymple, for instance, talks about “addicts whose histrionics were obviously and demonstrably dishonest” and how he “observed the triviality of withdrawal symptoms from opiates”.

Indeed. Many heroin addicts are thespians. And, turning to medical records, we find little evidence to support the argument that heroin junkies have it tough (in comparison to cancer patients). Arguably, alcoholics have higher withdrawal hurdles.

“Over and over again,” writes Dalrymple “medical writers liken withdrawal, at worst, to a dose of the flu.” Over and over again, however, heroin addicts resort to theatrics in order to prove that they are first-class victims. Nurturers rush to their aide. There are town hall meetings. Writers offer their supposedly deep insights. And in time, the junkies’ audiences - self-praising social welfare types - prove their “compassion” by applauding the manipulative kabuki performances.

In this context, one might ask: are we wasting millions on attention-seeking addicts and their histrionic fits? Aren’t there more deserving causes? How long must we mother these infantile creatures?

For their part, the compassion police treat addicts as wounded babies. In some circles they’re celebrity victims. No abuse excuse is too awful to buy. And addicts almost always have an excuse to sell. “It was the addiction wot dunnit,” they’ll say.

“Theodore Dalrymple is,” according to Kenneth Minogue, professor emeritus at the London School of Economics “a brilliant observer of both medicine and society,” and inarguably one of England’s greatest essayists. Thus, he deserves a larger audience.

And, one should note that drug-taking criminals commit crimes before they first took drugs. In Dalrymple’s observations, many lawbreakers committed between 50 and several hundred crimes before they even took heroin. Nevertheless, abuse excuses are abuse excuses. The chattering classes, after all, see addicts through their politics.

It is scarcely surprising too, that heroin addicts feel little compassion for their fellow junkies. They, after all, are playing the same game, and competing for the affections of paternalistic bureaucrats, and mummy figures.

In Sydney, Australia, some experts have embraced silly projects: “safe injecting” rooms, say. But after weighing up the pro and con arguments, Darlymple stands against legalisation. He stands for reason. He rightly stands up for taxpayer slaves.

Finally, Dalrymple asks that all socially correct drug clinics shut shop. On the other hand, he asserts, “doctors should treat addicts only for serious physical complications of drug addictions: abscesses, viral infections and the like,” as reason maintains.

The addiction ladder is manmade, and it can be unmade by “unmentionable facts”. I, for one, am terribly tired of the paternalistic medical model, and applaud Dalrymple for encouraging us all to think about the many ways in which it “infantilises the subject.”

Most bravely, Dalrymple states that, “In short, the bureaucracy of drug addiction needs drug addicts far more than drug addicts need the bureaucracy of drug addiction”. You see, there really are uncomfortable moral issues on both sides. Mommies love to nurture their junkies. They’re addicts too.