Drug Addiction: The Canary in the Mine

You’ve heard that drug addiction is up.  You’ve seen the news stories about how the death rate from addiction has accelerated.  You’ve also been told that addiction is a disease like any other.  What you haven’t been told, however, is that there is a connection between these events; one which bodes ill for our society.

As someone who worked for years as an addiction counselor, I grappled with several nasty facts.  First, many addicts get started voluntarily.  They want to see what it feels like to be high and to escape from the unpleasant demands of everyday life.

Second, although the number of addicts introduced to drugs by physicians has increased, in most cases people can shake chemical dependency if they try hard enough.  But they have to try.  It is not enough to get into a program.

Third, more Americans than ever believe they have a right never to experience pain.  They are prepared to take medications to ease their discomfort because they refuse to endure any distress.  For them, drugs are an easy way out.

Fourth, physicians often prescribe drugs because this is what their patients want and what the pharmaceutical companies have convinced them is harmless.  They too take the easy way out rather than confront unhappy patients.

Fifth, these trends feed off the belief that people should never feel guilty for their mistakes.  We are repeatedly told to be nonjudgmental.  We must not condemn others for being immoral.  That they get hooked on drugs or fail to get off is not their fault.

Diseases, most people would agree, are not a personal flaw.  They are something that happen to us over which we have little control.  Yet this is why people conflate addictions with illnesses.  The maneuver relieves them of the pain they might have to endure if they felt guilty.

Nevertheless people should feel guilty if they voluntarily become addicted.  And they should feel guilty if they do not take measures to get drug free.  Perhaps the pain of a guilty conscience will motivate them to behave in ways that are not injurious to themselves or others.

Our attitude to drug addiction is like the canary in the coal mine in that it too is an indicator of a larger problem.  Coal miners once brought these birds into their workplace to warn of lethal accumulations of gas.  Thus, if the birds died, it was time to evacuate as soon as possible.

The de-moralization of drug addiction is a similar warning sign.  It is a precursor to the de-moralization of society as a whole.  Few Americans want to feel guilty about anything.  Having become exceedingly pain averse, they do not wish to experience moral distress.

As a result, we have witnessed levels of dishonesty shoot up to unparalleled heights.  People now tell untruths without a twinge of regret.  They likewise accept rank duplicity from their political allies.  Not only do they not recognize deceit as such; they applaud it.

The same goes for the explosion in crass behavior.  Vulgarity seems to be everywhere.  Casual insults have similarly proliferated.  People claim to be compassionate, but they have no compunctions about defaming others or ruining their reputations.

Nor do many people feel a need to be responsible.  When the policies that they advocate hurt others, they shrug their shoulders and move on.  They care not a whit about the consequences of their conduct.

Like the New York Times, people do not acknowledge when they have been caught in lies.  Like the sponsors of Obamacare, they will not admit that premiums have gone up and millions of people can no longer afford their deductibles.  What matters is not the truth, but that they win their political battles.

If we, as a nation, do not heed the antecedents we see every day on our television screens and the Internet, we will become as decadent as the ancient Romans.  If we do not have the courage to identify immorality and condemn it out loud, we will soon drown in it.

Admitting our faults and criticizing others for theirs is not easy.  Nor is this always free of miscalculations.  Nonetheless, being genuinely moral is something to which we should aspire.

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University