STRATEGY FOR DRUG-FREE LIVING

A position paper by Charles Slack, Ph. D.

Introduction

There are two wars against drugs. One is the battle between the police, the drug squads, the international constabularies, military forces and the crime commissions against drug growers, drug lords, drug dealers and two kinds of crime, that perpetrated to acquire drugs and that perpetrated because drugs are ingested. This war is a supply-side war fought by law enforcement agencies against law-breakers. Nearly everyone, those who want governments to fight harder and those who want them to quit fighting, agree that this first drug war is a real war with real casualties.

On the demand-side however, there is another "drug war". One ex-addict many years ago called this "an imaginary war with real casualties"[i]. It takes the form of an argument or debate between those who strive for a drug-free society versus those who believe we must all adjust to drugs as a permanent fixture of modern life. Of course the debate has real consequences: its outcomes affect legislation and public opinion, and shape social attitudes and behaviour.

This paper deals only with war number two, the debate that is analogous to a war. The paper suggests that the war analogy may not be the best metaphor.

Where I stand

Personally, I strongly favour a drug-free society. Drugs nearly ruined my life. My addiction cost me my career, my first marriage, my financial assets and even my country[ii].

At first my attempt to remain drug-free was definitely a battle, even one I felt hopeless ever to win. But as time went on, with God's help, I abandoned my personal war-against-drugs that was bringing me neither peace of mind nor permanent sobriety. Eventually, I learned to stop fighting, surrender to Him, and concentrate on remaining abstinent by removing roadblocks in the way of my sober future. By this means I ultimately found full recovery and the good life I have today.

Now I certainly do not propose that the shining light of my personal experience can guide us all to a drug-free society! However, I do feel that a roadblock metaphor may be more amenable than a "war-on-drugs" metaphor. It is with that hope in mind that I present this paper for your consideration.

Statement of the problem

Those who want to live in society free from harmful, addicting drugs, face two major obstacles: 1) the misguided idealism or, in some cases, evil intent of those who favour less restricted drug use, and 2) the recalcitrance and intransigence of drug users and abusers themselves. Fighting on these two fronts simultaneously is a difficult and debilitating exercise. Old strategies and tactics are inadequate. These days the enemy has the upper hand and, from its position, the easier fight.

I firmly believe that those of us who want to live drug-free lives must continually revamp our thinking to remain vigilant and keep up with the times. Right now I believe we need a new strategy and a new overall perception of the entire effort.

Summary of the solution

I propose what is called a "wedge strategy" as an alternative or adjunct to a war-on-drugs strategy. Toward the end of the paper, I will explain the wedge metaphor more completely. Now, however, I want to mention one or two of its main thrusts.

In addition to opposing bad legislation, a major thrust of the wedge involves updating the definition of "abstinence" and eliminating the negative connotations surrounding the concept.

Another involves forcefully accusing the government and the professional establishment of denying the reality of drug-free living and marginalising growing numbers of drug-free people who want to remain that way. This is one of the weakest cracks in the current professional paradigm.

In addition to being an anti-drug campaign, the wedge is also a pro-abstinent-life-style campaign. The wedge confronts the government and the academic establishment for ignoring and not recognising the rights of those who wish to remain drug-free. In addition to fighting against drugs and pro-drug laws, we must empower abstinent people and supports their efforts to be heard, to be recognised and to be de-marginalised. To do this we must rid the road ahead of obstacles in the way of progress toward a drug-free society.

Let us now briefly examine some of these roadblocks.

Obstacles to a drug-free life

The miscreants and misguided idealists who would decriminalise drug use gain powerful support from professional scientists, social scientists and technicians whose conclusions gravitate toward the highest bidder in the research-grant market. In the present academic climate, those who propose removal of restrictions can get support from the best "research" and expert opinion money can buy. Such "scientific" opinion is then backed up by data derived from users and abusers who willingly cooperate to supply data.

Likewise drug users, in contrast to drug-free persons, have their own special means of defending unrestricted use. We tend not to think of slackness and lassitude as techniques. However, in the hands of a drug abuser, passive resistance can be more powerful than any form of legitimate persuasion. Rage and mayhem are also at the disposal of the drug user while accusations of intolerance and political incorrectness are weapons the drug advocates apply to those of us who want freedom from drugs. Abstinence, the only effective cure for drug addiction, has now been given a bad name and the professional establishment has managed to marginalise those who advocate abstinence or want to live abstinent lives.

Whether through sloth or wild violence, when it comes to avoiding change, the addict is as tenacious as a religious fanatic is and, like a religious fanatic, risks life itself[iii]. To quote from Narcotics Anonymous, "An addict who does not want to stop using will not stop using. They can be analyzed, counseled, reasoned with, prayed over, threatened, beaten, or locked up but they will not stop until they want to stop."[iv]

Forces promoting drug abuse

The medical and social-science academics who study and "treat" the using addict in return for fees, professional salaries and research funding, have an equally powerful avoidance tactic. From their position as scientists and experts (actually a secular priesthood), they can define and redefine the drug problem as they see fit. This includes defining it as no problem at all.

Q. When is a disease not a disease?

Common sense cries out that addiction is a disease and that drug addicts and alcoholics are among the sickest people on earth. But in contemporary society the professional community determines in the first instance whether something is a disease or not. Faced with a sickness phenomenon whose cure lies outside its professional scope, the professional community can simply redefine the phenomenon. In this way it relieves itself of the responsibility for finding a cure and/or for admitting that a cure may exist but not readily fit into the confines of the traditional professional dyadic doctor-patient/counsellor-client relationship. In other words, the cure may be largely an amateur effort and to recognise it as such would diminish professional prerogatives. Ipso facto, the phenomenon is not a disease.

A. When a cure is non-professional

Unfortunately, the complete cure for drug addiction, abstinence, can only be maintained long-term through non-professional channels such as self-help groups, fellowships and similar networks. A narrow focus on professionalism precludes studying and teaching about such resources no matter how successful they may be. Quite often the professional community refuses even to acknowledge the existence of successful amateur activities that help keep members off drugs, even those with long-term success.

Rare indeed is the professional drug expert who has ever even attended a non-professional recovery group meeting. Rarer still is the secular addiction-studies academic who has any first-hand knowledge of how religious groups solve drug and alcohol problems among their members. Many such academics would, I'm sure, be glad to propose a theory. However, I am equally sure that their theory would be wrong.

I know something about how social scientists think because I was for many years a social scientist and have studied their ideas first-hand. Most drug experts who don't attend religious services think religious groups require members to remain drug-free. However, as I clearly implied above, requiring people not to use drugs can be a big waste of time. You can't successfully require unless you can also inspire. It is in this totally unstudied area of inspiration that faith-based drug programs excel and social science fails. Can you imagine an addiction-studies course at Curtin University, titled, "How to inspire people to remain off drugs?" Well, why not?

Vast as the academic ignorance of religious efforts to facilitate drug-free living is, of even greater concern is the ignorance of the professional community regarding 12-Step programs like Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous. Many professional drug-experts define AA as a religious programme when clearly neither it nor any of its members think it is. Somebody is wrong somewhere: it is unlikely to be the hundreds of thousands of AA members all over the world not one of whom considers AA to have anything to do with religion.

There are many important social phenomena that professionally organised drug-experts do not understand and one of them is the phenomenon of the non-professionally-organised group.

Fellowships and treatments are different things entirely

Nearly every addict and alcoholic who has ever been to a 12th Step meeting instinctively understands what few academic addiction experts do, namely the important distinction between fellowships, memberships and organisations like AA on the one hand and treatments like counselling, rehabs and courses on the other. These are not at all similar, they are not mutually exclusive, they are not competitive and they are not comparable.

People join AA for the long haul, perhaps for life. All treatments, including counselling, group therapy, hypnosis, sensitivity training - whatever - electro-shock treatment (!) have a beginning and (thank goodness) an end.

Treatments are activities that engage and then conclude: you don't "join" a treatment, you "undergo" (or endure) it. A fellowship or organisation (like Alcoholics Anonymous or the Australian Psychological Association) on the other hand is nothing like a treatment. A fellowship of addicts who associate together to keep off drugs, may contain one or more treatments but the association itself is not a treatment. Nothing prevents an AA member from also being treated by, say, avoidance therapy, psychoanalytic counselling, or a church-sponsored course, while still belonging to AA. Indeed, the fellowship and the treatment are usually complimentary.

Comparing the incomparable

Since social science today lacks the technology to initiate and maintain fellowships, memberships and organisations, social scientists try to evaluate fellowships and memberships as though they were treatments, the latter being something most professionals believe they understand.

But comparing a fellowship like AA to a treatment program like avoidance therapy is worse than comparing apples and oranges. It is tantamount to comparing an apple to a fruit market or a motor-mechanic to an automobile club.[v] Nevertheless, the addiction-studies curriculum relies on studies that compare AA to other "treatments". If you send 100 people to an AA meeting whether or not they want to go, and if only five or six join and remain sober for three months, then you conclude that AA has only a 5 or 6 percent success rate. Actually AA has an incredibly high success rate among people who join, that is attend regularly over the years. But lumping AA together with treatments allows the professional researcher to conclude that it is relatively ineffective.

When counselling is ineffective

Since addiction has, as yet, no foreseeable medical or psychological cure that can profitably be applied in the doctor's surgery or the counsellor's office, these professions can simply declare that the addict is not sick. By rejecting "the disease model" and adopting another, such as a "learned behaviour model", the counselling professional neatly passes the buck onto, say, the teaching professional. It is now the educational establishment who is to blame not the psychiatrist or psychologist. The obvious fact that thousands of young people look and feel extremely ill from chemicals in their blood streams can be ignored with impunity because the medical community, not the educational establishment, defines what is and is not a disease.

Who's got the problem?

In regard to buck-passing, social scientists go a step further than physicians do. Since the social sciences control the social definitions, the social scientist can redefine the problem so that it is the non-addict who has the problem not the addict!

This neat perceptual reversal results in a curriculum featuring courses in conquering pharmacophobia rather than conquering drugs. The courses have descriptions like "living with drugs", "adjusting to drug use", and "harm reduction". By the same token, the academic curriculum contains no courses about "Overcoming Addictions", "Abstinent Lifestyles", or "Achieving a Drug-free Society".

Abstinence defined as religious

We can assume that addiction-studies programs were initiated, at least in small part, with the intent of reducing drug abuse. One might therefore expect to find one or two solution-oriented courses extant in the curriculum. The fact that such courses are missing is not due to lack of a body of relevant knowledge. Rather, "abstinence" has been defined a-priori as a right-wing religious phenomenon. The drug experts label those who espouse abstinence as a cure - indeed those who even practice it as a life-style - rigid religious fundamentalists. By the same token, "a drug-free society" is deemed a wishful myth not worthy of serious consideration.

Experts marginalised

Don't get the idea that no one has the skill to teach abstinence-based courses. The academic establishment says that qualified abstinence-experts don't exist and, indeed, they are not to be found on every street corner. However the reason for their scarcity is that they have been marginalised to a point where the marginalisers can claim they aren't there at all.[vi] Quite a few are afraid to lose professional standing if they express themselves.

A hopeless war?

From the point of view of the war-on-drugs metaphor, it is now clear that those who care about the direction our society is heading, who want to win the war, must battle on two fronts. First they must cope with users and abusers themselves and second, with pharisitical professionals who write policy, define terminology, formulate the addiction studies curricula and influence law from a platform of expert consultation to the political sector.

Obviously, both these enemies are superbly skilled at denial and can win battle after battle simply by refusing to change attitudes toward abstinence and continuing to use arguments (and drugs) which they, heedless of the victimised public, define as correct, harmless and socially acceptable.

When opposition arises from some public sector, say the concerned parents or other carers of addicts, the ruling experts merely marginalise the complainants by alluding to a deficiency in their knowledge base. The carers and victims of drug abusers, then, get diagnosed as ignorant. Of course the cure for their ignorance is information provided by the same experts who diagnosed them. This information not surprisingly turns out to prove that abstinence is not a real option and that drug-abuse is not as serious as everyone thinks but is merely a set of learned behaviours to which the rest of society must adjust.

Faced with such odds, all the under-funded and over-scrupulous battlers for a drug-free society are destined to lose.[vii]

If not a war, then what?

In fact, I believe that what we are doing is better viewed as running an obstacle course in order to get to a destination, a drug-free society. The opposition we face is analogous to a barrier rather than to a battle. They are clever and heavily funded but tend to rely on denial as their prime strategy. In short, they are obstructionists.

In striving for a drug-free society, we can adopt tactics that will ultimately get this obstruction out of our way. After all, it is we who want to make a change whereas the enemy just wants more and more of the status quo. What we must do is to find a weakness, a point of vulnerability in the roadblock, and then keep up the pressure until it cracks.

The wedge strategy

In his most-recent book, Phillip E. Johnson, Professor Emeritus of Law at the University of California at Berkeley, writes,

Imagine that you are driving down a narrow road with a cliff on one side and a precipice on the other, when you find that a huge, thick log blocks the way forward. The log is too heavy to lift, and there is no way around it. If you are going to proceed, you must find some way to split the log into segments, so you can move the barrier out of the way. Fortunately, this can be done. The log seems solid, but there are bound to be cracks, some of which penetrate deep into the interior. What you need to do is insert the thin edge of a wedge into the most profound crack and gradually drive the broader parts of the wedge into the log until the crack widens and the log is split.[viii]

The log in this metaphor is the ruling anti-abstinence theory of decriminalisation and legalisation that takes on a number of different guises such as harm-minimisation and harm-reduction. This theory dominates academic and professional thinking and practice in the field of addiction studies. The proponents of the theory oppose any discussion of a drug-free society. They do not listen to "the voices of recovery" and they marginalise both abstinent people and the carers and victims of addicts.

The local media and public fora have followed suit. Abstinent people are not shown on TV and are not heard from on radio. The claim that abstinence is a fundamentalist hold-over from the "temperance movements" of the Victorian era (a claim that can quickly be falsified by anyone belonging to any modern recovery programme) goes unchallenged because abstinent people are not professionally encouraged or permitted to testify to refute the claim.

The sharp point of the wedge is aimed at the most vulnerable weakness in the theory which is simply this: the theory assumes a priori that abstinence is unattainable and then goes on to prove that it is irrelevant. Abstinent people, including abstinent drug experts are excluded from the establishment. Research supporting abstinence is excluded from the curriculum. The entire abstinence-based recovery movement is ignored or disparaged.

A revealing test item

A few years ago an AA member also enrolled in one of Perth's addiction studies courses told me that he had been given a test item that read, "Since we know that AA doesn't work, why is it so popular?" He said he had feared he would not be admitted to the course if he revealed his AA membership. Now he wondered if he should inform his instructor that AA worked well for him and many others. I think he decided that since anti-AA bias was rife on the faculty, discretion was he better part of valour in this case and so left his instructors in the dark about the success of AA.[ix]

The question is but one example of the logical flaw in academic thinking about abstinence in general and abstinence-based programs in particular. First use their position as academic experts to deny that abstinence is attainable. To deny the reality of abstinence, they exclude the abstinence literature by labelling it irrelevant and then exclude personal examples of abstinence by fiat. One wonders how long they can keep this up since the number of abstinence-oriented people is rapidly increasing and not a few of us want to write about the relevance of abstinence in their lives.

Hope for the future

The drug-advocate's fear and loathing of the abstinence-advocate ultimately works in favour of the latter. The presence of a single abstinence-advocate on a faculty, committee or panel attracts attention and disturbs the status quo. The message is not "everybody should be abstinent" but rather, "we abstinent people should be allowed to have our say". Whatever the past, it is now the pro-drug establishment that discriminates against a significant growing group within the population.

Eventually, non-drug users will have clout similar to non-smokers. The history of smoking can be instructive in predicting the future of abstinence in regard to other drugs. A change in attitude toward non-drinkers can also be detected.

Incorrect and correct views regarding abstinence:

Current incorrect view of abstinence supported by social-science establishment and government bureaucracy: Abstinence is a religious holdover from the 19th century "temperance" movement, and a dead issue in modern society. The only people who choose abstinence are religious fundamentalists. Abstinent people (reformed addicts) are self-righteous, rigid extremists. One is justified in keeping them out of the academic establishment and baring their views from being promoted.

Truth about abstinence: Modern abstinence from drugs is a way of life achieved through considerable effort by growing numbers of people of all ages who, primarily for physical and/or mental health reasons, must avoid drugs and/or alcohol. In the main these days, people accept abstinence to minimise harm to themselves and others, NOT for religious reasons. (It is hard enough to have to remain drug and alcohol free without being labelled a religious kook for doing so!)

Points of the wedge

To make progress toward a drug-free society, here are some of the sharp points of the wedge that we must drive home into the cracks in the ruling addiction-studies establishment. The purpose of these efforts is to improve the connotations of abstinence and raise the image of abstinence as a way of life.

  1. Gain abstinent representation in addiction studies and government programs. This means that abstinence advocates who can represent abstinent members of the public must be employed and given attention and a forum. Protest the exclusion of abstinent students from addiction-studies courses. Protest the exclusion of abstinent teachers from addiction-studies courses.
  2. Dispel the myth of "spontaneous recovery" promoted by addiction-studies. People who recover from drug addiction do so through hard work in largely non-professional fellowships and programmes. The fact that such activities are privately funded does not make the recovery they facilitate "spontaneous."
  3. Encourage abstinent people to "come out of the closet" and share. Get the media to feature abstinent people from all walks of life.
  4. Establish a roster of prominent abstinent people willing to share. Encourage testimonies regarding the effectiveness of abstinence.
  5. Form an association of abstinence-based programmes, SABRE (Society for Abstinence-Based REhabilitation).
  6. Correct the academic curriculum in recognition of abstinence-based programs and life-styles.
  7. Publish books and papers explaining the modern theory and philosophy of abstinence.
  8. Improve public understanding of abstinence-based drug rehabilitation programmes.
  9. Hold seminars on abstinence-related subjects.
  10. Criticise drug agencies that fail to recognise and/or employ abstinence advocates.

Finally

Most completely abstinent people are happy about it. They love their drug-free lives and would not go back to "controlled use" even if they could. Let's dispel the myth that abstinence is a drudge.

  1. John Maher, founder of the Delancy Street rehabilitation programme in San Francisco.
  2. I migrated to Australia in 1976 to start a new life when I was but seven months free from all drugs including alcohol. I have lived here ever since.
  3. The very word "addicted" originally meant "consecrated and devoted to religious duties".
  4. Narcotics Anonymous, Fifth Edition, NA World Services Inc., Van Nuys, California, USA. Page 62.
  5. People may join an automobile club because they want to keep their cars in good nick; hence the purposes of the club and the mechanic do overlap. However, for reasons too numerous to mention, the two cannot be compared in the same evaluative framework. Can you imagine a research study comparing a clean-car club with a car wash? (Researchers send a sample of people to the clean-car club with instructions to join and a group matched for surface grime to the car wash. Dirt is measured after three days and the car wash is declared the winner.)
  6. However they are there. Of that I am certain because I am one. I have a Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology from Princeton and was an Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychology at Harvard. I am also a recovered drug addict completely abstinent from all drugs including alcohol for over twenty-five years. I have been an Australian resident since 1976 and a West Australian resident since 1990. Certainly, on the face of it, I am as qualified as anyone is to speak on the psychology of drug-free living. I am not a bad public speaker: I receive enough invitations to keep me busy but never have I (nor any other abstinence-espousing social scientist I know) been invited to address any local "addiction studies" function. Recently I was rejected without comment from contributing to an academic-sponsored "drug summit." If I were to espouse "harm minimisation" rather than abstinence, I get a strong feeling I could get on an academic-supported lecture circuit.
  7. The "war" metaphor is better suited to the law-enforcement (supply-side) aspects of rather than the social aspects (demand-side) of the drug problem. It is not my purpose in this paper to discuss the forensic aspects of the drug problem.
  8. Johnson, Phillip E., The Wedge of Truth: Splitting The Foundations Of Naturalism, InterVarsity Press, 2000 ISBN0-8308-2267-4, page 9.
  9. We both agreed that one correct answer would be that hundreds of thousands of members of AA don't know it doesn't work and therefore remain sober members!

THE DRUG ADVISORY COUNCIL OF AUSTRALIA SUPPORTS-

More detoxification & rehabilitation that gets illicit drug users drug free.
Court ordered and supervised detoxification & rehabilitation.
Less illicit drug users, drug pushers and drug related crimes.