G:asa (07/08/82)
"Quick, Watson, the needle!" was written in reply to a suggestion
that society was entitled to "protect itself" against certain kinds of
deviant behavior, heroin addiction being the example cited.
I think the term "psychological addiction" is too vague to be
terribly useful, and I find its use in the present context utterly
misleading. Physiological addiction is a relatively straightforward
concept: an organism has acquired a physical dependency on a
previously unnecessary chemical compound. The condition can be
diagnosed, studied, and treated. Treatment for alcohol addiction
ideally involves substantial medical supervision, and even then, a
surprising percentage of patients die. That's d-i-e. Is anyone
seriously proposing that an obsessive interest in
computers/art/stamps/classical music/-what-have-you is in any way
comparable? Nobody ever died from "computer withdrawal" following a
system crash....
Because of its BIOLOGICAL definition, the word "addiction" has
extremely negative connotations: call ANYTHING an "addiction" and
you've defined it as undesirable. If anyone would care to take a stab
at providing a useful definition of "psychological addiction" that
does not also include harmless pasttimes, I'll be delighted to try to
shoot it down.... (By the way, I first encountered the term
"psychological addiction" in the middle 1960s. For years, the
government had claimed that marijuana was BIOLOGICALLY addicting. As
more and more medical studies proved that that just wasn't true, we
began to hear the term "psychological addiction" bandied about.
Caveat emptor.)
I'm not claiming that heroin's GOOD for you; I'm arguing that the
social consequences of heroin addiction borne by society are more a
product of the drug being illegal than of its pharmacological
properties. Addicts faced with the necessity of procuring greater and
greater quantities of an expensive and illegal substance will
eventually turn to crime. Certainly the "heroin lifestyle" is not a
healthy one, what with poor nutritiion, infected needles, contaminated
dope, etc. Many years ago, I read an interesting discussion of the
purely biological effects of heroin and alcohol: the author claimed
that given two addicts, one addicted to heroin and the other to
alcohol--and with the further stipulation that each had sufficient
resources to avoid the negative lifestyles associated with their
particular addiction (i.e., with enough money to eat well, see a
doctor, etc., etc.)--that upon detoxification, the heroin addict would
(on the average) be in significantly better physical condition than
the alcoholic. I don't remember the source; if anyone can throw
further light on the truth or falsehood of this assertion, I'd be
delighted to see it.
In any event, I don't think there's much doubt in the medical
world that the biological consequences of using alcohol/tobacco relate
directly to the drugs themselves and not simply the fact that they're
socially acceptable. Cancer and addiction aside, alcohol abuse exacts
a tremendous price from all of us. In a recent interview, the Surgeon
General stated that the third highest cause of death (after heart
disease and cancer) in this country is "accidental deaths," of which a
high proportion are alcohol-related automobile accidents. My point
was that if society needs to adopt repressive methods in order to
"protect" itself, then it should start with the real problems of
alcohol and tobacco use and not with the straw man of heroin use. And
we all know how successful Prohibition was, don't we?
John Hevelin ...ucbvax!G:asa