Drugs: A challenge close to home
Dominique Simon-Levine
In over 25 presidential debates, no candidate from either parly mentioned drug abuse as a national problem. Yet I would be willing to bet that the problem exists in many of the candidates' own families.
The United States demands and consumes more illicit drugs per capita than any other nation. The human toll is compelling. A recent Gallop Poll reported that one-third of all Americans reported a loved one with an alcohol problem, and a quarter had a loved one with a drug problem. Over half of all inmates in the correctional system were convicted of a drug offense. For the most understandable of reasons, Alcoholics Anonymous is based on creating a therapeutic "community" outside of easy visibility.
Local school surveys that ask about alcohol or pot reveal that more Hampshire County junior high and high school teens are regular users than the average nationally, statewide, or even in Springfield or Holyoke. By high school, 57 percent of Hampshire County students are using alcohol regularly and 39 percent are smoking pot Our challenge is indeed close to home.
While many of these kids will mature out of their drug use, 10 percent to 15 percent win become addicted to alcohol, pot or harder drugs. A recent study followed a group of teens for 10 years who either drank or smoked pot heavily. Researchers concluded that pot was "the drug of choice for life's future losers," with pot smokers six times more likely to use other drugs than those who drank alcohol, and three times more likely to be unemployed or drop out of school.
Drug use and addiction pierce into our fears too much. As parents, children, siblings or partners, we just close our eyes.
Take the sad story of actor Heath Ledger, who was found dead in his Manhattan apartment this past January. His toxicology report measured shelves-worth of narcotics like oxycodone, mood-effecting drugs, and hypnotics—all in the brain of an otherwise healthy 27-year-old. Like millions of Americans of all ages, Heath Ledger had a life-threatening and debilitating substance problem. Yet the media and his famify chose to focus on the accidental nature of the overdose, presumably because the more likely explanation was simply too revealing and stigmatizing.
Heath Ledger died because others, friends or family, tried in vain to put an easy face on an ugly wound.
It seems beyond reason that despite all that molecular neuroscience reveals of the basic mechanisms of addiction, we continue to regard it largely as a personal failing meriting moral judgment and marginalization. Drug addiction has become a "brand," not a diagnosis, with the label conveying more about the person than about brain chemistry.
Only a generation ago, cancer was a barely spoken word: It predicted its own inevitable finality. Today, cancer survivors can celebrate advanced medical science and a compassionate society. Imagine a time when survivors of "addiction" are so welcome that families like Ledger's embrace the truth at the earliest possible moment of diagnosis, optimistic that full remission is possible.
Substance abuse remains the true third rail of American political discourse. And when the problem is kept in the shadows, solutions are much harder to find.
As with most difficult problems, a missing ingredient is "will," individual, local and political. With it we can traverse the barriers of fear and shame. Parents, partners and other significant others can be taught how to modify day-to-day behaviors that can have a profound effect on their loved one's addiction. It is through political will that treatment-on-demand will become a reality.
At the core, though, remains the stigma. There are no ribbons to wear, no marches to join, and no telethons to raise money. Stories about local kids who "overdose" or "binge" to death or run away into lives of risk and despair remain as frightening as looking through the microscope at a slide of our own cancer. With compassion, clarity and some courage, we can move drug addiction from a place of fear to the prospect of real progress. Think again about those Hampshire County students — don't see "me," or "them," but "us."
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Dr. Dominique Simon-Levine is the director of Allies in Recovery, a center in Northampton that provides research-based training, resources and support to family members of those with substance abuse problems.
Originally published in the Daily Hampshire Gazette, April 2, 2008