Getting off drugs

Theodore Dalrymple has been going on about his quite contrarian views about illicit drugs for a few months now; I think I have not previously mentioned it.

This article gives a summary of his idea: that addiction to drugs (heroin in particular) has been long romanticised, and that the modern assumption that it can only be overcome with medical treatment is wrong:

When, unbeknown to them, I have observed addicts before they entered my office, they were cheerful; in my office, they doubled up in pain and claimed never to have experienced suffering like it, threatening suicide unless I gave them what they wanted. When refused, they often turned abusive, but a few laughed and confessed that it had been worth a try. Somehow, doctors—most of whom have had similar experiences— never draw the appropriate conclusion from all of this. Insofar as there is a causative relation between criminality and opiate addiction, it is more likely that a criminal tendency causes addiction than that addiction causes criminality.

Furthermore, I discovered in the prison in which I worked that 67% of heroin addicts had been imprisoned before they ever took heroin. Since only one in 20 crimes in Britain leads to a conviction, and since most first-time prisoners have been convicted 10 times before they are ever imprisoned, it is safe to assume that most heroin addicts were confirmed and habitual criminals before they ever took heroin. In other words, whatever caused them to commit crimes in all probability caused them also to take heroin: perhaps an adversarial stance to the world caused by the emotional, spiritual, cultural and intellectual vacuity of their lives.

He goes on to defend his position in this article.

It is certainly a controversial view, and an interesting one from someone who seems so conservative on this point but who is not personally religious. He was interviewed by The Brussels Journal recently, and it is well worth reading.