Unleash the Hounds! (Link Roundup)

You folks would have us believe that addicts can’t take a small bit of a substance, such as taking one drink, then stop, and go on and act normal. One of the tenets of AA and NA is that we are “powerless”. If that were true, then a former heroin addict couldn’t have surgery with anesthesia, take pain medication, and go on with our lives. If we were powerless, we could not perform acts of magick to effect change. That expectation of powerlessness seems to be, well, job security for the medical and social work professions, and excuses for those who choose to be week. You can’t take a bit of a substance, then quit?

Well, I just did. Had major surgery, needed pain control. It was one of my worst fears (not just the severe pain, not just dying), that I’d take a couple of pills, be hooked again, and get right back to seeking out $800 / day of street drugs, including, yes, Star, heroin… (yes, it was a “real” addiction, don’t be obtuse, Kenneth… severe cravings, physical symptoms, and the desire to associate with scuzzy Mexican cartels who don’t give a fig about your life, your loved ones, or ruining America; in order to procure more drugs.) Asked the doctors, who had NO WAY to address this fear other than bogus “talking cures” or NA, or methadone. Of course, selling drugs is what they do for a living… they wanted me to take months of drugs. They really do desire to replace an addictive substance with another addictive substance… one from which they make money!

So, once again, the ol’ will power kicked in. Anesthesia, check. Pain pills, check. Took ‘em for four days, then quit. Will power. Mild withdrawals. Major pain from the surgery, but that’s better than wallowing with the lowlifes one must associate with to procure street drugs. Yes, one CAN take a bit of a substance, and quit again, no matter what liberals and the medical establishment would have us believe.

I am sharing this with you to show that will power and magick and mental strength work so much better than all of the whining to social workers and replacement drugs in the world.

MertvayaRuka — this is not a talent like singing, playing basketball, or a learned skill like accounting. Anyone can stop using. Willpower is neither genetic nor a talent.

Kenneth — if you have weak lungs from working in a coal mine or a paper mill, don’t smoke. If you have diabetes, don’t eat wads of sugar and fat. You have a genuine genetically based disability to not manufacture insulin. But anyone, ANYone who is given strong pain medication for six months is gonna develop an addiction. We can justify that addiction, we can talk about it ’til we’re blue in the face, or we can QUIT and cure ourselves.

Mark Mandrake is working on a book about how to do just that… watch for it!

“You folks” meaning those who have replied to my comment. You DID say, above, “treatment is NECESSARY”. I’m living proof that NO, it is not.

Star, my knowledge of heroin comes mostly from hanging out with users in my mis-spent youth. It’s my understanding from that that your facile comparison with heroin use and moderate alcohol use is fallacious. There is no non-addicting level of regular heroin use for the person who has never been an addict of it. Some addicts who have been through rehab evidently can revisit heroin occasionally without becoming re-addicted, but that’s pure anecdote afaik.

Star, thanks for the stat. I wasn’t comparing your alcohol use to alcoholism; quite the opposite.

The smart money says you were never a true addict. You may well have had a dependency or a pattern of drug or alcohol use that was destructive. Not everyone who falls into substance abuse is an addict by any means, and most of us can indeed turn things around with will power and a dose of maturity, getting our priorities straight etc. If that were not the case, most people who partied hard in college would be dead by their mid 40s.

To say that addiction is a “character flaw” is medieval thinking. There’s just no nicer way to put it. It’s in the same league as six-day creationism or the belief that schizophrenia can be cured by “slapping some sense” into its victims.

The evidence for addiction as a true disease state is absolutely staggering. There is a huge and growing body of good, solid science which is documenting genetics and specific dysregulation of the mesolimbic dopamine system and the mechanisms which tell the conscious brain when we’ve had enough of a stimulus. It is as real and definable a disease state as Parkinson’s and Leukemia.

Your insistence otherwise in the face of this mountain of evidence is the very sort of thing which has turned me off to modern conservatism. It has become a world view that admits of no complexities. The world is what we say it is, and evidence and critical thought are just tools of namby-pamby liberals to subvert it. We know what we know. At its heart it is pure Stalinism. (In mindset, not ideology). The Soviets were the masters of reality by decree. Any facts or evidence of economics, science or anything else that clashed with what their pre-formed narrative decreed as truth was simply ignored.

I think we’re talking past each other on what addiction is and is not. Addiction and physical dependence are very different things. Most people given opiates, even strong ones, for months and even years are not addicted. They are physically dependent. Even most people who use drugs in an abusive fashion do not go on to become true addicts. Only about a quarter of heroin users become addicts in this medical sense I am referring to.

The addicts are not amenable to cure by simple will power because they have real and demonstrable problems with the circuitry in their brains that governs our most primitive instincts. Their brains believe they need the drug in the same way a person needs oxygen. It’s that level of instinct. Can you will away the drive to breath after a couple of minutes of holding your breath? This kind of primitive instinct is what made waterboarding such an effective method of torture. Hardened terrorists who would have gladly died in a suicide bomb attack broke under manipulation of that panic circuitry. Bin Laden would still be alive today if will power was enough to overcome that circuitry, and that’s a fact.

Based on your reasoning, schizophrenics should be able to cure themselves by will. Why wouldn’t they be able to? Many of them are intelligent strong willed people. Many of them have insight into the fact that they are ill. Apparently anti-psychotic meds and other therapy are just employment scams for the medical industry and excuses for crazy behavior offered by liberals.

There is no qualitative difference between addiction and schizophrenia or Alzheimer’s as real brain diseases. Anyone proposing to treat them by will power alone is in the same league as those who would resort to crystal therapy alone for a stroke or a ruptured spleen.

I’ll be interested to see the brain imaging studies and large scale trials that back the superiority of Mr. Mandrake’s method vs traditional treatment of addiction.

“I’ll be interested to see the brain imaging studies and large scale trials that back the superiority of Mr. Mandrake’s method vs traditional treatment of addiction.”

Sure, I’d like to see some scientific studies that show us how magick, works, too. How we can bring our will into manifestation. How summoning and invoking actually perform. But we ain’t there yet. However, most of us who read this blog agree that magick exists and works.

“MertvayaRuka — this is not a talent like singing, playing basketball, or a learned skill like accounting. Anyone can stop using. Willpower is neither genetic nor a talent.”

Couple of points you seem to be missing here. Your solution worked FOR YOU. That it does not or will work for others is no more a flaw in them than it is a flaw in you if you can’t sing.

Also, people can and do train to resist physical and mental hardships. You’re trying to claim it as an innate characteristic while simultaneously trying to say it isn’t “genetic or a talent”. You’re treating something incredibly complex and variable as if it’s a switch that can just be flicked on by anyone at any time. Additionally, whether you realize it or not, you’re trying to claim yourself as a universal example for a ridiculously huge cross-section of humanity. As if they’ll all be saved if they just follow your superior example and if they’re not, obviously they’re just weak and lazy. How’s that different from either the Calvinists and their fixation on predestination or AA’s wretched “You’re a powerless weakling and you must admit it first” nonsense?

Again, this feels more like a balm for conscience than anything else. Seeing other addicts as universally weak, lazy and contemptible neatly relieves one of any inclination towards helping them. You know, hard work that will likely be full of disappointment, tragedy and loss. Maybe it’s just me, but I think that would take a lot more willpower than spitting at their feet and walking away.