Romancing Opiates: Pharmacological Lies and the Addiction Bureaucracy | Theodore Dalrymple

Romancing Opiates: Pharmacological Lies and the Addiction Bureaucracy | Theodore Dalrymple | Eye-Opener

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Romancing Opiates:...

	Romancing Opiates: Pharmacological Lies and the Addiction Bureaucracy Theodore Dalrymple Encounter Books, 2006 - 165 pages average customer review:based on 26 reviews view larger image
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Theodore Dalrymple believes that almost everything people know about opiate addiction is wrong. Most flawed of all is the notion that addicts are in touch with profound mysteries of which non-addicts are ignorant. Dalrymple shows that doctors, psychologists and social workers, all of them uncritically accepting addicts' descriptions of addiction, have employed literary myths (drugs are creative and intense) in constructing an equal and opposite myth of quasi-treatment. Using evidence from literature and pharmacology and drawing on examples from his own clinical experience, Dalrymple shows that addiction is not a disease, but a response to personal and existential problems. He argues that withdrawal from opiates is not the serious medical condition, but a relatively trivial experience and says that criminality causes addiction far more often than addiction causes criminality.

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TD does it again.

Theodore Dalrymple makes a convincing argument to show that almost everything we 'know' about opiate addiction is way off the mark. Drawing on his vast experience, he methodically debunks the myths we believe are true about the 'addict' and the 'addiction' itself, and he is sceptical that the government and people in our institutions are capable of changing the way we handle this (largely social and moral) "illness". I always have something to learn from his essays and am always interested in his perceptions (which are usually close to the truth - if not always dead on) and intrigued by his consummate skill as a writer in bringing searing insight and rationale (based upon empirical evidence) to the issues he tackles. He can be satirical and witty (as well as compassionate) but comes across as one (prophetically) railing against the prevalence of a wilful and destructive blindness to this problem.

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Eye-Opener

A must-read if you want to know something about addiction and about the politico-medical complex. In general, my personal policy is that if Theodore Dalrymple wrote it, I read it. That said, however, this book is not his best effort in terms of his usually elegant, witty, and engaging writing style. It is repetitive and there are unusual mistakes, from punctuation to grammar, as if he was in a rush to be done. That is why I give the book only four stars instead of the five stars and two thumbs up this man usually deserves.

If you like gadflys, this one's for you

If you are the kind of person who delights in an author that has the rare ability to change your mind, then Theodore Dalrymple is your man. He doesn't just expose the origins and motivations behind the modern myths of opiate/heroin addiction; he beats them to death, and then runs them over a few times just for good measure. Dr. Dalrymple is a bit verbose, but in a somewhat delightful fashion. Perhaps it is more that we readers of the modern era have lost some of our appreciation for the beauty of the English language. But this is a good book for a relaxing weekend, and makes for some excellent water cooler conversation the following week.

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A paradoxical attack on paradoxical dogma

Everything you know about addiction is wrong. Heroin is not addictive--it takes a lot of hard work to become addicted to it--and withdrawal is, at most, mildly uncomfortable. Addicts do not commit crimes to buy drugs to avoid withdrawal; raher, those already criminal tend to become addicts. Why? Because of their bad ideas about how to live, ideas which percolated from middle-class intellectuals to lower-class petty criminals. In particular, Mill's view that all authority (including teachers' and cops') is against libery and self-expression led to the glamorizing of the criminal anti-hero, whose crimes are really virtues--an expression of his "authentic" "rebellion" against opressive "society". Criminals take drugs as another sign they are "rebels".

Dalrymple's criticism of the liberal drug dogma is quite insightful. The problem is, his own view is its exact mirror image--and the mirror image of an absurd position is itself absurd. For example, he is correct to say the "instant addiction/horrible witdrawal" liberal dogma is incosnsistent with demand to legalize drugs: if drugs really *were* that addictive and harmful, they surely should be kept illegal. However, if addicts' crimes are a free choice which has nothing to do with their alleged craving for drugs, why would legalizing drugs make it more likely for them to commit crimes--which he gives as an argument against legalization?

Similarly, he blames middle-class intellectual for making the lower class their playthings, sacrifising millions to the all-against-all culture of the slums in order to promote their unrealistic Millian view of "freedom" and "rebellion". But he suggests to stop offering addicts clean needles, hoping fear of HIV and hepatitis woud be an incentive to addicts to take less drugs. Isn't this sacrifising thousands of lower-class addicts to preventable diseases in order to support an unrealistic view of "moral responsiblity" held by middle class intellectuals--specifically, Dalrymple himself?

Dalyrmple's diagnosis of what ails liberal drug-addiction dogma is excellent; but his suggested cure is worse than the disease.

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