Addiction recovery advocates all over the world are tired of having a label pinned on them, yet when they continually say at daily or weekly meetings that they are still an addict, they’re doing it to themselves without even realizing it.
The stigma associated with addiction is far-reaching. It’s not okay to judge someone if they used to have a problem with drugs or alcohol. It’s not fair to hold their past misdeeds against them if they are upstanding citizens today.
Drug addiction is the root cause of many other social problems that we face in our communities. It affects us all in one way or another; therefore it is up to us all to help find solutions for successful rehabilitation and effective prevention. Without these two key elements changing the social norms then this will be an eternal battle of substance abuse ebbs and flows.
There is no scientific proof that alcohol or other drug addiction is a disease, and certainly not a brain disease. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. I have personally met hundreds of people who were former addicts who no longer suffer from the affliction. Some of them were able to do it on their own, and others used tools they learned through effective drug rehabilitation programs.
I also happen to be one of those people. Why was I able to do it? Am I some kind of anomaly? No. I did what these other people did. I realized that I didn’t want to be a dreg of society dragging down my friends and family and drifting closer to death every day. I didn’t want to die. I pulled myself up from my bootstraps, decided to confront life and make it what I wanted it to be. It wasn’t easy for me, and I’m sure it’s not really easy for anyone to overcome, but it can be done and it happens every day. It’s called a willingness to live and, without trying to sound too much like a cliché, learning that you get out of life what you put into it.
Does faith have something to do with it? Maybe. It can for some people, but your life is in your own hands. God didn’t make people addicts. He didn’t force them to do drugs; they decided that on their own, just like they can reach for help and decide to quit on their own. You simply have to make up your own mind to find solutions that help you reach that goal. This simple step alone circumvents any supposed theories of how the brain functions, because the mind is separate from the brain. Our mind stores memories and we use it to make decisions. Our brain is nothing more than the control room for the central nervous system.
Some lawmakers, doctors and suffering patients feel that substance abuse and other labeled mental health disorders should receive insurance benefits equal to physical diseases. That’s fine. There are benefits and there are drawbacks, but the biggest pushers of substance abuse and mental health parity are the psychiatrists and pharmaceutical companies. Why is this? Is it because they want the best for their patients – to receive the best care possible? No. It has absolutely nothing to do with that. It is so they can get paid more. Period. Repeated attempt at addiction treatment is expensive. If insurance companies were mandated by law to cover addiction and other mental conditions then that means the legal drug pushers and the weekly psychotherapists and mental health hospitals now have several billion dollars of additional income – because the tap doesn’t run dry so quickly.
Much of our healthcare system, especially mental health, is based on how long someone is treated. Doctors usually get paid more for not having a well patient. Therefore, when addiction, or depression for that matter, is classified as a brain disease, they have an excuse to continue treating a patient and getting paid for it, repeatedly, without having to get any real results. We should be paying more for treatment that actually works, not paying more for something that doesn’t get any better or gets worse, like the side effects caused by some of the medications today.