Facing Addiction in America: The Surgeon General’s Report on Alcohol, Drugs, and Health makes the current discussion we have about addiction, i.e. helping people with addiction “make better choices,” “make better decisions, or “understand the consequences of their behavior” – whether coerced through drug court or supported through counseling – well-meaning but, unfortunately, irrelevant. Addiction compromises all of those functions in the brain.
The brain no longer does what it needs to do in a person with addiction, just as a pancreas no longer does what it needs to do in a person with diabetes. Medical care for a brain illness – not tough love, arrest, commitment to a mental institution, or recovery support services – needs to be the first order of treatment, including assessment for suitability for medications. Medications need to be prescribed by qualified medical professionals, not by non-qualified court officials or lawmakers.
We would rush our neighbor with acute diabetes to the doctor. Why don’t we rush our citizens with an acute brain disease to the doctor as well? Because, at essence, contrary to scientific evidence, we still believe addiction is a choice. We believe that if people with addiction could just see the errors of their ways and would work hard on those errors (rather than be lazy, immoral, selfish, self-indulgent, or inadequately faithful or spiritual), addiction would go away.
Working hard on one’s ways may help one live a better life. Might working hard to be a better person alter the brain in targeted ways that reverse or ameliorate addiction? Possibly. Neuroscience research may ultimately support that. Certainly on ways to live a better life, many people, both with and without academic or medical credentials, can offer helpful guidance. But, for now, what we know is that addiction is a medical condition, 1 in 7 Americans is expected to get it, a person dies of a drug overdose every 19 minutes in the U.S., and only a fraction of those who need help are receiving it. For this dire medical condition, insufficiently treated such that a public health crisis has occurred, medical care is an imperative.
“Do no harm” is a principle of health care. By stubbornly holding onto the concept of “choice” – in spite of the data that says we’re simply wrong to do so – we’re harming, even killing, our own citizens when we require them to, at essence “be better and do better,” rather than provide them with medical care.
May the Surgeon General’s report inform and direct the treatment we provide our fellow citizens struggling with the grave and dangerous medical condition of addiction.
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On 11/17/16, the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services issued Facing Addiction in America: The Surgeon General’s Report on Alcohol, Drugs, and Health.
Here’s a link to the YouTube video of the 3-hour presentation of the Surgeon General’s report.
Here’s Maia Szlavitz’s commentary on the Surgeon General’s report.
This post is an updated and expanded version of my letter to the editor about the Surgeon General’s report published by the Roanoke Times on 12/13/16.
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