Drug addiction should be treated like a learning disorder – not a crime | Hacker News Reader

Drug addiction should be treated like a learning disorder – not a crime

theguardian.com

I don't believe that drug abuse is a result of not learning from punishment. Looking at it in that light seems counterproductive to me. I have made a lot of questionable choices with regards to drug use, and I have lived and been close friends with with addicts of all types. I've seen addictions to heroin, alcohol, benzodiazepines, and even weed, and one factor is always consistent. People who develope serious addictions are those that use drugs as a way to solve, or more often hide from, their problems. This may sound slightly cliched, but people who use drugs to enhance reality don't have the same problems as those that use them to avoid it. My personal litmus test is if you think Xanax is the greatest drug ever, you should avoid most drugs like the plague.

"but people who use drugs to enhance reality don't have the same problems as those that use them to avoid it"

In terms of lifestyles, professions, and passions I have a very horizontal range of friends/coworkers/acquaintances. I see the motives behind drug use as being very personal through observation and I understand the self derivative nature of addiction through my own experiences with a wide variety of substances.

For some people an escape (not necessarily a complete avoidance) from reality acts as a reality enhancement (novel antidepressants such as dissociatives similar to Ketamine and other NMDA agonists fall into this category). Its use offers a renewed perspective on life and can put issues into perspective as to how important those problems are or how simple it is to solve many of them.

There are also those that use drugs to enhance reality (mostly through the use of stimulants which promote a feeling of sober sobriety) and those users may fall into a dangerously addictive mindset best summarized as 'Reality without a drug to enhance it is a very dull and mundane mode of existence. When I use this substance my reality is enhanced and I become the best version of myself I can possibly be.' Those individuals are not operating under a need to solve a problem, they view the drug as a way to follow the mantra 'just be yourself' because the use of the drug lets them do that with a sense of weightlessness. The use becomes the path of least resistance towards an unequivocally enhanced reality.

Personally my first experience with any 'problem drug' belonged to the category of benzodiazepines and it was prescribed to me. The dissipation of anxiety from the point of view of a chronically anxious and nervous user turns the litmus "Xanax is the greatest drug ever" towards something akin to the discovery of 'the secret chord' in the song "Now I've heard there was a secret chord, That David played, and it pleased the Lord [..] It goes like this, The fourth, the fifth, The minor fall, the major lift. The baffled king composing Hallelujah." I never fell into a xanax addiction, I was happy with composing hallelujah, but I understand the sentiment behind its value to some users.

There are classes after classes of drugs with effects ranging beyond my own personal experiences. It comes down to what does the drug do, what conditions primed the user for abuse, and what conditions have arised from the use of the drug (if any) that are negatively affecting the user's life. There is no simple cure for addiction but there is a period of time where the addiction isn't about physical dependency on the drug and that is, in my opinion, the best place to search for when 'curing' and understanding addiction.

This is an okay article, but not a great one. I expected this to be the entirety of the first page, and 3 or 4 more pages to follow. Instead, I am left with a very simple question: what is the proposed treatment, if we conclude it is a learning disorder?

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