Surpisingly the NIDA says “addiction” is a genetic disease triggered by environmental factors. They had to be dragged kicking and screaming to this conclusion. It was pretty much established science by the time they allowed as how it might be true. Here is what they have to say:
The drug war is a war on the traumatized. Way to go America. Or put another way: people take pain relievers to relieve pain. And we have laws against this? Here is my concluding paragraph from "Addiction Is A Genetic Disease":
Here is some background that may help your understanding of the biological basis for addiction: Fear memories, the amygdala, and the CB1 receptor.
Evidence from adoption and twin studies and from animal models suggests that vulnerability to addiction has a moderate to high heritable component. The gene variants underlying increased vulnerability to addiction are unknown, but new advances in science and technology will facilitate the identification and characterization of these gene variants.You can read more, including evidence, anecdotal and scientific, about how almost all female heroin addicts were sexually abused: Addiction Is A Genetic Disease.
The drug war is a war on the traumatized. Way to go America. Or put another way: people take pain relievers to relieve pain. And we have laws against this? Here is my concluding paragraph from "Addiction Is A Genetic Disease":
In any case we know that the genetic factor is an important component. Why doesn’t the NIDA trumpet this? Well it hardly helps the drug war to think of it as a scheme for genetic discrimination and persecuting the tormented.
If the propensity to addiction is genetically determined, then legalization will not produce hordes of new addicts.
ReplyDeleteHow would you reconcile these findings with Theodore Daltrymple's contention that "physical addiction" is only a social construct that is used to excuse motivated behavior? Cf. "Romancing Opiates: Pharmacological Lies and the Addiction Bureaucracy." Encounter books, 2006.
Here are excerpts from his WSJ article of May 25, 2006 (http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/_wsj-poppycock.htm)
"Heroin doesn't hook people; rather, people hook heroin. It is quite untrue that withdrawal from heroin or other opiates is a serious business, so serious that it would justify or at least mitigate the commission of crimes such as mugging. Withdrawal effects from opiates are trivial, medically speaking (unlike those from alcohol, barbiturates or even, on occasion, benzodiazepines such as valium), and experiment demonstrates that they are largely, though not entirely, psychological in origin. Lurid descriptions in books and depictions in films exaggerate them à la De Quincey (and also Coleridge, who was a chronic self-dramatizer).
I have witnessed thousands of addicts withdraw; and, notwithstanding the histrionic displays of suffering, provoked by the presence of someone in a position to prescribe substitute opiates, and which cease when that person is no longer present, I have never had any reason to fear for their safety from the effects of withdrawal. It is well known that addicts present themselves differently according to whether they are speaking to doctors or fellow addicts. In front of doctors, they will emphasize their suffering; but among themselves, they will talk about where to get the best and cheapest heroin.
When, unbeknown to them, I have observed addicts before they entered my office, they were cheerful; in my office, they doubled up in pain and claimed never to have experienced suffering like it, threatening suicide unless I gave them what they wanted. When refused, they often turned abusive, but a few laughed and confessed that it had been worth a try. Somehow, doctors—most of whom have had similar experiences— never draw the appropriate conclusion from all of this. Insofar as there is a causative relation between criminality and opiate addiction, it is more likely that a criminal tendency causes addiction than that addiction causes criminality.
Furthermore, I discovered in the prison in which I worked that 67% of heroin addicts had been imprisoned before they ever took heroin. Since only one in 20 crimes in Britain leads to a conviction, and since most first-time prisoners have been convicted 10 times before they are ever imprisoned, it is safe to assume that most heroin addicts were confirmed and habitual criminals before they ever took heroin. In other words, whatever caused them to commit crimes in all probability caused them also to take heroin: perhaps an adversarial stance to the world caused by the emotional, spiritual, cultural and intellectual vacuity of their lives."
sexual predation and serial killing have major genetic components giving certain people a diathesis for those anti-social behaviors.
ReplyDeleteshould we legalize them!?!?!
we mustn't ever throw people into jail or even ostracize them for the genes, but that is different than legalizing their bad, anti-social behavior.
thee is great social, moral, and ethical value in defending norms of behavior.
perhaps we can use this info to develop a gene therapy for addiction, and other genetically linked criminal behaviors.
it doesn't logically flow from this that since addiction has a genetic component therefore it is "natural", good and should be legal.
reliapundit,
ReplyDeleteWhat is anti-social about taking medicine for your pain?
If taking medicine for pain is anti-social then why haven't we outlawed aspirin?
Punditarian,
PTSD makes people anti-social. Perhaps drugs which relieve the pain would decrease anti-social behavior?
In fact pain is known to make people anti-social. The homeless war vet is a well known anecdote.
In any case Theodore Daltrymple is not up to date on the latest in addiction science. I have tried to contact him several times about his position on drugs (I admire most of his writing) and he never responds.
I think this study on mice is very telling Fear memories and the CB1 receptor
it doesn't logically flow from this that since addiction has a genetic component therefore it is "natural", good and should be legal.
ReplyDelete