Drugs and Addiction - (part 1)
One of the central difficulties in thinking effectively about drugs and
addictions lies in the fact that the whole business is befuddled by propaganda,
outdated information and superstition. We will explore some of the concepts of drugs, addiction and NLP can be applied in a meaningful and successful way.
NLP brings some wonderful tools
to the discussion but before those tools can be effective, we need to
clear the air.
Whenever people begin to talk about drugs (including alcohol) the following ideas are trumpeted as fact:
- Addiction is a progressive chronic disease that ends in death.
- There is some identifiable thing called addiction.
- All drug use inevitably leads to addiction.
- Certain drugs have the specific property of being addictive.
- Certain people are born with addictive personalities.
In a real sense, not one of these ideas is ‘true’. Each of them is a generalization or distortion that proceeds from the medical and moral models of addiction that have framed most of our thinking about drugs and alcohol. They have crippled our capacity to deal effectively with the concept of addictions and this is what we will be addressing here.
Anciently, and far into the Twentieth Century, addiction was treated as a moral failing. It was a sin or error of excess. It was considered positive proof of the presence of some lack of personal virtue, self-control or will power. Addicts were sinners or idiots.
Through most of American history, the addict’s ruin was viewed as just desserts but the toll taken on long-suffering family members and business associates was scandalous. (Shattuck, 1994).
Although the disease concept was originally designed as a metaphor with the intent of saving addicts from humiliation, in 1956 the AMA accorded alcoholism the medical status of disease.
From an NLP perspective, and the growing body of neuroscience, it may be useful to think of addictions as a set of over-learned and over-valued behaviors.
Later on in this discussion, we will look at how addiction works and how it affects values hierarchies and preference criteria. From this perspective, we will see that drug and alcohol abuse, is not a disease, just a powerful set of well used preferences.
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