The Fact of the Matter is: Facts Matter
I marvel at the number of false narratives surrounding the overdose epidemic. Given the seriousness of the crisis—from lives ruined to lives lost—you would think that certain basic truths would be the drivers of policy and would, in turn, be perpetuated by the media. But this isn’t the case.
Some facts are refuted or dismissed out of hand. Others—running counter to ideas long-baked in our culture—are simply ignored. Serving as a case in point is this fact: Most people who use highly addictive drugs do not become addicted; and, of those who do, most recover on their own without any treatment. Because the journey of those who outgrow addiction isn’t sensational enough to warrant news coverage, and because it doesn’t coincide with the world of traditional treatment programs, the phenomenon is obscured from view.
Award winning author and respected neuroscience journalist for thirty-plus years, Maia Szalavitz, writes in a 2014 article that originally appeared in Substance.com,
By age 35, half of all people who qualified for active addiction diagnoses during their teens and 20s no longer do, according to a study of over 42,000 Americans in a sample designed to represent the adult population.
The average cocaine addiction lasts four years, the average marijuana addiction lasts six years, and the average alcohol addiction is resolved within 15 years. Heroin addictions tend to last as long as alcoholism. . . In these large samples, which are drawn from the general population, only a quarter of people who recover have ever sought assistance in doing so (including via 12-step programs). This actually makes addictions the psychiatric disorder with the highest odds of recovery.
Chock full of data and animated by human interest and lived experience, Outgrowing Addiction—the 2019 book by Stanton Peele and Zach Rhoads—substantiates the frequency of natural recovery and highlights the commonalities among those who do overcome addiction on their own. Important in its own right, this knowledge also embodies untapped potential for the future—informing the scope of preventative youth programs and the underlying tenets of treatment programs for those in need.
The point is not to under-emphasize the significant number of people who need help, but rather to illuminate the many paths to overcoming addiction and to promote a thorough understanding of all of them, an understanding that not only includes natural recovery as a common occurrence but one that can bolster success regardless of the chosen path. While this is an encouraging concept, we await the buy-in needed to acknowledge and employ these findings.
Such widespread misunderstandings provoke frustration among those in the know, but far worse is their persistence in undergirding our failures. Whether nurturing unfounded biases or diverting our attention and wasting our resources, denial of facts thwarts our capacity to mitigate the overdose crisis and reign in the massive number of preventable deaths for which the US holds the world record.
Other unsubstantiated, nonetheless pervasive, mistruths include: 1) prescription drugs and the prescribing doctors are to blame for the increasing overdose deaths, 2) drug use represents a moral failure calling for harsh consequences, 3) incarceration of drug users is helpful for the offender and for society in general, 4) coerced treatment is effective, 5) harm reduction services and compassion encourage drug use, 6) treatment programs can forgo FDA approved medication as an option, 7) a person suffering from addiction has to hit rock bottom before opting to seek help, 8) prevention programs employing scare tactics work, and 9) the granddaddy of them all—prohibition is an effective strategy in combating the prevalence of illicit drugs, the extent of their use, and the devastation of their deadly consequences.
The list goes on.
Advocates for drug policy reform strive to merge data with legislation, humanity with policy, in urging initiatives and practices that, instead of shooting in the dark, are evidence-based, coordinated, and devised to reduce the still growing death toll. How much longer will it take, how many more preventable deaths will we endure before the legislation reflects the facts and makes a difference?
[photo credit: Markus Winkler]