On a political blog, there’s a minor debate over the Emmy broadcast apparently giving an individual tribute to late Glee star Cory Monteith and not to the also-died-this-past-year Jack Klugman and Larry Hagman (though both will be acknowledged fully).
Let’s forget for the moment that Hagman and Klugman had much longer careers, and that both had well-known problems with tobacco and/or alcohol. The comment that interested me is this:
This isn’t an uncommon outlook. So I’d like to ask how much of a moral failing substance abuse — especially drugs — is, whether it should be viewed that way, and how much it should impact an outsider’s perspective towards an addict. If it’s not a moral failing, how would you (the person who believes such) go about changing that perspective, assuming you want to?
I believe that it is important to change that perception, and I think we’ve come a long way, but there’s a long way further to go. I think the best way to do it is what we’ve been doing, but more: allow and encourage powerful, respected people to talk about their own struggles with addiction. It’s very easy to look down on people you don’t know, or don’t admire. When a respected doctor or pastor or author or television personality whom people respect is open about their history of addiction, people see that real people, even those of good moral character (in their opinion, of course) are sometimes plagued with addiction.
I’ve seen more than one thread dripping with disdain calm way the heck down when our own Qadgop the Mercotan steps in and quietly mentions his own history of opiate abuse, for example. He’s a well respected Doper, very intelligent and in a field with great social respectability (he’s a doctor) and posters’ respect for him doesn’t diminish with the awareness that he’s been addicted to drugs, rather their appreciation for the complexity, insidiousness and struggles of addiction rises.
I do not think that being addicted to a substance is a “moral failing”, as in only those who are weak become addicted. That’s just not true. However, I do think that for me to use any drugs or alcohol would be morally wrong because of my history of abuse and addiction. Once I know I am addicted and get help, then it becomes a moral issue for me to continue to use when I know the consequences, especially the harm of innocents around me.
From **GusNSpot ** in the Murphy’s Law thread: In the aviation world it was heard a lot that, “The way to gain good judgement was to survive your bad judgement.”
Trying drugs is bad judgement. All of us have been guilty of bad judgement. All of us have, or have had, bad habits. Not moral. Obviously, drug addiction can lead to immoral behavior, as can pretty much any addiction.
If PSXer can honestly claim never to have had a drop of alcohol, none of tobacco, no other recreational drugs, no poor judgement when it comes to sexual behavior, let me know.
I think that the reason it’s called a ‘moral failure’, in the case of those who fit the description, is because they fuck up so many other lives. Looking at the original quote, it indicates that the weakness is that the celebrity ‘couldn’t control’ his drug habit’, not that they *had a habit. In other words, it isn’t a person who goes home and gets drunk every night. It is, usually, a drunk who beats his wife, doesn’t go to work, goes to work drunk and gets fired, pisses on a cop car, or calls his mother-in-law a whore at Thanksgiving, etc… IOW, a drug addict who uses the drugs in spite of the cost to others. *
I don’t think that anybody can really, or really wants to, judge one who is a loner drunk/druggie, who only brings harm onto himself/herself.
Often the moral failure or perceived moral failure takes place before the addiction. The drugs and alcohol help the addict to live with himself and his guilt, at least they think it helps.
My view of addiction is the same as my view of obesity: Just because some people find it easy to avoid falling into a certain trap (drug addiction, over eating, etc.) doesn’t mean that the people who do struggle with these problems are weaker people.
There is ample evidence that genetics set some people up to be more likely to become addicts than other people. Many people end up starting down the road of drug addiction when they are teens - and of course a lot of people do stupid things when they’re teens (the brain is not fully developed until a person is about 25, after all). A lot of times these people have unhealthy families who enable their addiction.
I have a lot of empathy for people who are addicted to substances that I know are very difficult to overcome such as opiates or nicotine. It is tragic how many people die prematurely because of these substances.
I feel sorry for addicts and definitely see their condition as a disease, not a moral failing.
But I’m not surprised that drug addiction is treated differently than other diseases. One doesn’t become an addict overnight. It usually follows a chain of events that are very much in someone’s control. Drug dependency is a problem pretty everyone over the age of 10 should realize is a potential consequence to regular drug use, and so when it happens, I totally understand why people would look at that situation unsympathetically.
Also, it is not surprising that us common folk would look at a celebrity and assume that because they are successful, they have little excuse for using drugs to cope with existence. Presumably celebrities have access to money, power, and adoration…everything the average person wants. So here is someone who had all of that, but threw it away seemingly so carelessly.
Expecting everyone to treat this as a tragedy similar to cancer is unrealistic because of the assumptions we attach to drug use and fame. That said, to judge someone as a moral failure simply because they have a drug problem is pretty much a moral failing too.
It’s pretty hard to look at the Marianne Faithful story and not reach a conclusion that the legal supply of pure heroin via the National Health Service in the early 1970’s did her no favours. No judgement there on my part - merely a resignation that there doesn’t appear to be a magic bullet solution when it comes to drugs.
I agree, and I have another argument.
It is perfectly common for people to have just one addiction. Take me, for instance. I was obese before I had bariatric surgery. Overeating can be seen as an addiction.
But even at my heaviest, I never had a problem with any other common addiction. I didn’t drink, didn’t smoke, didn’t gamble, didn’t hoard, had no other major problems. If my addiction to food was a character failing, a moral weakness, shouldn’t I have had problems in other areas as well?
Many, many other people have just one addiction. Again, if their addiction was a character failing, a moral weakness, shouldn’t they have addictions in other areas as well?
Because you have an obligation to everyone around you to act as a “reasonable person” would. Thus you also have an obligation to not deliberately cripple your ability to meet that obligation with mind-altering substances.
Another useful concept here is…in Dutch, I use the word individualisation, but that apparently means something else here.
I mean that for a given problem, the onus to solve it is placed on individuals, where that is likely to be less efficient then to adress it at a higher (communal) level.
As you will note, it is highly politically and morally charged where, for any given problem, the correct balance lies between individual responsibility and communal responsibility. (I myself tend to look at this in a mostly practical way; I want to know what works.)
A nice parallel is with green consumerism. These socials scientists arguethat the onus for “going green” is left with a subset of consumers, and that doesn’t really help the problem.
Going back to drugs, I’d say that there are a lot of people whose livelyhood depends on either making individual responsibility smaller then it should be (some therapists, and some addicts moms and partners, I’m looking at you) and some are too invested in making the individuals responsibility too great (that would be the ones who don’t want to pay for others healthcare, and the politicians catering to them, and a large subset of Americans who, IMHO tend to make everything way too much the individuals responsibility, even when it is proven couterproductive to do so, like in the case of sexual abstinence).
The only thing you can and should expect from addicts is that they should seek help (help that has been proven effective) and do what they can to make the help work.
Drug addiction isn’t a moral failure. You’d have to ignore all the science about addiction to make this conclusion.
Any addiction can cause failure of morality, though. An addiction can make a priest disappear with the collection plate, or turn a saintly grandmother into a thief, liar, or child abuser. Few people who are truly addicted live morally impeccable lies.
Yet, you can say the same thing about the non-addicted too, I suppose. Maybe they aren’t stealing from the collection plate, but they don’t pay their taxes. Or they get road rage at the police officer who pulls them over for speeding. Or they bully their coworkers and withold affection from their children and spouses. These are moral failures too, but they just don’t make the 6 O’Clock News.
So I don’t think turning drug abuse into a character issue is helpful at all.
Indeed, and it is an interesting side discussion as to why this happens. the most common reasons listed are:
some drugs are so expensive (due to the economics) that an non-wealthy addict will have to resort to illegal (stealing, prostitution) and immoral ways (lying and badgering in case of prescripition medicines) to get money to get the fix.
Some drugs, like alcohol, or more dramatically pcp, proactively impair good judgement. If a guy knows he will beat up his wife and drive under the influence when he’s had too much to drink, I would say he would make a very immoral choice if he ever got drunk again. I’ve never understood drunks who used the “I was drunk, I didn’t know what I was doing, you can’t hold that fully against me”-excuse. If anything, crimes committed under the influence of drugs should be punished more severely.
Some drugs (alcohol again) can be used to temporarily numb feelings of guilt that would otherwise perhaps lead to changing behavior, or at least to seeing help.
Some drugs, (exessive use of weed or other downers come to mind) impair the mental energy to do much of anything that might benefit oneself or others.
Some drugs, (opiates especially) are the most devious, because they chemically replace the good feelings a person otherwise would get from doing good and being a part of society. While high, morality is irrelevant, as euphoria sets in; while on the lookout for the next fix, morality has to compete with getting the next fix, and so it will lose.