A few weeks ago I was meeting with someone I mentor. We got onto the topic of prescription drug addiction. Working with fighters, this is something I see often. On the heels of having my shoulder replaced and being prescribed the very drugs many people I know are addicted too. I found the conversation even more timely. Lets be honest, I want off my painkillers asap!
Dan surprised me with his knowledge of addiction. Something he has meticulously researched. Something he has battled and overcome. I learned so much in that short meeting I asked him to write a blog on it. Brevity has never been one of Dan’s strong suits so this will be shown in 3 parts. Here is part 1:
I, ADDICT: THE DRUG PROBLEM (1)
By Dan Carpenter on 2/10/12
“His only thought was to wake up and wonder where he’d get his next fix, how he’d score, and where he could sell this stuff.”
Addiction is anything but a simple subject. It is often misunderstood, ignored, unseen, and miss-assessed. It is at the center of a million painful stories, as many broken hearts, and is, by it’s ambiguity, a modern boogeyman. So we’re going to tackle it here, in some depth, by Brandon’s request. And, as this is a companion message to Ryan’s (excellent) message from Sunday – we’re going to borrow from Ryan with thanks, who provided us a parable of his friend David’s descent into drug abuse. But were going to go very different places with it. We’re going to take it for a spin to provide common language in foreign places. To help illustrate just how thorny this issue is.
Because no matter what I promise you this – this story of David, of drugs, of addiction and sin is ANYTHING but simple to judge – even if it is simple as a caution. It’s also, for so very (very) many of us, a glass house we’d best not cast stones in.
The Parable of David & Addiction (this being David from WA, not David King of Jews)
David descended, step by stand by sit, into drug addiction and a lifestyle of sin. Speaking to Psalm 1:1-3, Ryan charted choices that ran from alcohol to pot to a lifestyle of hard drugs. An archetypical tale, it matched the psalm perfectly, and matches a million real life stories even better. Well chosen, it used an illustrating subject – drug use – that is condemned in both secular and biblical culture. Which makes the moral really clear & the story easy to follow.
Right?
In Ryan’s case – yes. He had a point and a story. Close subject.
But in general?
Not necessarily. Not. At. All.
Because the truth is, by focusing on a subject condemned in both cultures we run risks – of missing the morals as applied to socially acceptable (or socially celebrated) choices, and in landing on judgement without enough information to justify it. Why? Because the combined force of a social and spiritual push to judge shouldn’t be underestimated, by anyone. It’s a very powerful set of pressures – one of which matters completely, one of which our faith directly cautions us against (Romans 12:2).
So – I’d like to look at a story less clear. One with a moral a little less easy to follow. Ironically, the same story – but with a few changes.
But first, before we dive in, we have to define what were dealing with. The sin. We need to define David’s drug addiction as sin. I mean, we know it’s bad… but why? What sort of sin is it?
Is it a sin of the body? It can be, a defilement of our temple (1 Corinthians 3:16), but it isn’t always so. After all, what of my grandfather who lay dying of cancer, taking painkillers for two years as he withered? That’s a medication that will physically addict it’s user no matter how pure the spirit. It is also one with a great physical cost in intoxication and in trauma to the liver and lungs. Was my grandfather committing a sin of the flesh to take his medication? He was an addict, unavoidably, but was he sinning?
Is it a sin of the spirit? It can be, a defilement of the Law in placing idols before God (Exodus 20:3-4), but it isn’t always so. After all, what of one of my brothers, who requires medication to treat a hindrance of his mind, a hindrance that causes him to worry and obsess, to crave and to fear constantly? The medication is all that allows him to live at all normally, it is vital to his life and it is not something he can control – at the whim of doctors, laws and lottery. Has he built an idol to his medication in considering it vital – in his nature of worrying to fret and think and worry about his medicine? His lack of control of it? He is addicted, no question, to this medication which keeps him from chaos. So, he too is an addict, but is he sinning?
Is it a sin of excess? It can be, a form of gluttony or inebriation (Ephesians 5:18), but it isn’t always so. What of my one of my sisters, who takes a strong medication yet resents it all the while? She is addicted, her biology has seen to that and yet she resists, taking as little as her health, her faith, and her will allow. A constant struggle she is in fact addicted, but is she sinning?
I don’t think so.
Which leaves us with a problem. Addiction can be any of these things or all of these things but isn’t necessarily so. So how do we judge? Based on a doctors involvement? On Caesar’s ruling of what is lawful and what is not? Can we afford to treat all addiction everywhere as equally sinful, as the same thing?
I don’t think so.
Doctors prescribe unneeded medications all the time. Patients seek the same, with many finding themselves in surgery after surgery… that aren’t needed. Doctors are not the gatekeepers we need; they simply cannot be counted on to do the job – their compass is logic and data. Data changes and logic will create new rules. Same for Caesar… constant change. Did you know that cocaine was used (here in the US) to treat morphine addiction 100 years ago as a prescribed medication? That it is still used, today, in the US, as a topical anesthetic for nasal and eye surgeries? Or that heroin is named for ‘heroine’ because it was supposed to save people from Demerol?
And what of these many designer drugs found in tobacco shops, fresh from the same companies that make our ‘medicine?’ Drugs that will be illegal, someday, but aren’t? And what of that most potent, dangerous and addictive of all drugs – the legal hard drug, alcohol? When it was outlawed our nation faced a near civil war in black market violence – it made the US look worse than Mexico does today. More alcohol addicts die of their addiction than any other kind and yet… so many of us are okay with having ‘a beer.’ Would those same people be okay with having ‘a snort?’ Probably not, and yet in practice they are essentially the same thing (a fact that does NOT excuse drug use – it calls into question what were doing when we choose to drink) – its a choice to use an addictive and dangerous drug to feel pleasure. Regardless – that tension we just had, right there, is what happens when we let Caesar define our moral boundaries.
No. Neither Caesar nor our doctors can be counted on to keep us from sin – or to give us the basis to understand when others are or are not sinning. They’re ‘of the world,’ inconsistent, and not up to the task of safeguarding our hearts.
Which, come to think of it, raises yet another point – what of all the people (whom we may not well understand here in our suburban cultures with insurance and rx discounts) who medicate themselves? Folks who live off the gird, away form doctors and government? People using drugs to healthful purpose outside of social rules as we know them – but with benign and healthful intent? Is the individual who buys antibiotics for an infection without a prescription doing something morally repugnant or wrong? If not, would they be to do the same thing to treat an anxiety disorder? How do those differ?
It’s a mess isn’t it?
A mess. And this mess is the heart of the ‘drug problem’ – the problem being that it isn’t simple, not at all. Addiction is a word that is inadequate to the task, representing too many disparate things. Because physical dependency to a chemical and drug abuse – the CHOICE to misuse or use too much of a drug – are COMPLETELY separate things… and neither of those are addiction itself. They are potential pieces of a larger whole; the tail and fin of our white whale. Or, as I prefer to see it – symptoms of a larger problem – symptoms that are most often diagnosed, and treated, as the disease. A disease that is far more common, and far more deceptive, than many of us would suspect.
