Stanton Peele, meth, addiction
I wrote this as a response to a comment, but want to re-post it as an actual entry because it summarises many of my thoughts.
for unconventional and gut-instictively CORRECT ideas about addiction, look at www.peele.net. Peele and I correspond (as of last weekend, when I wrote him an email praising his word and naming my own areas of study) and he's asked me to contribute to the section on MDMA in an article on drugs and harm reduction he is currently writing for a magazine. I'm very excited to do this, especially right now. I'm also putting Speedsmart up this weekend (the barebones version) because I've heard just about enough bullshit about meth/amph/mdma and am ready to fucking counter it in a space where I cannot be censored, repressed, shusshed, or otherwise gagged.
Here is my response to a person on meth and addiction in general:
"I don't at all think it's unfavorable that you don't try meth. I think it is most habituating, toxic, dangerous drug that is commonly abused on the street right now. If in doubt, there's no harm done in staying away and it's certainly no test of courage to say one's tried it and not become hooked (if anything is a test of courage, in my opinion it's the more mind-fucking psychedelics at high doses).
That said, much of the idea of addiction is a cultural construct. (see www.peele.net on this one; I correspond with peele and we are in great agreement). we are coaxed to believe that a drug can have inherent pharmacological properties that will deprive us of volition, and we are even sold on a certain pattern of behaviors that this will manifest as. once this standard is in place, society will indeed display a large fraction of individuals acting in this way. however, if one fundamentally understands that addiction is not in the drug but in oneself, and that addiction (vs use) represents a certain discomfort with the sober self, it becomes easier to form a functional relationship with a drug. a drug cannot have the power to take away your control unless you give your control away to it. this is not the same as users saying, "I'll be different, I won't get addicted." It's very hard not to buy into the cultural standard of addiction, and also I don't deny that addiction is a real phenomenon. however, if people can stop conceptualising of addiction as a battle between themselves and the drug, their addictive patterns may in themselves change. addiction is a battle between fear of change/novelty (and therefore clinging to one experience, over and over again) and the other, life-driven aspects of oneself that do not fear deviation from pleasure. but one doesn't even need to enter the area of addiction if one doesn't delineate certain experiences as inherently 'addictive'! after all, people are prescribed amphetamine (adderall) and meth (desoxyn)all the time, seemingly without becoming addicted, and it is given to airforce in Iraq as 'go-pills'. Similarly, soldiers during the Vietnam war who used a lot of heroin while there did not even manifest physical withdrawal symptoms upon return to the US, presumably because the environment and context were such that the substance was no longer required, not craved, and not seen as something one is dependent on. Stanton Peele expresses all of this more eloquently than me, but our feelings on the subject very much coincide."
for unconventional and gut-instictively CORRECT ideas about addiction, look at www.peele.net. Peele and I correspond (as of last weekend, when I wrote him an email praising his word and naming my own areas of study) and he's asked me to contribute to the section on MDMA in an article on drugs and harm reduction he is currently writing for a magazine. I'm very excited to do this, especially right now. I'm also putting Speedsmart up this weekend (the barebones version) because I've heard just about enough bullshit about meth/amph/mdma and am ready to fucking counter it in a space where I cannot be censored, repressed, shusshed, or otherwise gagged.
Here is my response to a person on meth and addiction in general:
"I don't at all think it's unfavorable that you don't try meth. I think it is most habituating, toxic, dangerous drug that is commonly abused on the street right now. If in doubt, there's no harm done in staying away and it's certainly no test of courage to say one's tried it and not become hooked (if anything is a test of courage, in my opinion it's the more mind-fucking psychedelics at high doses).
That said, much of the idea of addiction is a cultural construct. (see www.peele.net on this one; I correspond with peele and we are in great agreement). we are coaxed to believe that a drug can have inherent pharmacological properties that will deprive us of volition, and we are even sold on a certain pattern of behaviors that this will manifest as. once this standard is in place, society will indeed display a large fraction of individuals acting in this way. however, if one fundamentally understands that addiction is not in the drug but in oneself, and that addiction (vs use) represents a certain discomfort with the sober self, it becomes easier to form a functional relationship with a drug. a drug cannot have the power to take away your control unless you give your control away to it. this is not the same as users saying, "I'll be different, I won't get addicted." It's very hard not to buy into the cultural standard of addiction, and also I don't deny that addiction is a real phenomenon. however, if people can stop conceptualising of addiction as a battle between themselves and the drug, their addictive patterns may in themselves change. addiction is a battle between fear of change/novelty (and therefore clinging to one experience, over and over again) and the other, life-driven aspects of oneself that do not fear deviation from pleasure. but one doesn't even need to enter the area of addiction if one doesn't delineate certain experiences as inherently 'addictive'! after all, people are prescribed amphetamine (adderall) and meth (desoxyn)all the time, seemingly without becoming addicted, and it is given to airforce in Iraq as 'go-pills'. Similarly, soldiers during the Vietnam war who used a lot of heroin while there did not even manifest physical withdrawal symptoms upon return to the US, presumably because the environment and context were such that the substance was no longer required, not craved, and not seen as something one is dependent on. Stanton Peele expresses all of this more eloquently than me, but our feelings on the subject very much coincide."