bios

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“For the first time in human history, a simple program has proven effective in the lives of many addicts.” –NA Preamble, “What is the NA Program”

While the simple program has proven effective for me now, there have been many other times in human history where suffering existed, dependency existed, and acceptance existed. But the addict, as a category of person to be punished, did not yet exist. This has been a relatively new historical development.

Now, in countries such as Switzerland, Portugal, the Czech Republic, and the Netherlands, acceptance, destigmatisation, and harm reduction programs over a period of decades show radical changes in social behaviour — crime rates drop, overdoses drop. It's Rat Park in real life. In South Africa, we are living in a state of anomie.

“The drugs were never the problem. I was the problem.” – NA Literature.

As a tool for recovery, this may be profoundly useful. It helps the recovering addict take responsibility for their behaviour. As an explanation for addiction, it is woefully incomplete. Drug use is a temporary solution to the problem. And the person is obviously the centre of that problem, but no amount of Step Work explains why one neighbourhood has ten times the overdose rate of another.

With a progressive constitution, that still treats the right to shelter as aspirational, where the cabinet and its deputies cost taxpayers approximately R3.1 billion a year in running costs, the current system is failing its most vulnerable.

If we provide clean needles to those without, we reduce HIV transmission.

If we give the addict methadone or suboxone as an alternative, we begin to provide pathways to recovery.

If the state controls supply, the drugs are clean, and fewer addicts die of contamination.

If we make drugs legal, and supply them to the addict, we take away the economic power of the syndicates.

If the addict does not need to steal to get their fix, we reduce drug-related crimes.

If the police are freed up from policing massive levels of drug-related crime, they can focus on more serious community issues.

If the syndicates lose their stranglehold, the temptation to bribery is reduced.

If we pay the police, hospital workers, and all essential workers a living wage, we reduce the need to supplement income.

If we reduce the number of drughouses, there are fewer sites for exploiting sex workers.

If we make sex work legal, we can protect both the client and the practitioner.

If we give the addict a chance to find recovery and purpose, we reduce their opportunities for relapse.

If we stop isolating users, they start connecting to society. If we have proper shelters, rehabs and integration programs including education, and skills development for the unhoused, they have choices.

If we accept that people who compulsively abuse substances are people who need help, then we ourselves become more fully human.

If society stops separating into we and them.

Res Ipsa Loquitur.