The U.S.-style law-and-order drug policies that the Conservative cabinet appears poised to embrace are doomed to fail in this country, as they have everywhere. What’s worse, they make impossible the rational and humane treatment of hard-core drug addiction. It is not feasible to rehabilitate large numbers of substance-dependent people in the context of the so-called […]
Stop Treating Drug Users As Criminals Read More »
Addictions always originate in unhappiness, even if hidden. They are emotional anesthetics; they numb pain. The first question — always — is not “Why the addiction?” but “Why the pain?” The answer, ever the same, is scrawled with crude eloquence on the wall of my patient Anna’s room at the Portland Hotel in the heart
Embraced By The Needle Read More »
Nine-year-old Naomi stood in front of the mirror, an expression of rage on her face, her left hand pulling at her hair while with her right she wielded the scissors. Shiny black locks fell to the floor. When her mother, shocked at this act of self-mutilation, tried to intervene, the child pointed the scissors at
In Treating Depression, Drugs Are Not Enough Read More »
Gordon Campbell’s drunken driving arrest is more than a painful episode in the life of an individual and more than a “severe misjudgment,” as the B.C. premier’s said, in the career of a politician. It highlights the dysfunction that characterizes the lives of many adults whose childhoods were blighted by the alcoholism of their parents.
On [BC Premier] Gordon Campbell’s Drunk Driving Arrest Read More »
