Archive for June 7th, 2005

Addiction

Posted by Bob in Bob on 06/07/2005

All new drugs are non-addictive.

Meprobamate, the first tranquillizer, came out in the 1950s. It was guaranteed non-addictive. It is highly addictive.

Some of the older members of my recovery club told me about the first days of Valium. Right there before a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous, one woman would ask another, “Have you got a Valium on you?”

Valium was new and therefore nonaddictive. The FDA and the medical community agreed on that.

By the time I got into recovery, Valium addicts were part of the crew.

People say marijuana is not addictive, but the recovery community is full of people who abused it.

Let me tell you the secret to all this: Drugs are not addictive. PEOPLE are addictive.

The definition of “addictive” is that you suffer physical withdrawals when the drug is taken away. Anyone has who has ever quit drinking coffee will describe for you the almost unbearable pain most people get when caffeine is withdrawn. If you drink one cup of coffee a day, you will suffer a sharp head pain when you quit that is like having a needle in your head.

That is addiction.

But this physical pain is not the reason most people are alcoholics or addicts. Most people who become addicts are used to pain.

One man who called me during my time in the program was on heroin. When I arrived he was standing in the bathroom, which was covered with blood. He was naked. He was sobbing and jabbing the needle into his private parts and screaming, “I can’t find a vein!”

Addicts use the needle so much they destroy veins. Many addicts’ arms are caved in from the collapsed veins. Many junkies get to the point where they simply enjoy the pain of a needle without the drug.

I know why. Every year when I was child I would try to chew some of my grandfather’s tobacco. It was horrible. It burned my mouth and I couldn’t get the taste out all day. But my grandfather liked the taste, because he associated it with the pleasure nicotine gave him.

An addict is not afraid of the pain of withdrawal. What he suffers from is living without the comforter a drug pulls over him.

It is not the drug that is addictive. It is the addict.

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The Media’s Little Dictator

Posted by Bob in Coaching Session, How Things Work on 06/07/2005

There is a natural gap between those who are entertained and those who do entertaining for a living.

When you sit down to watch TV or a movie or read a story, you just finished your day’s work or you are taking a break from your normal life.

I was in a discussion about the media and a young man who wants to get into television management asked the routine question such people ask:

“Isn’t there a Public Service element in television? Is there a way to balance the Public Interest against just giving the public what it will pay for?”

He was asking the same question, and using the same code language, every socialist uses.

The consumer wants to get what He wants. This young man wants to give the consumer what he thinks the consumer NEEDS. And he leaves out the critical three word s that makes every discussion like this USELESS:

“IN MY OPINION”

So let us put this question, which occurs in every discussion of the media, in plain English:

“Isn’t there an element of WHAT I CONSIDER a Public Service Element in television? Is there a way to balance WHAT I CONSIDER is the Public Interest against just giving the public what it will pay for?”

That correction destroys the whole coded discussion.

Frankly, young man, I don’t give a flying rip about what you consider to be in the Public Interest. The very fact you can’t ask a straight question in English shows me your opinion is meaningless.

The young man thinks he has a Truth the public needs to get from him. It would never occur to him in a million years that he and the Great Experts he is talking do not have the Final Truth. He wants to balance the cheap pleasure of the paying public against the Great Truth he and the other experts have.

No. I do not think you have the slightest right to dictate Public Interest. The paying public has ALL the rights. The public has the opinions. You have no more right to force people to buy your idea of Truth than a preacher does. You have no more right to force people to buy your idea of the Public Interest any more than a contractor has the right to tell a home builder what house he wants.

Like the contractor, you can recommend. But until you get over the idea you represent the True Public Interest nobody will trust you the way they do their contractor.

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