Bush Should Do More than Talk About His Own Drug Addiction Problems
President Bush last week shared his personal struggles against alcohol addiction with former prisoners in recovery who are enrolled in a program to help them reenter productively into society.
Bush recounted having given up alcohol the day after his 40th birthday, following a "particularly boozy night." He often credits his Christian faith for giving him the strength to stay sober.
Here are five observations on Bush's drug use confessions and his continuing struggle with addiction:
1) Drug misuse doesn't discriminate, but our drug policies do.
George W. Bush, Al Gore III, Rush Limbaugh and Patrick Kennedy all remind us that anyone can be susceptible to drug use problems -- addiction does not discriminate. Unfortunately, our drug policies do. Despite similar rates of drug use, blacks go to jail 13 times the rate of whites. In New York, 91% of the people incarcerated under the draconian Rockefeller drug laws are black or Latino, which is grossly disproportionate to their share of the population or involvement in illegal drug use and sales. Too often, treatment is reserved for the privileged, jail for the poor.
2) "Straight Shooter" Bush Won't Answer Questions about his "Youthful Indiscretions."
President Bush likes to portray himself as a no-nonsense straight shooter. While he may be comfortable talking about his struggles with alcohol, he refuses to address or even acknowledge rumors of past cocaine use. While he asks for privacy for his "youthful indiscretions," our prisons are filled with people who have similarly made mistakes in their youth, wrestled with addiction problems, or have been caught possessing cocaine or other drugs.
3) The Bushes -- and Most Families -- Will Confront Addiction at Some Point
Almost every family in America has had to deal with drug addiction or experience the collateral damage from the drug war. President Bush is not the only Bush to have had serious problems with addiction. His niece Noelle Bush was arrested for trying to fill a fake prescription for Xanax. While in a treatment program, she was busted for crack cocaine. Fortunately for her, she was able to get help without being forced to spend years of her life behind bars. Millions of other people without money or powerful connections are not as lucky. Millions have a loved one behind bars on drug charges. Many millions more have struggled themselves or have a loved one who has dealt with addiction to illegal or legal drugs. By declaring a "war on drugs" we have declared a war on ourselves.
4) There are Many Effective Strategies and Pathways for Dealing with Addiction
Bush was able to give up his drinking "cold turkey" and used his faith to help himself. Millions use abstinence-only programs like Alcoholics Anonymous when trying to give up drugs. Some people give up one addiction like heroin, but may still hold on to smoking marijuana or cigarettes. Many people who quit a drug will relapse one or more times before finding the strength to quit again. There are many pathways and strategies for dealing with an addiction. There is no "one size fits all" approach.
5) Bush Administration Policies Emphasize Prison and Punishment over Compassion and Treatment
One would think that Bush's personal struggles would have him advocate for treatment over jail and punishment. According to the Office of National Drug Control Policy, only 35% of the federal drug control budget is spent on education, prevention and treatment combined, with the remaining 65% devoted to law enforcement efforts. Our drug policies have led to the United States becoming the world leader in incarceration. We have 5% of the world's population, but 25% of all the world's prisoners, with more than 2.3 million citizens incarcerated in its prisons and jail - more per capita than Russia, Belarus or China.
I appreciate President Bush opening up and sharing his struggles with his drug addiction (yes, alcohol is a drug). It is helpful to remind people that drug addiction is an issue that so many of us have had to deal with. I just wish that his personal experiences would give him the wisdom and courage to advocate for others what he would want for his own family.
Tony Newman is the director of media relations for the Drug Policy Alliance.
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I don't recall asking for advice, or even claiming to have problems or need help.
I’m not proposing treating anyone – I don’t believe that alcoholism
People often convince themselves of things that either are not so or can never be proven. Behavior & self-image are highly situational. That's why doctors require tests as evidence before treating a disease, instead of relying on a patient's report of problems. Elizabeth Loftus' work shows that memories themselves are malleable, especially when someone is subject to the influence of another person acting like they expect the person to remember something a certain way. She got people to claim to remember Disney workers walking around in Buggs Bunny costumes [Buggs is not Disney, he's WB]. That was with nothing important - like avoiding jail or getting a job or forgiveness by family - to increase the need to conform their report to expectations.
Unlike faith-healing, real medicine, like antibiotics, or surgery, works not only on those who make an effort to believe they will, but also on the unconscious. This is why science & medicine recognize a distinction between physical disease and antisocial actions.
Bush should have been more honest with the American people, before his election. About many things.
Bush is living proof that alcohol destroys brain cells!
A "Drug War" story-#2
Barry was the first person who should have been sent prison.
Barry was the last person who should have been sent to prison.
Barry was arrested at Customs in Calgary airport for smuggling a kilo of cocaine. He showed up looking exactly like a cocaine dealer, Northern California, 1970's style. The blow was stuffed into a moccasin in his suitcase, almost ready to jump out if the bag was opened. When he never made the lobby I did what I could, but the best case was the plea bargain he eventually settled for.
In our visit Barry said he didn't know that Canada was not part of the U.S. He was so busy doing his own thing at the time, and more women and drugs than almost anyone but a celebrity, that he just didn't have time to pay attention to anything else. I guess that he really got locked up for stupidity, but a year of his life for trying to bring joy to the frozen masses seems a little steep.
The coke trade turned out to be very evolutionary. Straight survival of the fittest/most violent. It didn't start out that way, though. It, like pretty much everything else at the time, was just "white punks on dope". Barry never wanted anything more than a good time and he turned out to be one of the last of the mellow breed that I ever met in that trade. Neither Barry nor society really needed him to go to prison, but this is another example that looking for logic in life is largely a thankless pursuit.
How many more people would be alive today if Bush hadn't had God running interference? It makes you wonder whether the harvester of souls wasn't the one actually providing his spiritual resolve. Maybe it was just dark out.
There's no scientific evidence that "addiction" &/or "alcoholism" are a disease - no infectious agent, organ deformity or malfunction, no hormone excess or deficiency, only the self-reported statement that one is addicted/alcoholic. These self-reports are based on only one form of "evidence" the memories of the self-reporter. Self-reporting can be influenced by group pressure [conforming to what the group wants to hear], the prospect of a reduced sentence in a criminal trial, or getting a second chance from friends & relatives one has hurt or angered.
So, we're taking the self-reports of people who have reason to distort their view of their lives/memories for forgiveness, reduced criminal liability, or domestic harmony, and using that as "evidence" that "addiction" & "alcoholism" are diseases. [Plus, we're now accept people claiming ot be addicted to things they don't even ingest, like sex with lots of partners or shopping or gambling]
Our society accepts that the "addict" or "alcoholic" can't control their behavior because of what they've ingested, but also that complex, sneaky behaviors are caused by recent use of substances, and aren't the fault of the person who did the ingesting.
The behaviors that are claimed to have been caused by "addiction" or "alcoholism" [stealing, lying to lovers, violent outbursts, blowing off work] can be done without any substance in one's system. It's possible to learn behavior, good or bad. Bad behavior can runs in families without being inherited.
Medical doctors are usually suspicious when patients come in and announce they have x disease. They don't take a patient's memories as sufficient to treat a disease a patient claims to have. People can misinterpret their bodily changes, miss changes that are important, not know which things will pass & which won't, or claim a disease for reasons other than their health. Doctors use examinations & tests to determine who has what disease.
With "addiction' & "alcoholism" It's the opposite - as soon as someone makes the claim, it's accepted by our society & government as being as reliable as a diagnostic work-up by a medical team.
Here's the strawman. First you limit the etiology of the disease process to "..infecti
In fact, in addition to the medical model there is the public health model, the learning theory model and others that have merit if one assumes a pragmatic perspective rather than an absolutist one.
Central regions of the brain are involved in what now appears to be a genetic predisposition to become physically dependent in appx 60% of cases of alcohol dependency. Google "the dopamine circuit" and/or nucleus acumbins. There is also some indication of a strong role by the aymigdala and the frontal lobes.
Unfortunately, your definition of "disease" is one driven by the literature of S.O.S., a cognitive group, one that has enjoyed some degree of success, but like the AA/NA model does not work for everyone.
Again, you suggest an unrealistic dichotomy, which is ironic if you are in fact promoting the cognitive cure at the same time you deny the fortuitous status of alcohol dependency as a "disease."
I have no personal experience with SOS. I've read a little about them. For my own information, as a citizen trying to stay informed about my country & my government, I've read about AA/NA and rehab. If my taxes pay for coercing people to go, I want to know what I'm sending them to.
I am not promoting a cure, because I don't believe that a collection of bad behaviors qualifies as a disease. Just saying that there is a disease called X doesn't make it so. Before scientific medicine, hysteria [a collection of vague complaints of unhappiness made by women] was a "disease". In the 1800s [when alcoholism
Scientific medicine demands that there be real physical evidence before it accepts a proposed disease is a physical condition that affects human bodies for the worse. It also demands that there be actual, physical evidence that the patient is suffering that disease before initiating treatment.
If someone wants to claim that disease condition X exists, and wants the recognition of the scientific and medical communities, they have to come up with scientific evidence that the phenomenon is physical.
If people want to claim that their bad behavior is caused by things that are not physical, and that science and medicine can't detect, they have the right to do that. But the proper name for such a condition is not disease [we already use that word for actual, physical forms of malfunctioning].
Claiming that there is a disease, but claiming that science & medicine can't detect it, is trying to have it both ways.
Are you fucking kidding me? What do you call withdrawl symptoms? The physical manifestation of the body's violent upheval when not receiving the drug it has become addicted to! There has been study after study about the physical and psychological addictive properties of nicotene, alcohol, heroin, and crack cocaine! YOU need to get a clue! Bad behavior CAN be learned and not inherited. But there are scores of empirical evidence that these tendencies can ALSO and OFTEN be inherited. Denying a problem is NOT the way to resolve it.
I am not kidding.
Withdrawal symptoms are a temporary physical state. When a brain is flooded with chemicals that plug up endorphin receptors for a period of time, it will produce more receptors. that's why people "habituate" to a drug, i.e. start to need more of a drug to get the same effect. it's about the ratio of full to empty receptors. When the person stops consuming these chemicals, the ration of full/empty receptors changes, and the person feels lousy until the number of receptors drops, and their brain resumes its pre-extra-
This doesn't prove a percentage of the population has a pre-existing "disease" called alcoholism or addiction that dooms them to wildly-antisocial behavior and lifetime inability to control their behavior.
I am not saying that nobody in America has behavior problems. I am saying there's no evidence it's a disease.
Here's a thought: 150 years ago, people with fevers were thought to have a single disease, Fever with a capital F. There were lots of treatments for Fever [including headshaving and bleeding]. A lot of people were diagnosed with fever & treated, but died anyway. What it the millions of antisocial, criminal and just unhappy people who are currently put under the umbrella "alcoholis
We don't force insulin on diabetics, or chemo on cancer sufferers. They can choose to ignore their health problems & even die.
Tell me more about these "scores of empirical evidence". Can I find them on the internet? Can you give citations from reputable scientific or medical journals?
Often recovering alcoholics &/or addicts are in a form of denial that some call a dry drunk. W is the current unofficial dry drunk poster boy for many good & compelling reasons.
The claimed phenomenon of "dry drunk" refers not to people "in recovery" who are also "in denial", but to people who quit drinking without attending AA. The idea is that without attending meetings, acquiring and taking the direction of a sponsor and re-working one's life story to highlight how bad life was before "recovery" and how helpful "recovery" is, one continues to have all the negative qualities attributed to the "alcoholic" - sneaking, stealing, lying, committing crimes, etc.
The idea of the "dry drunk" shows that "alcoholism" is all about accepting the claims of AA, not about quitting drinking [notice 6 of the 12 steps mention God, but not one says "I will quit drinking"]. If it were about getting people who have problems with alcohol to quit drinking, would not any effort to stop drinking be respected?
Also, in 1999,the Supreme Court has upheld a Circuit Court ruling that prisoners or parolees couldn't be forced to attend AA meetings because AA has a "substantial religious component" and Justice Leval pointed out that AA meetings include at least one Christian prayer, and "the claim that nonsectarian religious exercise falls outside the First Amendment's scrutiny has been repeatedly rejected by the Supreme Court."
When medical doctors treat physical diseases, they use medicines & surgery to alter the course of physical events. Whether a patient has religious beliefs doesn't change whether they will get better when they take antibiotics, or have an appendectomy, or use insulin.
It doesn't appear that you understand the nature of obsession. In fact, you haven't even mentioned it. Instead, you define what you mistakenly think other programs believe, setting up the straw man which you then attack.
The dichotomous thinking I am reading surely indicates that you have some S.O.S. experience? This group goes on and on about the cognitive cure -- which, for some, has proven successful -- but by immediately launching into attacks on 12-step programs the authors of this approach reveal themselves as victims of the most common of all thinking errors in the West-- dichotomous thinking. I never could get passed this irony to stop laughing.
12-step programs have never claimed to be the magic bullet -- only that it has been successful for those able to honestly examine their lives and practice a universal spiritual discipline that centers around the relaxation of the will – called "letting go" or "surrender
I don't understand how this approached has been called "Christian" or “religious
BTW, George Bush is and continues to be a periodic drunk while he claims about once or twice a month that he quit drinking..
I do agree with you about "dry drunk syndrome" - pretty much a lay term. Depression and/or personality disorders are the true culprit.
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Do you know how many people have stop their use of alcohol because they realized it was ruining their families life's?
Would you call all of them "dry drunks?"
It takes GUTS to stop becoming intoxicated on a regular basis. I wonder if you have attempted it.
Facing the World sober is not easy, but being the President of the United States and the pressures it imposes upon you, has to be extremely difficult.
Do you think Barack, Hillary and Bill ever have a drink or two? (Just to take the edge off?)
Fairfloss, if you are saying it's possible for a person to stop drinking because their family convinces them that it's ruining the family's life, I agree on that limited point.
But it's also possible for people to stop drinking for numerous other reasons - from changing who their friends are, to joining a church that requires abstinence, to a fiance who demands it as a condition for marriage, to just aging out of it. I would not call any people who abstain, for whatever reason, dry drunks. I think whether they drink or not, or how much, is their own business. I don't believe there is such a thing as a "dry drunk" any more than I believe that over-using alcohol &/or drugs is a disease. [I think evidence points to the latter being behavior]
The remark "Facing the world sober is not easy" is somewhat alarming. The world is a big place. I would hope that all people on it can find something in the world to enjoy without a sensation of constant, grinding effort.
Yes, being president is a job full of pressure, but unlike the pressure-filled job of - say - a draftee in wartime, president is a job obtained voluntarily. It also has some perks, as I understand, like free housing, health care, and body guards & health care for life.
I have no idea if Hillary or Obama ever have a drink. I really don't care if they do or not. That is a choice that free citizens in a nation government by the Constitution & Bill of Rights are free to make for themselves.
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