The Mystery of 'Addiction' continued

And so the debate on ‘addiction’ continues. Would it do so, if ‘addiction’ were the objective certainty its proponents claim it is? .

 

Mr ‘W’ complains : ‘You say (about me): "[...] his world view, in which people are not free actors but pitiful subjects of outside influence, who cannot be held responsible for their own actions, appeals strongly to him."

This is entirely untrue. What evidence do you have for this assertion? If none, perhaps you should retract it?

In fact I more or less agree with you entirely on the subject of drugs. The reason I want you to stop asserting that "there's no such thing as addiction" is because it means you immediately lose all credibility and undermines the rest of your argument. I think Ben Lovell's post illustrates very well why you lose all credibility.

You say that the concept of 'addiction' and the concept of 'free-will' cannot co-exist.

I say that they can because the concept of 'addiction' does not imply that an addict cannot quit using their own will power.

Can Mr. Hitchens supply a single definition of 'addiction' from any source which states clearly that 'addiction' means that an addict cannot quit and that this is what 'addiction' necessarily implies?’

 

Well, first of all it seems to me that a person who hides his identity cannot really complain in this fashion. Nobody knows who he is, so any criticisms made about him or any summaries of his opinions given, affect him and nobody else. Secondly, his vigorous defence of the fantasy of ‘addiction’ can have no other purpose than to support this delusion. And since the delusion maintains(and is maintained by) the view that man lacks the will to control his own actions, I really cannot see that it is unreasonable to draw this conclusion.

 

The idea that he is in some way trying to save me from being seen as foolish is just an evasion. This is terribly kind of him , but why should he care? If I am right, then the act of looking foolish is unimportant.What's more, if I am right, the whole direction of criminal law and medicine, on this subject, is dangerously wrong.

 

So if I am right, and it seems to me to be demonstrable that I am, then I couldn’t care less if mistaken people think me foolish. The reason for this series of postings was an article in which Decca Aitkenhead, it seemed to me, quietly accepted that my arguments (previously dismissed by her and people like her) actually had some force. This is what can happen when someone persists with an attack upon conventional wisdom and received opinion. A seed is sown. Why, 12 or so years ago, when I first began campaigning for the return of grammar schools, my position was derided and dismissed . Now, many people are coming round to it, in many cases people who despise and dislike me. I like to think that this would not have happened had I not sown the seed, by defying the conventional wisdom.

 

He asks for a dictionary definition of ‘addiction’ which states that an addict cannot quit.  I don’t know about ‘cannot quit’ .  I suppose we would all accept that the alleged ‘addict’ can quit if he is on a desert island, or in a properly run prison, and cannot get supplies. The argument is about whether the addict is capable of quitting of his own free will.  In the definition he originally supplied, ‘addiction’ was described as the ‘ compulsive need for and use of a habit-forming substance’. Well, there’s the answer. The use of the word ‘compulsive’ *by definition* removes the possibility of the exercise of will. But dictionary definitions do not, as a rule, follow themselves to their logical conclusions.

 

It is true that, like many other scientific expressions in common use (including our old friend ‘evolution’, whose use in general conversation, lay journalism and debate is hilariously different from its precise meaning)  is  that the meaning shifts quite broadly and rapidly depending on the circumstance, and sometimes in ways that contradict or defy the original meaning. As soon as anyone is forced to define it, the definition dissolves in question-begging and qualification, as we have seen in this argument already. But they are seldom asked to do so, because the idea is not challenged.

 

I have no doubt that the common public understanding of this word is summed up by the scenes in the film  ‘French Connection 2’, in which a police officer, dedicated to the fight against drugs,  is turned into a helpless slave of heroin by being forcibly pumped full of it, and can only escape his enslavement through a terrible ordeal in which he is equally forcibly denied supplies and suffers terribly as a result. The idea that this officer might, of his own volition, simply refuse to take any more heroin, and undergo a few not very terrible sensations and intestinal upheavals as a result,  is not even considered.

 

It is on that basis that the public accepts ( and pays heavily for ) policies under which the ‘addict’ is indulged and offered ‘treatment’ (often more drugs) or ‘rehab’ rather than ( as would be more sensible)  being chucked into the slammer to deter other people from doing anything so stupid, and incidentally being deprived of his drug.

 

By the way, a correspondent writes to inform me : ‘ I looked up Delirium Tremens in my old copy (1970) of Taber's Cyclopedic Medical Dictionary, a standard medical reference at least in the United States. Here's what it says: "A psychic disorder involving hallucinations both visual and auditory, found in habitual and excessive users of alcoholic beverages." No mention of "withdrawal." And yet, just as you said, every contemporary reference to delirium tremens attributes it to "withdrawal." It would be interesting to pinpoint exactly when this trend started.’  Indeed it would.

***

On a separate point, there have been one or two explosions of outrage because I explained  that Englishmen of my generation and upbringing view the Roman Catholic Church as (amongst other things)  ‘foreign’  and ‘effeminate’, and that it was therefore most unlikely that I would be crossing the Tiber any time soon. I also mentioned the RC church’s dreadful liturgy and Bible, and its fast-impending collapse into liberalism, restrained only by two conservative Popes.

I was stating a fact (though I have to say that I am also flummoxed by many RC doctrines, from transubstantiation to the immaculate conception and the infallibility of the Bishop of Rome, and these also influence me). Read Macaulay’s description (in his ‘History of England’ )of the reaction to Roman Catholic worship, when it was reintroduced into London during the reign of James II, and you will see there is nothing new in the description of ‘effeminacy’ as compared with Anglican worship.  I’d further note Eric Newby’s observation in his fine book ‘Love and War in the Apennines’ that in rural Italy as long ago as the 1940s men barely attended church at all, leaving it to the women. I’d also advise anyone interested to read A.N.Wilson’s excellent popular history ‘the Victorians’, in which it is once again stated as bald historical fact that English Protestants regarded Roman Catholic practice as foreign and effeminate. I was brought up in this view. It influences me. I acknowledge this. There’s no occasion for people to get upset, unless they want to. I endure incessant sectarian rubbish about my own Church being founded on Henry VIII's (non-existent) divorce.

 

What do I mean by effeminate? Well, the elaborate vestments, the tinkling little bells, the clouds of incense might have something to do with it.  I agree that some sections of the Anglican Church have adopted these things too. They tend to be the ‘Catholic’ wing, so-called.  I don’t like them, though I try to keep my dislike down out of an eirenic inclusivity.  As for ‘foreign’, well, the RC Church is a multinational organisation run from abroad, isn’t it?