The findings of stress research suggest that the issue is not control over others, but whether one is free to exercise control in one’s own life. Yet the practices of the social welfare, legal, and medical systems subject the addict to domination in many ways and deprive her of control, even if unwittingly. In relegating the addict to the bottom of the social and moral scales and in our contemptuous rejection of him as a person, we have created the exact circumstances that are most likely to keep him trapped in pathological dependence on drugs.
