Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs

by Johann Hari

All over the Western world, people are being given very powerful opiates every day, legally. If you have been badly injured in a car crash, or had a hip replacement, or had significant dental surgery, you have probably been given opiates, perhaps for quite a long time. These are pretty much the same opiates taken by Gabor’s patients (except yours didn’t have the contaminants added by drug dealers). So if the pharmaceutical theory of addiction is right—if the drugs are so chemically powerful they hijack your brain—then it’s obvious what should happen. You should, at the end of your treatment, be an addict. When you are discharged from the hospital, you should be looking to score on the streets, because now you need your fix.