Drug Awareness Programmes
Written as a reflection for friends from Beyond Borders, a youth group conducting an awareness programme in Mumbai colleges.
- Leslie Nazareth
When we are speaking to people about drug abuse and promoting awareness about it we are usually addressing a range of users and potential users. Each type of user and potential user will find the usefulness of what we offer varies according to their need or lack of it. There is no point in arguing a point metaphorically or hypothetically. Often a real issue is cloaked in metaphor and hypothesis. One must gauge whether the person is defending a personal habit or indulging in intellectualism about it. If it is the former they need to know about the dangers of substitution and progressiveness and must be left to make their choices. If it is the latter they can be given a hearing and their opinion acknowledged without your agreeing to it but don't enter into argument. Occasional users and non-users who are unsure of their stand may be encouraged to make more informed choices by recognizing and learning about the dangers of substitution, codependency and progressiveness. Chronic compulsive abusers and their relatives and friends need one thing: a contact number for therapy.
Habits are neither good nor bad by themselves. Much of our lives, particularly civilized life depends on the maintenance of certain habits. Conforming to norms or not conforming is also not automatically good or bad. Many of the norms of our age may be very imbalanced and worth resisting while some of them might be very important to sustain. Getting over drugs and drink to become a more efficient exploiter of our fellow humans and the planet is not my idea of successful therapy. Being self-responsible requires one to be a conformist and a non-conformist in the right context.
This was a prelude to discussing when consuming a substance is healthy and when it isn't. For this we need to look at why drugs are used at all.
Why do we use Drugs?
Obviously the user of a drug is doing so to meet some felt need. Similarly when we consume food we do so because we feel the sensation of hunger which tells us our body needs nourishment. Once we have eaten hunger disappears till hours later we get the message that we need nourishment once again and we have our next feed. So why is consuming a drug a problem and eating for hunger something different?
For a clue we must look at whether we are filling a psychological need by a mismatched substitute . Let us look at food again. As long as we are eating to nourish the body adequately we are eating right and using the feedback of hunger from the body correctly. However, if we eat because we are bored, afraid, restless, anxious, nervous, indulging in a flavour or some other state of mind rather than our natural hunger we are trying to resolve a negative psychological state by consuming food. Eating has now become imbalanced and there are negative consequences. Indeed, it does drive away and suppress the unpleasant psychological state by distraction. Once one makes this magic discovery that eating is a way to drive away insecurity or boredom one is likely to use it again. Since one has never dealt with the primary psychological issue it remains and one uses this “remedy” again and again. The result can be as serious as an addiction to drugs when the condition becomes compulsive and chronic. Where the case is not so serious the phenomenon goes quietly unobserved but the person's psychological ineptitude remains or even progresses with either more food or other objects of substitution waiting to be discovered.
So when a person uses drugs they are using a chemical for the purpose of: feeling good, not feeling bad, experiencing meaning, altering perception and awareness, suppressing sleep, increasing excitement, suppressing shyness, becoming bold and uninhibited, becoming calm, reducing pain, becoming social, looking hip, being one of the guys. Such things are psychological needs whether natural or artificial. They require psychological and behavioral solutions. However, by substituting a real solution with a drug, the problem can be quickly and effectively “solved”. But, the dangers are far greater than they are when eating is used as a substitute.
People talk of alcohol use and alcohol abuse. I think removing stains, running engines, thinning paint are some of the good uses of alcohol. Consumption of mood altering substances whether alcohol or other drugs if not for medical reasons is most likely to be for the purpose of psychological substitution. In our societies I would say this is usually abuse whether it comes from full blown alcoholism or just the need for a little psychological crutch or of not making a choice (not knowing how to say “no”). There are always consequences of substitution and dependency. Sometimes they are too small to be an issue at all. However, seriousness is proportional to the extent of abuse and the danger increases geometrically in some cases. While you still have a choice you must decide whether your particular level of use, its benefits and the consequences are really necessary and desirable for your life. What is it substituting? Are there signs of progression?
Why drugs like alcohol are a special class of addiction
The initial discovery of the power of substitution may lead to a period of apparently harmless “use”. With many drugs a tolerance develops as the body adjusts to balance out the foreign chemical. It becomes necessary to have a regular dose of the chemical just to be normal and larger amounts to get the psychological effect. Not getting the regular dose then makes one feel worse than normal. Mental and biological factors are affected so as to join in to form escalatory loops which reduce options of choice and possibilities of recovery. The disease, as in the example of alcoholism, is progressive .
The drug can take over! In substitution for one's psychological ineptitude one is avoiding the required internal change by using a substance. This takes self-regulation out of one's hands. The characteristic of successful nature is that it is self-regulated at every level of its systems, sub-systems and at every individual level. The risk of putting an external agent in charge of one's internal state is that one becomes controlled by the external whether this is a chemical or someone who makes one feel brave or speaks on one's behalf. Such a person can soon start to represent us in a way that goes beyond our needs. We can become quite helpless without such representation and could also be badly misused. (This is an aspect of codependency which is often the status of most immediate relatives of an addict who are all swept into forms of substitution and surrogate behaviour.) Your drug can take charge because you have made it responsible for your mental state.
While any kind of substitution for appropriate behavior is mostly an inept, short term solution to a need, substitution by drugs can unleash a vicious loop of cause and effect. It is very hard to escape as the body, mind, one's genetic predisposition, expenses, social environment, criminal association etc. can get locked into a fatal spiral of concomitant, self-destructive factors.
Minimizing damage
Judicious substitution can be a way of damage reduction but it is not a solution. One can eventually go back to the drug of one's choice. This leaves the main question: if substitution is not a solution then how do we answer the psychological needs which drive people to use drugs? If we look at the list of needs again – and this is not an exhaustive list – each one may require a different approach but all are related to an interconnected group of new behaviours to be learned which one could call skills for living.
Life Skills
If I feel bad because I realize I have wronged somebody, the answer is not the bottle but to make amends and if possible to put right the wrong and seek forgiveness. If I am too self-conscious to give a public performance I can use every opportunity I get to offer myself as I am, transparently, honestly to my audience – one of the ways that works and makes one grow as a person. If I feel tired and lacking in energy it may be that all I need is to reorder my life so I get proper time for sleep. Some things just require a little practice, a little familiarity and a little patience.
In our nuclear families we have not learned how to be in a larger community. We are not at ease with the silences, the clique formations, the centre-pieces and the wall-flowers that have their time and place. We try hard to be somebody else or make others be what they are not. We feel obliged to do something or look like we are enjoying ourselves. Our entire group may have no idea that a good community offers space for you to be who you are. A whole group can experience an uncomfortable, painful, awkward silence. It needs to feel this. It is a moment of group conscience and resolution. Sometimes it concludes with a few, deeply felt, quiet words expressed and sometimes even without any words said the group is suddenly lighter and festive. But by habit people tend to substitute the reflective moment with a forced trivial chatter to “break the ice”. It is a substitute. Moreover, it works. But like other substitutes it leaves the community addicted to triviality or alcohol as a way of “solving” problems.
There are paths, methods and traditions which help one to tap into great sources of freedom from one's negative conditioning and the raw materials are accessible to us from within. They work comprehensively and harmoniously and treat our condition at the roots. These are ways to really deal with our ineptness in life. It is well worth exploring and finding such a path for oneself.