From: pwh@bradley.bradley.edu (Pete Hartman)
Subject: Re: Partial Legalization
Organization: Bradley University
Distribution: usa
Date: Mon, 27 Jul 92 15:46:02 GMT

In <lamontg.712114833@milton> lamontg@milton.u.washington.edu (Lamont Granquist) writes:
>pwh@bradley.bradley.edu (Pete Hartman) writes:
>>3) I also did not mean to imply that there was a completely mental
>>solution to all these problems, right from the start.  Without
>>psychological treatment of some sort to get the abuser/addict to
>>recognize his/her own power over their addiction, all the 12-step
>>blame-free plans in the world will only work so far.  The fact of
>>the matter is that it is ultimately the individual who is responsible
>>for his/her actions.  Period.
>I am *NOT* advocating 12-step programs.  12-step programs teach you that
>addiction is a "disease" which is not curable.  Essentially this is a
>thinly disguised metaphorical relationship with some kind of "satan"
>figure.  And IMHO the whole thing is just sunk into religion, and is
>only useful for certain people.

As I recall, the very beginning of this was an argument about NA,
and mutated when (I guess?) you seemed to perceive someone saying
that these problems were strictly psychological and tried to counter
that with your comments about biochemistry of the brain.

I think I got confused and returned to the earlier argument, assuming
you were in support of the original poster about NA.  Sorry about that.

>                                 Impressing them with the idea that
>they are the only ones that are ultimately reponsible for their
>actions would (IMHO) just be a wonderful way to completely rip
>them down, because you would be requiring them to come up with the
>mental willpower to resist something that might be *extraordinarly*
>hard to cure via psychological action alone, and quite hard to simply
>tolerate. 

This would be true if it were the first step of therapy (of either type).

That wasn't want I was advocating--I was assuming that any competent
therapist would be able to judge when the appropriate time for this
particular concept's introduction would be.

>That is *ONE* example.

And the point of the example, which you seem to have missed, was
primarily that I do *NOT* think that strictly psychological
solutions are the answer even most of the time.

>However, on the other side of the coin, I can see other cases, where
>pharmacotherapy would need to be used as the primary cure.

And that's just fine--but what is the point of removing one drug
and substituting another, unless the previous drug was a problem
for other reasons?

>                                                   In that case, "you
>can do it yourself" messages really would be bullshit, since they'd
>need pharmacological help.

Are you speaking of "permanent" pharacological help, or just "help"?

>My whole point is there is a spectrum.  And that psychotherapy is no more
>important than pharmacotherapy and that blanket statements about addiction
>that only address psychology are utterly ignorant without also addressing
>the biochemical mind to an equal extent.

By that, I'd say that none of us in this discussion have been "utterly
ignorant", we just haven't been able to express the entirety of our
meaning over this low-bandwidth medium.
-- 
Pete Hartman		       Bradley University	pwh@bradley.bradley.edu
They might be fake, they might be lies, They might be big, big, fake, fake lies
                                        
Xref: sparky talk.politics.drugs:5234 alt.drugs:13260