Cold Turkey
From the Everything You Know is Wrong Department, Theodore Dalrymple sets us straight on how to treat drug addiction:
"And in China, millions of Chinese addicts gave up with only minimal help: Mao Tse-Tung's credible offer to shoot them if they did not. There is thus no question that Mao was the greatest drug-addiction therapist in history."
Dalrymple presents the position that it is time to stop treating addicts as victims.
"And in China, millions of Chinese addicts gave up with only minimal help: Mao Tse-Tung's credible offer to shoot them if they did not. There is thus no question that Mao was the greatest drug-addiction therapist in history."
Dalrymple presents the position that it is time to stop treating addicts as victims.
posted by Steve at 9:50 AM
1 Comments:
One story I heard, from a psychology PhD student no less, was that Mao gathered all the remaining hard core opium addicts, transported them onto ships, and then set the ships out. The treatment consisted of gunboats shelling and sinking the ships. The communists had this lingering resentment against the addicts for having caused much of China's problems with the Europeans.
While not agreeing with these extreme measures, I do understand why rehab centers have to brutal in their choosing their patients. I remember hearing one psychology professor in Berkeley who couldn't understand why treatment centers in San Francisco only accepted addicts who had voluntarily gone off their drug of coice within 48-72 hours. The professor in question though treatment centers should take in everyone in at all times, regardless of cost, or of the individual's likelihood of sustained recovery. It seems that the professor was unaware that long time addicts may look at detox as either a ruse to to pull on caring relatives and friends (i.e. human ATMs) or a sure fire way to get a better high later.
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