Somewhat recently I visited a webpage that referenced Gabor Maté's work, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction [0] - my local library had a copy. Dr. Maté spent decades working with the most hopeless of the residents of "the drug ghetto of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside".
Part I has some anecdotes from patients - virtually 100% of Dr. Maté's patients suffered from childhood trauma. Part II goes into the science of addiction. "'It may be said without hesitation that for man the most important stressors are emotional', wrote the pioneering Canadian stress researcher and physician Hans Selye."
I went to the science library to look up the reference - Dr. Selye discussed how he came to appreciate the general syndrome of being sick, and claimed to have originated the term 'stress' into the medical lexicon. I have to wonder why good science gets ignored, while garbage science [1] persists for decades?
This theory of addiction basically matches my observations of my girlfriend's predicament. She had some childhood stress (won't get into here). After six months of my influence she was doing fine, then she got sucked into the mental health system. Her current drug treatment program costs $10,000/month, and is mostly a scam. They try real hard to be helpful, though - I think they want an 'A for Effort'.
Helping people to feel safe is most important intervention of all [2].
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15024780 - my comment from 134 days ago about the importance of helping people feel safe, and how drug rehab helps people feel like failures.
(minor edits)
Edit2: Dr. Maté's book tells of how one of his patients described heroin as 'a hug in a needle'... "Chapter 14: Through a Needle, a Warm, Soft Hug" [3]
[0] https://www.google.com/search?tbm=bks&q=editions:4tpUFXvV_8s...
Part I has some anecdotes from patients - virtually 100% of Dr. Maté's patients suffered from childhood trauma. Part II goes into the science of addiction. "'It may be said without hesitation that for man the most important stressors are emotional', wrote the pioneering Canadian stress researcher and physician Hans Selye."
I went to the science library to look up the reference - Dr. Selye discussed how he came to appreciate the general syndrome of being sick, and claimed to have originated the term 'stress' into the medical lexicon. I have to wonder why good science gets ignored, while garbage science [1] persists for decades?
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16020617 (my comment from yesterday about bad science)
This theory of addiction basically matches my observations of my girlfriend's predicament. She had some childhood stress (won't get into here). After six months of my influence she was doing fine, then she got sucked into the mental health system. Her current drug treatment program costs $10,000/month, and is mostly a scam. They try real hard to be helpful, though - I think they want an 'A for Effort'.
Helping people to feel safe is most important intervention of all [2].
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15024780 - my comment from 134 days ago about the importance of helping people feel safe, and how drug rehab helps people feel like failures.
(minor edits)
Edit2: Dr. Maté's book tells of how one of his patients described heroin as 'a hug in a needle'... "Chapter 14: Through a Needle, a Warm, Soft Hug" [3]
[3] https://books.google.com/books?id=Oew75Hp8XP4C&printsec=fron... (pg 156)