Medway Messenger column, 12th June 2003: The Pleasure Of Drugs And The Pain Of Addiction

She is the queen of trailer-park trash TV, Jerry Springer in a skirt. Every morning her show exploits social inadequates for salacious entertainment, and adds a veneer of respectability by offering them counselling.

I’m not keen on Trisha, in case you hadn’t guessed.

Last week Trisha Goddard published a book about her life. She has a colourful story, not least her own past as a former drug addict.

What would a former addict say to her children? In Medway, with its increased drug abuse, we might be interested. Sadly, she doesn’t offer much hope.

Trisha is realistic enough to know that the old ‘Just say no’ campaigns simply don’t work. It’s her alternative I have problems with. All she can counsel her own children to do is get a drug testing kit.

This newspaper has begun a commendable anti-drugs crusade, seeking to remove the dealers from our streets. That would be good news if it happened. In the last week teenagers high on substances damaged cars down one street in Parkwood. The men of the street had had enough, and confronted the youngsters. But the police arrived on the scene too late.

In the areas of drugs and addiction, it is easier to address the symptoms than the causes. But we need to consider the causes if we are to see lasting change. To my mind, there are at least two principal causes of our drugs epidemic.

The first problem is pleasure. I sound like a killjoy, don’t I? Let me explain.

We have built a society where our first priority is to seek our own pleasure. Making ourselves happy matters more than anything else. If drugs are what it takes to get a kick out of life, then we’ll take them.

Jesus taught us the opposite. It is by putting him first in our lives, and following his example of caring more about the needs of others that is the route to true joy.

But we think we know better than Jesus, and we have elbowed him out of our lives. In doing so, we have created a destructively selfish pleasure-seeking society.

The cost is devastating. Even a so-called ‘soft drug’ such as cannabis is medically linked with cancer and hallucinations.

The second problem is the apparent opposite of pleasure: it is pain. Why do people become addicts? Often an addictive habit develops in a person’s life in order to mask inner pain. Addiction is an anaesthetic against the harsh realities of life. But this anaesthetic is never strong enough, and so the addict takes more and more.

Such a definition of addiction includes much more than narcotic drugs.

There are so many types of addiction. People don’t just take drugs, they overeat. Some surrender themselves to shopping, others to technology. Some have ‘relationship addictions’ – in Robert Palmer’s words, they are ‘addicted to love’. Others have given themselves over to a cause, an ‘ism’ – which may include the most popular one: consumerism.

So addiction is not just a case of ‘them’. It is about  us.

The solution comes when Jesus helps us face the pain of life that we want to hide from.

He created us – and so we have real dignity. By dying on the Cross, he faced head-on the worst life can throw at anyone – and transformed it. Not only that, his resurrection gives hope and purpose to those who think they are facing a dead end, and his Spirit gives power to change.

So I believe that addiction is not a social problem (although it affects all of us). Nor is it a political problem (although politicians can help treat the symptoms).

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Copyright © David D Faulkner, 2006 except where other sources are attributed or noted as inspiration.