It’s easier to blame victims of addictions

Diane McIntosh, who teaches in the psychiatry department at the University of British Columbia, has written, “I believe this opioid crisis is due, to a great extent, to the willful blindness of all levels of government through the inadequate resourcing of mental health care. Untreated mental illness drives addiction and addiction drives mental illness, creating a vicious cycle that too often is broken by death, not recovery.”

The overdose crisis, like homelessness and tent cities, is a symptom of a sick society and it speaks to a broader malaise. We live in an economy that depends on consumption and that requires people to need more stuff, to feel unsatisfied with what we already have. “We don’t love ourselves... That’s the root of it. Our society is sick, our society is depressed and mass parts of the population have huge traumas.”

Simon Fraser University psychology professor Bruce Alexander: “The presence of an addictive substance matters less than the social conditions that made people, or rats, want it.” Alexander concluded that addiction is more of a social problem than an individual problem, and that when a society fragments, addiction increases dramatically.

In a piece available on his website, Alexander wrote: “When I talk to addicted people, whether they are addicted to alcohol, drugs, gambling, internet use, sex, or anything else, I encounter human beings who really do not have a viable social or cultural life. They use their addictions as a way of coping with their dislocation: as an escape, a pain killer, or a kind of substitute for a full life. The problem is not fentanyl, opioids, heroin or alcohol. The problem is modern life. It’s a perspective that shifts blame from the person who is addicted to the broader circumstances within which they live.”

It’s just easier to blame the victim.

Don Ryane

Lethbridge