Let’s confront assumptions
National Addictions Awareness Week a time for us to consider societal weak link
A chain is only as strong as its weakest link. What an apt metaphor for just about any facet of life, conjuring up the image of strength, yet the vulnerability inherent in any human being or any collective human endeavour.
The phrase has come into common use from its scholarly origin in “Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man” (1786) by the Scottish philosopher Thomas Reid. However it is applied, it embodies a truth about human beings — both in social groupings and individually. There’s an Achilles heel to be contended with, a vulnerability to recognize and beware of.
This is National Addictions Awareness week (Nov. 2026), a time for us to consider one very apparent weak link: the lack of fulfilment in the lives of those suffering from addiction, which is a societal weakness as well. Addiction may suggest dark images of entrapment in a self-imposed prison that’s the result of weak will, lack of discipline and a sense of responsibility, as well as self-indulgence, selfishness and so on. The truth is, it is personal entrapment, period. And there’s good evidence that it is a response to trauma, quite possibly out of reach in memory.
To unpack the assumptions and attributions that may blur our collective vision, let’s begin with the layers of meaning we ascribe to our language. For example, we may casually use the word “addiction” when admitting to, or talking to others about, what psychologists call behavioural addictions, and there are many, such as to work, food, sex, exercise, gambling, shopping and social media.
CHRONIC DISORDER
A fuller understanding of addiction emerges from listening to medical and social service professionals and, most importantly, to people with addictions themselves. The American Psychological Association classifies addiction as a chronic disorder with biological, psychological, social and environmental factors influencing its development and maintenance. Substance addiction, including alcoholism, nicotine and drug addiction, is recognized by the World Health Association and the Canadian Medical Association as a serious, life-threatening, chronic but treatable disease.
From the perspective of those working on the front lines, such as addictions expert Dr. Gabor Maté, who has spent many years in the “trench warfare” of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, there is less of a dichotomy and more of a continuum: “Those whom we dismiss as ‘junkies’ are not creatures from a different world, only men and women mired at the extreme end of a continuum on which, here or there, all of us might well locate ourselves.”
His work has led him to believe that childhood trauma affecting neurological development leads to addiction as an escape from pain. Since there is pain in every life, we are all vulnerable.
“Misplaced attachment to what cannot satiate the soul is not an error exclusive to addicts, but the common condition of mankind,” he says. He is convinced that what is needed most is understanding, tolerance, humility, respect and love.
TRAUMA AND PAIN
Some people with addictions have confirmed the existential root of the path they’re on. For example, Edgar Allan Poe acknowledged that his substance abuse had been not the pursuit of pleasure, but “the desperate attempt to escape from torturing memories, from a sense of insupportable loneliness and a dread of some strange impending doom.”
On websites dedicated to offering hope and encouragement to those struggling with addiction, you can find people sharing their painful realizations in their own words: “I understood myself only after I destroyed myself”; “Only in the process of fixing myself, did I know who I really was”; “Addiction is the disease that makes you too selfish to see the havoc you created or care about the people whose lives you have shattered.”
It is a humbling experience to enter the hearts and minds of those who have addictions and those whose lives are affected by them. Some authors of fiction have led the way here. Who, having read Alistair Macleod’s “No Great Mischief,” can forget that compelling first chapter describing one of Alexander’s weekly trips to Toronto’s Queen Street West district to visit Calum, his brother who grappled with addiction?
There is no doubt about addiction being, as Maté and others have said, a “soul” problem in our society — a weak link in the chain of our well-being.
“If we are to help addicts,” Maté says, “we must strive to change not them, but their environments. These are the only things we can change. Transformation of the addict must come from within and the best we can do is to encourage it.”
HELP AVAILABLE
Granted, much is being done. There is now increased public awareness, including funding for research, and the development of prevention, treatment and rehabilitation programs.
In Nova Scotia alone, one phone call to the Nova Scotia Health Authority begins a search for 24/7 support from the thousands of mental health and addictions programs offered by local community groups, non-profits and government departments, and dedicated specifically to children, youth, adults, Indigenous people, seniors, caregivers and family.
At the national level, Health Canada’s Substance Use and Addictions Program (SUAP) provides grants and contributions funding for projects responding to drug and substance use issues and encompassing projects led by communities, including First Nations, Métis and Inuit notfor-profit organizations. Also at a national level, Justice Canada has just welcomed proposals for both multi-year and short-term pilot projects for access to funds “designed to encourage a more effective youth justice system, respond to emerging youth justice issues and enable greater citizen and community participation in the youth justice system.”
This is where we become part of the solution. Social and structural stigma is well recognized as a force contributing to the isolation of those addicted to substances.
Maté reminds us that addiction “is not a choice, not a moral failure, not an ethical lapse, not a weakness of character, not a failure of will, which is how our society depicts addiction, nor is it an inherited brain disease. … It’s a response to human suffering… an attempt to escape suffering.”
Those addicted don’t need judgment, they need to be helped to heal from their trauma. Let’s take time out for a second look at ourselves. We are only as strong as our weakest link.
Since there is pain in every life, we are all vulnerable.