Hat tip to Pete’s Politics and Variety.
Johann Hari is the author of Chasing the Scream: the First and Last Days of the War on Drugs (2015) and Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression—and the Unexpected Solutions (2018)
In the first book, he argued that drug addiction is not mainly a chemical dependency; it is an escape from pain and misery. In the second, he argued that depression is not mainly a result of a chemical imbalance, it is a reaction to pain and misery.
The answer to both addiction and depression, Hari believes, is to enable people to fulfill their basic needs, material and psychological.
Late last year he was in Brazil, promoting the Portuguese-language version of Lost Connections, and did a wide-ranging interview with Glenn Greenwald about addiction, depression and drug policy.
The most interesting part, to me, starts at about the 38 minute mark. It is about Switzerland’s successful drug legalization policy, which began in 1991.
In Switzerland, a heroin addict can visit a clinic and get a medically-supervised injection of heroin. This does not, as I might have thought, lead to an increase in heroin use. Just the opposite!
The reason is that Switzerland uses the money saved from not enforcing drug laws to help addicts obtain jobs. housing and therapy. Over time they commonly find they no longer want to escape from reality.
This fits in with the famous “rat park” experiment. Scientists found that rats in cages prefer heroin to food and water to the point where they literally will die of starvation. But one scientist decided to create a “rat park,” containing everything that might constitute a good life from a rat’s point of view. Happy rats had no interest in heroin.
Unfortunately I don’t think such an experiment is feasible in the United States. The reason is that millions of Americans, maybe a majority of the population, are stressed and fearful. Many can’t pay their medical bills. Many are burdened with student debt. Many are losing ground economically.
I think they would be very jealous if the minority of the population who are addicted to drugs are guaranteed jobs, housing and even drugs themselves. It is actually more practical to make things better for the American public as a whole than for a targeted group, such as addicts.