removing responsibility from the junkie

August 24th, 2010 § 1 comment

People should stop calling heroin users “junkies” or “addicts”, an influential think tank on drugs has said.

The UK Drug Policy Commission said such names stigmatised users and made it more difficult to get off drugs.

…says a page on the BBC website.

What a crock of shit.

Heroin users are called ‘junkies’ because heroin is also called Junk – by drug users. Junkies are also called ‘addicts’ because they are addicted to a substance.

Authors of the six-month report said the terms “junkie” and “addict” were distrustful and judgmental and led to feelings of low self-worth among drug users.

The feelings of low self-worth are caused by the drug. Any term used to describe a junkieis going to have negative connatations because of how junkies behave.

They said these hostile attitudes only added to the stigma of drug addiction and made it harder for users to give up.

I would argue that these hostile attitudes also prevent a fair number of people from taking heroin in the first place.

Colin Blakemore of Oxford University, one of the report’s authors, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme drug addicts faced stigma “as damaging as similar attitudes to gay people, and people with mental health issues, were 30 years ago”.

And that’s a bad thing how? There may be many factors determining whether someone take drugs or not, but the ultimate responsibility lies with the individual. It is a choice. People don’t choose to be gay, and you’d have to be mantal to actually want a mental health issue of any sort. Gay and people with mental health problems don’t have to spunk a great wodge of cash they don’t have on being gay or being er, mental. They can be for free.

He added that hostility towards drug addicts failed to recognise how difficult it was for them to quit, describing what they faced as “chemical bondage”.

No it doesn’t. It recognises that the vast majority of mainliners are untrustworthy to some degree or other. Don’t give an addict an ultimatum between you and the drugs. The drugs will win.

“The crux of this problem, I’m afraid, is the persistent view that drug addiction is the problem of the addict,” he said.

For fucks sake. Who’s fucking problem is it then, if it’s not the addicts’ problem? Society at large, I suppose.

I’m all for liberalising drug laws and spending money rehab rather than prison, treating drug addiction from a public heath direction rather than criminal, but lets not remove responsibility from the user for getting hooked in the first place or try and hide what a fucking awful life being a heroin addict is.

N.B.
Yes, I know there are always exceptions to the dirty skank junkie, and prostitues that get hooked because of their pimps etc.

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