The Disease Accompanied by People Looking Down Their Noses
Sorry this is so long. I edited it for brevity. What is left, I think, is worth reading and considering. For quite a while, I felt a stigma attached to my alcoholism, and so tried to hide my disease. Later, I came to realize I needed to be open about it if I was going to help others recover. That's why I started this blog and announced my addiction to my Facebook friends.
Stick with today's post and see if you see reasons why a stigma comes at the bottom of a bottle.
The Deadly Stigma of Addiction
The new definition of addiction
The idea that those with addictive disorders are weak, (immoral), deserving of their fate and less worthy of care is so inextricably tied to our zeitgeist (a thought or feeling characteristic of a particular period of time) that it’s impossible to separate addiction from shame and guilt....
Stigma impacts us all, both consciously and unconsciously, and is perhaps the single largest contributor to the mortality rate. Consider these eight points:
1. People fail to seek treatment.
Most people who struggle with an addictive disorder fail to seek treatment, in part because of their concern that they will be labeled an “addict” and that the stigma will stick. If you ask the question, “Would you rather go to treatment or die?”, presumably nobody would choose death, but that’s how it often goes.... If we removed the stigma, guilt and shame from the equation, people would find it easier to make a realistic, objective assessment of their substance misuse and discuss it openly with a health care provider.
2. The medical profession fails to treat addicts properly.
Can you think of other situations in which the health care system abdicated responsibility for dealing with a healthcare issue that afflicts such a huge segment of the population? For far too long, those people who did seek treatment, often following a crisis, found no appropriate reception from the medical community.... The medical community should recognize unhealthy, addictive behavior as part of its purview and (should) apply evidence-based approaches in their practices.
3. The mental health profession ostracizes people with addictive disorders.
It is routine in mental health practice for persons with substance misuse problems to be discharged from treatment when substance misuse is revealed. They’re told that ... they need to “get clean” first by going to a chemical dependency or substance abuse treatment program.... It’s common for clinicians to believe that before they can help a patient with the various traumas, interpersonal conflicts, intrapsychic issues and other problems that other people are helped with in psychotherapy (and which are, of course, related to their their use of substances) the patient needs to first become abstinent from substances....
4. Funding for addiction treatment is discriminatory.
In spite of the huge impact and cost of addictive disorders on society, the way that addiction treatment is funded is disproportionately low. Despite passage of Federal Mental Health Parity legislation, mental health and substance use disorders continue to be treated differently—and often poorly—compared to “medical” illnesses.... What if there was no stigma in addiction? Given its huge cost to society, addiction should be funded and paid for on a level playing field with medical problems.
5. Addicts get sent to jail.
Where substances are concerned, people go to jail for the possession of something that is part and parcel of their addiction, unlike the diabetic caught walking out of Costco with a shopping cart full of Ring Dings. Most of the money that governments spend on “drug control” is spent on criminal justice interdiction rather than treatment and prevention. Here again, clearly, is a system with stigmatization at its roots: blaming, punishing and making moral judgements instead of providing treatment and other help that would change behavior....Taking the stigma out of addiction argues for prevention and treatment as opposed to prosecution and incarceration.
6. Even when people do get to treatment, stigmatization can continue and contribute to poor treatment outcomes.
It is critical to recovery that treatment programs not send messages to patients that are blaming (for relapse) and shaming (for being weak). People enter treatment at a vulnerable moment, psychologically and in terms of their brain chemistry. Addiction comes with a hard-to-escape sense of failure that recapitulates prior disappointments and works in opposition to growth. Patients have spent a lifetime trying to silence the “inner critic” that repeats "I'm-not-good-enough" messages....
7. People in recovery are always under suspicion.
When people obtain a stable recovery they are always presumed to be on the verge of relapse. The label, shame and stigma of problems with substances is always around—once an addict, always an addict. This has an enormous impact on their lives every day—in the community, in the family, in social networks. The person in recovery has their autonomy and their ability to participate in the normal, character building aspects of family life constantly in question....
8. They confront stigma-based roadblocks constantly.
The cancer survivor is proud, but those in recovery from addiction face ongoing stigma and discrimination instead. People in recovery are faced with obstacles, especially those who have been in treatment or in the criminal justice system for chemical dependency. Employment, education, insurance and the ability to vote are all fraught with uncertainty and discrimination for those in recovery....
Things need to change. Having struggled with addiction in the past should not make life that much more difficult now. (emphasis added)
Things need to change. Having struggled with addiction in the past should not make life that much more difficult now. (emphasis added)
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