culture and illness

Alec Ramsdell a_ramsdell at yahoo.com
Sat Dec 19 10:23:54 PST 1998


---Jim heartfield <jim at heartfield.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
> In message <199812190319.UAA29627 at smtp02.primenet.com>, Doyle Saylor
> <djsaylor at primenet.com> writes
> > You seem to have the desire to label someone morally bad?
> >What about an addict? Are they morally bad?
>
> Most of the addicts I've known are pretty reprehensible characters.
. . .

But the addict population, such as it is, really contains a wide cross-section of people of different behaviours and social dispositions. "Emotional parasitism," another name for co-dependency, is something the mainstream attitude easily attributes to addicts. Sure, they're a mess socially and personally when they're using, but dismissing them as parasites dismisses them as never-to-recover, and to be corralled up, doesn't it? This sounds like a born and addict, die an addict evaluation.

Antisociality is a part of, it seems to me, a majority of alcoholics' and addicts' stories. But why judge them on a moralistic level as reprehensible? That just perpetuates the situation and demonization.

Alec _________________________________________________________ DO YOU YAHOO!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com



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