>> Most of the addicts I've known are pretty reprehensible characters.
>. . .
That's what I meant.
Alec and Bill seem to be talking in the abstract about some ideal policy that the government ought to pursue. I was talking about how one lives one's life.
Most people would give any serious drug or alcohol addict a wide berth, unless there was some special bond of obligation or affection there. In doing so, they, I, am discriminating. Why should I not? When a friend crashes in my flat and then sells my stereo while I'm out at work, it colours my judgement of him.
When heroin addicts move in to a neighbourhood, people are naturally alarmed and depressed. It is a caricature, but it is not one without foundation. When I lived in Whalley Range in Manchester, getting beaten up and robbed by smackheads was not something that I could ignore. This is a judgement based on behaviour, not on colour or sex.
Judging people is not doing them a disservice. On the contrary, it is a favour. It means that you value them. If you are indifferent to somebody's self-abuse or boorishness, you will just carry on smiling away, looking forward to the moment that you can escape. I expect my friends and acquaintances to make judgements of me. If they didn't I would feel pretty uncomfortable about it.
Refusing to disapprove is the course that is most likely to reinforce behaviour. Refusing to disapprove is the assumption 'once an addict, always an addict'. I strongly approve of drinking smoking and all kinds of recreational drugs. But as Heraclitus says, to do the same thing over and over is not just boring, its slavery.
In message <19981219182354.16387.rocketmail at web306.yahoomail.com>, Alec Ramsdell <a_ramsdell at yahoo.com> writes
>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
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