New Series on Drug Abuse More Propaganda than Documentary

Drug-Free Alliance

Jointly-funded 'Addiction' pushes unproven brain disease theory, pharmaceuticals

ATLANTA, Ga. - The much-hyped premiere of the new HBO 14-part documentary series called "Addiction" aired Thursday night, and what was disguised as a positive look into helping people understand and overcome alcohol and other drug addiction was actually a propaganda campaign to convince people that it is an incurable brain disease and should be treated with pharmaceuticals.

At times it was almost a question of who had funded the show, like when an opiate addict claimed there just wasn't enough money to continue paying for his opioid replacement drugs after treatment. Much of it almost looked like a direct lobby to Congress to mandate insurance coverage and to provide more appropriations to drug makers. You don't have to dig that deep to find the connection to pharmaceutical companies.

Probably the worst part about it is when some of the people in the addiction treatment field were interviewed, including the director of the National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA), was the continued repetitive drone that addiction is a life-long disease and that relapse is expected. Such a statement is not only blatantly false, but it should be prosecutable as a crime against humanity. People permanently recover every single day with no further signs, symptoms or relapses - direct observable proof that it is not an incurable brain disease.

The best possible ploy they've come up with is to replace fact with conjecture when comparing the colors that appear brain scans. There is no basis for "this part of your brain is the 'go' part, and this part of the brain is the 'stop' part," especially when it is the mind, not the brain that makes those decisions. As mentioned in an earlier article from the Drug-Free Alliance, the brain is just the center of the nervous system, not that which controls our thoughts and decisions.

There are millions of people who are caught up in the trap of addiction and don't know how to get out. Telling them that they are diseased for the rest of there life provides no hope.

In a statement give to the Alliance for this review, Dr. Stanton Peele, author of "7 Tools to Beat Addiction" wrote, "Promulgating the idea of addiction as an inescapable disease is not a new or scientifically based idea. It is an old Harry Anslinger and Temperance tactic, and the NIDA, NIAAA, and their perhaps unwitting HBO filmmaking accomplices are serving up a moralistic, anti-drug menu. But what's worse is that the series eventually undercuts people's ability to overcome addiction and alcoholism - since a large majority of people do so on their own (think about smokers) - primarily addicts who reject the disease concept."

There is also the term "in recovery" that is used a lot, especially among traditional treatment groups and settings. This implies that they are still battling the addiction, for some decades later, one day at a time. Well, there are millions of people, as mentioned by Dr. Peele, that don't buy the brain disease theory who are now leading very healthy and happy lives free from drugs and alcohol and who never look back.

Most psychiatry-based treatment providers use "in recovery" to suggest that relapse is a part of the life-long recovery process from the disease, meaning they expect the user to go in and out of treatment several times in life and fight the temptation to use drugs again for the rest of their life. This was suggested in the series as well, which continues to make me sick. Of course people will relapse if you tell them it's expected, it gives them an excuse to go out and get high again and it gives the provider an excuse to bill the insurance company again and the pharmaceutical companies again to create more drugs.

The aim here is not to upset those who have bought the lies over the years and believe them to be true. I say to them congratulations for doing well despite the false information you've been given. The intent is to get the masses to speak up and policy makers to not give in to this. Do not continue funding programs and ideas that only work ten percent of the time.

At last national survey by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), the majority of the country still believes that addiction can be overcome permanently. Where do you stand?