Neo-conservative values blamed for raging addiction

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A Simon Fraser University psychology professor's 30 years of clinical research have convinced him the human animal's natural way of living is not compatible with the values of the free market system, and many of today's most persistent social ills are the result.

That's the basic argument in Dr. Bruce K. Alexander's The Roots of Addiction in Free Market Society, a 26-page paper contributed to the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives newsletter, available online at www.policyalternatives.ca/bc/rootsofaddiction.html.

Alexander believes addictive behavior is a natural defense mechanism humans use when faced with unnatural or inhuman stresses. Humans need "psychosocial integration," a term that describes the community and extended family ties that existed in tribal communities. Without that integration, people experience "dislocation." Something is missing and they seek ways to replace it. He believes different people find different ways to fill that gap and concludes that society judges some addicts more harshly than others.

"The word 'addiction' has come to be narrowly applied to excessive drug use in the 20th century, but historically it was applied to non-drug habits as well. There is ample evidence that severe addictions to non-drug habits are every bit as dangerous and resistant to treatment as drug addiction, whether they be the compulsion for money, power, work, food, or material goods," he wrote. "The notorious downtown Eastside [Vancouver] junkies- the most publicized addicts in Canada- are not necessarily the most destructive ones. For example, some occupants of the country's boardrooms feed their own habits by ruinously exploiting natural resources, polluting the environment, misinforming the public, and purveying modern weapons in Third World countries. Severe addictions to power, money, and work motivate many of those who direct this destruction."

In deciding which addictions are considered socially acceptable and which are not, politics, moral bias and the views of interest groups skew the debate, the psychology professor believes.

"There have been decades of futile debate about whether addiction is a 'criminal' problem or a 'medical' problem," he wrote. "The hard fact is that it is neither. In free market society, the spread of addiction is primarily a political, social, and economic problem. If the political process does not find contemporary wellsprings of psychosocial integration, society-with its ever freer markets-will manifest ever more dislocation and addiction."

He concludes the paper by calling for a re-evaluation of public attitudes and an end to the unexamined self-righteousness that leads power or wealth junkies to criminalize alcoholics or drug addicts. The futility of the war on drugs and the general ineffectiveness of the health care profession to get drug addiction under control are signs the basic approach to the problem is wrong, led astray by faulty thinking, he argues.

"A century of intense effort has shown that no matter how well different approaches are co-ordinated, society cannot 'prevent,' 'treat,' or 'harm reduce' its way out of addiction any more than it can 'police' its way out of it," he wrote.

By detailing his research into the history of addictions, Alexander demonstrates that widespread addiction began just after free market capitalism took hold during the industrial revolution. The fundamental social changes of that period destroyed community life and its extended-family inter-connectedness and ripped humans out of their natural state of being.

"In order for 'free markets' to be 'free,' the exchange of labor, land, currency, and consumer goods must not be encumbered by elements of psychosocial integration such as clan loyalties, village responsibilities, guild or union rights, charity, family obligations, social roles, or religious values," he wrote. "Cultural traditions 'distort' the free play of the laws of supply and demand, and thus mst be suppressed. I free market economies, for example, people are expected to move to where jobs can be found, and to adjust their work lives and cultural tastes to the demands of a global market."

He quotes many studies to show the spread of drug and alcohol addiction mirrors the spread of free market ideology.

"Addiction changed from being a nuisance in the ancient world to a steadily growing menace as Western society moved into free market economics and the industrial revolution. Because Western society is now based on free market principles that mass-produce dislocation, and because dislocation is the precursor of addiction, addiction to a wide variety of pursuits is not the pathological state of a few, but to a greater or lesser degree, the general condition in Western society. Western free market society also provides the model for globalization, which means that mass addiction is being globalized along with the English language, the Internet, and Mickey Mouse," he wrote.

Alexander believes the growing dominance of corporate attitudes and conservative values has created an unbalanced, one-sided debate within political, health provider and policing circles when it comes to dealing with addictions.

"There has been little analysis of free market society and dislocation among professional addiction researchers because their field has been fenced in on four sides by professional conventions. First, only experimental and medical research has been considered really valid, other approaches seeming too philosophical, political, literary, anecdotal, or unscientific. Second, attention has been lavished upon alcohol and drug addictions, although non-drug addictions are often as dangerous and far more widespread. Third, American examples, data, and ideology have provided most of the important guideposts in this field, although powerful political forces limit debate there more than other places. Fourth, although a few individual scholars do speak out, professonal addiction researchershave rarely contradicted the mainstream media misinformation concerning drugs and addiction. Under these conditions, and since professionals are making little progress on the problem of addiction, society will do well to fall back on common sense and history," he wrote.

The colonial period reached its peak at almost the same time as free market ideology became universally accepted in the West. Alexander said that mainstream society can see its own future-should its attitudes not be re-evaluated-just by looking at the problems faced by Native nations when they were forcibly dislocated by European colonizers.

"Extensive anthropological evidence shows that prior to their devastation by Europeans, the diverse Native cultures in Canada all provided a level of psychosocial integration that is unknown to modern people. Most Native people lived communally and shared their resources within a matrix of expectations and responsibilities that grew from their family, clan, village, and religion, as well as their individual talents and inheritance of particular prerogatives.

"They clung to their cultures with courageous resolution-although they valued European trading goods, they found European ways repellant. I have as yet found no mention by anthropologists of anything [in pre-contact Native societies] that could reasonably be called addiction, despite the fact that activities were available that have proven addictive to many people in free market societies, such as eating, sex, gambling, psychedelic mushrooms, etc. Canadian Natives did not have access to alcohol, but Natives in what is now Mexico and the American Southwest did. Where alcohol was readily available, it was used moderately, often ceremonially rather than addictively."

That conclusion contradicts the "drunken Indian" stereotype. Alexander said that is just another example of the fuzzy, erroneous data that passes for knowledge in the area of addictions.

"Although some Canadin Natives developed a taste for ritous drunkenness from the time that Europeans first introduced alcohol, many individuals and tribes either abstained, drank only moderately, or drank only as part of tribal rituals for extended periods. It was only during assimilation that alcoholism emerged as a pervasive, crippling problem for Native people, along with suicide, domestic violence, sexual abuse, and so forth. Massive dislocation produced massive addiction," he wrote.

"There is a more popular explanation for the widespread alcoholism of Canadian Natives. They are often said to have a racial inability to control alcohol. However, this is unlikely, since alcoholism was not a ruinous problem among Natives until assimilation subjected them to extreme dislocation. Moreover, if Natives were handicapped by the 'gene for alcoholism,' the same must be said of the Europeans, since those subjected to conditions of extreme dislocation also fell into it, almost universally."

A lot of space in Alexander's paper is dedicated to the history of British colonization of Scotland. Alexander discovered that tribal villages were uprooted and the tribal lifestyle destroyed by British businessmen who wanted to use the land to graze sheep for the wool industry. The forced dislocations of the Scottish people were called "clearances."

Alexander learned of this almost-forgotten bit of colonial history from Native academic Roland Chrisjohn. Chrisjohn is a former psychologist who now teaches Native Studies at St. Thomas University in Fredericton, N.B. He wrote The Circle Game, widely recognized as one of the definitive books about the residential school system.

Alexander said it was at a conference that was sponsored by the Treaty 7 organization in Edmonton about five years ago that he heard Chrisjohn speak.

"It was quite controversial with a lot of Native people and there were five of us white guys holding forth on alcoholism. Some of what we said ran into trouble, as it should