While this might not rise to the level of a conspiracy theory, I am more than a little annoyed by the untimely heroin overdose death of Philip Seymour Hoffman, because I think he was one of the most talented actors around and I enjoyed his work.
So this is a selfish post. I am pissed because I have lost a talented entertainer I enjoyed.
My first reaction was “Why would a guy who obviously has money resort to heroin?” Not only is the stuff garbage, but street heroin is highly unpredictable, for the simple reason that there is no way for a user to know what dose he is getting. I suspect that Hoffman — who has a long history of opiate addiction — was having trouble getting pharmaceutical opiates, because no doctor would risk prescribing for a known addict. Hence, he turned to the street.
Street dealers need not worry about having their licenses yanked, or a paper trail enabling the cops and the DEA to scrutinize every prescription and every patient. Had Hoffman been allowed to go to a doctor to obtain the drugs he needed to fuel his stupid habit, he would most likely be alive today. (Yes, I realize he may have had a death wish, but right now they are saying that it was an accidental overdose, so I am assuming for the purpose of this post that it was not suicide.)
I also can’t help but notice that the guy had repeatedly been “in recovery.” In all likelihood, this means his treatment had most likely been based on so-called “chronic brain disease” theory:
That drug addiction, including its remission, is simply an extension of ordinary human behavior has actually been known for some time, as I noted in Love and Addiction in 1975. It had been discovered by Charles Winick, and announced in his 1962 paper for the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, “Maturing Out of Narcotic Addiction,” in which he found that from two-thirds to three-quarters of addicts registered by the Federal Bureau of Narcotics had quit their addictions by their mid-thirties. Indeed, in a sense, Winick was moved to understand why the minority of heroin addicts did not recover. He surmised, based on his investigations of New York City street addicts, “The difference between those who mature out of addiction and those who do not may also mirror the difference between addicts who struggle to abandon addiction and may develop some insight, and those who decide that they are ‘hooked,’ make no effort to abandon addiction, and give in to what they regard as inevitable.”
Thus, ironically, it is those who are most convinced by the “chronic brain disease” narrative who are least likely to overcome addiction!
How sad. And what a waste.
What kind of country would rather see people die than let them get high?
MORE: From another article about Hoffman’s death:
Authorities have warned that heroin addiction is soaring and noted an uptick in the availability of the drug.
Last week, the Drug Enforcement Administration announced a heroin mill bust in the Bronx after the agency seized $8 million worth of the drug.
The DEA has warned that people who are addicted to opioid prescription pills are now finding highly pure heroin easier and cheaper to obtain, according to CNN.
It produces a similar, if more dangerous, high because unlike with the pills, there is no way to regulate the dosage of heroin, given the undetermined purity.
That statement — “people who are addicted to opioid prescription pills are now finding highly pure heroin easier and cheaper to obtain” — is all but an admission by the DEA that their crackdown on prescription pain meds is doing little more than causing users to switch to heroin.
Not that the DEA minds having blood on its hands. They see death as a sign of success.
Comments
5 responses to “Why shouldn’t Philip Seymour Hoffman have been able to go to a doctor for his damned drugs?”
My PTSD theory of addiction works just as well.
People in chronic pain chronically take pain relievers.
Once the pain is gone so is the addiction. And for most people PTSD declines with time and distance from the trauma that initiated it.
Not to mention that these puritan roundheads have made it increasingly difficult for people with a genuine medical requirement for opiates to get them. What, exactly, is wrong with being a addict, anyway?
I’ve seen this type of statement made many times by conservative commenters around the web:
People like this have no problem spending $30-$40 billion annually to pinch drug users and sellers, but can’t find it in their hearts to spend one thin dime of the public treasury to help someone overcome an addiction. In short, it’s okay to spend money to knock the heads of druggies but immoral to spend the same money to help an addict. Do these people ever listen to themselves?
One thing is for sure, moral authoritarians don’t have any empathy for their fellow man. Not surprising I guess, as they can’t see the damage they do because they are blinded by their own bright, shiny halos.
As Thomas Szasz said, addicts don’t want treatment, they want drugs.
In a free market heroin wouldn’t be much more expensive than sugar. So, what’s the big deal if some small percentage of the population want to use it? Eradication and imprisonment haven’t worked. The Japanese used to chop heads off addicts and it didn’t work. Prohibition doesn’t work.
All great comments! Thanks. As to what is wrong with being an addict, I see no moral shame in it per se, but the prevailing theory is that it’s a disease. Except it is one that we punish. The war on drugs is a misnomer in that major respect. They got the whole thing backwards in 1914 when they decided that since addiction was bad, they would make the substances a crime. It has never worked, because the theory is wrong on its face, as well as impractical.