The narcotic drug problem

by Ernest S. Bishop

One of the great hardships under which every addict suffers is the constant dread lest his affliction become known and he be branded a “morphine fiend,” a term which should be prohibited, or at least never used by an intelligent physician. What this exposure would mean to a man of standing in his community I need not explain. This risk he must always run, but it would be robbed of some of its terror if the nature of addiction were better understood.

Therefore the law now existing in some states requiring the registration of addicts is little short of barbarous. So little possible good can be accomplished by this law that one is tempted to believe that its passage was not instigated primarily by honest, though misguided zealots but by quite another class. The addict, in his efforts to find a cure, has learned something of a class of men, who, posing as public benefactors, are in reality a shrewd set of rascals, capitalizing the misfortunes of the addict most successfully. If such men were not the originators of the idea of registration, certainly they, and not the body politic, are its chief beneficiaries, since it affords them an authentic list of prospective victims.

As for the effect of this law on the addict, it merely adds further to his dread of exposure. Think of the position of a man of prominence and respected in his community, having his own feelings as have other men, holding equally dear the sensibilities of those he loves, living under the constant dread that his necessities may any day force him to seek aid in a state in which his name will, as it were, be added to a rogues’ gallery!

My plea is for realization of the great need for finding some means whereby the individual addict may get real relief and whereby addicts collectively may be restored to such condition as will render them capable of performing those services of which our country is now in need.

I am confident that I am understating the case when I say that nine addicts out of ten earnestly desire to be cured. Why should they not? They get no pleasure out of taking the drug, but only relief from intolerable suffering which they must otherwise endure. Hence to be free both from this suffering and from the necessity of getting this relief by artificial, and at present exceedingly costly, means is bound to appeal to them. Most addicts, I am confident, are willing to go through whatever acute suffering may be involved in any really rational treatment which will, after a reasonable time, restore them to normal condition.

Experiences such as I have described above are, I know, the rule and not the exception with those who have tried the various so-called cures. They can hardly be called satisfactory. Even admitting that they may prove successful in a small proportion of cases, relatively few addicts are able to find the means of taking them, such as I have been able to make for myself in the midst of a very active life.

Surely a disease having so definite a symptomatology and, I believe, so plain a pathology, must be susceptible of rational cure. That such a cure has not yet been found by those who so loudly proclaim to have found one I honestly believe. Whether others have devised more promising lines of treatment I frankly do not know.

But a cure must be found which does more than any I have succeeded in finding. In what other disease would a patient who, after reaching a certain point, beyond which he could not progress towards recovery, be told that from then on everything rested with him, although he himself knew that his need for help was really as great as it ever was? In what other disease would any physician worthy of the name calmly tell a patient that, having taken a “cure,” he was, ipse facto, cured, and become highly incensed when the patient pleaded that his condition was in many respects more desperate than before treatment?

The medical profession must seriously study addiction. Of material there is, unfortunately, an abundance. Some high authority should see that every facility is afforded the proper persons for employing it. It is not unlikely that many of the “cures” which have been advocated have in them some elements of good, properly selected and properly applied in each individual case. Possibly competent investigation, furnished with every facility, might result in the discovery of a truly specific cure. I have long thought that there was such a possibility in more than one direction, but investigation of these would involve very careful and laborious work, as well as considerable cost. Here indeed, would seem to be a wonderful opportunity for philanthropy.

But while such a specific cure would be an untold blessing, we need not find one in order to meet the situation—at least, much more successfully than it is being met at present. Coordination of the entire problem of addiction, in the hands of the few men whose work in this field is most promising (and the men I have in mind are not those with whose vaunted cures I have had such unhappy experiences) would almost certainly lead to valuable results.