Conservative British psychiatrist and curmudgeon Theodore Dalrymple (which I have just learned is the pseudonym of Anthony Daniels (Wikipedia )) writes in the Wall Street Journal that he is not impressed about the difficulties of withdrawing from narcotics:
When, unbeknown to them, I have observed addicts before they entered my office, they were cheerful; in my office, they doubled up in pain and claimed never to have experienced suffering like it, threatening suicide unless I gave them what they wanted. When refused, they often turned abusive, but a few laughed and confessed that it had been worth a try. Somehow, doctors—most of whom have had similar experiences— never draw the appropriate conclusion from all of this. Insofar as there is a causative relation between criminality and opiate addiction, it is more likely that a criminal tendency causes addiction than that addiction causes criminality.”
I largely agree that withdrawal from opiates is highly overrated, and that addicts have a hard time being honest with those of us to whom they come for assistance. However, I am not sure, except for sampling errors introduced by the fact that Dalrymple works in the penal system, how he quickly makes the leap from their histrionics, manipulativeness and inadequacy to any conclusions about criminality. It is probably what stops him from being more compassionate toward these unfortunate individuals who have so little in the way of coping mechanisms that they have reduced all the diversity of life’s challenges to one — copping their drug and feeding their jones — and, correspondingly, pitifully, all life’s distress to one mind-numbing feeling of unrequited craving.
