How to cure an addict: compassion or tough love?
We have just observed National Addictions Awareness Week in Canada. Everybody — informed or otherwise — has an opinion on addiction and how to treat it, so the subject never fails to generate animated public debate. The literature on addiction is voluminous. Any amateur researcher trying to get a handle on the constant outpouring of medical, governmental and ideologically-tuned advocacy literature (both for and against legalization of drugs) will find it a daunting and confusing business. I have tried, so I know. In the end it’s pretty simple. Everyone agrees addiction takes a terrible human and societal toll. It’s what to do about it that polarizes us. Opinion invariably drifts toward one of two basic camps, depending on one’s view of human nature. According to the Tough Love (TL) school, human beings are endowed with moral agency and can control their choices. In this view, however painful the circumstances driving the flight into the oblivion drugs provide, nobody is beyond redempti
