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tweet by Johann Hari: The core of addiction is not wanting to be present in life, because pour life is too painful a place to be. This is why imposing more pain or punishment on a person with an addiction problem actually makes their addiction worse.
During the Covid lockdown, when there was nothing better to do, I was watching a court proceeding where a judge was really struggling with this while sentencing a person for possession.
He felt like his hands were tied, and he was essentially forced to sentence a drug user to jail, which doesn’t normally work, but he had already tried all of the other remedies allowed to him. And he basically said, “I’ve seen a few cases where people get clean in jail because they can’t get the drugs. I hope this happens for you.” The sentence was like a month or two.
Cold turkey works for a lot of
I was chatting to a guy who stayed in his room until he was no longer addicted to heroin. He said it was the worst time of his life.
He also said he’d never take heroin again because that’s the last thing he wants to do in the world (get clean again). But he said that’s what they should do to all heroin addicts, lock then in a room until they are clean and they will never what to do it again, don’t give them any drugs to ease their suffering.
Not sure I agree with the guy but I felt it was an interesting view.