Law of Attraction Magazine October, 2015 | Page 56

world.
There is an alternative. You can build a system that is
designed to help drug addicts to reconnect with the world
-- and so leave behind their addictions.
This isn't theoretical. It is happening. I have seen it. Nearly
fifteen years ago, Portugal had one of the worst drug
problems in Europe, with 1 percent of the population
addicted to heroin. They had tried a drug war, and the
problem just kept getting worse. So they decided to do
something radically different. They resolved to
decriminalize all drugs, and transfer all the money they
used to spend on arresting and jailing drug addicts, and
spend it instead on reconnecting them -- to their own
feelings, and to the wider society. The most crucial step is
to get them secure housing, and subsidized jobs so they
have a purpose in life, and something to get out of bed for. I
watched as they are helped, in warm and welcoming clinics,
to learn how to reconnect with their feelings, after years of
trauma and stunning them into silence with drugs.
One example I learned about was a group of addicts who
were given a loan to set up a removals firm. Suddenly, they
were a group, all bonded to each other, and to the society,
and responsible for each other's care.
The results of all this are now in. An independent study by
the British Journal of Criminology found that since total
decriminalization, addiction has fallen, and injecting drug
use is down by 50 percent. I'll repeat that: injecting drug
use is down by 50 percent. Decriminalization has been such
a manifest success that very few people in Portugal want to
go back to the old system. The main campaigner against the
decriminalization back in 2000 was Joao Figueira, the
country's top drug cop. He offered all the dire warnings that
we would expect from the Daily Mail or Fox News. But when
we sat together in Lisbon, he told me that everything he
predicted had not come to pass -- and he now hopes the
whole world will follow Portugal's example.
This isn't only relevant to the addicts I love. It is relevant to
all of us, because it forces us to think differently about
ourselves. Human beings are bonding animals. We need to
connect and love.

The wisest sent ence of t he t went iet h
cent ury was E.M. Forst er's -- "onl y
connect ."
But we have created an environment and a culture that cut
us off from connection, or offer only the parody of it
offered by the Internet. The rise of addiction is a symptom
of a deeper sickness in the way we live -- constantly
Page 56 - Oct ober, 2015

directing our gaze towards the next shiny object we
should buy, rather than the human beings all around us.
The writer George Monbiot has called this "the age of
loneliness." We have created human societies where it is
easier for people to become cut off from all human
connections than ever before. Bruce Alexander -- the
creator of Rat Park -- told me that for too long, we have
talked exclusively about individual recovery from
addiction. We need now to talk about social recovery -how we all recover, together, from the sickness of
isolation that is sinking on us like a thick fog.
But this new evidence isn't just a challenge to us
politically. It doesn't just force us to change our minds. It
forces us to change our hearts.
Loving an addict is really hard. When I looked at the
addicts I love, it was always tempting to follow the tough
love advice doled out by reality shows like Intervention
-- tell the addict to shape up, or cut them off.
Their message is t hat an addict who won't st op shoul d
be shunned. It 's t he l ogic of t he drug war, import ed int o
our privat e l ives. But in f act , I l earned, t hat wil l onl y
deepen t heir addict ion -- and you may l ose t hem
al t oget her.
I came home determined to tie the addicts in my life
closer to me than ever -- to let them know I love them
unconditionally, whether they stop, or whether they
can't.
When I returned from my long journey, I looked at my
ex-boyfriend, in withdrawal, trembling on my spare bed,
and I thought about him differently. For a century now,
we have been singing war songs about addicts. It
occurred to me as I wiped his brow, we should have been
singing love songs to them all along.
The full story of Johann Hari's journey -- told through the
stories of the people he met -- can be read in Chasing
The Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs,
published by
Bloomsbury. The book
has been praised by
everyone from Elton
John to Glenn
Greenwald to Naomi
Klein. You can buy it at
all good bookstores
and read more at
www.chasingthescream.com. Republished from the
HuffingtonPost - June 19, 2015