It’s a good point
Brand was himself (still is depending on your opinion) an addict and therefore knows how addicts think and feel.
It’s a fair cop
Really! I used to be a four year old does that mean I know precisely how my four year old niece thinks and feels, and more importantly that I know how four year olds I’ve never met think and feel. The only way you know how people think and feel is to spend enough time with them sharing experiences and building a trusting relationship… I think Mr B proved beyond all doubt last night listening (especially to people he doesn’t agree with) aint his thing.
From working in this field I would say that ex-addicts can make some of the best workers there are but they also make some of the worst workers there are. The reason for this is about their preparedness to take their time and listen to the people they trying to help. The bad workers are the ones who believe they don’t have to listen because they already know how people feel from their own experience.
It’s a good point
Brand knows the answer because he has negotiated the journey from addict to substance free.
It’s a fair cop
Is there really one answer to beat them all – like something out of The Lord of The Rings? Had the attitude have been, ‘I know an answer because I’ve lived it’ fewer people would have switched of their TVs last night. It’s the classic case of the person whose only tool is a hammer treats every job like a nail… that girl (Karen I think it was) clearly wasn’t ready to go to a rehab. But in his personal style Brand hammered her in there anyway… and as expected the picture hung on a screw that had been hammered into the wall soon fell onto the floor!
That’s not to say that the rehab was the wrong place for Karen, or isn’t any good (on the contrary it has a proven track record of getting a high proportion of success) but it wasn’t the right time. Karen really did need some support to develop the motivation to change.
It’s a good point
There are many people prescribed methadone who are not moving in a positive direction and in many cases are also using substances.
It’s a fair cop
As the GP on the show last night was trying to say, some people need stabilisation to give them a chance to prepare for moving towards being substance free. Karen is a great example – perhaps a methadone programme with good quality psycho-social support would have given her the space to get things more manageable so she had the space to think about change and what she would hope to gain from it… without a clear understanding of what the desired end game is and knowing they have a real desire for them who in their right mind would embark on the journey of facing the kinds of demons most addicts have in front of them.
But it is if not a good point then an interesting one to consider how often people are offered good quality psycho-social support along with their methadone. I know many drug workers will be aggrieved by Brands point of view as it almost suggests that they are wasting their time but I also know that they feel there is so much more they could to increase the quality of outcomes if they had a larger capacity for psycho-social support.
It’s a good point
Addiction is a life-long problem; people who are that way will always be that way.
It’s a fair cop
No it isn’t!
I want to leave it there but perhaps should elaborate. Using Brand’s technique of evidencing an argument by an example; I personally know three ex-addicts (two heroin and crack one alcohol) who now drink socially, if Brands point is right then this is an impossibility, they would all be hopeless alcoholics the moment that they touched a drop.
It’s a bit like saying someone is naturally gifted at playing the piano or selling – there are no pianos or sales deals in the state of nature so it can’t be natural. People learn how to play the piano and how to sell and people learn to be addicts (although it is complicated by the physical addiction to some substances). If you can learn it you can learn to modify or change it. However, if you learn that it’s an innate and unavoidable inevitability that is also true (for you; or more appropriately for Brand). And that’s the issue; if it works for you I’m really pleased for you but we need to allow others to find what works for them. Humans are complicated and diverse and that’s what makes life worth living so we need to celebrate this by keeping an open mind and offering diverse solutions to our problems and not trying to hunt down the one method that that we all have to mechanically march towards like a scene from Metropolis.