Nothing could more clearly indicate the popular ignorance concerning the drug habit than the general belief that it is usually accompanied by moral deterioration. Where the habit is an accompaniment of life in the under-world, moral deterioration of course exists, though this is due rather to the under-world than to the drug habit. In the thousands of histories where the habit has been acquired by the administration of drugs by physicians it results in moral deterioration no more than drinking tea does. As a matter of fact, that portion of society which holds a drug victim blamable is woefully mistaken and inhumanely unmerciful, the truth being that the man or woman who is not taking drugs is lucky.
THE NECESSITY OF DEFINITE MEDICAL TREATMENT IN DEALING WITH ANY FORM OF ADDICTION
It is impossible for me to conclude this book without discussing further the question of treatment for those afflicted with habits or addictions.
My taking up this work in 1901 was due almost entirely to an investigation into the methods employed to restore those who had lost control through the use of habit-forming drugs, whether they had acquired the habit through dissipation or from the administration of the drug by a physician on account of illness or injury. At that time such cases were supposed to be hopelessly incurable, and the victims only drifted from bad to worse until they had been accounted for either in a mad-house or in the morgue.
I found, on making inquiries from some of the leading medical men who had been dealing with the various types of mental and nervous diseases, that they were virtually unable to name any case of a confirmed drug-user who had been permanently benefited by institutional or any other means of treatment. This was very difficult to understand, particularly in the case of drug-users who had acquired the habit through the administration of the drug by a physician, and who earnestly desired to be freed from the habit. It seemed incredible that a skilled physician could not eliminate the craving or desire for the drug, or restore these unfortunates to the point where their systems would not demand or feel the need of it.
I soon found out why this was so. My investigation showed me that the drug habit is a mental as well as a physical condition; that the physiological action of an opiate is to tie up the functions, resulting in a deterioration of the vital organs when the victim has taken the drug sufficiently long to set up a definite tolerance.