ACCURATE DIAGNOSIS POSSIBLE AFTER TREATMENT
Physical revelations which follow the unpoisoning of patients frequently startle the patients themselves as well as the physicians who have their well-being in charge for long periods. Nor are the mental revelations less astonishing. There have been many cases, after the unpoisoning was complete, in which a man or woman has been found to be as seriously ailing mentally as others have been found ailing physically. Drugs and alcohol, especially drugs, have frequently been responsible for extraordinary mental and moral twists. But it must be maintained that the use of drug or liquor is usually the result rather than the cause of such conditions. There are many cases in which no type of medical help will bring about satisfactory permanent results, though other victims, after the elimination of alcohol or narcotics, quickly take their places as useful and admirable members of society.
The problem confronting the physiologist after a patient has been relieved of a drug or drink habit is comparatively simple. If this relief makes diagnosis possible and reveals the existence of an unsuspected, but curable, ailment, the course to follow is obvious. With the psychologist the problem is frequently far more complicated. The useless citizen who becomes a drug- or drink-user will remain a useless citizen after the drug or drink habit has been eliminated.
To this class belong most of those who readily relapse into their old habits after their systems have been thoroughly cleared of the physiological demand for the substance of their habit. Thus perhaps the most important query the psychologist interested in this work must ask after the treatment of a patient is, What is left of value, and what can be done with it? It is a curious fact that usually more is left in the case of a poor than in the case of a rich patient. No one is so hopeless as the vagrant rich. No man will ever make a reputation in work of this character who deals wholly or even principally with people to whom money has no value.
UNPOISONING THE USER IS ONLY THE FIRST STEP
My work has brought me to the conclusion that few physicians seem able accurately to classify their own patients. Even the specialist in psychology, who should be able to weigh all the details of men's mental and moral as well as physical being, seems likely to go astray when he considers a psychology that has been affected either by drink or drugs. Many physicians seem to be imbued with the idea that after a patient has once been through the process of treatment for a drug or drink habit he will be entirely made over; but the fact is that the elimination of drugs or drink from a degenerate will not eliminate degeneracy. Nothing, in fact, will eliminate it except stopping the breeding of degenerates.