Happy Election Day! Finally, right? If you’re living in the United States, you know what I mean. It seems like this election has been going on since the last presidential election day in 2012. I didn’t really support either candidate this year. Instead, I grudgingly voted for one because I really didn’t like the opponent. It was truly a year of voting for the lesser of two evils. So much for choice.
Choice is a word we often hear in many contexts, but I think that some people have a misguided idea about choice. For instance, we often hear that people make conscious choices to abuse alcohol or drugs.
While people might elect to try drugs and alcohol in the first place, I don’t believe that full-fledged drug addiction or alcohol abuse is a conscious choice. Who would choose to abuse other drugs, alcohol, or tobacco? Who would choose to enter into something that can hurt their mental and physical health, their families, their friends, their jobs, their everything? Most people I know aren’t that consciously self-destructive.
Maybe it’s easier for some people to say that drug addiction and alcohol abuse are choices because that way, they can blame addicts and stigmatize them. It’s much easier to blame people for their problems than to try to figure out why they’re having those problems and to try to find solutions for them.
Come to think of it, that also sounds a lot like the election. Both parties and candidates called each other a lot of names during the campaign season. They blamed each other for so many things. But they didn’t seem to talk about real issues and problems as much. They seemed to talk even less about practical solutions for such problems.
Drug addiction is one of those problems. Did media outlets highlight the candidates’ views on addiction and treatment? Addiction, after all, is a huge and growing problem across the United States, as larger numbers of people are becoming hooked on heroin, prescription painkillers, and other drugs.
I really didn’t see the candidates address these issues. Or, maybe they did and the media didn’t cover it. Or, maybe they didn’t talk about such issues because they knew that name calling, blaming, and other tactics would garner them more media coverage.
That bad behavior is what appeared in the news. Does that mean that media coverage needs to change? Do voters’ expectations need to change? Do some people’s assumptions about addiction still need to change? While I don’t know about the first two questions, I think the answer to the last question is yes. Assuming things doesn’t help discussions about addiction, and it sure doesn’t seem to help addicts.
