Items related to The Addiction Process: A Systemic Cultural Condition
Synopsis
This book came out of a series of lectures given to participants in a chemical dependency treatment program. It is a provocative and powerful book that illuminates the hypocrisies and inequities in the laws and values in our society surrounding alcohol and other drug use, abuse, and addiction. These inequities stem from the lack of knowledge of the underlying addiction process on the part of our institutions and the general public. The author challenges the very foundation of our cultural values and shows us how these values give birth to an addiction process that permeates thinking throughout our family, religious, governmental, and educational institutions. This distorted thought system perpetuates a state of fear which polarizes society in an us against them mentality, and an attitude of any means justify the end
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About the Author
Bob Colonna Ph.D., DD, C.A.S., is a nationally certified addiction specialist who has worked in the field of addiction as a counselor, researcher, and workshop facilitator for 16 years. He has been published in the 1992-93 edition of "Who's Who in the West" for his commitment to human services. He was host of his own talk radio show, "Off the Hook with Dr. Bob," that aired in Northern California from 1991-93. He is presently working as a counselor and workshop facilitator in the San Francisco Bay Area. Dr Bob will present a lecture series upon which this book is based in Northern and Southern California in 980000-99.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
The Addiction Process Dr. Bob This book is the result of a series of lectures given by the author to participants in a chemical dependency treatment program. The topic was the addiction process and how alcohol, drug, and other forms of addiction are symptoms of a systemic cultural condition that permeates thinking throughout our society.
The intent of this book is not to do a treatise on the politics of addiction. But we cannot avoid the impact that politics and public policy have on the way we deal with the endemic problem of alcohol and other drug abuse and addiction. Current public policy toward addiction is to enact stringent criminal laws that emphasize punishment and incarceration of the user. This policy avoids the real problem and enables society's denial. The issue that we have to examine as a society is our Judeo/Christian ethic, that fundamental belief system that generates fear, guilt, and shame. Along with our cultural belief system, we are also conditioned to live under a value system that advocates principles based on our social, political, and economic systems. These two systems together give birth to the addiction process.
The addiction process is the result of an underlying generic disease that is driven by a core belief system based on a foundation of fear, guilt, and shame. This system is the product of a culturalization process that is instilled in us by the three primary institutions of family, religion, and education. The core belief system determines our reality in life and who we are in relation to life. The genesis of the generic dis-ease and the addiction process is the separation from our innermost self, or soul. In place of our innermost self is the conditioned falseself that is the product of beliefs and old ideas of the culture we were born in. In the addiction process the false self learns to avoid the feelings of pain and powerlessness caused by our core beliefs by creating a false sense of reality. This distorted reality gives the illusion of security in an insecure world. The illusion of security becomes an avoidance pattern and comfort zone to protect us from our core beliefs of fear, guilt, and shame that are part of an addictive thought system that reinforces the addiction process.
When we compromise the insecurity of our true self in favor of the security offered by the false-self, we have a new belief system that is driven by the addictive thought system that believes it is possible to control everything in life, including people, places, and situations, other countries, and even outer space. It is a thought system that believes we can play God-to know, understand, and control everything. It is a self-centered thought system that tells us we are a separate superior species, with a self-endowed covenant to control all creatures and natural resources of the world to meet our needs and expectations.
A by-product of this addictive thought system is alcohol, drugs, and other addictions. Society's lack of awareness of the underlying generic dis-ease sees drug abuse and addiction as a morality issue that is eating away at the very fabric of our culture and our way of life. The reaction by society and government is the so-called "War on Drugs," attacking primarily illicit drug use and possession with aggressive legislation that incarcerates criminals and users for months or years in jails and prisons. The rationale for these aggressive laws is to make our community "safe" by getting "these people" off our streets. Recent statistics indicated that one out of three African-American males are caught up in a criminal justice system on some level, either jail, prison, probation, or some other. Over 60% of the cases are alcohol and drug-related crimes.
We have now lost three generations of our young people to nicotine, alcohol, and other drugs, and to a criminal justice system that incarcerates and stigmatizes them as criminals-a label that can follow them for the rest of their lives. Unfortunately, our laws make a definite distinction between alcohol abuse and drug abuse. Our culture has a long history with alcohol that is very similar to that of nicotine. It has become a socially accepted drug, even though it has contributed to more deaths than any other drug, save nicotine. Society and our legislatures, overtly or covertly, defend the use and advertisement of alcohol. This is reflected in the disparity of our criminal laws, which mandate lesser criminal penalties for alcohol offenses and more extreme penalties for other drug use and possession offenses.
A recent study released by the National Center of Addiction and Substance Abuse of Columbia University stated that alcohol is more closely associated with crimes of violence than any other drug. Twenty-one percent of state prison inmates incarcerated for violent crimes were under the influence of alcohol and no other substance when they committed the crimes. Violent crimes among jail inmates are also more closely linked to alcohol than to any other drug, with 26% of convicted violent offenders under the influence of alcohol alone at the time of their crime vs. 4% under the influence of crack or cocaine alone, and none under the influence of heroin. 12 spiritual principles we can begin to understand that surrendering to our powerlessness will bring empowerment and change in our attitude toward life.
We are in the midst of a crisis that is tearing away at the very essence of our humanity. A drastic change is needed-a paradigm shift in our status quo thinking that so desperately clings to old values and beliefs by resisting substantial change that can free us as human beings to the natural forces of conscious evolution.
The time is now for a cultural revolution-a renaissance, if you will, as we enter a new millennium. Let's not wait until we lose a fourth generation of youth to alcohol and other drug addictions and to a criminal justice system of juvenile halls, jails, prisons, or death. It is time now for all of us as individuals in a society to make a commitment to recovery, which means recovering from our past, to a new way of thinking that will encompass the trinity of our humanness, our being - self - human, or spirit-soul-body, that will become our path to self-realization. This book is a step in that direction.
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