Learning about Recovery from Drug Prevention Programs
July 8th, 2010By Geoff Thompson, MA, CCC
Program Director
Sunshine Coast Health Center
We can learn a lot about addiction and recovery from our current fare of drug prevention programs.
Here are some statistics: According to a 2007 published survey by the Government of Canada, most Canadian youth, aged 15 to 24, reported that they used illicit drugs. Only 39.7% said they have never used, 38% said they used only cannabis, and 23.7% said they used an illicit drug other than cannabis. Almost all youth reported using alcohol, and 82.9% in the last 12 months. Of past year drinkers, 13.8% reported getting drunk weekly and 40.6% at least monthly. (By the way, if there is such a thing as a ‘gateway drug’, then these numbers tell us that it’s alcohol.)
To combat these numbers, communities, schools, and parents spend a lot of energy trying to keep youth away from drugs and alcohol. Most prevention programs are simply local efforts, which have no basis in psychology research or practice. But both the US and Canadian governments tell us that many programs have been studied and have “scientific evidence” that they work. These programs generally use some basic psychology principles to help people learn how to say no, how to deal with peer pressure, how to deal with stress, how to deal with anxiety and depression, and so on.
The key to all these programs is that they point out that drugs are a poor way to deal with what makes us uncomfortable in life. And there are lots of things that make us uncomfortable. Booze is great if you’re going to a dance. It helps you get over shyness. Being intoxicated is a great way of dealing with boredom. Getting high is a great way of dealing with loneliness.
The problem with using drugs for this kind of uncomfortableness is that they can backfire. Having to rely on drugs every time you go dancing, for instance—and having to use more as time goes on because of tolerance—can lead to disaster.
Pointing out the risks involved seems entirely reasonable. But here’s the problem: Regardless of what program designers and governments tell us, top-of-the-line research has shown that our current prevention programs don’t work very well.
It’s important to remember that Bill W., the driving force behind the development of the 12 steps, also understood the benefits of using. He said that intoxication is a substitute for satisfying the urge for wholeness and connection with God. In 1943 at the Shrine Auditorium in LA he told the audience that the alcoholic was a person who was looking for religion in a bottle. But, of course, seeking fulfillment through intoxication always backfires, leading to great suffering.
In this article we’ll explore prevention programs to see why they are not very successful. Knowing this can help you understand the power of drugs and what you or your loved one will likely have to do to recovery from addiction.
Part One — Our Current Approach to Prevention: “Drugs are bad”
Drug prevention programs operate according to the principle that “Drugs are bad, so don’t use them.” Typically, they tell us that using drugs will inevitably cause any number of problems. Studies of the effects of drugs on the brain, physical deterioration of the body, lost jobs, depleted finances, broken families, risk of arrest and incarceration, and so on are marshaled up to convince people to abstain. And many programs invite recovering addicts to tell their story to young people about how drugs destroyed their lives.
It all seems like a good way to keep young people away from drugs. Unfortunately, this approach doesn’t work very well.
Many big-shot researchers have studied the “evidence” of programs that claim to be successful — the ones that the US and Canadian governments have said were scientifically proven to be effective. The researchers discovered that the “evidence” was not very good.
For example, four of the most famous prevention programs are Strengthening Families, Life Skills Training, Project ALERT, and DARE. Researchers examining the evidence for Strengthening Families and Life Skills Training wrote: “Far from supporting the evaluators’ claims concerning the rigour of the findings and their generalisability and public health significance, the results were very fragile, of little practical significance and quite possibly analysis-dependent.” What this means is that the so-called “evidence” that the program worked did not meet basic research standards. Other researchers studied the evidence behind Project ALERT and DARE and found that these programs were of little or no value.
Part Two — Problems with the “Drugs are Bad” Approach
It seems so reasonable to try to stop people from using drugs by telling them all the dangers. And the dangers are not little: lost families, major health problems, lost jobs, mucking up the brain chemistry. And there is the real possibility of death.
But there are a growing number of experts in the field, who are showing why this “drugs are bad” approach is not very effective in preventing drug use. Here are some of their reasons:
1) Prohibition doesn’t work — The idea that drugs are bad is based on, as one researcher said, “the persistence of prohibition as an ideological force.” What this means is that trying to scare people into abstaining is based on ideas of the prohibition movement that helped make drinking illegal in the United States in 1920 and in Canada in 1918. You probably know that prohibition did not work. It was based on a moral stance and not on any scientific understanding of human nature.
2) People don’t believe the message — Surveys of school kids exposed to the “drugs are bad” message have shown that they don’t believe it. They know kids who have used crystal methamphetamine and who didn’t end up in the emergency ward of the hospital. They know kids who use substances and are straight-A students. They know athletes who smoke marijuana. They know kids who get drunk at parties, and the most they seem to be affected is a hangover the next day.
3) Kids like to take risks — One of the pleasures of teenagers is to take risks, including doing things that are illegal (small things, mainly). There’s an excitement involved. A drug prevention program that displays illegal drugs is likely to inspire more curiosity than fear. Interestingly, when addicted famous people talked to kids about drugs, the kids usually thought they could do drugs and then clean up — just as these celebrities did. (By the way, when researchers discovered this, they stopped asking famous people to talk to kids about drugs.)
These are just a few examples; there are many more. But they show that perhaps our current drug prevention programs are wrong-headed.
Part Three — New Research on Prevention
A handful of researchers, knowing that current prevention programs do not work very well, have said that we need to re-think the logic that we use to try to prevent drug use.
Most of these researchers are in England, but a growing number are in Canada and the United States. For example, British researchers have been studying why young people in Britain use ecstasy and ketamine. They have discovered that many young people find positive benefits from intoxication.
The idea that intoxication has rewards is not new. The great psychologist and philosopher William James (the guy who impressed Bill W. so much) was convinced that being drunk or stoned helped the user connect with the universe, find insight into perplexing problems, and generally feel more energized and alive. And, of course, some of the great addict-writers, such as Thomas De Quincey, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William S. Burroughs, Eugene O’Neill, and Jack Kerouac said more or less the same thing.
Young people we’ve studied have told us that using ecstasy and ketamine at dance clubs has helped them connect with others in a positive way. They even tell us that they have found long-term benefits of being more empathic (the ability to appreciate what others are feeling).
The second thing they tell us is that intoxication allows them to connect with something greater than they are. In previous articles I’ve talked about how people can feel a sense of belonging while under the influence. Researchers in the United States have studied 18 to 24 year olds who experience the benefit of ecstasy as “transforming the everyday.” The researchers concluded that ecstasy highlights “the extraordinary or transcendental nature of the experience.”
Part Four — Drug Prevention has to Account for the Benefits of Drugs
Modern drug researchers have come up with a “new” idea. As one researcher put it, “Research has failed to explore a significant and integral feature of drug use, primarily the reasons why people use and the benefits they receive.”
People use because they find some rewards for getting intoxicated. Researchers have concluded that we need to understand these benefits if wide are to design drug prevention programs that work. In fact, one researcher has pointed out the obvious: The reason why our current drug prevention programs don’t work is precisely because the benefits that users tell us they get from being intoxicated make them resistant to programs that are based on the approach that “drugs are bad.”
Here are some of the rewards that users have told us about substances: (1) “Alcohol is great for dealing with shyness,” (2) “ecstasy can make you feel closer to others,” and (3) “heroin makes everything okay even when my world is falling apart.” Young users of dextromethorphan tell us that it aids in creating a trans-personal experience. This trans-personal experience means that that intoxication moves the user beyond paying attention to himself and puts him in a state that is beyond time and space.
So, this is good information for you to know as part of how to stay away from drugs and alcohol. If the benefits of intoxication are this feeling of community and this trans-personal experience, then it makes sense that you will have to figure out how to find a sense of belonging and how to finding something in life that makes you feel alive.
This is, of course, the entire purpose of the 12-step program. And it is one of the main themes of addiction treatment at Sunshine Coast Health Center.









