Enabling the Control Addicts

Addictions to money, power, gambling and greed, in my opinion all fall into the larger category of control addiction. Right now, we are watching as control addicts, having blown all their own money and a whole lot of other people's feeding their habit, are allowed to remain in control.

(For the record I don't think that a Republican administration would be doing anything differently with regard to corporate welfare; Bush started it, Obama just picked up where he left off)

How did we become a nation of enablers to a bunch of no good junkies with very expensive habits? As a libertarian, I believe that people who get off on greed and power have the right to pursue happiness through these vices. It is the same as my right to have sex with hookers or grow marijuana and opium poppies for my own use (er,....not that I would ever do things like that).

However, some dope fiends can be annoying and you are not obligated to help them feed their habits. You can demand that they change their ways or leave your life.

Addicts who support their habits merely through low level dealing to experienced users, or by prostitution should not end up in jail. Leave them alone and they probably won't bother you.

Society is not obligated to help such individuals, nor does it have the right to persecute them. Municipalities can decide for themselves whether such things may go on, and where, on the basis of zoning laws and licensing as with liquor and porno stores. It is perfectly reasonable not to want to these things going on near where you are raising your children.

It's a question of individuals taking responsibility for their own lives and communities, rather than expecting the government to function as some kind of monstrous public babysitter for adults, which libertarian author David Harsanyi and others have called "The Nanny State."

But why do control addicts get a free ride? Why are we, in the language of the addiction industry's family systems theory, enabling them? Even though not all of them actually violated the law, they are at least as annoying as crackheads, and not the kind of people I want around my children either. Their activities have harmed people who are able to steer clear of the local heroin and crack corner without thinking twice about it, yet end up losing their modest and honestly gained wealth to junkies anyway!

It would have been less expensive to just send all the control addicts to rehab. But somehow, the control addicts and greed-fiends have manipulated their prime enablers and co-dependents, who are also fellow addicts, into supporting their habits. At this point I don't care about their addictions, they have the right to be addicted; I'm just sick of seeing them on TV, and hearing about their ongoing con games. Even in the lowest depths of drug addled depravity I never came close to that caliber of hustling! I used to think I was a "player," but these people put even the most accomplished in the dope world to shame.

But as they say, if you play the game, you can't complain when the game plays you. You play, you pay, and there may come a day when even your best friend or you own mother has lost all patience with you. At that point, if you want to keep your binge going, you have to hit those streets and have some kind of hustle, just like everyone else.

Why don't these rules seem to apply to the control addicts? Make them experience the sordid consequences of their addictions. Let them "hit bottom." If they are out of money, they can always turn to prostitution. Let them get a taste of what they've been doing to everyone else. I'm not without compassion though. I don't want them to get HIV or other STDs. I even think giving them free condoms is reasonable. Let them know that society still cares, and when they are ready to change, they will ask for help. This is what is known as "harm reduction," and initial studies indicate that it is a cost-effective approach.

Along with free condoms, they give out free needles in some places; this is also a cost-effective public health policy, although some may object to this practice on moral grounds. Resources for food and shelter are also made available to addicted populations. Perhaps Parker Brothers could donate some Monopoly games to the down and out executives.

But no one is giving out free cocaine and heroin! They don't even hand out free methadone anymore. Why the #&%@ are they giving out free money?! Where can I get some? I promise, I won't spend it on drugs.

Notes/Reference

*From Naked Lunch page 21: "I deplore brutality," [Dr. Benway] said. "It's not efficient. On the other hand, prolonged mistreatment, short of physical violence, gives rise, when skillfully applied, to anxiety and a feeling of special guilt, A few rules or rather guiding principles are to be borne in mind. The subject must not realize that the mistreatment is a deliberate attack of an anti-human enemy on his personal identity...The naked need of the control addicts must be decently covered by an arbitrary and intricate bureaucracy so that the subject cannot contact his enemy direct." (William S. Burroughs, Copyright 1959, Grove Press New York NY)(emphases mine)