'We are the most addicted society in Europe' (Centre for Social Justice)

Addiction as a mass phenomenon has been with us for several decades, perhaps from the late 1960s onwards, reaching the current epidemic levels it has mushroomed into today. Previously, people not only lacked the means to drink as much as they do now (in a world of ever rising prices, alcohol and other drugs continue to buck the trend, drink is now cheaper in real terms than it has ever been), but if it were simply a matter of affordability, there would be no such thing as the homeless addict. Rapid changes in our society have made us more affluent, but have exposed us to perpetual round the clock advertising and marketing, selling us innumerable fantasies and dreams, reminding us on a daily basis in often subtle and invisible ways that we lack something, miss something, need something more. Often the structures of community and spiritual life that once gave meaning to existence beyond hedonism have crumbled away, but have not been replaced by anything that nurtures the individual and connects him or her to others. A banal and egocentric self-centred-ness has been elevated by television and political discourse to be a virtue, not a flaw and the results of this toxic brew have been revealed by a government think tank this week. We are the most addicted society in Europe, be it in legal highs, street drugs or alcohol (the research doesn't mention gambling, but this government and the last have both made creating gambling addicts for the bookies to exploit a special priority) according to the Centre for Social Justice, which estimates that addiction costs Britain £36 billion a year. These stark figures would tend to suggest to anyone with a modicum of intelligence that the government's drug policy has failed completely, but the official wisdom on how to treat addiction remains unchanged. Light touch regulation which allows the drinks trade to behave as it sees fit, combined with the criminalisation of other drugs to make millionaires out of a huge criminal class that recycles the money to finance every other kind of organised crime, allows the supply of addictive substances to flourish every year. At the other end of the addiction cycle, the government still insists on imposing a medical model of addiction on the growing numbers of addicts, where they are ministered unto by professionals who have no direct experience of addiction themselves. It is these experts who argue that a harm reduction approach, advising alcoholics to just try to have a few drinks instead of two bottles of vodka, is best. The only solution to alcoholism or any drug addiction is abstinence based recovery, one day at a time abstaining from intoxicating substances and working with other recoverers to build a new life from the ashes of the old. The Living Room Cardiff practices an abstinence based approach to recovery and it is a philosophy that needs to be adopted with more urgency now than ever before. Our society with all its constant demands on individuals to be smarter, funnier, better looking, richer, more successful and popular is an addict making machine, we have developed the settings on this machine to create a perpetual and ambient insanity that punishes children as they grow into adults for the crime of being who they are. This hurt is medicated in a myriad of different dysfunctional ways, leaving broken individuals, homes, families and communities. Not only is a different way of treating addicts needed, but a different language in society required in assessing the validity and worth of individuals.