Seek the advice of addiction treatment professionals if you want to learn how to help a drug addict face and overcome their dependency.

Adam Roberts no longer uses heroin. That is, unless he can get it in jail. I guess you could consider that a successful cure by the P/R paradigm (the current addiction paradigm based on the hijacked brain hypothesis). One less heroin addict. But, two less parents as well. Hey, whatever it takes, right?

Quoted from a Newsday article: "Roberts' relatives revealed after his guilty plea on Aug. 30 that they had known soon after the bodies of Seth Roberts, 51, and his wife, Ronna, 50, were discovered on Nov. 17 that they had been killed by their son. Calling it the "entire tragic truth," they said Seth Roberts, a Manhattan immigration lawyer, and Ronna Roberts, a former lawyer, had taken their son to a physician to detoxify him two weeks before their deaths, an effort that failed. They then took matters into their own hands by driving him to their elaborate vacation home on a 44-acre estate in Woodstock. Roberts had been without heroin for 48 hours, they said. He had also been hoarding and using the medication his doctor had given him to get himself off the drug. That medication, they said they later learned, was incompatible with existing prescription drugs he was taking for attention deficit disorder. The factors combined to lead him to suddenly 'go berserk,' said Lewis Fidler. The relatives pressed the impact of the heroin withdrawal and other drugs yesterday. They also said his parents had allowed him to smoke marijuana in the hopes this would help soothe him."

Results: Two dead parents. One child in jail for a long long time. One entire family shamed and in chaos, confusion, denial, and ignorance.

What exactly happened here? How could this have happened? Do we just accept this as part of our righteous attempts to stop drug addictions in this country at any cost?

The answer is: The current paradigm of addictions, the psychological/religious (P/R) paradigm, the paradigm pushed but not proven by addictionology and the U.S. Government (NIH, NIDA, NIAAA), the paradigm that hasn't changed the face of addictions in this country in 100 years, the paradigm that says, "we just need to do it more and we will conquer this plague," caused this tragedy.

Last year, Carroll O'Conners from All In The Family Fame, and apparently an addiction expert after his cocaine addicted son died, got on TV and told parents around the country, "Get your kids off drugs any way you can." Well, I guess the Roberts were successful by following this advise. But, at what a cost! Why would the media give Carroll O'Conners TV time to send this message? Because our country believes the message to be correct, that we can control addictions if we try hard enough and do whatever is necessary. Our country's whole approach to addictions centers around control and coercion as if one could control and coerce a disease and a drug, or drugs. Where did this power to control diseases and drugs come from? Where did O'Conners get this power and knowledge. Why should we listen to him? Was he so successful? For some reason we keep listening to the advise of completely unsuccessful experts and government scientists. Please tell me how this makes sense?

The fact is that the P/R paradigm of addictions is wrong and control of addictions and addicts has and will never work, whatever "work" means. Prevention and education methods of stopping addictions, outgrowths of the wrong P/R paradigm, don't work. Nothing about the P/R paradigm works. Yet, we keep doing the same things expecting to get different results. And, believing that MORE of the same thing will be even better than what we are currently doing. That's like failing to cure an infection with the wrong antibiotic, but instead of dumping it and looking for another way to deal with it, giving more of it instead. When the patient finally dies, we conclude that we were successful because there's one less infection and vow to do the same thing next time.

I wish I could give you the details of the Roberts case, what treatments and advise the psychiatrists involved in the case prescribed, the alternatives given Adam and his folks, the thinking involved in their decision-making, but I can't because no one will tell me, not the reporter, Luo, not the family. I can tell you this: 1) whatever it was, was wrong and malpractice, 2) that Adam was not allowed to be a heroin addict as dictated by the drug war, a result of the P/R paradigm. Out of this stigma, ignorance, denial, fear, and shame came the results described above. I know because I experienced the same nonsense myself in 1968 with my first addiction, and subsequently with other addictions. Fortunately, my parents and I survived, but it took 30 years of this nonsense before we realized the reality of the disease that was ruining our lives. The Roberts and millions of other families don't know about this disease and how to deal with it. In fact, although I have told the entire addictionology community and the media about this disease, I have been ignored. I imagine that people to whom I send this article will ignore it also.

My only hope is that someone somehow will find this article on the web and be helped. I persist because of this hope.  

Thanks,

Dan