To Whom It May Concern:

Dear Judge,

This letter is not to ask you to be lenient, fair, just, or enabling to Robert Downey, Jr. This letter is not about Robert Downey, Jr. per se, but about you and how you perceive the seemingly recalcitrant addicts who come before you in your courtroom, how you perceive drug addiction and addicts so that you might have the needed insight and wisdom necessary to deal with Robert and other addicts in a way that will preserve public safety and help some addicts at the same time.

The most thorough way to get my message across is to ask you to read my book, Hypoic's Handbook, the book that explains in an objective way the neurobiology of addictions and why addictions are symptoms of a disease that can't be controlled by its victims or society until they are understood in a completely new and different light, the light of science; the science and its implications that only exist in my book, nowhere else. And then, not controlled but surrendered voluntarily, something Robert can't do because he doesn't know about the disease that requires this approach to recovery. In fact, both you and Robert are attempting to fight an unfightable disease, inevitably losing, and misunderstanding why. Both of you consciously want to win, but the funny thing about addictions, as you will see if you are willing to read and study my written material, is that you two can only win by losing; surrendering to a foe that can't be beaten, the disease that causes addictions and all its abominable related behavior. Surrender of control is the only way to recovery from addictions because of the way the human brain is organized and works in producing addictions. This last sentence is the reason we, as a country, are handling addictions and addicts incorrectly and failing despite trying harder and harder to control them. Instead of surrendering and admitting defeat, we erringly persist in trying to defeat the disease and coerce its victims.

Have you ever tried defeating a disease with will power? Name a disease that yields to the power of the human will. There is none, and the disease causing addictions, Hypoism, is no different. The only way to help patients with diseases is to first understand the diseases, and then to use that understanding to devise relevant recoveries. This simple sequence is not happening in addictions because the understanding of the disease is wrong primarily. How can recovery follow from a misunderstanding of a disease? It can't. This is why both you and Robert are failing; you're attempting to force recovery from a position of ignorance about the disease.

You and others say, "But many people stop their addictions this way, and we must continue to do it this way." This is a misinterpretation of what is happening. Some percentage of addicts stop their addiction through force, but they are not in recovery from the disease, the disease that causes their addictions and other behaviors too, and are subject to a high rate of relapse and even switching addictions. Stopping an addiction does not equal recovery from the disease because the addiction is not the disease. An addiction is a symptom of the disease. We, addicts and society, must deal with the disease instead of the individual addictions for real, effective, and prolonged recovery to occur. Only this kind of recovery will produce the kind of thorough benefits to addicts and society that we all desire but are unwilling to obtain because we are unwilling to change our thinking and understanding of addictions to get them. Thus, I ask you to read my book before dealing with Mr. Downey.

You say, "But addictions are willful misbehaviors. And, even if addiction is a disease or part of a disease, recovery is a matter of will. Relapse is willful as well."

What disease is a willful misbehavior? None. Addictions are misinterpreted as willful misbehaviors only because we can't conceive of any behavior not being willful. Because of this misperception we then force addicts to accept responsibility and punishment for their addictive behaviors as we do to all people who behave badly. Victims of what other disease are perceived this way? Leukemics? Heart attack victims? Cancer victims? Diabetics? Rheumatoid arthritis? Multiple Sclerosis? Seizure victims? Manic Depressives? Schizophrenics? Alcoholics? Homosexuality? When was the last time you put one of these victims in jail for just having their disease or relapsing after treatment absent interpersonal damage? Or, mandating them to jail for treatment? Never. Why? Because you understand these to be real diseases despite many of them causing potential danger to the patients and to society.

Perception of addictions, despite all the talk about their being diseases, is still biased by moral and superstitious coloration much like many other disease once were. Even addicts see themselves in exactly this way because their perceptions of themselves are biased by the same beliefs. Thus, the need for religious based recovery so prevalent today; the need for forgiveness from god to achieve recovery. What other disease requires forgiveness from god or man to achieve recovery? None.

Addictions stem from a physiological mechanism that can be recovered from if they are understood as such, just like all other symptoms of diseases. That this understanding doesn't exist today is our fault, not Robert's. Despite all the words that come from his mouth, and all his promises, he has no idea what is happening to him. His failure at recovery is not his fault, but ours. We have been steadfastly insisting that we understand addictions and their recovery when we don't. Thus, when an addict fails to recover when and how we tell them to, we punish them. This makes as much sense as punishing a leukemic who relapses.

The fact is, we don't understand addictions as based upon the current paradigm. Hypoism, a quantum leap in addiction theory, however, does understand addictions. Its individual and societal benefits will only come to pass when we acknowledge this and switch paradigms. A good beginning would be made in this direction if you would take the time and make the effort to study Hypoism and use its science and wisdom into addictions to deal with Mr. Downey. That's all I ask. Please take the time to learn about addictions from a paradigm that makes biological sense and whose implications will help all of us to find solutions to addictions that will finally be both effective and obvious despite any residual prejudices we might have against addicts. Someday even these biases will disappear as they have with other diseases wrongly misunderstood from the past.

Sincerely Yours,

Dan F. Umanoff, M.D.