January 13, 2001

William H. Johnson, Ed.D.
Superintendent of Schools
Administration Building
128 Shephard Street
Rockville Centre, NY 11570

Dear Dr. Johnson:

I just received your letter to parents about the PRIDE meeting on the 25^th. I am an alumnus of Rockville Centre schools as well as a parent of a student who currently attends Rockville Centre schools. As a physician, recovering addict, and addiction theorist/activist, I am deeply concerned about the paradoxical negative impact the PRIDE program has on students, society, and addicts alike.

To be sure, this negative impact is not caused by any lack of desire or will on your part to help, but, instead, by the paradoxical effects the incorrect understanding of the origin of drug use and addictions among students and all people has on the outcomes of this kind of program. The lack of correct understanding of the cause of addictions results in perpetuation and exacerbation of the problems rather than solutions to them.

Bottom line: The PRIDE program is based on a moralistic and control paradigm at least 100 years old that is incorrect scientifically and ineffective practically. If this weren't true we wouldn't currently be as impotent against drug addiction as we are. These kinds of moralistic, stigmatizing, and fear inducing "education and prevention" programs not only don't reduce addictions of all kinds, but force underground the people who will inevitably use and get addicted to drugs and other things where they are deeply injured and, additionally, will inevitably cause the social harms they desperately don't want to commit. Thus, the paradoxical negative effects of PRIDE programs and programs like it.

Instead of educating students, parents, and society on the actual science-based neurobiology of addictions and the helpful policies that should be derived from it, PRIDE programs teach an incorrect addiction paradigm that result in policies both ineffective and harmful. This is caused by the current misunderstanding of why people use drugs and why certain people inevitably get addicted. In this respect, addiction is no different from Diabetes, many cancers, and most other science based medical diseases not caused by the victim's consciousness. This last sentence is the crux of the misunderstanding of addictions - "not caused by the victim's consciousness." Another way to say the same thing is, "Against the will of the victim."

I'm certain you wouldn't blame the victims of Diabetes and cancer for causing their disease and wouldn't have "education and prevention" programs designed around their conscious causation either. Can you picture a judge, policeman, social worker, and therapist telling an audience not to get cancer or Diabetes and that if they do they will be prosecuted? In fact, if you did, the victims of these diseases would nonetheless succumb to these diseases and would have to go underground and suffer just as the future addicts of today do under programs like PRIDE. PRIDE programs make no sense for Diabetes, cancer, or any other medical disease, and they make no sense for addictions, symptoms of a medical disease. Why? Because none are caused by conscious decisions or choice. I realize this last statement goes against everything you believe about addictions, but as I said in the beginning of this letter, what you believe you know about addictions is wrong even though it seems so intuitively right. The current addiction paradigm has been wrong for 100 years and will continue to be wrong indefinitely. When the paradigm is wrong, the treatment and policies derived from it are wrong. They don't work to produce the effects we want from them and they paradoxically perpetuate rather than solve the problem they were designed to solve. This is the case with DARE and it is the case with PRIDE and is the case for the drug war and all policies and programs based on the incorrect drug use and addiction paradigm. These programs not only don't do what we say we want them to do but they make the problem worse, as they must. To reiterate: WHEN THE PARADIGM IS WRONG, THE TREATMENTS AND POLICIES BASED ON IT ARE WRONG. These policies hurt our kids rather than help them. I know this all goes against your opinions and intuition, but reputable people like yourself once believed the sun revolved around the earth, the earth was flat, infections were caused by miasma, and other dead paradigms. The current addiction paradigm based on conscious decision and choice is just as intuitive and just as dead. It just doesn't realize it yet.

So, if PRIDE makes things worse, and if we don't want things to continue to get worse, what then is the alternative?

Let's teach the real and actual neurobiological paradigm of addictions and see if this, as it should, leads to diminution of the harm caused by addictions. This is what we want, right? As with other real diseases, the teaching of the actual pathophysiology of the disease leads not only to destigmatization of the disease and its victims, a good thing, and the resultant earlier entry into recovery from the disease, a good thing, but also, by this route, to less severe complications caused by the disease, again, a good thing. In doing so, we are not condoning addiction any more than we condone cancer or Diabetes. We don't want or like cancer, addictions, or Diabetes, but due to our understanding of their causes at this time, we know they occur, that we can't prevent them through our collective will, but we can help their victims deal appropriately with them as soon as is heavenly possible, just the opposite result if these diseases are stigmatized and their victims blamed and ostracized, the only thing PRIDE accomplishes.

The following is what I suggest if you are truly interested in helping students and society with addictions. Let's stop the moralizing, stigmatizing, ostracizing, and scientifically incorrectly based PRIDE program, and start teaching students, teachers, and the public about the actual neurobiology behind addictions and see if this, as it should and will, leads to the positive changes we all want to have come about for addictions. I would be happy and thrilled to volunteer to teach to your school system the most up to date and complete science based addiction paradigm that will lead to the results you all want.

Please let me know if you are interested in my help.