Letter

Anonymity can work

Dear healthmatters — I would like to draw to your attention by a health matter that is largely ignored by the health service and health professionals, that is the problem of addictive disease. For those among you who don’t like the word ‘disease’, the problem can be described as a learnt method of coping with life that leads to addiction.

Thousands of people in Britain today are addicted to drugs, alcohol, food, smoking, gambling and other mood-altering activities. Having not learnt non self-destructive methods of dealing with the pain, sadness or happiness of life, we (I speak from personal experience) have used mood-altering substances to make ourselves fell better. At first this works but as time goes on we need more of our chosen substance until we are unable to live without it. Removing the addicted substance only then deals with the result, not the cause of the problem.

Removing the heroin and replacing it with methadone, stopping the alcohol and detoxing with drugs, or putting someone with an eating disorder on a diet will only lead to a short respite then the self-destructive cycle will begin again. What is needed is a new programme for living, new methods to deal with the ups and downs of life.

There is a programme that works for many people and there are hundreds of groups around the country which are self-run and self-financed offering help, support and hope for us with the problem — that is in the form of the 12-step programme of the anonymous fellowships — Alcoholics Anonymous, narcotics Anonymous, Overeaters Anonymous, Bulimics Anonymous, Gamblers Anonymous and many more.

One in three addicts die either as a direct result of their addiction, accidents or suicide. Many are/were young healthy people — support us, don’t ignore us.