Addiction and suicide are symptoms of our growing misery

Drug addiction and suicide are both symptoms of misery. When the misery takes the form of suicide attempts, as a society we respond by trying to alleviate the person’s suffering, whether by internal or external means.

If the misery takes the form of drug addiction, as a society we increase the misery in hopes they’ll become so miserable they’ll stop using drugs. We increase their internal suffering by layering guilt and shame onto their addiction and pushing them towards secrecy and social isolation; we increase their external misery by inflicting them with incarceration, isolation, family separation, felony convictions, and then restrict their access or ability to maintain employment and housing. This severe ratcheting-up of misery is somehow supposed to make them stop exhibiting a symptom of misery, drug addiction.

We’ve been sold the lie that discomfort and suffering are optional human conditions and can be avoided if only we purchase XYZ. Collectively, we feel a void and various enterprises offer us means of filling our voids from the outside in. Any fulfillment that comes from without is fleeting, and we’re soon left feeling empty once again and onto the next fix, whether it be goods, sex, drugs, or followers on IG. Social and spiritual disconnect and consumerism are making us miserable.

The era of opioid prescribing coincided with the era collective misery, a perfect storm. The misery, the root cause, was there before the drug. People found their void-filler of preference when they were exposed to opiates. But now heroin is so prolific we don’t need the stepping stone of the pills anymore, everyone knows someone who knows someone on heroin.

First, decrease the addicts suffering. Allow them an opportunity to live a full life so that there void can be filled from within. The drug war does the opposite of this, it exacerbates suffering. Second, we all must examine our cultural values and decide what brings us long-term, sustainable, peace, joy, and fulfillment. Poverty inevitably leads to suffering.

We can stop writing prescriptions today, the rates of drug addiction will continue to rise. They will rise with the rate of suffering and misery we collectively feel as a people.