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LITIGATION LESSONS
Cucumbers, pickles, and hope
reetings, faithful county officials and friends of landmark report entitled Facing county government. Addiction in America, addiction As I’ve written about in roughly half of my is a disease that changes the funccolumns over the past five years, we — the tion of brain circuits involved in united counties and governments of Arkansas — are engaged pleasure, learning, stress, deciin a yearslong effort to bring financial recovery into the state, sion-making, and self-control. to help our communities, families, and addicts, recover from Addiction “is a chronic illness Colin Jorgensen the Arkansas opioid epidemic. I will surely write more about that we must approach with the Risk Management this in the future. same skill and compassion with Litigation Counsel My column is entitled “Litigation Lessons,” and I usually which we approach heart disease, try to stay in my lane. But today, I shall preach a bit about diabetes, and cancer.” Addiction cucumbers, pickles, and hope. is the “public health crisis of our time” because untreated It’s no secret that I’m a sober alcoholic (at least at the time addiction prevents addicts from living healthy and productive of this writing — one day at a time). But because of baseless lives, and it has profoundly destructive effects on families, stigma, many folks like me choose to recover in the shadows. friends, colleagues, and entire communities. That is absolutely their The Surgeon General choice — a necessary has also explained that choice for some folks to there is no cure for the he social stigma strongly associated with adachieve and sustain sodisease of addiction — briety, and a choice that no magic pill or surgery diction is understandable given the way we should be respected by or therapy that will all. Other folks choose fully vanquish the disease act. We arguably earn our reputations as weak-willed to recover out loud, from the addict. As some people who made bad choices — moral failures, bad while respecting the folks say in recovery, anonymity of others. once a cucumber turns apples. But the stigma is incorrect. Anonymity is esseninto a pickle, it can’t be a tial for many who seek cucumber again. recovery from addicBut there are solution, primarily because of the shame and stigma associated tions to addiction. As explained by the Surgeon General, with the disease of addiction. Shame often accompanies public policies, education, a variety of medical treatments, addiction because when we drink and/or use, we do shamecounseling, social support, and mutual aid groups have all ful things. There’s no sugar-coating the conduct of an active proven successful at helping addicts achieve sobriety, sending addict. We lie, manipulate, disappoint, fail, and worse in the disease into remission. There is always hope of recovery. pursuit of the next fix over all else. Whether we like it or not. The most important message from the U.S. Surgeon We lose the power of choice, completely. We are powerless to General is this: Our biggest challenge with alcoholism and behave differently, and we are powerless to conquer addiction addiction — and the primary reason it is a public health on our own — no matter how much we yearn for sobriety. crisis of such magnitude — is the social stigma and shame We must have outside help, or the addiction and the shamethat makes alcoholics and addicts unlikely to come forward ful behavior will continue until it ends in death. and seek help. The social stigma strongly associated with addiction is Think about that for a minute. We have solutions to the understandable given the way we act. We arguably earn our biggest public health crisis that we face. But despite having reputations as weak-willed people who made bad choices — solutions, we fail to solve the crisis because of baseless stigma moral failures, bad apples. But the stigma is incorrect. and shame. This saddens me to no end. But we are changing I have been trapped in the hell of alcoholism, where drink- — slowly but surely, the stigma is eroding. And that delights ing was no fun anymore and I wanted to stop drinking more me to no end. than I’ve ever wanted anything in my life, but I couldn’t You might ask yourself: What can I do to help eradicate because addiction robs the addict of the power of choice and renders us powerless. As the U.S. Surgeon General stated in a See “CUCUMBERS” on Page 26 > > >
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