editorial comment paraphernalia guesses that the cup of snot might indeed be more painful than withdrawl....

Drug addiction is all in the mind – and withdrawal pains are no worse than hunger pangs, a leading British expert will tell a conference in Edinburgh this week.

Psychologist Joseph Griffin, who trains thousands of NHS workers in how to deal with addiction, believes he has developed a revolutionary new way of tackling the problem by changing the way addicts think.

His technique of planting negative images in an addict’s imagination while he or she is in a trance-like state resembles that used in Anthony Bur gess’s novel A Clockwork Orange.

“When somebody wants to take a drink or whatever, we make them associate it with something repulsive, like a cup of snot or sick,” Griffin told the Sunday Herald.

They will take a mother who smokes, Griffin explains, and focus her mind on her children; then explain to her that she will never see them grow up if she keeps on smoking.

“It’s easy to give up an addiction,” he said, “Ninety per cent of the discomfort is caused by our minds, and when you strip all that away, all you’re left with is a feeling no worse than a hunger pang.”

Griffin, who has co-authored three books on sleep, depression and addiction, disagrees with groups like Alcoholics Anonymous who see addiction as an incurable disease. “Every addict is curable if they are willing to work hard with us,” Griffin claims.

He believes addictions of all kinds, from heroin to shopping, are created by unfulfilled needs in our life which he calls “human givens”. Addictions are fool’s gold, he explained, a false way to meet natural human desires.

The number of human giv ens that must be met if an individual is to be content can vary, Griffin explained. Hunger is the strongest desire, but we also crave love and the praise of our peers, and want to be challenged by our work.

If these needs are not met, we are in danger of using ever-increasing amounts of the things we enjoy to fill the gap and are then in danger of becoming addicted. “That means we can be addicted to anything we enjoy, from shopping for shoes to heroin,” said Griffin.

Pamela Woodford, a counsellor who uses Griffin’s ideas to help young drug addicts, thinks his way of using the imagination has revolution ised the fight to get addicts off drugs. “A lot of places are still using the same kinds of courses I learned years ago,” she said. “Human givens is a new, evolving set of ideas.”

Woodford stressed the positive work she does with the imagination. She uses images and metaphors to allow add icts to follow what is happening to them in language they can understand. This means the decision to stay off drugs becomes their own.

“I have had enormous success with the ideas,” she said. “They allows me to develop a real emotional connection with the addict because they understand what’s going on, what is happening to them and how much better life would be without their addiction.”

Other agencies working with addicts are less enthusiastic. A spokesman for Alcoholics Anonymous said they view alcoholism like an allergy: it is something an addict is born with and which must be dealt with on a daily basis, using the group’s 12-step plan.

The spokesman said: “The AA works. I joined 25 years ago and I’ve not had to take a drink since. When I arrived I was in a terrible state. I’d lost my family, my job, everything, because of the amount I drank.”

The spokesman said five people who had walked out of Alcoholics Anonymous this year had already drunk themselves to death, and that the group had taught him his alcoholism was something modern medicine could not cure.

“It’s something I can only control through the focus the AA gives me,” he said.

Griffin’s ideas are based on Project Match, a study of the US marines who returned from Vietnam hooked on heroin. The American authorities were terrified the highly trained addicts would be unable to fit back into society, but most of them experienced few problems. Griffin argues that that was because their natural human needs were being met by girlfriends and jobs at home.

“Using these techniques we can repair post-traumatic stress disorder in one or two counselling sessions,” Griffin added.

The Scottish Training on Drugs and Alcohol Association is sending representatives to Griffin’s Edinburgh seminar. They think his ideas are close to their own view of drugs and drug addiction.

Spokeswoman Petra Max well said: “We think addictions cannot be separated from the social conditions an addict lives in. For most young people drugs are a form of escapism, and that implies they think there is something they believe they need to escape from.”

By Peter John Meiklem

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