Beyond Addiction by William C. Moyers

Improving our understanding of alcohol and drug addiction

The Politics of Addiction

Not even Rush Limbaugh dared to criticize Sen. Edward Kennedy about his ongoing battle with brain cancer, a chronic disease.

But it didn't take much for some narrow-minded critics to jump all over Kennedy's son Patrick when the congressman from Rhode Island announced this week that he was seeking treatment again for another chronic illness, addiction.

"At some point, we've got to say, when is enough enough?" Giovanni Cicione, chairman of the Rhode Island Republican Party, told The Associated Press. Cicione suggested that Kennedy needs to consider whether he's serving his constituents properly.

Either Cicione is ignorant about addiction or he deliberately chose to politicize the younger Kennedy's medical condition for his party's gain. And that's the problem about the politics of addiction in America these days. Unlike the cases with other diseases, when it comes to alcoholism and drug dependence, there's a double standard for judging people who suffer relapses or recurrences of their illnesses. Such is the stigma of addiction, too.

That's not to excuse the younger Kennedy's responsibility to manage his chronic illness. Just like diabetics and people with hypertension, addicted people must work programs of recovery actively in order to lessen the chances that their treatable but incurable condition will return. As a policy advocate, I've known and worked with Patrick Kennedy in Washington on addiction and mental illness issues; his political passion for legislation to expand help for people like him is matched only by his personal zeal to help himself.

"People like Patrick and me need to deal with our recovery one day at a time for the rest of our lives," former Republican Rep. Jim Ramstad, who has been a recovering alcoholic since 1981 and has mentored Kennedy, told me. "Those of us in recovery, especially in the first couple of years, experience bumps in the road and need preventative maintenance.
Patrick knows what he needs to do, and he is doing it. It is never easy, though."

A few days before Kennedy sought help, a colleague of his in the House, Rep. John Sullivan of Oklahoma, announced that he, too, was checking into treatment, for what he called his "addiction to alcohol." The Republican lawmaker has had several legal run-ins linked to intoxication over the past few years. (I couldn't find anything on the Internet to suggest that Cicione has an ally in Oklahoma.)

Sullivan and Kennedy are proof that addiction is a bipartisan illness and that it does not discriminate. And their travails come at what is perhaps a definable moment in our country's relentless battle against the victims of addiction, namely, the people afflicted with it and their families. President Barack Obama's drug czar, former Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske, has called for an outright end to the failed "war on drugs," shifting the emphasis from tough law enforcement and international interdiction to prevention and treatment. Talking heads in the media are debating whether illicit drugs should be decriminalized or even legalized. And with health care reform once again on the front burner, advocates are pushing to make sure that addiction treatment isn't left out.

Not too long ago, when a politico hit bottom, his problem was cloaked in "leave-of-absence" or "time-off" lingo, meant to disguise the real issue. Sullivan and Kennedy are brave to identify their struggles publicly. If timing is everything, then now is the time for all of us to change the terms of the debate for the sake of those who still suffer, for people who haven't had the opportunity to find hope, help and healing from their chronic illness.

June 20, 2009