Question Authority

In an earlier blog I reviewed the controversial decision by the American Psychiatric Society to categorize normal grief as an illness in the new Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Psychiatric Disorders- 5th edition (the DSM-5). In that discussion, I challenged their idea that this everyday psychological process should be classified as a disease (due to public outcry since I wrote the blog, the DSM-5 dropped grief as an illness). Now another one of their dubious determinations has come to light in a Time web-article where these psychiatrists have discarded the old DSM-4 categories of substance abuse and dependence, replacing them with mild, moderate and extreme addiction.

I highlighted the term of ‘addiction’ as labels can be very powerful, and I can’t understand what was going through these committee members’ minds as they made this decision. Surely they must have known it would be hard to find a more pejorative term for alcohol or other drug problems than that of being called an ‘addict’. Additionally, as the Time article rightly points out, this new categorizing of alcohol (and other substances’) use results in about 40% of college students being labeled as ‘addicts’! Undoubtedly resulting from this classification millions more in the general public have also joined the ‘addicts’ ranks. How absurd! Even more significantly, all of this ‘scholarly and expert’ opinion occurs in a decidedly ethnocentric way. If you look at how the rest of the world approaches alcohol and other drug problems, only the US treats these problems as a disease/and or crime (jailing vast numbers of primarily minorities for drug related ‘offenses’). This is no small matter, as people accept these ideas and labels as the truth and then act accordingly. Perhaps soon, we’ll see headlines decrying the rise of addiction in our public schools. Don’t be surprised!

But when I reflect on the ‘addict’ question, it also seems to represent a larger matter. With regard to the DSM-5 committee’s decision on alcohol and substance use (the group contains MDs and PhDs), their scientific, rational and objective conclusions contain many implicit cultural suppositions. This rings true for other ‘experts’ as well, whether they are medical, political, or financial: they often tell us how to think and what to believe. In response to this I recall a bumper sticker which simply stated: ‘Question Authority’. We have a choice as to whether or not we accept these outside experts’ opinions and proclamations. We can question their authority, coming to our own conclusions on how to live. Of course, after reflection, some experts can offer us useful information, but we decide what to do with this. Awareness assists us in this journey towards personal self-determination, by giving us a tool with which to examine our own and societal assumptions and conditioning. It gives us the space to observe ourselves and society, so we don’t simply react unconsciously to whatever form of ‘propaganda’ that we get exposed to. This gives us more openness to deal with life’s problems, ultimately freeing us to decide who we want to be.