Everything you think you know about addiction is wrong | Johann Hari

One of my earliest memories is trying to wake up one of my relatives and not being able to. And I was just a little kid so I didn't really understand why. But as I got older, I realised we had drug addiction in my family, including later cocaine addiction. I've been thinking about it a lot lately, partly because it's now exactly a hundred years since drugs were first banned in the United States and Britain and we then imposed that on the rest of the world. It's a century since we made this really fateful decision to take addicts and punish them and make them suffer because we believe that would deter them, it would give them an incentive to stop. And a few years ago, I was looking at some of the addicts in my life who I love and trying to figure out if there was some way to help them.

我最早的记忆之一是试图叫醒我的一位亲戚，但怎么都叫不醒。当时我还只是个小孩，所以并不明白其中的原因。等我长大后，我才意识到我们的家庭中存在毒品成瘾的问题，后来还包括可卡因成瘾。最近我常常在思考这些事情，部分原因是现在正好是美国和英国首次禁止毒品一百周年，那时我们也把这种禁令推向了全世界。已经一个世纪过去了，我们做出了一个影响深远的决定——把吸毒者视为罪犯并加以惩罚，让他们受苦，因为我们相信这会对他们形成威慑，并促使他们戒掉毒瘾。几年前，我看着我生活中那些我爱着的吸毒者，努力寻找一种方法去帮助他们。

And I realised there were loads of incredibly basic questions I just didn't know the answer to. Like, what really causes addiction? Why do we carry on with this approach that doesn't seem to be working and is there a better way out there that we could try instead? So I read loads of stuff about it and I couldn't really find the answers I was looking for. So I thought, okay, I'll go and sit with different people around the world who've lived this and studied this and talked to them and see if I can learn from them. When I ended up, I didn't realise I would end up going over 30,000 miles at the start, but I ended up going and meeting loads of different people from a transgender crack dealer in Brownsville, Brooklyn, to a scientist who spends a lot of time feeding hallucinogens to mongooses to see if they like them. It turns out they do, but only in very specific circumstances, to the only country that's ever decriminalised all drugs, from cannabis to crack, Portugal.

我意识到有很多非常基础的问题我完全不知道答案。比如，成瘾的真正原因是什么？我们为什么继续用这种似乎不起作用的方法，还有没有更好的解决方法可以尝试？于是我读了很多相关的资料，但仍然找不到我想要的答案。所以我决定去世界各地拜访那些有相关生活经历和研究经验的人，和他们交流，看看能否从中学到东西。刚开始我没想到会走过超过三万英里的旅程，但最终我去见了很多不同的人，从布鲁克林布朗斯维尔的一个跨性别毒品贩子，到一个花大量时间给獴喂食迷幻药的科学家，看看它们是否喜欢。结果证明獴在特定情况下会喜欢迷幻药，还去到世界上唯一一个从大麻到可卡因全部毒品都合法化的国家——葡萄牙。

And the thing I realised that really blew my mind is, almost everything we think we know about addiction is wrong. And if we start to absorb the new evidence about addiction, I think we're going to have to change a lot more than our drug policies. But let's start with what we think we know, what I thought I know, right? Let's think about this middle row here, right? Imagine all of you for 20 days now went off and used heroin three times a day. Some of you look a little bit more enthusiastic than others at this prospect. Don't worry, it's just a thought experiment. Imagine you did that, right? What would happen? Now, we have a story about what would happen that we've been told for a century. We think, because there are chemical hooks in heroin, as you took it for a while, your body would become dependent on those hooks, you'd start to physically need them. And at the end of those 20 days, you'd all be heroin addicts, right? That's what I thought.

让我感到震惊的是，我意识到我们对成瘾的几乎所有认知都是错误的。如果我们开始接受关于成瘾的新证据，我认为我们除了改变毒品政策之外，还需要做出更多改变。 让我们从我们自以为知道的开始说起。我本以为知道的事情是这样的：想象一下这个中间的假设，现在你们每个人为了20天，每天使用三次海洛因。有些人对这个情境似乎比其他人更感兴趣。别担心，这只是个思想实验。想象你们真的这样做了，会发生什么呢？我们被灌输了一个流传了一个世纪的故事，我们认为因为海洛因中含有化学成分，当你长时间使用后，身体会对这些成分产生依赖，你会开始在生理上需要它们。于是，在这20天结束时，你们全都会成为海洛因上瘾者，对吧？这就是我以前的想法。

The first thing that alerted me to the fact something not right with this story is when it was explained to me, if I step out of this TED talk today and I get hit by a car and I break my hip, I'll be taken to hospital and I'll be given loads of diamorphine. Diamorphine is heroin. It's actually much better heroin than you're ever going to buy on the streets, because the stuff you buy from a drug dealer is contaminated actually very little of it is heroin, whereas the stuff you get from the doctor is medically pure. And you'll be given it for quite a long period of time. There are loads of people in this room. I mean, I realize that you've taken quite a lot of heroin, right? And anyone watching this anywhere in the world, this is happening. And if what we believe about addiction is right, those people are exposed to all those chemical hooks, what should happen? They should become addicts. This has been studied really carefully. It doesn't happen. You will have noticed if your grandmother had a hip replacement, she didn't come out as a junkie.

令我第一次意识到这个故事有问题的是，当有人跟我解释说，如果我今天走出这个TED演讲，然后被车撞了，髋骨骨折，我会被送到医院并被给予大量的二吗啡。二吗啡其实就是海洛因。这种海洛因比你在街上买到的要好得多，因为你从毒贩那里买到的海洛因是被掺杂的，实际上很少有纯海洛因，而医生给你的则是医用纯度的药物。而且你会在相当长一段时间内持续使用这种药物。这里有很多人，我想你们应该已经意识到，你们吸入了不少海洛因，对吧？在世界任何地方观看这个的人，这都是在发生的。如果我们对成瘾的看法是对的，那些人接触了所有这些化学成分，应该会发生什么？他们应该会变成瘾君子。但经过仔细研究，这种情况并没有发生。你会注意到，如果你的祖母做了髋关节置换手术，她并没有因此变成瘾君子。

And when I learned this, it just seemed so weird to me. So contrary to everything I'd been told, everything I thought I knew, I just thought it couldn't be right. Until I went and met a man called Bruce Alexander who's a professor of psychology in Vancouver who carried out an incredible experiment that I think really helps us to understand this issue. Professor Alexander explained to me, the idea of addiction we've all got in our heads, that story, comes partly from a series of experiments that were done earlier in the 20th century. They're really simple experiments. You can do them tonight when you go home if you feel a little bit sadistic. You get a rat and you put it in a cage and you give it two water bottles. One is just water and the other is water laced with either heroin or cocaine. If you do that, the rat will almost always prefer the drug water and almost always kill itself quite quickly. So there you go, right? That's how we think it works.

当我了解到这个的时候，我觉得非常奇怪。它完全与我之前被告知的一切相反，与我以为自己知道的一切相悖，所以我一开始觉得不可能是对的。直到我去见了一位名叫布鲁斯·亚历山大的心理学教授，他在温哥华进行了一项了不起的实验，我认为这有助于我们理解这个问题。亚历山大教授向我解释说，我们所有人脑海中的成瘾概念，那种说法，部分来自于20世纪早期进行的一系列实验。这些实验其实非常简单。如果你有一点点恶作剧的心理，今晚回家后就可以试试。你拿一只老鼠，把它放到笼子里，然后给它两瓶水。一瓶是普通的水，另一瓶则掺了海洛因或可卡因。如果你这样做，老鼠几乎总是会选择含毒品的水，而且很快就会因此丧命。所以，这就是我们一直以来对成瘾的理解方式。

In the 70s, Professor Alexander comes along and he looks at this experiment and he noticed something. He said, ah, we're putting the rat in an empty cage. It's got nothing to do except use these drugs. Let's try something a bit different. So Professor Alexander built a cage that he called rat park, which is basically heaven for rats, right? They've got loads of cheese, they've got loads of coloured balls, they've got loads of tunnels. Crucially, they've got loads of friends, they can have loads of sex, and they've got both the water bottles, the normal water and the drugged water. But here's the fascinating thing. In rat park, they don't like the drugged water. They almost never use it. None of them ever use it compulsively. None of them ever overdose. You go from almost 100% overdose when they're isolated to 0% overdose when they have happy and connected lives.

在七十年代，亚历山大教授进行了一项实验，他注意到一个问题。他说，我们把老鼠放在一个空荡荡的笼子里，除了使用这些药物，老鼠几乎没有其他事情可做。让我们尝试一些不同的方法吧。于是，亚历山大教授建造了一个他称之为“鼠乐园”的笼子，这里对老鼠来说就像天堂一样。有大量的奶酪、有各种颜色的球、有许多隧道。最重要的是，这里有很多同伴，它们可以进行很多社交和交配。此外，这里还有两种饮水瓶，一种普通的水，另一种是掺了药物的水。但是，有趣的是，在“鼠乐园”里，它们不喜欢饮用掺药物的水，几乎从不碰它。没有一只老鼠会强迫性地使用它，也没有一只出现过量的情况。在孤立环境中几乎100%出现过量的案例，在幸福和连接的生活中变为了0%。

Now, when you first saw this Professor Alexander thought, you know, maybe this is just a thing about rats, they're quite different to ours. Maybe not as different as we'd like. But, you know, unfortunately, there was a human experiment into the exact same principle happening at the exact same time. It was called the Vietnam War. In Vietnam, 20% of all American troops were using loads of heroin. And if you look at the news reports from the time, they were really worried because they thought, my God, we're going to have hundreds of thousands of junkies on the streets of the United States when the war ends. It made total sense. Now, those soldiers who were using loads of heroin were followed home.

当亚历山大教授第一次看到这个现象时，他可能认为这只是关于老鼠的一个特例，因为它们与我们人类有很大的不同。也许没有我们想象的那么不同，但不幸的是，当时正好有一个人与此原则相同的人类实验，那就是越南战争。在越南，大约20%的美军士兵大量使用海洛因。查看当时的新闻报道，人们非常担心，因为他们觉得，天啊，战争结束后，美国的街头将会涌现数十万瘾君子。这种担忧是完全合理的。而那些大量使用海洛因的士兵被跟踪到了他们回国的情况。

The archives of general psychiatry did a really detailed study. And what happened to them? It turns out they didn't go to rehab. They didn't go into withdrawal. 95% of them just stopped. Now, if you believe the story about chemical hooks that makes absolutely no sense, but Professor Alexander began to think there might be a different story about addiction. He said, what if addiction isn't about your chemical hooks? What if addiction is about your cage? What if addiction is an adaptation to your environment? Looking at this, there was another professor called Peter Cohen in the Netherlands who said, maybe we shouldn't even call it addiction. Maybe we should call it bonding. Human beings have a natural and innate need to bond.

《普通精神病学档案》进行了一项非常详细的研究。结果如何呢？事实证明，他们并没有去康复中心，也没有出现戒断反应，其中95%的人直接戒掉了。如果你相信所谓“化学钩子”的理论，这似乎让人费解。但是，亚历山大教授开始认为成瘾可能有不同的解释。他提出一个假设：如果成瘾不是因为化学钩子，而是因为“你的笼子”（即环境）呢？如果成瘾是对环境的一种适应呢？在这样的背景下，荷兰的另一个教授彼得·科恩提出，也许我们不应该称其为成瘾，或许应该称之为“纽带”。人类有一种天然且内在的建立联系的需求。

And when we're happy and healthy, we'll bond and connect with each other. But if you can't do that because you're traumatized or isolated or beaten down by life, you will bond with something that will give you some sense of relief. Now that might be gambling. That might be pornography. That might be cocaine. That might be cannabis. But you will bond and connect with something because that's our nature. That's what we want as human beings. And I think, you know, at first I found this quite a difficult thing to get my head round. But one way to help me to think about it is, and I can see, you know, I've got over by my seat there, a bottle of water, right? I'm looking at lots of you and lots of you have bottles of water with you, right?

当我们快乐和健康时，我们会与彼此建立联系。然而，如果你因为创伤、被孤立或者生活的打击而无法做到这一点，你会选择和某些东西建立联系，以获得某种程度的解脱。这可能是赌博，可能是色情，也可能是可卡因或者大麻。因为这就是我们的天性，作为人类，我们渴望连接。起初，我觉得这个观点很难理解，但有一种方式帮助我思考这个问题。比如，我看到我座位旁边有一瓶水，我注意到你们很多人也带了水瓶，对吧？

Forget drugs. Forget the drug war. Totally legally, all of those bottles of water could be bottles of vodka, right? We could all be getting drunk. I might after this. But we're not, right? Now because you've been able to afford the approximately a gazillion pounds that it costs to get into a TED talk, I'm guessing you guys could afford to be drinking vodka for the next six months. You wouldn't end up homeless. You're not going to do that. And the reason you're not going to do that is not because anyone's stopping you. It's because you've got bonds and connections that you want to be present for. You've got work you love. You've got people you love. You've got healthy relationships.

忘了毒品，忘了毒品战争。完全合法地说，那些瓶装水全都可以是伏特加，对吧？我们都可以喝醉。也许我演讲完后会这样做。但是，我们没有，对吧？既然你们能够负担得起参加TED演讲所需的天价门票，我猜你们也完全负担得起未来六个月每天喝伏特加。你们不会因此无家可归。你们不这样做的原因不是因为有人阻止你们，而是因为你们有想要陪伴的人和事。你们有热爱的工作，有爱的人，有健康的关系。

And a core part of addiction I came to think and I believe the evidence suggests is about not being able to bear to be present in your life. Now, this has really significant implications. The most obvious implications are for the war on drugs, right? In Arizona, I went out with a group of women who were made to wear t-shirts saying I was a drug addict and go out on chain gangs and dig graves while members of the public could jeer at them. And when those women get out of prison, they're going to have criminal records that mean they'll never work in the legal economy again.

我开始认为，成瘾的核心部分是无法忍受生活中的存在感，我相信证据也支持这一观点。这一点有着非常重要的影响，最明显的是对毒品战争的影响。在亚利桑那州，我看到一群女性被迫穿着印有“我是毒品成瘾者”字样的T恤，组成劳改队伍挖掘墓穴，期间公众还能对她们进行嘲笑。而当这些女性出狱后，她们将有犯罪记录，这意味着她们永远无法在合法经济中找到工作。

Now that's a very extreme example, obviously in the case of the chain gang, but actually almost everywhere in the world we treat addicts to some degree like that. We punish them, we shame them, we give them criminal records, we put barriers between them reconnecting.

这当然是一个极端的例子，比如在犯人队伍的情况下，但实际上在世界上的几乎每个地方，我们在某种程度上都这样对待成瘾者。我们惩罚他们，羞辱他们，给他们留上犯罪记录，并在他们重新融入社会时设置障碍。

And there was a doctor in Canada, Dr. Gabon Marte, an amazing man who said to me, if you wanted to design a system that would make addiction worse, you would design that system. Now, there's a place that decided to do the exact opposite and I went there to see how it worked.

在加拿大有一位医生，名叫加博·马特博士，他是一个了不起的人。他对我说，如果你想设计一个让成瘾情况变得更糟的系统，那这个系统就是你要设计的。现在，有一个地方决定采取完全相反的方法，我去那里看了看他们是怎么做到的。

In the year 2000, Portugal had one of the worst drug problems in Europe. One percent of the population was addicted to heroin, which is kind of mind-blowing. And every year they tried the American way more and more. They punished people and stigmatized them and shamed them more. And every year the problem got worse.

在2000年，葡萄牙的毒品问题在欧洲是最严重的之一。全国有1%的人口沉迷于海洛因，这真是令人震惊。每年他们都越来越多地尝试美国式的方法：惩罚、污名化和羞辱吸毒者。然而，问题每年都在恶化。

One day the prime minister and the leader of the opposition got together and basically said, look, we can't go on with a country where we're having more people becoming heroin addicts. Let's set up a panel of scientists and doctors to figure out what would genuinely solve the problem.

有一天，首相和反对党领袖聚在一起，基本上是说，我们不能继续在一个有越来越多人变成海洛因成瘾者的国家生活。让我们成立一个由科学家和医生组成的小组，来找出真正能够解决这个问题的方法。

They said, by an amazing man called Dr. Huau Gu Lao, to look at all this new evidence and they came back and they said decriminalize all drugs from cannabis to crack. But, and this is the crucial next step, take all the money we used to spend on cutting addicts off, on disconnecting them and spend it instead on reconnecting them with the society.

他们提到了一位了不起的人，名叫华乌·古老博士，让他查看所有这些新证据。结果他回来后建议，将所有毒品从大麻到快克全部非刑罪化。但，这只是关键的下一步：把我们之前用来切断瘾君子与社会联系的钱，转而用来帮助他们重新融入社会。

And that's not, essentially that's not really what we think of, what they did wasn't really what we think of as drug treatment in the United States and Britain. So they do do residential rehab, they do do psychological therapy that does have some value. But the biggest thing they did was the complete opposite of what we do.

这并不是我们所认为的美英常见的药物治疗方式。虽然他们确实提供住院康复和心理治疗，这些有一定的价值，但他们做的最重要的事情与我们完全相反。

A massive program of job creation for addicts and microloans for addicts to set up small businesses. So say you used to be a mechanic. When you're ready they go to a garage and they'll say, if you employ this guy for a year, we'll pay half his wages.

为成瘾者提供一个大规模的就业计划，并提供小额贷款以帮助他们创办小型企业。比如，如果你曾经是一名机械师，当你准备好重返就业市场时，他们会联系一家车库，并告诉那里的老板，如果你雇佣这个人成为员工一年，我们将支付他一半的工资。

The goal was to make sure that every addict in Portugal had something to get out of bed for in the morning. And when I went and met the addicts in Portugal, it's fascinating what they've said is, as they rediscovered purpose, they rediscovered bonds and relationships with the wider society.

目标是确保在葡萄牙的每一个瘾君子都有早上起床的动力。当我去那里与这些瘾君子交流时，我发现他们说，当他们重新找到生活的目标时，他们也重新建立了与社会的联系和纽带。

It'll be 15 years this year since that experiment began and the results are in. Injecting drug uses down in Portugal or according to the British Journal of Criminology by 50%, overdoses massively down, HIV is massively down among addicts. Addiction in every study is significantly down.

今年是那个实验开始的第15年，结果已经出来了。根据《英国犯罪学杂志》，葡萄牙的注射毒品使用量减少了50%，过量用药的情况大幅降低，感染HIV的吸毒者人数也大幅减少。每一项研究都显示，成瘾行为显著下降。

One of the ways you know it's worked so well is that almost nobody in Portugal wants to go back to the old system. Now that's the kind of political implications. I actually think there's a layer of implications to all this research below that.

你可以知道这个做法非常有效，因为在葡萄牙，几乎没人想回到旧制度。这是政治方面的影响。我实际上认为，在这项研究的背后还有更深一层的影响。

We live in a culture where people feel really increasingly vulnerable to all sorts of addictions, whether it's to their smartphones or to shopping or to eating. You know, before these talks began, you guys know this, that we were told we weren't allowed to have our smartphones on.

我们生活在一种文化中，人们对各种各样的成瘾感到越来越脆弱，无论是对智能手机、购物还是饮食的上瘾。在这些讨论开始之前，你们知道的，我们被告知不允许打开智能手机。

And I have to say, a lot of you looked an awful lot like addicts who were being told their dealer was going to be unavailable for the next couple of hours. And yeah, a lot of us feel like that. And it might sound weird to say, oh you know, I've been talking about how disconnection is a major driver of addiction.

我不得不说，你们很多人看起来都像是被告知自己的“供应商”接下来几个小时不可用的瘾君子。是的，我们很多人确实有这样的感觉。可能听起来有些奇怪，但你知道，我一直在谈论断联是成瘾的一个主要因素。

But weird to say it's growing because you think, well, we're the most connected society that's ever been, surely. But I increasingly began to think that the connection we have, the connections we have, we think we have, are like a kind of parody of human connection.

虽然奇怪地说孤独感在增长，因为你可能会想，我们现在是史上联系最紧密的社会。但是，我越来越觉得，我们所拥有的连接、我们自认为拥有的连接，就像是人类真正联系的一种讽刺。

If you have a crisis in your life, you'll notice something. It won't be your Twitter followers who come to sit with you. It won't be your Facebook friends who help you turn it round. It'll be your flesh and blood friends who you have deep and nuanced and textured face to face relationships with.

如果你生活中遇到危机，你会注意到一些事情。不会是你的推特粉丝来陪伴你，也不会是你的脸书好友帮你渡过难关。而是你那些面对面交往的、拥有深厚和细腻关系的真实朋友，会在你身边支持你。

And I think there's a study I learned about from Bill McKibben, the environmental writer, I think tells us a lot about this. It looked at the number of close friends, the average American believes they can call on in a crisis. That number has been declining steadily since the 1950s.

我从环境作家比尔·麦基本那里了解到一个研究，我认为这个研究告诉了我们很多信息。研究调查了一个普通美国人在危机中可以依靠的亲密朋友的数量。自1950年代以来，这个数字一直在逐渐减少。

The amount of floor space an individual has in their home has been steadily increasing. And I think that's like a metaphor for the choice we've made as a culture, right? We've traded floor space for friends. We've traded stuff for connections.

每个人在家中的居住面积一直在稳步增加。我认为这就像一个隐喻，代表着我们作为一个文化所做出的选择，对吧？我们用居住空间换来了朋友的减少，用物质换来了人际关系的疏远。

And the result is that we are one of the loneliest societies there has ever been. And Bruce Alexander, the guide of the Rat Park experiment, says, we talk all the time in addiction about individual recovery. And it's right to talk about that. But we need to talk much more about social recovery.

结果是，我们成为有史以来最孤独的社会之一。进行“鼠乐园”实验的布鲁斯·亚历山大（Bruce Alexander）指出，我们谈论成瘾问题时，总是提到个人恢复，这当然是很重要的。但我们更需要大力讨论的是社会恢复。

Something's gone wrong with us, not just as individuals but as a group. And we created a society where for a lot of us, life looks a whole lot more like that isolated cage and a whole lot less like rat park. If I'm honest, this isn't why I went into it, right? I didn't go in to discover the political stuff, the social stuff. I wanted to know how to help the people I love. And when I came back from this long journey and I'd learned all this, I looked at the addicts in my life and if you really candid, it's hard loving an addict and there's going to be lots of people who know in this room, you are angry a lot of the time. And I think one of the reasons why this debate is so charged is because it runs through the heart of each of us, right? Everyone has a bit of them that looks at an addict and thinks, I wish someone would just stop you.

我们出现了问题，不仅仅是作为个体，而是作为一个群体。我们创造了一个社会，对很多人来说，生活看起来更像是孤立的笼子，而不是“老鼠乐园”。如果我要诚实说，这并不是我当初进入这个领域的原因，对吧？我不是为了研究政治或社会问题而来的。我是想知道如何帮助我爱的人。当我结束了长时间的旅程，学习了这一切后，我看着生活中的成瘾者，坦率地说，爱一个成瘾者真的很困难。这里可能会有很多人明白，你会经常感到愤怒。我认为，这场争论之所以如此激烈，是因为它触及了我们每个人的心灵，对吧？每个人心里都有一部分在看着成瘾者，想着，希望有人能让你停下来。

And the kind of script we're told for how to deal with the addicts in our lives is typified by, I think, by the reality show, intervention. If you guys haven't seen it, I think everything in our lives is typified by reality TV, but that's another TED talk. If you're noticing the show, intervention, it's a pretty simple premise. You get an addict, all the people in their life gather them together and say if you don't shape up, confront them with what they're doing and they say if you don't shape up, we're going to cut you off, right? So what they do is they take the connection to the addict and they threaten it. They make it contingent on the addict behaving the way they want. And I began to think, I began to see why that approach doesn't work. And I began to think that almost that's like the importing of the logic of the drug war into our private lives.

我们对于如何处理生活中瘾君子的处理方式，常常被像真人秀《干预》这样的节目所影响。如果你们没看过这个节目，那就说明我们的生活太多方面都被真人秀影响了，不过这又是另一个主题。《干预》这个节目的理念很简单：你找一个瘾君子，召集他们生活中的所有人，然后告诉瘾君子，如果你不改正自己的行为，我们就要和你断绝关系。也就是说，他们用威胁会断绝关系来迫使瘾君子按照他们希望的方式改变自己的行为。我逐渐意识到，这种方法并不奏效，也开始理解这种方法就像是把“毒品战争”的逻辑应用到了我们的私人生活中。

So I was thinking, well, how can I be Portuguese, right? And what I try to do now, and I can't tell you I do it consistently and I can't tell you it's easy, is to say to the addicts in my life that I want to deepen the connection with them, to say to them, I love you, whether you're using or you're not. I love you, whatever state you're in, and if you need me, I'll come and sit with you because I love you and I don't want you to be alone or to feel alone. And I think the core of that message, you're not alone, we love you, has to be at every level of how we respond to addicts socially, politically and individually. For a hundred years now, we've been singing war songs about addicts. I think all along we should have been singing love songs to them because the opposite of addiction is not sobriety. The opposite of addiction is connection. Thank you.

所以我在想，我怎么才能成为一个真正的葡萄牙人呢？现在我努力去做的是，虽然我不能保证一直都这样做，也不能说这很容易，但我会对我生命中的那些有瘾的人说，我想加深与他们的联系。我会对他们说，无论你是否在使用毒品，我都爱你，无论你处于什么状态，我都爱你。如果你需要我，我会陪在你身边，因为我爱你，我不愿让你感到孤单。我认为这个信息的核心是：你并不孤单，我们爱你。这应该是我们从社会、政治以及个人层面上对待上瘾者的基本态度。过去一百年来，我们一直在对上瘾者唱“战争歌曲”。而实际上，我们应该一直在为他们唱“爱情歌曲”，因为上瘾的反面不是戒断，而是连结。谢谢。