Avoid fatalistic addict identity
Casting drug users as ‘patients’ and depicting psychiatrists and doctors as the only ones who can help them can foster a permanent ‘addict’ identity, clutching at medical remedies and extinguishing the hope of a natural recovery.
See, for example:
D Best et al, Addiction careers and the natural history of change, NTA Research Briefing 20, 2006.
J McIntosh and N McKeganey, ‘Addicts’ narratives of recovery from drug use: constructing an non-addict identity’, Drugs: education, prevention and policy, 8, 2000.
Rosie Winterton, Minister of State for Health Services, Written Answer, 7 December 2006.