Quotes by Maia Szalavitz

Maia Szalavitz

A lot of addiction actually ends by age 30 – something like 50 percent of all addictions with the exception of tobacco – and I think a lot of what’s going on there is that the self-control areas of the brain are finally developed enough to be able to stop yourself from relapsing or just continuing. There is a maturational aspect to it as well.

Addiction

Self

Thinking

A lot of the stuff that we say about drugs is just wrong.

Drug

Stuff

Addiction is when you fall in love with a drug instead of a child or a lover and the learning that takes part in that part of the brain is designed by evolution to get us to persist despite negative consequences to do what we need to do – because I don’t know anybody who could survive a relationship or parenting if not for the ability to persist despite negative consequences. The problem is when that gets misdirected to a drug and then you can find yourself in some very negative and potentially deadly situations.

Addiction

Children

Falling In Love

Because addiction is a developmental problem, the developmental stage is important, things like employment are important, things like having a sense of purpose, meaning and hope are important, and this is why there’s been so many spiritual cures for addiction, because those things often give people a sense of meaning and purpose.

Giving

People

Spiritual

Because of the war on drugs, pain patients are treated with skepticism and pain doctors live in fear of being prosecuted for overprescribing. The end result is that addicts still get their opioids without much trouble, while genuine patients often can’t find treatment. Those who do must typically be tracked in a database and must schedule frequent, expensive doctor visits for surveillance like urine testing.

Doctors

Pain

War

Do we really want to base our 21st-century policy on what the colonialist preferred at a certain time in history, not at all based on health or what the preferences of different cultures might be? That’s just ridiculous.

Culture

Different

Want

Drug warriors’ staunch opposition to needle exchanges to prevent the spread of HIV in addicts delayed the programs’ widespread introduction in most states for years. A federal ban on funding for these programs wasn’t lifted until 2009. Contrast this with what happened in the U.K. At the peak of the AIDS epidemic in the mid-1990s, the HIV infection rate in IV drug users in the U.K. was about 1%. In New York City, the American epicenter, that figure was 50%. The British had introduced widespread needle exchange in 1986. That country had no heterosexual AIDS epidemic.

Country

New York

Warrior

I also had my own addiction to cocaine and heroin in my 20s. I knew that it was driven not by the things that the drug workers were telling me; in fact, I couldn’t believe any drug information that was given to me by authorities because I knew from my own experience that it was wrong.

Addiction

Believe

Drug

I don’t have kids, but I’ve often noticed when people first become parents they seem to completely forget their own adolescence and they start to, as their kids become teenagers, try to do the things that didn’t stop them themselves. And I jokingly frame this as: Your brain gets wiped of those memories when you become a parent.

Kids

Memories

Teenager

I don’t think there’s a single child who’s ever benefitted from being arrested for marijuana or for underage drinking; this does not solve the problem. It makes worse problems because a) it puts them into the system, and b) it gives them a potential criminal record to have to deal with and it can have consequences for school.

Children

Drinking

School

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Addiction

Alcohol

Believe

Bullying

Caffeine

Cages

Children

Country

Culture

Different

Doctors

Drinking

Drug

Drug Laws

Drug Use

Ends

Falling In Love

Fun

Giving

Home

Hurt

Incarceration

June

Justice

Kids

Law

Legalizing Marijuana

Love Is

Marijuana

Matter

Medical Problems

Memories

New York

Order

Outcomes

Pain

Passion

People

Problem

Punishment

Racism

Racist

Real

Recovery

School

Self

Should

Spiritual

Strong

Stuff

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Quotes by Maia Szalavitz

Maia Szalavitz

A lot of the stuff that we say about drugs is just wrong.

Do we really want to base our 21st-century policy on what the colonialist preferred at a certain time in history, not at all based on health or what the preferences of different cultures might be? That’s just ridiculous.

I also had my own addiction to cocaine and heroin in my 20s. I knew that it was driven not by the things that the drug workers were telling me; in fact, I couldn’t believe any drug information that was given to me by authorities because I knew from my own experience that it was wrong.

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Topics by Maia Szalavitz

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The Future Blueprint

The Home Therapist: Anti Anxiety

The Autobiography

The Behaviour Diary

The Dating Diary

The Relationship Therapist

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