Noget af det første jeg kan huske, var da jeg ville vække et familiemedlem, og var ikke i stand til det. Jeg blot var et barn, så jeg forstod det ikke rigtigt, men da jeg blev ældre, indså jeg, at vi havde stof-misbrug i min familie. som senere inkluderede kokain-misbrug.
One of my earliest memories is of 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 realized we had drug addiction in my family, including later cocaine addiction.
Jeg har tænkt meget over det i den seneste tid, til dels fordi det nu er præcis 100 år siden stoffer blev forbudt i USA og Storbritannien og vi tvang resten af verden det. Det er et århundrede siden vi lavede denne skæbnesvangre beslutning at pågribe misbrugere og straffe dem og lade dem lide, fordi vi mente at det ville afskrække dem - det ville give dem et incitament til at holde op.
I'd been thinking about it a lot lately, partly because it's now exactly 100 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 believed that would deter them; it would give them an incentive to stop.
Og for nogle få år siden undersøgte jeg nogle misbrugere, som jeg holdt af, og forsøgte at finde en måde at hjælpe dem. Og jeg erkendte, at der var masser af helt basale spørgsmål, som jeg bare ikke havde svaret på, som f.eks. hvad forårsager misbrug? Hvorfor fortsætter vi med den metode, som ikke lader til at virke. og findes der en bedre metode, som vi kunne prøve i stedet for?
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. And I realized 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?
Så jeg læste en masse om det, og jeg kunne ikke rigtigt finde de svar, som jeg søgte. Så jeg tænkte, ok, jeg vil opsøge de personer i verden, som beskæftigede sig med det her, for at tale med dem og se, om jeg kunne lære noget af dem. Jeg vidste ikke at jeg skulle rejse 50.000 km og ville møde mange forskellige mennesker, lige fra en transseksuel drug-pusher i Brownsville i Brooklyn, til en forsker, som brugte meget tid med at fodre mungoer med hallucinogener, for at se om de kunne li' dem -- det viste sig, at det gjorde de, men kun i særlige omstændigheder -- til det eneste land som nogensinde har afkriminaliseret alle stoffer, fra cannabis til crack -- Portugal. Og den erkendelse, som virkelig tog mig, var, at næsten alt det vi tror om misbrug, er forkert. og hvis vi begynder at absorbere de nye beviser om afhængighed, så tror jeg, vi er nødt til at ændre meget mere end vores narkotikapolitik.
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 lived this and studied this and talk to them and see if I could learn from them. And I didn't realize 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 decriminalized all drugs, from cannabis to crack, Portugal. And the thing I realized 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.
Men lad os starte med hvad vi tror vi ved, og hvad jeg troede, jeg vidste. Lad os se på den midterste række her. Forestil jer i gik i 20 dage og tog heroin tre gange om dagen. Nogle af jer ser lidt mere entusiastiske ud end andre ved den ide. (Latter) Bare rolig, det er bare et tankeeksperiment. Forestil jer at i gør det. Hvad ville der ske? Vi har en 100 år gammel fortælling om, hvad der ville ske. Vi tror, at fordi der er kemiske kroge i heroin når man har taget det i et stykke tid, at kroppen vil blive afhængig af disse kroge, at man vil få et fysisk behov for dem, og at efter disse 20 dage vil alle være heroin-misbrugere - ikke? Det var det jeg troede.
But let's start with what we think we know, what I thought I knew. Let's think about this middle row here. Imagine all of you, for 20 days now, went off and used heroin three times a day. Some of you look a little more enthusiastic than others at this prospect. (Laughter) 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.
Det første, der gjorde mig mistænksom ved den historie var, da jeg blev forklaret, at hvis jeg går ud og bliver ramt af en bil, og brækker hoften, så vil jeg komme på hospitalet og få en masse diacetylmorfin. Diacetylmorfin er heroin. Det er faktisk en langt bedre heroin, end den man køber på gaden fordi det man køber hos en drug-pusher er forurenet. Faktisk er der kun lidt heroin i det, hvorimod det, som lægen giver dig er helt rent. Og man bliver givet det over ret lang tid. Der er mange her i dette rum, som ikke er klar over, at de har taget end hel del heroin. Det sker overalt i verden, og hvis dét vi tror om afhængighed er rigtigt, så er alle disse mennesker udsat for de kemiske kroge. Hvad burde så ske? De burde blive misbrugere. Dette er blevet undersøgt meget grundigt. Det sker ikke. Du har sikkert set, at din bedstemor ikke kom ud efter en hofteoperation, som en junkie.
First thing that alerted me to the fact that something's 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 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, you may not realize it, you've taken quite a lot of heroin. And anyone who is 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. (Laughter)
Da jeg hørte dette, virkede det så underligt så modsat af, hvad jeg havde fået at vide og hvad jeg troede jeg vidste. Jeg troede ikke, at det var rigtigt, indtil jeg mødte Bruce Alexander. Han er professor i psykologi i Vancouver, som har foretaget et utroligt eksperiment, jeg synes virkelig hjælper os til at forstå dette spørgsmål. Professor Alexander forklarede mig at den ide om afhængighed, som vi alle har, delvis stammer fra nogle eksperimenter, der blev udført tidligere i det 20. århundrede. De var meget simple eksperimenter. Man kan selv lave dem derhjemme, hvis man føler sig lidt sadistisk til mode. Man tager en rotte og sætter den i et bur og giver den to vandflasker. Den ene er bare vand og den anden er tilsat heroin eller kokain. Rotten vil næsten altid foretrække heroinen eller kokainen og vil næsten altid slå sig selv ihjel ret hurtigt. Det er sådan vi tror det fungerer - ikke? Professor Alexander kiggede nærmere på eksperimentet i 70'erne, og han lagde mærke til noget. Han sagde "Aha, man sætter rotten i et tomt bur." "Den har intet at foretage sig, bortset fra at tage disse stoffer." "Lad os gøre det lidt anderledes." Professor Alexander byggede så et bur, som han kaldte 'Rotteparken', som, dybest set, er himlen for rotter. De fik masser af ost, de fik masser af farvede bolde, de fik masser af tunneller, og, afgørende, de fik masser af venner. De kunne have masser af sex. Og de fik både rent vand og narko-vand. Men her kommer det interessante, i Rotteparken kunne de ikke lide narko-vandet. De drak det næsten aldrig. Ingen af dem drak det tvangsmæssigt. Ingen fik en overdosis. Man gik fra næsten 100 procent overdosis, når de var isolerede, til nul procent, når de er glade og forbundne.
And when I learned this, it 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 met a man called Bruce Alexander. He's a professor of psychology in Vancouver who carried out an incredible experiment 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. You can do them tonight at home if you feel a little 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. 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 different. So Professor Alexander built a cage that he called "Rat Park," which is basically heaven for rats. They've got loads of cheese, they've got loads of colored 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 drug water. They almost never use it. None of them ever use it compulsively. None of them ever overdose. You go from almost 100 percent overdose when they're isolated to zero percent overdose when they have happy and connected lives.
Da professor Alexander første gang så dette, tænkte han at måske gælder det bare rotter. De er anderledes end os. Måske alligevel ikke så forskellige, som vi gerne vil tro. Heldigvis var der, på samme tid, et eksperiment med mennesker, efter nøjagtig samme princip. Det blev kaldt Vietnamkrigen. I Vietnam tog 20 procent af alle amerikanske tropper masser af heroin, og når man læser aviser fra dengang, så var man meget bekymret, fordi man troede "Åh Gud. Vi får hundredtusinder af junkier på gaderne i USA, når krigen slutter". Det var helt logisk. De soldater, som tog masser af heroin, blev fulgt hjem. Archives of General Psychiatry udførte en meget detaljeret undersøgelse. Og hvad skete der med dem? Det viste sig, at de ikke gik til afvænning. De gik ikke tilbage på stoffer. 95 procent holdt bare op. Historien om kemiske kroge giver ingen mening. Men professor Alexander tænkte, at der kunne være en anden forklaring på afhængighed. Han tænkte, "hvad hvis afhængighed ikke skyldes kemiske kroge?" Hvad hvis misbruget skyldes buret? Hvad hvis afhængighed er en tilpasning til miljøet?
Now, when he first saw this, Professor Alexander thought, maybe this is just a thing about rats, they're quite different to us. Maybe not as different as we'd like, but, you know -- But fortunately, 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 percent 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. 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. Ninety-five percent 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?
Professor Peter Cohen fra Holland kiggede på det, og sagde at måske bør det ikke engang kaldes misbrug. Måske bør vi kalde det tilknytning. Mennesker har en naturlig iboende trang til at tilknytte sig, og når vi er glade og sunde, så knytter og forbinder vi os med hinanden. Men hvis man ikke kan gøre det, fordi man er traumatiseret eller isoleret eller slået ud af livet, så vil man knytte sig til noget, som giver én en følelse af lettelse. Det kan være spil, det kan være pornografi, det kan være kokain, det kan være cannabis, men man vil knytte sig til noget, fordi det er ens natur. Det er det vi ønsker som mennesker.
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, 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.
I starten, fandt jeg det svært at få ind i mit hoved, men en måde, som hjalp mig til at forstå det, er jeg ser, at jeg har en flaske vand på mit sæde, ikke? Jeg ser at mange af jer, har en flaske vand hos jer. Glem stofferne. Glem krigen mod drugs. Alle disse flasker kunne, helt legalt, være fyldt med vodka, ikke? Vi kunne alle blive fulde, (latter) men det bliver vi ikke. Og da i har kunnet betale det hvide ud øjnene som det koster, at komme til TED talk, så tror jeg, at i også har råd til at drikke vodka i de næste seks måneder. I ville ikke blive hjemløse. Men i ville ikke gøre det, og det skyldes ikke at noget vil hindre jer. Det er fordi i har tilknytninger og forbindelser, som i helst vil være til stede for. I har et arbejde i holder af. I har nogle i holder. I har sunde relationer. Og en central del af afhængighed, tror jeg nu og jeg mener at beviserne bekræfter, at det drejer sig om dette, ikke at kunne bære, at være til stede i ens liv.
And at first, I found this quite a difficult thing to get my head around, but one way that helped me to think about it is, I can see, I've got over by my seat a bottle of water, right? I'm looking at lots of you, and lots of you have bottles of water with you. Forget the 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 -- (Laughter) -- but we're not. Now, because you've been able to afford the approximately 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. 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.
Det har rigtigt store følgevirkninger. Den mest indlysende følgevirkning gælder for Krigen mod Drugs. I Arizona, var jeg ude sammen med en gruppe kvinder, som skulle bære T-shirts med påskriften 'Jeg var en misbruger', og gå lænkede i kæder og grave grøfter, mens folk spottede dem. Når disse kvinder kommer ud af fængslet, så har de en plettet straffeattest, som betyder, at de aldrig vil arbejde i den legale økonomi igen. Dette er et meget ekstremt eksempel med lænkede kvinder, men over stort set hele verden, behandler vi, til en vis grad, misbrugere på denne måde. Vi straffer dem. Vi skammer dem. Vi giver dem en plettet straffeattest. Vi sætter hindringer op mod dannelse af ny tilknytning. Der var en doktor i Canada, Dr. Gabor Maté, en forbløffende mand, som fortalte mig, at hvis man ville lave et system, som vil gøre misbruget værre, så ville man lave dette system.
Now, this has really significant implications. The most obvious implications are for the War on Drugs. 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 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. 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. There was a doctor in Canada, Dr. Gabor Maté, an amazing man, who said to me, if you wanted to design a system that would make addiction worse, you would design that system.
Nuvel, der findes et sted, som besluttede at gøre det stik modsatte, og jeg tog dertil for at se hvordan det virkede. I år 2000 havde Portugal én af de værste problemer med drugs i Europa. Én procent af befolkningen var misbrugere af heroin, hvilket er vanvittigt mange. Og hvert år forsøgte de sig mere og mere med ´the American Way´, Man straffede folk og stigmatiserede dem og skammede dem og hvert år blev problemet værre. En dag stak Premierministeren og lederen af oppositionen hovedet sammen, og sagde "Det ikke længere kan gå" "med at land, hvor man har stadig flere, som bliver heroinmisbrugere." "Lad os nedsætte et videnskabeligt panel" "som skal finde ud af, hvad der virkelig vil løse problemet." Og panelet blev sat op og ledt af en utrolig mand, Dr. João Goulão, som skulle skaffe klarhed over al den ny viden Man kom tilbage og sagde "Afkriminaliser alle stoffer fra cannabis til crack, men" -- og det er det væsentlige -- "brug alle de penge, som vi brugte på at bekæmpe stofmisbrugere," "og hindre nye tilknytninger," "og brug i stedet pengene på at genskabe tilknytning til samfundet." Det er ikke lige det, vi forstår ved misbrugsbehandling i USA og Storbritannien. Så de brugte misbrugscentre, de brugte psykologhjælp, der har nogen virkning. Men det største, som de gjorde, var det stik modsatte af hvad vi gør: Et kæmpeprogram for jobskabelse for misbrugere, og mikrolån for misbrugere, så de kan starte en mindre forretning. Lad os sige, at én havde været mekaniker, Når man er klar, så ville man besøge et værksted og sige "hvis du ansætter denne fyr i et år, så vil vi betale halvdelen af hans løn". Målet var at give alle misbrugere i Portugal noget at stå op til om morgenen. Da jeg mødte misbrugerne i Portugal, sagde de, at de genfandt formål i livet, de genfandt tilknytninger og relationer med det omkringliggende samfund.
Now, there's a place that decided to do the exact opposite, and I went there to see how it worked. 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. And 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 ever more people becoming heroin addicts. Let's set up a panel of scientists and doctors to figure out what would genuinely solve the problem. And they set up a panel led by an amazing man called Dr. João Goulão, 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 society." And that's not really what we think of as drug treatment in the United States and Britain. So they do do residential rehab, they do psychological therapy, that does have some value. But the biggest thing they did was the complete opposite of what we do: 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'll go to a garage, and they'll say, if you employ this guy for a year, we'll pay half his wages. 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, what they said is, as they rediscovered purpose, they rediscovered bonds and relationships with the wider society.
Der er nu gået 15 år siden det eksperiment begyndte, og resultatet kan nu ses: Brug af sprøjte er i henhold til 'The British Journal of Ciminology' nede på 50 procent, fem-nul procent. Overdosis'er er reduceret voldsomt. HIV er reduceret voldsomt. Alle undersøgelser viser et betydeligt mindre misbrug. Den måde man ved, at det har virket så godt, er, at kun få vil tilbage til det gamle system.
It'll be 15 years this year since that experiment began, and the results are in: injecting drug use is down in Portugal, according to the British Journal of Criminology, by 50 percent, five-zero percent. Overdose is massively down, HIV is massively down among addicts. Addiction in every study is significantly down. 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.
Dette er den politiske implikation. Jeg mener faktisk, at der under den, findes et lag af implikationer under dette, til al den forskning. Vi lever i en kultur, hvor befolkningen, i stigende grad, føler sig sårbar til afhængighed af alt muligt, hvad enten det er deres smartphone, eller det er shopping eller spisning. Før disse foredrag -- det ved i -- fik vi at vide, at vi ikke måtte tage smartphones med, og jeg må nok sige, at der var mange af jer, som lignede misbrugere, som får at vide, at deres pusher var borte i et par timer. (latter) Mange af os føler det sådan, og det lyder måske mærkeligt at sige det, at jeg har talt om hvordan manglende tilknytning, er en stor drivkraft bag misbrug, og det er mærkeligt, at sige at det er stigende, fordi man tror, at vi er det mest sammenknyttede samfund i verden - med rette. Men jeg er i stigende grad begyndt at mene, at de tilknytninger vi har eller tror vi har, er lidt af en parodi på menneskelig tilknytning. Hvis du har en krise i livet, så vil du opdage at det ikke er dine Twitter-followers, som kommer for at besøge dig. Det er ikke dine Facebook-venner, som hjælper dig til at få det til at løbe rundt. Det er der kun dine venner af kød og blod, som du har en dyb, nuanceret og rig ansigt-til-ansigt forhold til. Der er en undersøgelse af miljøforfatteren Bill McKibben, som jeg synes fortæller en hel del om dette. Han så på det antal af nære venner, som den gennemsnitlige amerikaner tror de kan stole på i en krisesituation. Antallet har været jævnt faldende siden 1950'erne. Antallet af kvadratmetre i deres hjem har været konstant stigende, og jeg mener at det er et udtryk for det valg vi har gjort som en kultur. Vi har handlet kvadratmetre for venner. Vi har handlet ragelse for tilknytninger, og resultatet er, at vi er et af de ensomste samfund, der nogensinde har været. Og Bruce Alexander, ham der lavede Rottepark eksperimentet, siger at om misbrug, taler vi hele tiden om individuel genopretning, og det er rigtigt at tale om det, men vi må tale langt mere om social genopretning. Noget er gået galt med os, ikke blot som individer, men som gruppe. Vi har skabt et samfund hvor livet - for manges vedkommende - i høj grad ligner et isoleret bur og langt mindre en Rottepark.
Now, that's the political implications. I actually think there's a layer of implications to all this research below that. 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. Before these talks began -- you guys know this -- we were told we weren't allowed to have our smartphones on, and I have to say, a lot of you looked an awful lot like addicts who were told their dealer was going to be unavailable for the next couple of hours. (Laughter) A lot of us feel like that, and it might sound weird to say, I've been talking about how disconnection is a major driver of addiction and weird to say it's growing, because you think we're the most connected society that's ever been, surely. But I increasingly began to think that the connections we have or think we have, are like a kind of parody of human connection. 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, and there's a study I learned about from Bill McKibben, the environmental writer, that 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. 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. We've traded floorspace for friends, we've traded stuff for connections, and the result is we are one of the loneliest societies there has ever been. And Bruce Alexander, the guy who did 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. Something's gone wrong with us, not just with individuals but as a group, and we've 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.
Når jeg skal være ærlig, så er dette ikke grunden til at jeg begyndte på det her. Jeg gik ikke ind i det, for at lære om det politiske og det sociale. Jeg ønskede at vide, hvordan man hjalp de mennesker jeg holdt af. Da jeg kom tilbage fra denne lange rejse, og havde lært alt dette, så kiggede jeg på misbrugerne i mit liv, og hvis du skal være helt ærlig, så er det svært at elske en misbruger, og der er mange i dette rum som ved det. Man bliver ofte vred, og jeg tror, at en af grundene til, at denne debat er så ladet, er fordi dette går lige til hjertet, ikke? Alle har det ligesom dem, der kigger på en misbruger og tænker, bare nogen kunne stoppe dig. Den slags recepter vi får, på hvordan vi skal omgås misbrugerne i vores liv synes jeg, er karakteriseret ved realityshowet 'Intervention', hvis i har set den. Jeg synes alt i vores liv, er bestemt af reality TV, men det er en anden TED Talk. Hvis du har set 'Intervention'. Den har en ret simpel grundide. Få fat i en misbruger og alle personer i hans liv. Saml dem og konfronter ham med hvad han gør, og sig, at hvis du ikke tager dig sammen, så er det helt farvel. De tager misbrugerens tilknytninger, og truer ham, og gør det betinget af, at misbrugeren opfører sig som de ønsker. Jeg begyndte at forstå, hvorfor den fremgangsmåde ikke virker, og jeg begyndte at se, at det er næsten som en kopiering af logikken i War on Drugs ind i vore private liv.
If I'm honest, this isn't why I went into it. I didn't go in to the 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're 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. And the kind of scripts we're told for how to deal with the addicts in our lives is typified by, I think, the reality show "Intervention," if you guys have ever seen it. I think everything in our lives is defined by reality TV, but that's another TED Talk. If you've ever seen the show "Intervention," it's a pretty simple premise. Get an addict, all the people in their life, gather them together, confront them with what they're doing, and they say, if you don't shape up, we're going to cut you off. 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's almost like the importing of the logic of the Drug War into our private lives.
Jeg begyndte at tænke 'hvordan bliver jeg Portugiser'? Hvad jeg har forsøgt indtil nu, - og jeg kan ikke sige, at jeg gør det konsekvent - og jeg kan ikke sige at det er nemt, er at sige til misbrugerne i mit liv, at jeg ønsker at udbygge forbindelsen med dem, at sige, at jeg holder af dem, uanset hvad du tager. så jeg holder af dig, ligegyldig hvilken tilstand du er i, og hvis du har brug for mig, så kommer jeg og sidder hos dig, fordi jeg holder af dig, og ikke vil, at du er alene eller føler dig alene.
So I was thinking, how could I be Portuguese? And what I've tried 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.
Og jeg tror at budskabets kerne -- du er ikke alene, vi holder af dig -- skal altid findes, når vi omgås misbrugere, socialt, politisk og individuelt. Vi har sunget krigssange om misbrugere i 100 år. Jeg synes, vi skulle have sunget kærlighedssange i stedet, fordi det modsatte af misbrug er ikke stoffri. Det modsatte af misbrug er tilknytning.
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 100 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.
Mange tak.
Thank you.
(Bifald)
(Applause)