Opinion: it would be transformative if the Citizens' Assembly listened to testimonies and became empathetic witnesses about drug use in Ireland
Members of the Citizens Assembly On Drugs Use will have an opportunity in the coming months to hear a range of views on drug use and evaluate the supporting evidence. By the end of this process, many participants may feel differently about the drivers and dangers of drug use, with a new appreciation of the devastating impact of living in a community that is an open drug market. Understanding the twin evils of poverty and trauma, they might no longer ask 'why the addiction?'.
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From RTÉ Radio 1's Late Debate, will the Citizens Assembly on drugs tackle harm and addiction?
Young people who experiment with illicit drugs are not all equally susceptible to becoming addicted. Indeed, not all scheduled drugs are necessarily intrinsically harmful. Some of the worlds leading psychiatrists, including Dr Rachel Yehuda, advocate for, and conduct research on psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy to more effectively treat mental health problems including PTSD.
There is growing scientific evidence on childhood trauma, adversity, 'dislocation' and drug use. Alienation from the self, other people, mainstream society, culture, nature and economic forces often precipitate addiction and crime.
Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) include experiences of emotional, physical and sexual abuse, emotional or physical neglect, exposure to domestic violence, parental addiction, warfare, genocide, incidences of racism and discrimination or bullying, e.g. due to LGBT identity. A 2015 Welsh study found that people who self-reported four or more adverse childhood experiences were 16 times more likely to have used crack cocaine or heroin and 20 times more likely to have been incarcerated than people who experienced none.
From Public Health Network Cymru, what are Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs)?
In 2019, Public Health Wales found that 46% of prisoners in Parc Prison had four or more ACEs. The proportion of people increased from 25.4% of those in prison for the first time to 58.9% of those who were in prison on more than seven separate occasions.
A felt sense of safety in the presence of others is necessary for human health and functioning. If a child's nervous system is perpetually overwhelmed and dysregulated due to fear, they will be poorly positioned to learn. They may find it hard to relate well to peers and teachers and will often fail to meet behavioural expectations.
According to Dr Stephen Porges, "neural state" - the condition of our nervous system - is "the intervening variable". Porges views addiction and mental health problems as neural state disorders. Dr Bruce Perry explains how relational capacity, IQ and behaviour is "state-dependent". Addiction and crime are normal, predictable responses to the pains of a punishing childhood, i.e. being in a chronic state of physiological defence due to a toxic combination of structural violence, relational poverty and trauma which is viscerally held in the body.
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From RTÉ 2fm's Jennifer Zamparelli Show, Senator, Lynne Ruane talks about her campaign for honest discussion around the reform of drug laws
In People like Me, Senator Lynn Ruane describes how trauma is embedded in her community. The consequences of excessive peer orientation include the normalisation of drug sale and supply. Ruane's memoir portrays "the adverse experience of class", in which hopelessness, addiction, dangerous risk-taking and crime are commonplace features of life on the margins.
It is difficult for children to thrive if they grow up in a socially toxic community environment where ACEs are prevalent, with high levels of local drug consumption, community violence and low opportunities for mainstream flourishing. Residents of Ireland's most deprived communities often feel a foreshortened sense of future due to the frequent traumatic deaths of peers caused by "deaths of despair", such as suicide, overdoses, fatal car crashes, and sometimes homicide often related to drug networks.
Qualitative interviews with 12 long sentence male prisoners for my PhD on post-release supervision* revealed histories of neglect, abuse, intense family stress, poverty and community adversity. Childhood wounds such as disorganised attachment, domestic violence, maternal mental illness/suicidality, and hunger linger in the body.
'A frightening Hulk-like side'
Most of the men informed me that their crimes were connected to addictive behaviours. Drugs offered them fleeting relief from overwhelm, but as Dr Vincent Felitti states, "it is difficult to get enough of something that doesn’t quite work"
Four interviewees described having a frightening Jekyll and Hyde or Hulk-like side. The largely repressed angry part of themselves emerged when they mixed alcohol with benzodiazepines which quell fear in the brain.
My PhD recommended that the focus of prison-based services should embrace trauma-responsive, healing-centred practice to help people make better sense of themselves and their personal struggles. Prisons should provide a range of trauma-oriented modalities incorporating "bottom-up", body-based methods such as Somatic Experiencing, coherent breathing and yoga that shift the somatic residue of trauma.
My hope is that the Citizen's Assembly will listen to the lived experience testimonies and become "empathetic" witnesses
We need to attend to the embodied aspects of trauma to enhance survivors' wellbeing and reduce their recidivism risk. Programmes which target people’s rational cortical brain while ignoring their autonomic dysregulation will not help them feel safer in their bodies nor improve their impulse control when confronted with stressors (e.g. having no safe place to live upon release). Providing traumatised, drug-using people with offending behaviour with opportunities to heal so that they experience improved physiological, psychological, emotional and relational wellbeing "is not soft on crime or coddling wrongdoers", but a means of improving community safety.
Author and journalist Johann Hari contends that the opposite of addiction is connection not sobriety. The human brain is plastic and the nervous system is dynamic. Neural pathways are built and reinforced in the context of safe, patterned, healthy relationships and experience. We all have a role to play in this regard, not just criminal justice service providers.
My hope is that the Citizen's Assembly will listen to the lived experience testimonies and become "empathetic" witnesses, to adopt Dr Gabor Maté's phrase. If they collectively choose love and compassion over shame, blame, prosecution and punishment, it could be transformative. Irrespective of the challenges of implementing policy and legal change in this area, an expression of support from ordinary people for ending the Irish State's prohibition of drugs would be welcome. The 'war on drugs' is futile and unwinnable and, essentially, this crusade is waged primarily on the traumatised poor, with huge individual and social costs.
The views expressed here are those of the author. They do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ, the author's funders or the author's employer.
