Ever since I’ve become a part of the world of addiction medicine, I’ve spent a lot time arguing over the Internet. I’ve joined a handful of message boards, commented on journal articles and scientific studies about addiction treatment, and exchanged emails with all sorts of people interested in addiction, whether they were professionals or not. Some of the conversation has been constructive, but a lot of it has been angry and fruitless for both sides.
I’ve decided recently to pull back a bit on my Internet arguments. I used to think that the majority of people I encountered online were simply mistaken when they talked about addiction — that they were misinformed, or confused, and that if I provided clear, impersonal evidence, I could show them why I believed what I believed. When I came across arguments that were just plain factually wrong, I thought I could change the situation by presenting correct facts. I have since found that this is mostly not the case.
Many of the people I talked with were not interested in any arguments or facts I could present. They were often much more interested in the fact that I was not an ex-addict; that seemed to invalidate anything I said. While I have no problem with them holding their own beliefs for their own reasons, I was disappointed that we didn’t seem to be talking about the same things.
The most interesting thing to me over all the years of online arguments was the resistance people showed to the idea of addiction as a treatable disease — because, from my point of view, having a treatable disease is in some ways preferable to having a vague, inherent, incurable spiritual weakness. I had thought that past and present addicts alike might feel relieved to know that they didn’t have to feel ashamed of their “weakness”, that there was a path back to a normal life that contained much less suffering and struggle than the twelve steps. Instead, people fought to defend their conception of addiction as a deep-seated moral failing. When faced with what I thought would be an easier way to improve their lives, they clung to the struggle, and attacked me for casting doubt on it.
I’ve become convinced that the majority of online arguments, especially on touchy subjects around health and addiction, are being fought based not on studies, or sample sizes, but on ideologies; and because ideologies cannot be ranked objectively, and are based in each person’s subjective experience, arguments of this kind are unlikely to change anyone’s mind.
Even the slightest amount of interest in this subject is enough to get people to start looking for information, and there is a great deal of information available, both good and bad, about all aspects of addiction.
There is a great deal of talk today about how the Internet is destroying our ability to process and remember information; I think that, instead of destroying our memory, the Internet is shifting our focus from remembering information to discerning good information from bad. If people don’t choose or aren’t able to let go of bad information in order to replace it with good, then I am no longer going to try to convince them.