The article doesn't support its conclusion that drug addiction is caused by people's dim prospects. The man in this article was already an addict before he was old enough to have any perspective on his future potential.
I think the deeper problem is that kids are not inspired to gain their own ambitions. So many people walk through life with no ambitions beyond what they plan on doing next weekend.
I think a huge issue is the way material is taught in school tends towards hero worship. Scientists, authors, are all looked at as mythical creatures who achieved things that mortal man cannot. It makes us all feel as though the best we can ever achieve is being a cog in a wheel. It took me many years after school to realize that something as simple as starting your own business was actually achievable (by me!) and not something relegated for those who had been born of a higher caste, or of some superior skills.
Chris Arnade has a lot of first-hand experience witnessing this modern despair. He writes, "What I saw was huge parts of US, more than reported, was filling with drugs. And where there was drug there was despair."
Of course, economic hardship is at the heart of many of society's problems, drugs included. I don't argue with that. What I am skeptical of is the idea that people, once they reach adulthood and see dim prospects, turn to drugs to cope with that depression. The article you linked to pushes the same idea.
From my bubbled existence, most of the people who I went to school with who became drug addicts were always part of "the bad kids" cliques; those who always saw life through the prism of partying and never had ambitions to be much of anything. Maybe my perspective is totally wrong, and most drug addicts were B students who just decided not to go to college, but if that's the case I'd love hard data.
> What I am skeptical of is the idea that people, once they reach adulthood and see dim prospects, turn to drugs to cope with that depression.
Do you really find the idea of people self-medicating depression hard to encompass? I'm having a hard time myself, encompassing the idea that there is anywhere in the world this might seem like a controversial question.
He almost certainly understands that. But he is saying that he wants data that demonstrates that the economic hardship causes the depression rather than drug use causing the depression. Obviously these causes are all intertwined but I think he's saying that it probably isn't particularly unidirectional.
"The man in this article was already an addict before he was old enough to have any perspective on his future potential."
> Johnson started using opioids in high school after breaking his collarbone, first in football and again while wrestling, and he got hooked on his prescription, his mother thinks. He was a functional addict at first, caring and warm, but things slipped out of control after he graduated and found that his skills—art and cooking, but not academics—meant little in the workforce.
In Arnade's formulation, this is how a front-row kid who succeeded looks at a back-row kid who failed. "Where's the numbers?" and "Always looked to me like drugs are for people without ambition in the first place." Which, fine, if that's how you want to look at it. But, speaking as a back-row kid who's known a lot of front-row people and had a lot of front-row jobs, it doesn't aid understanding.
What I was trying to say is that it's more complex than the article paints it. Certainly despair, and economic despair in particular, is at the heart of many of societies problems, drugs included.
But it's not necessarily the one in despair that turned to drugs. It might be his/her kids, who grew up without a supportive family (or perhaps were abused) when then found friends who accepted them, who turned them on to drugs. I mean, drug stats are what they are, more than 50% start before their 18.
I think the deeper problem is that kids are not inspired to gain their own ambitions. So many people walk through life with no ambitions beyond what they plan on doing next weekend.
I think a huge issue is the way material is taught in school tends towards hero worship. Scientists, authors, are all looked at as mythical creatures who achieved things that mortal man cannot. It makes us all feel as though the best we can ever achieve is being a cog in a wheel. It took me many years after school to realize that something as simple as starting your own business was actually achievable (by me!) and not something relegated for those who had been born of a higher caste, or of some superior skills.