Maia Szalavitz Quotes

• Punishment by definition isn't going to help. So what you need to do is to help people to change and recover is to help them find different areas of passion and help them find better ways of coping. Because about 50 percent of people with addiction have a preexisting mental illness, about two-thirds have had some type of severe trauma during childhood, and they are not using to the point where they're risking their lives because it's fun. They're doing something to help them cope.

  Maia Szalavitz

  Fun, Passion, Punishment

  Source: sojo.net

  4 Copy quote

• The thing about our drug laws is that they're not based on science.

  Maia Szalavitz

  Law, Drug, Drug Laws

  Source: sojo.net

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• Science could never get you to make alcohol and tobacco legal and marijuana illegal. Only racism can do that.

  Maia Szalavitz

  Marijuana, Racism, Alcohol

  Source: sojo.net

  7 Copy quote

• Marijuana is not not harmful, but is the least harmful psychoactive substance that we have, with the possible exception of caffeine.

  Maia Szalavitz

  Marijuana, Substance, Caffeine

  Source: sojo.net

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  Maia Szalavitz

  Falling In Love, Children, Addiction

  Source: sojo.net

  8 Copy quote

• When President Nixon declared war on drugs on June 17, 1971, about 110 people per 100,000 in the population were incarcerated. Today, we have 2-3 million prisoners: 743 people per 100,000 in the population. The U.S. has 5% of the world's population, but 25% of its prisoners. As Senator Jim Webb once put it, Either we are home to the most evil people on earth or we are doing something different and vastly counterproductive.

  Maia Szalavitz

  War, Home, June

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• 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.

  Maia Szalavitz

  Believe, Addiction, Drug

  Source: sojo.net

  16 Copy quote

• 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.

  Maia Szalavitz

  Spiritual, People, Giving

  Source: sojo.net

  7 Copy quote

• Incarceration is as useful for addiction as it is for diabetes - i.e., not useful and potentially harmful, particularly for kids.

  Maia Szalavitz

  Kids, Addiction, Incarceration

  Source: sojo.net

  7 Copy quote

• The best outcomes that are seen for therapy intervention and for other psychological interventions is where the therapist really connects and the person really feels understood. That matters often even more than the technique.

  Maia Szalavitz

  Technique, Outcomes, Matter

  Source: sojo.net

  7 Copy quote

• We have a system that was devised by racists to create racist ends.

  Maia Szalavitz

  Racist, Ends

  Source: sojo.net

  4 Copy quote

• There is a safe, nontoxic drug called naloxone that can instantly reverse opioid overdose and prevent most of these deaths. But the drug war interferes with saving overdose victims in two ways: first, because witnesses to overdose fear prosecution, they often don't call for help until it's too late. Second, because the drug war supports the belief that making naloxone available over-the-counter or with opioid prescriptions would encourage drug use, the antidote is available only through harm reduction programs like needle exchanges or in some state programs aimed at drug users.

  Maia Szalavitz

  War, Drug Use, Two

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• There's traditionally been two different ways of seeing addiction. Either it's a sin and you're a horrible bad person and you are just choosing to be hedonist or it's a chronic progressive disease. And while I certainly believe addiction is a medical problem that should be dealt with by the health system, the way we've conceptualized addiction as a disease is not actually accurate, and it has unfortunately become stigmatizing and it's also created a lot of hopelessness in a lot of people.

  Maia Szalavitz

  Believe, Two, Medical Problems

  Source: sojo.net

  6 Copy quote

• We absolutely should legalize marijuana.

  Maia Szalavitz

  Marijuana, Should, Legalizing Marijuana

  Source: sojo.net

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• 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.

  Maia Szalavitz

  Pain, War, Doctors

  9 Copy quote

• I know that sounds really extreme, but if you just look at the history, you will find Harry Anslinger [first U.S. commissioner of the Bureau of Narcotics] going on about satanic swing and how reefer will make black people think they're as good as white people - which to him, obviously, was a very horrible outcome. This is the basis of our drug laws.

  Maia Szalavitz

  Thinking, Law, White

  Source: sojo.net

  4 Copy quote

• Love is great and it does help a lot of people, but a lot of people do have things like depression or schizophrenia or bipolar disorder or other disorders, all of which will need to be addressed in order for people to stay in long-term recovery.

  Maia Szalavitz

  Recovery, Love Is, Order

  Source: sojo.net

  5 Copy quote

• 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.

  Maia Szalavitz

  Different, Culture, Want

  Source: sojo.net

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  Maia Szalavitz

  Children, Drinking, School

  Source: sojo.net

  7 Copy quote

• We should not be putting kids in cages and hoping that is going to fix their psychological problems of any type.

  Maia Szalavitz

  Kids, Cages, Problem

  Source: sojo.net

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  Maia Szalavitz

  Memories, Teenager, Kids

  Source: sojo.net

  4 Copy quote

• I think our drug laws need to be made scientifically, as best as possible, recognizing that values will always be part of that.

  Maia Szalavitz

  Thinking, Law, Drug

  Source: sojo.net

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  Maia Szalavitz

  Country, New York, Warrior

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• In order for people to recover, we can't just say 'love is all we need.'

  Maia Szalavitz

  Love Is, Order, People

  Source: sojo.net

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

  Maia Szalavitz

  Drug, Stuff

  Source: sojo.net

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