Alfred R. Lindesmith
Encyclopedia
Alfred Ray Lindesmith was an Indiana University professor of sociology
. He was among the early scholars providing a rigorous and thoughtful account of the nature of addiction
.
Lindesmith's interest in drugs
began at the University of Chicago
, where he was trained in social psychology
, earning his doctorate in 1937. His education there was a mixture of the analytical and theoretical, a balance that would later appear in his drug studies. The work at Chicago involved research with interactionist
theory, including the research of Chicago's Herbert Blumer
, emphasizing the idea of self-concept
in human interaction.
of drug addiction". This paper appeared in the American Journal of Sociology
and involved in-depth interviews with 50 so-called addicts.
As this work progressed, it developed into a full theoretical and empirical account of the nature of opiate
addiction, culminating in his book Opiate Addictions in 1947 (republished as Addiction and Opiates in 1968).
What Lindesmith developed was an account of opiate addiction that (1) distinguished between the physical reactions of narcotic withdrawal
and its psychological (phenomenological) experience, and (2) described the relationship between these two phenomena and addiction. Addressing the question of why regular users of opiates do not necessarily become dependent or addicted, he found that, while continuous opiate use does cause many to experience physical withdrawal, the impact of withdrawal on the likelihood of dependence and addiction is not certain. Lindesmith's "addicts" revealed this, in part, as did general reports from individuals who, despite regular use of opiates, failed to become habitual users, stressing "the advantage of attributing the origin of addiction, not to a single event, but to a series of events, thus implying that addiction is established in a learning process extending over a period of time."
This learning process has two parts. First, opiate users must connect their drug withdrawal to their use of the drug, which is something that individuals exposed to opiates in hospital settings are more likely to do. When withdrawal is interpreted as a form of addiction, the perceived (and felt) need for more drugs grows. More recent research has shown that, because hospital patients often associate opiate analgesia
with an illness and/or hospital care, and because the drugs cause sedation and other mind-altering effects, patients rarely experience any withdrawal.
Here is the second part of the equation: if and when an opiate user identifies opiate withdrawal as such, he or she must initiate a ritual activity that is a physiological, cognitive, and behavioral mixture. As Richard DeGrandpre writes in The Cult of Pharmacology, "the opiate user must first experience withdrawal (a physical phenomenon), he or she must develop a concern over the withdrawal experience as such (a cognitive phenomenon), and then he or she must engage in drug use, taking opiates repeatedly to eliminate or avoid opiate withdrawal (a behavioral phenomenon). A breakdown in any part of this bio-psycho-social circuit can keep a pattern of dependent opiate use from emerging."
In Robert Scharse's study of Mexican-American
users, for example, some interpreted withdrawal as a sign of emerging drug dependence, and subsequently reduced or quit their drug use. For others, the withdrawal experience caused an obsession over the prospect of withdrawal, encouraging them to repeatedly use in order to avoid it. This then completed a circuit, with Lindesmith's learning process being reinforced and strengthened.
As his career ended, Lindesmith held on to his belief that opiate addiction is not the simple product of one's exposure to opiates. Rather it is the result of a dramatic shift in a person's mental and motivational state. Once the individual concludes that he or she is hooked, it rarely occurs to them that they are engaging in a self-fulfilling prophecy
, trapped within a belief that makes the experience exactly what it is feared to be.
(FBN)—predecessor of the DEA
—worked to discredit him. This is outlined in a paper by Galliher, Keys, and Elsner, "Lindesmith v. Anslinger: An Early Government Victory in the Failed War on Drugs
". As early as 1939, FBN director Harry Anslinger
had the Chicago District Supervisor of the Bureau notify Indiana University that one of their professors was a drug addict. An internal FBN memo also suggests that, some years later, a wiretap may have been placed on Lindesmith's phone by the Bureau. Incidentally, there is no evidence that Lindesmith ever used illegal drugs. As Galliher et al. point out, "the targeting of Lindesmith was possible because Lindesmith acted virtually alone in standing up against federal drug control policies."
In his book The Addict and the Law, he presents a detailed account of U.S. laws, regulations, police practices and court procedures, often in painful detail. He was describing what we now know as the beginning of the "war on drugs", although that term was not coined until 1971. It was published just 3 years after Anslinger retired. In his book, Lindesmith expressed hope that the relatively liberal drug policies of the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations would continue, but that was not to be.
, the founder of the Swedish antidrug strategy, argued that professor Lindesmith's books had contributed to the drug problems in the US by making wrong conclusions from a comparison between England and the US, for example, what caused the low abuse of opium in the late 1940s in England. Lindesmith preferred the so called British System founded on the recommendations from the Rolleston Committee
of 1924. Bejerot claimed that Lindesmith wrote his earlier books from close personal interviews with a very limited number of addicts, about 50, almost all of them victims of therapeutic use of drugs when they were in health care for other reasons. Bejerot argued that this small group was a very lower and different risk than the more frequent addicts introduced in the habits by close personal contacts with other users of the drug. The therapeutic addicts could be treated as a personal health problem. The other type of users, the epidemic users, was also a risk for other citizens by introducing new users, particularly in the beginning of their drug career when the downside of the drug use was not so visible. Bejerot argued that Lindesmith's suggestions was adopted to the first group, the therapeutic addicts. One should be mindful that Bejerot never examined Lindesmith's field notes and consequently has no meaningful perspective on the type of addict he interviewed. To say that Lindesmith's research contributed to addiction is however a statement without basis. One of the ironies of Lindesmith's forty-year career was that the misinformation campaigns undertaken by the FBN and Anslinger drowned out most of proposed drug reforms he advanced. Virtually nothing came of Lindesmith's activities or his publications, while honored by the academy, they never had anything approaching a wide popular impact.
Lindesmith had noticed that England in the 1940s had very liberal narcotics laws (see the Rolleston Committee
Report of 1924) and draws the conclusion that this contributed to a low abuse of opium. Bejerot drew the opposite conclusion, the low abuse of opium in England in the late 1940s was the cause for the liberal opium laws in England; the low abuse of opium in England had other causes. An experiment in the late 1940s in England with free opium distributed by doctors to opium addicts had ended with a multiplied number of opium addicts. When the number of addicts of heroin in England doubled every sixteenth month 1959-1968 the British government was forced to implement a more restrictive law.
Bejerot argued that a policy with liberal drug laws, like neglecting smaller amounts of illegal drugs for personal use, would open the doors for a much larger epidemic outbreak of recreational drugs to a level not acceptable for the government. Then the society will rebound with much more restrictive laws (compare with the War on drugs
). He said, "A country can afford liberal narcotics laws as long as it has no widespread epidemic use of narcotics." Both Bejerot and Lindesmith criticized the way the American justice system worked in practices for drug addicts and advocated that more resources must be used in the treatment of drug addicts, but drew very different conclusions about what was the cause.
Lindesmith was a careful and conservative man, never using drugs or advocating their use. He was however wedded to the idea that addiction was a disease and that national policy was misinformed on the notion that addicts were a criminal class.
from his German-born mother. He attended public school in nearby Owatonna, Minnesota
, where he graduated from high school in 1923. He graduated from Carleton College
in 1927 and received an M.A. in education from Columbia University
in 1931. Lindesmith taught school before entering the University of Chicago
, where he received his Ph.D. in 1937. His teaching career at Indiana University spanned 40 years from 1936 to 1976. He became University Professor of Sociology there in 1965. He was president of the Society for the Study of Social Problems, 1959-1960.
Lindesmith married Gertrude Louise Augusta Wollaeger (1907–1985) in 1930. They had one daughter. He died in Bloomington, Indiana
. In his waning years Lindy suffered from Alzheimer's Syndrome and was afflicted with its complications.
Sociology
Sociology is the study of society. It is a social science—a term with which it is sometimes synonymous—which uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about human social activity...
. He was among the early scholars providing a rigorous and thoughtful account of the nature of addiction
Substance dependence
The section about substance dependence in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders does not use the word addiction at all. It explains:...
.
Lindesmith's interest in drugs
Psychoactive drug
A psychoactive drug, psychopharmaceutical, or psychotropic is a chemical substance that crosses the blood–brain barrier and acts primarily upon the central nervous system where it affects brain function, resulting in changes in perception, mood, consciousness, cognition, and behavior...
began at the University of Chicago
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...
, where he was trained in social psychology
Social psychology
Social psychology is the scientific study of how people's thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of others. By this definition, scientific refers to the empirical method of investigation. The terms thoughts, feelings, and behaviors include all...
, earning his doctorate in 1937. His education there was a mixture of the analytical and theoretical, a balance that would later appear in his drug studies. The work at Chicago involved research with interactionist
Symbolic interactionism
Symbolic Interaction, also known as interactionism, is a sociological theory that places emphasis on micro-scale social interaction to provide subjective meaning in human behavior, the social process and pragmatism.-History:...
theory, including the research of Chicago's Herbert Blumer
Herbert Blumer
Herbert George Blumer was an American sociologist. Continuing the work of George Herbert Mead, he named and developed the topic of symbolic interactionism. According to Blumer himself, his main post-graduate scholarly interests were symbolic interactionism and methodological problems...
, emphasizing the idea of self-concept
Self-concept
Self-concept is a multi-dimensional construct that refers to an individual's perception of "self" in relation to any number of characteristics, such as academics , gender roles and sexuality, racial identity, and many others. Each of these characteristics is a research domain Self-concept (also...
in human interaction.
Theory of addiction
Lindesmith's work on drugs began with his questioning of the nature of addiction in a 1938 essay entitled "A sociological theorySociological theory
In sociology, sociological perspectives, theories, or paradigms are complex theoretical and methodological frameworks used to analyze and explain objects of social study. They facilitate organizing sociological knowledge...
of drug addiction". This paper appeared in the American Journal of Sociology
American Journal of Sociology
The American Journal of Sociology was established in 1895 by Albion Small and is the oldest academic journal of sociology in the United States. The journal is attached to the University of Chicago's sociology department and it is published bimonthly by The University of Chicago Press. Its...
and involved in-depth interviews with 50 so-called addicts.
As this work progressed, it developed into a full theoretical and empirical account of the nature of opiate
Opiate
In medicine, the term opiate describes any of the narcotic opioid alkaloids found as natural products in the opium poppy plant.-Overview:Opiates are so named because they are constituents or derivatives of constituents found in opium, which is processed from the latex sap of the opium poppy,...
addiction, culminating in his book Opiate Addictions in 1947 (republished as Addiction and Opiates in 1968).
What Lindesmith developed was an account of opiate addiction that (1) distinguished between the physical reactions of narcotic withdrawal
Withdrawal
Withdrawal can refer to any sort of separation, but is most commonly used to describe the group of symptoms that occurs upon the abrupt discontinuation/separation or a decrease in dosage of the intake of medications, recreational drugs, and alcohol...
and its psychological (phenomenological) experience, and (2) described the relationship between these two phenomena and addiction. Addressing the question of why regular users of opiates do not necessarily become dependent or addicted, he found that, while continuous opiate use does cause many to experience physical withdrawal, the impact of withdrawal on the likelihood of dependence and addiction is not certain. Lindesmith's "addicts" revealed this, in part, as did general reports from individuals who, despite regular use of opiates, failed to become habitual users, stressing "the advantage of attributing the origin of addiction, not to a single event, but to a series of events, thus implying that addiction is established in a learning process extending over a period of time."
This learning process has two parts. First, opiate users must connect their drug withdrawal to their use of the drug, which is something that individuals exposed to opiates in hospital settings are more likely to do. When withdrawal is interpreted as a form of addiction, the perceived (and felt) need for more drugs grows. More recent research has shown that, because hospital patients often associate opiate analgesia
Analgesic
An analgesic is any member of the group of drugs used to relieve pain . The word analgesic derives from Greek an- and algos ....
with an illness and/or hospital care, and because the drugs cause sedation and other mind-altering effects, patients rarely experience any withdrawal.
Here is the second part of the equation: if and when an opiate user identifies opiate withdrawal as such, he or she must initiate a ritual activity that is a physiological, cognitive, and behavioral mixture. As Richard DeGrandpre writes in The Cult of Pharmacology, "the opiate user must first experience withdrawal (a physical phenomenon), he or she must develop a concern over the withdrawal experience as such (a cognitive phenomenon), and then he or she must engage in drug use, taking opiates repeatedly to eliminate or avoid opiate withdrawal (a behavioral phenomenon). A breakdown in any part of this bio-psycho-social circuit can keep a pattern of dependent opiate use from emerging."
In Robert Scharse's study of Mexican-American
Mexican American
Mexican Americans are Americans of Mexican descent. As of July 2009, Mexican Americans make up 10.3% of the United States' population with over 31,689,000 Americans listed as of Mexican ancestry. Mexican Americans comprise 66% of all Hispanics and Latinos in the United States...
users, for example, some interpreted withdrawal as a sign of emerging drug dependence, and subsequently reduced or quit their drug use. For others, the withdrawal experience caused an obsession over the prospect of withdrawal, encouraging them to repeatedly use in order to avoid it. This then completed a circuit, with Lindesmith's learning process being reinforced and strengthened.
As his career ended, Lindesmith held on to his belief that opiate addiction is not the simple product of one's exposure to opiates. Rather it is the result of a dramatic shift in a person's mental and motivational state. Once the individual concludes that he or she is hooked, it rarely occurs to them that they are engaging in a self-fulfilling prophecy
Self-fulfilling prophecy
A self-fulfilling prophecy is a prediction that directly or indirectly causes itself to become true, by the very terms of the prophecy itself, due to positive feedback between belief and behavior. Although examples of such prophecies can be found in literature as far back as ancient Greece and...
, trapped within a belief that makes the experience exactly what it is feared to be.
War on drugs
The fact that Lindesmith's work threatened the emerging demonization of heroin, etc., is clear from how the Federal Bureau of NarcoticsFederal Bureau of Narcotics
The Federal Bureau of Narcotics was an agency of the United States Department of the Treasury. Established in the Department of the Treasury by an act of June 14, 1930 consolidating the functions of the Federal Narcotics Control Board and the Narcotic Division...
(FBN)—predecessor of the DEA
Drug Enforcement Administration
The Drug Enforcement Administration is a federal law enforcement agency under the United States Department of Justice, tasked with combating drug smuggling and use within the United States...
—worked to discredit him. This is outlined in a paper by Galliher, Keys, and Elsner, "Lindesmith v. Anslinger: An Early Government Victory in the Failed War on Drugs
War on Drugs
The War on Drugs is a campaign of prohibition and foreign military aid and military intervention being undertaken by the United States government, with the assistance of participating countries, intended to both define and reduce the illegal drug trade...
". As early as 1939, FBN director Harry Anslinger
Harry J. Anslinger
Harry Jacob Anslinger held office as the Assistant Prohibition Commissioner in the Bureau of Prohibition, before being appointed as the first Commissioner of the U.S. Treasury Department's Federal Bureau of Narcotics on August 12, 1930.Anslinger held office an unprecedented 32 years in his role...
had the Chicago District Supervisor of the Bureau notify Indiana University that one of their professors was a drug addict. An internal FBN memo also suggests that, some years later, a wiretap may have been placed on Lindesmith's phone by the Bureau. Incidentally, there is no evidence that Lindesmith ever used illegal drugs. As Galliher et al. point out, "the targeting of Lindesmith was possible because Lindesmith acted virtually alone in standing up against federal drug control policies."
In his book The Addict and the Law, he presents a detailed account of U.S. laws, regulations, police practices and court procedures, often in painful detail. He was describing what we now know as the beginning of the "war on drugs", although that term was not coined until 1971. It was published just 3 years after Anslinger retired. In his book, Lindesmith expressed hope that the relatively liberal drug policies of the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations would continue, but that was not to be.
Criticism
Professor Nils BejerotNils Bejerot
Nils Bejerot was a Swedish psychiatrist and criminologist best known for his work on drug abuse and for coining the phrase, Stockholm syndrome.-Work:...
, the founder of the Swedish antidrug strategy, argued that professor Lindesmith's books had contributed to the drug problems in the US by making wrong conclusions from a comparison between England and the US, for example, what caused the low abuse of opium in the late 1940s in England. Lindesmith preferred the so called British System founded on the recommendations from the Rolleston Committee
Rolleston Committee
In 1924, following concerns about the treatment of addicts by doctors, Smith Whitaker suggested to the Home Office who suggested to the Ministry of Health that the Rolleston Committee be formed under the chairmanship of Sir Humphry Rolleston to ".....
of 1924. Bejerot claimed that Lindesmith wrote his earlier books from close personal interviews with a very limited number of addicts, about 50, almost all of them victims of therapeutic use of drugs when they were in health care for other reasons. Bejerot argued that this small group was a very lower and different risk than the more frequent addicts introduced in the habits by close personal contacts with other users of the drug. The therapeutic addicts could be treated as a personal health problem. The other type of users, the epidemic users, was also a risk for other citizens by introducing new users, particularly in the beginning of their drug career when the downside of the drug use was not so visible. Bejerot argued that Lindesmith's suggestions was adopted to the first group, the therapeutic addicts. One should be mindful that Bejerot never examined Lindesmith's field notes and consequently has no meaningful perspective on the type of addict he interviewed. To say that Lindesmith's research contributed to addiction is however a statement without basis. One of the ironies of Lindesmith's forty-year career was that the misinformation campaigns undertaken by the FBN and Anslinger drowned out most of proposed drug reforms he advanced. Virtually nothing came of Lindesmith's activities or his publications, while honored by the academy, they never had anything approaching a wide popular impact.
Lindesmith had noticed that England in the 1940s had very liberal narcotics laws (see the Rolleston Committee
Rolleston Committee
In 1924, following concerns about the treatment of addicts by doctors, Smith Whitaker suggested to the Home Office who suggested to the Ministry of Health that the Rolleston Committee be formed under the chairmanship of Sir Humphry Rolleston to ".....
Report of 1924) and draws the conclusion that this contributed to a low abuse of opium. Bejerot drew the opposite conclusion, the low abuse of opium in England in the late 1940s was the cause for the liberal opium laws in England; the low abuse of opium in England had other causes. An experiment in the late 1940s in England with free opium distributed by doctors to opium addicts had ended with a multiplied number of opium addicts. When the number of addicts of heroin in England doubled every sixteenth month 1959-1968 the British government was forced to implement a more restrictive law.
Bejerot argued that a policy with liberal drug laws, like neglecting smaller amounts of illegal drugs for personal use, would open the doors for a much larger epidemic outbreak of recreational drugs to a level not acceptable for the government. Then the society will rebound with much more restrictive laws (compare with the War on drugs
War on Drugs
The War on Drugs is a campaign of prohibition and foreign military aid and military intervention being undertaken by the United States government, with the assistance of participating countries, intended to both define and reduce the illegal drug trade...
). He said, "A country can afford liberal narcotics laws as long as it has no widespread epidemic use of narcotics." Both Bejerot and Lindesmith criticized the way the American justice system worked in practices for drug addicts and advocated that more resources must be used in the treatment of drug addicts, but drew very different conclusions about what was the cause.
Lindesmith was a careful and conservative man, never using drugs or advocating their use. He was however wedded to the idea that addiction was a disease and that national policy was misinformed on the notion that addicts were a criminal class.
Personal life
Lindesmith was born in Clinton Falls Township, Steele County, Minnesota, and gained an early fluency in GermanGerman language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
from his German-born mother. He attended public school in nearby Owatonna, Minnesota
Owatonna, Minnesota
Owatonna is a city in Steele County, Minnesota, United States. The population was 25,599 at the 2010 census. It is the county seat of Steele County. Owatonna is home to the Steele County Fairgrounds, which hosts the Steele County Free Fair in August....
, where he graduated from high school in 1923. He graduated from Carleton College
Carleton College
Carleton College is an independent non-sectarian, coeducational, liberal arts college in Northfield, Minnesota, USA. The college enrolls 1,958 undergraduate students, and employs 198 full-time faculty members. In 2012 U.S...
in 1927 and received an M.A. in education from Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
in 1931. Lindesmith taught school before entering the University of Chicago
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...
, where he received his Ph.D. in 1937. His teaching career at Indiana University spanned 40 years from 1936 to 1976. He became University Professor of Sociology there in 1965. He was president of the Society for the Study of Social Problems, 1959-1960.
Lindesmith married Gertrude Louise Augusta Wollaeger (1907–1985) in 1930. They had one daughter. He died in Bloomington, Indiana
Bloomington, Indiana
Bloomington is a city in and the county seat of Monroe County in the southern region of the U.S. state of Indiana. The population was 80,405 at the 2010 census....
. In his waning years Lindy suffered from Alzheimer's Syndrome and was afflicted with its complications.