The Dangers of Moral Equivalency

My involvement in 12 step groups and recovery has led me to a hard won truth. And that is that when it comes to substance-abuse there is no moral high ground.

Thinking back to younger days when my generation justified smoking cannabis and it’s variants, by moralizing that it’s not as bad for you as alcohol. Note that the keywords here are “not as bad.”and it was true that there was no equivalent hangover, but there were side effects with continued use.

The passage of time has given us perspective to view these issues clearly, especially if we are no longer using any of them. It removes the need of pitting one drug against another (alcohol is classified as a narcotic) in order to justify their use. In recovery we come to work hard won truth. The truth is that when we use a drug or substitute one for another, we release our addiction all over again. There is no safe refuge (alcohol included) for those of us dependent on a substance for our day to day functioning.

The mental gymnastics that I, and others like me, went through to justify and moralize continued use of alcohol, our drug of choice, were simply amazing.

There was constant comparing of myself to others who were worse off in addiction, and I was so stressed that I needed to relax, and on and on and on.

Today we live in a world awash in alcohol, entering into a new period of acceptance for alternate means of self indulgent escape. There is no room for morally equivalent defensiveness in those struggling with dependency. We need clear minds to deal with that dependency and the issues arising out of it.