Bill Maher discusses Addiction Is a Choice

by Jeffrey A. Schaler, Ph.D., on ABC’s “Politically Incorrect”

From Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher

Transcript of show broadcast on March 13, 2000

http://abc.go.com/pi/forum/word_index.html

March 13, 2000 [Image]

Guests on this program were:

Helen Gurley Brown

Kim Coles

Drew Pinsky

Scott Weiland

Bill's Opening

Bill: Hi, I'm Bill Maher.

Tomorrow, as you probably know, presidential

primaries will be held in six Southern states.

It's a day when, through the miracle of

democracy, representatives of our great parties

gather in their basements to choose the white

guy with the meanest TV commercials --

[ Laughter ]

-- And give him the keys to our nuclear

weapons.

[ Laughter and applause ]

And -- and tomorrow, we will be all over that

here at "PI."

But that's tomorrow.

As for tonight, I would like to dedicate the

next 30 minutes to sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll

--

[ Cheers and applause ]

Three great American institutions, all ruined

by David Crosby.

[ Laughter ]

Now, my guests tonight are a comedienne, a

Stone Temple Pilot, MTV's resident sex doctor

and the woman who founded "Cosmopolitan"

magazine.

So don't go away.

[ Cheers and applause ]

Announcer: Ladies and gentlemen, the star of

"Politically Incorrect" --

Bill Maher!

[ Applause ]

Panel Discussion

Bill: All right, let's meet our panel.

He's the co-author of "The Drew and Adam book,"

the co-host of "Loveline" and the man behind

drdrew.com.

Dr. Drew Pinsky.

Doctor!

[ Cheers and applause ]

Doctor.

How are you, doc?

Drew: good to see you.

Bill: Good to see you, thank you.

She's an actress, also a playwright and

stand-up comedienne, who will be performing

throughout the country this year, Kim Coles,

ladies and gentlemen.

Kim: Hey!

Bill: Hey, you.

Kim: Hello, bill.

How are you?

Bill: How are you?

You look great.

Thank you.

She is the legendary editor-in-chief of

"Cosmopolitan"

international magazine.

Her new book is "I'm Wild Again: Snippets From

My Life and a Few Brazen Thoughts," Helen

Gurley Brown, ladies and gentlemen.

[ Cheers and applause ]

Hey, you.

How are you?

Helen: Fine, thank you.

Bill: Thank you for doing this.

The band is the Grammy Award-winning Stone

Temple Pilots.

The CD is "Number four."

And he is Scott Weiland, ladies and gentlemen.

[ Cheers and applause ]

How you doing?

Scott: Good, how you doing?

Bill: Good to see you.

Thanks for being here.

Okay.

As advertised, this is a show about sex, drugs

and rock 'n' roll.

Helen, let's start with the sex.

[ Laughter ]

Helen: I thought you'd never ask.

. . .

Bill: All right.

Let's move on to drugs in our triad here.

There is a new book out called "Addiction Is A

Choice."

It's by George W. Bush.

No, I'm kidding.

[ Laughter ]

Scott: I think that was Nancy Reagan.

[ Applause ]

Bill: That's ridiculous.

Bush certainly couldn't write a book.

[ Laughter ]

Anyway, it's by Jeffrey Schaler, Ph.D, and I

agree with this guy.

He says, "All of addiction is a choice."

That's the title of the book.

"From heroin to coffee," he says, "it's a

matter of free will and it's not a disease.

And being hooked is a choice.

Every time you make it, it's a choice."

Drew: Who starts?

Scott: You can go.

[ Laughter ]

I have a few things to say about this.

Bill: Yeah, go ahead.

Drew: That is somebody who's never dealt with

the disease.

One of the things we try to get people to

overcome when they have this disease is even

the sense that they could use their willpower

in relation, other than getting them to

treatment.

The disease is an operation --

it's basically a hijacking of the survival

mechanisms.

The survival drive, the survival reward

systems, that then become focused on a

particular drug as the requisite of survival.

Is that making sense so far?

Bill: No.

[ Laughter ]

Drew: No.

Bill: It doesn't.

It's not involuntary.

Drew: To initiate it is not.

And there's no doubt, in our culture today,

people learn that the way they manage

unpleasant feelings is sex and drugs and fast

cars and money, and it doesn't work.

But if have you a biological predisposition to

condition --

Bill: It worked for a while.

Drew: You're still working on it, Bill, I

understand that, but be that as it may, if you

have a predisposition to condition your reward

system, some drives begin operating that

operate --

that overwhelm your willpower very easily.

Bill: He says the conventional wisdom is that

once you use the drug, something changes in

your body.

And that change -- which has never been

identified --

Drew: -- It's worked out --

plasmic changes has been worked out.

It has been highly --

Bill: But then how come so many people are able

to quit?

Scott: Let me -- come in for second.

First of all, choice, I know a little bit about

drug use.

[ Laughter ]

But I also --

[ Applause ]

But I also know about the other side of it as

well.

It's a choice when you -- to your teens,

whether you want to pick up and start

experimenting with drugs.

It's a choice once you're able to get detoxed

-- for a person who is an addict or an

alcoholic, it is a choice --

once you do have some distance from it -- if

you want to pick up again, once you're free

from it -- but once there's something that

happens -- and Drew was saying this -- there's

something that happens.

If I were to go and pick up and try to have a

glass of wine or a Rum and Coke or whatever,

there's a phenomenon of craving that takes

place that doesn't happen with everybody else.

There's something that happens where --

Bill: But the craving is still a matter of free

choice.

Unless you're shooting smack in your sleep --

Drew: It's a hijacking of the survival

mechanism.

So the brain -- not -- with thought.

This is the part of the brain that doesn't have

language and logic or language, but it believes

that it won't survive without the drug.

That's the intensity of the craving.

Helen: That is so fancy and so complicated that

I'm not sure I know what you're talking about.

I think --

[ Laughter ]

[ Applause ]

Not to be disrespectful, there are all kinds of

addictions, and you're talking about drugs.

My sister was an alcoholic.

And she was absolutely convinced that it was

systemic or indigenous and I say [ bleep ] --

excuse me --

[ Laughter ]

You have a means of saying no, and there's

shopping addiction and sex addiction -- and I

have a fudge brownie addiction -- but I can say

"No" if I really insist on it.

I just think it's a matter of choice.

Scott: Well, it's not a matter of choice,

though.

Here's the thing --

Kim: I don't think it is for everybody.

Scott: With shopping even -- all right --

someone who is a shopping addict, you're okay

and you don't have to go on a $50,000 in

two-day shopping binge if you don't start.

You know?

But once, like, you get into that mode of,

you're there on Rodeo Drive -- I don't know.

That's probably where you shop, I would've

guessed.

[ Laughter ]

And you start buying, something happens.

And, I think, a lot of it, too, is like -- it's

not just a physical thing, it's also like, a

three-pronged kind of thing.

It's like, also, there's a mental thing.

It's like something that happens for whatever

reason, from this big up to this big, you don't

feel right about yourself -- and you start to

learn that through medicating -- medicating the

way you feel, it starts to make you feel like

you think everyone else feels, like a whole

person.

And so when you're left with those empty

feelings and there's nothing -- you're not

treating it with any kind of way, no kind of

program --

Drew: You can't.

Your brain won't let you.

Bill: But at some point, you made the choice

not to.

Drew: You didn't make a choice.

Scott: With the help of other people --

Drew: With the help of law enforcement.

[ Laughter ]

Scott: Yeah, law enforcement.

Enough distance --

[ Applause ]

Bill: But many people have.

Many people have.

I quit smoking.

Smoking was a bitch.

Drew: You're not an addict.

You're dependent on tobacco, but it's different

than addiction.

Bill: Tobacco, they say, is harder to quit than

heroin.

Scott: Oh, it is.

It is.

But there's a difference.

There are people who go through periods of

their life, went through heavy drinking binges.

Bill: If you made that choice at one point,

that choice -- it means, was always available

to you at any point.

Drew: I wish --

May I speak liberally, please?

Bill: Yes, definitely.

Drew: I had the opportunity to see Scott when

he was in the throes of his disease -- and --

I'm delighted that he is alive.

And I told him --

[ Applause ]

I told him if I could just put him in a room

and lock the door, in 30 days, the biology

would be different, and he would be able then,

to begin making choices.

But in the throes of the biology, there was --

he couldn't make sense of his behavior or

anything.

Scott: There literally -- there literally is

something that happens --

Kim: Are you gonna keep on making excuses for

it?

Is that your -- the possibility that it might

be genetically programmed or genetically

possible?

Or is it that you're afraid that people are

using that as an excuse?

Is that what it is?

Or, you know -- because there are people who

can quit.

There are people who fight that addiction.

I do think it's --

Drew: Way off.

Kim: No, not at all.

It can be done, but I don't think it should be

used as an excuse.

Drew: All that is controlled early in their

disease.

Helen: But food can be an addiction, also.

Scott: I have an eating disorder as well.

I know about that.

I know about that.

It's like, when I start --

Helen: But that's not genetic, it's because you

don't have any willpower.

You don't know how to pass up --

Scott: No willpower?

Kim: I think the root of it is self-esteem.

I don't know, you're the author, you tell me --

Scott: Check this out, all right.

Listen.

When you're in the throes of being strung out,

okay?

And you're trying, you're trying to like, stop,

you're trying to stop.

The insanity that goes on inside your brain is

so overwhelming that no matter what

consequences are staring at you right in the

face, you cannot look at it as any reasonable

reason to stop because you're just craving that

relief from that chemical so intensely.

Drew: Again, the brain believes it will not

survive the craving.

It won't survive those impulses unless they're

gratified.

And what happens is, thinking gets distorted

into "I'll just get high this moment, and then

I'll be okay."

Bill: But to call it a disease, I think, is not

fair to people who have a disease where they

have zero choice.

If you have diabetes or cancer or any disease

--

Scott: But it's categorized in the mental

illness category.

Drew: What is a disease?

Define "Disease."

Let's define --

Bill: Something over which you have no choice

that just strikes you.

Drew: Something that strikes you.

But it's -- so, if a piano falls on your head

--

Bill: And you can't quit cancer, Doc.

You just can't quit cancer.

Drew: But you can choose not to get treatment.

Scott: Yeah.

Helen: Well, that's not an addiction.

[ Applause ]

Scott: It's like you have -- you know about

clinical depression and bipolar disorder and

all these sorts of other mental illnesses.

I mean, there are other ones that are much more

drastic than those, and those can be

life-threatening.

A person who doesn't get treated for that can't

stop that kind of thinking.

Can't start feeling, "I know I'm feeling

depressed right now and I want to kill myself,

but I'm gonna make a decision not to feel this

way right now."

Drew: That's right.

Bill: Well, I'm addicted to commercials.

We have to go away for a moment.

[ Cheers and applause ]

Bill: All right.

We were talking about addiction.

And Helen --

[ Laughter ]

I wanted to ask you, do you think you could

become addicted to orgasms?

Do you think you could have just so many

orgasms, one after another, Earth-shattering --

Helen: What?

[ Laughter ]

Bill: Well, I mean "Cosmo" -- orgasm is such a

natural question.

Okay.

Let me -- you also mentioned --

[ Laughter ]

Your sister was in A.A.

This doctor who wrote this book -- I love this

-- he compares A.A. to a cult, which I would

think is probably fairly true, because I think

the addiction to total sobriety is the most

dangerous of all.

He says, "My concern is that A.A. has become a

tool of the state.

The state arrests people for drunken driving

--"

don't I know it.

[ Laughter ]

-- "And then orders them into alcoholics

anonymous, and that's a violation of the first

amendment, separation of church and state."

I would agree with that.

Scott: Well, you know what?

If that cult is able to put people's lives back

together and people's families back together

and people's careers back together, then hail

the cult!

[ Cheers and applause ]

Drew: There's a misconception here about the

whole notion of higher power.

Isn't that what you're taking issue with, is

the advocacy of higher power?

Higher power really is, as a concept, just to

get people out of, frankly, trying to use their

will and their brain to overcome something that

is deeply -- deep in their brain function.

And giving them faith that just something

outside of themselves is going to make things

okay.

Now, people choose to have a very developed God

concept, but they don't have to.

They just need to get out of their own head and

have faith that things are going to be okay if

they do.

That's the whole purpose.

Helen: Nobody in our family was an alcoholic.

So --

Drew: What's your ethnic background?

Because if there's Irish, Scottish, North

American Indian, the ethnicity suggests the

probability that --

Helen: I don't even know what we are.

Bill: You're saying us Irish are drunks now.

Drew: 50/50.

It's about 50/50.

Bill: And proud of it, I'll have you know

there.

[ Applause ]

But this author, he says A.A. says they have

the truth about addiction, which is absolutely

false.

It would be like saying Judaism has the truth

about addiction.

Scott: All that A.A. says -- all that A.A. says

is that we men and women have found a way that

has enabled us to get our lives back and start

participating in society and enjoying the lives

that we're meant to enjoy.

And by doing that, it's simply relying on the

other people in the fellowship for strength.

And that is like a higher power.

And all of us together are more powerful than

me.

You guys all try to hold me down in a chair, I

can't get out of the chair.

That's greater power than I am.

And that's what the group relies on as a

stronger power.

Not just necessarily the God concept, but the

group helping each other through and helping

getting their lives back together.

Helen: But I believe all alcoholics feel that

they couldn't have helped it, that there's

something in them in their bodies that is

susceptible to one drink.

And that just isn't true.

They've -- they didn't get to be alcoholics

because of some failure of a gene.

They got to be alcoholics because they liked

the taste of alcohol.

Scott: I think a lot of people like the taste

of alcohol.

Helen: They like what happens after they taste

it.

Bill: Right.

Scott: Well, you should -- you should have been

around for a few of my Rums after -- you know

--

Helen: But do you think that you --

[ Laughter ]

Do you think you --

Bill: What are the chances that would have

really happened?

Okay.

I got to take another commercial break.

We'll be right back.

[ Cheers and applause ]

Bill: All right.

I'm glad you're alive, too.

Heroin never hurt my record collection, but I'm

glad you're around.

Oh, tomorrow is -- oh, the big primary day.

We'll be here and boy, we're gonna cover it.

[ Laughter ]

[ Applause ]

---

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