“Origins of ADD and Leaky Gates.

Drugs normalize. The reason you get addicted is because you try to normalize the system. And then they are taking drugs away - why? Until you get normalized here (in PT) you need them.”  

The title and the quoted sentences are extracts from a documented conversation between Art Janov and two patients undergoing primal therapy treatment.

When I read these sentences, I became aware of what I have “known” a lifetime. During a long life, rich in changes, I have met many in my immediate surroundings, families, friends and colleagues who have been dependent of drugs to function. However, I could not really see them as addicts (I’m talking about those who were criticized for balancing their pain with drugs) and moral comments about their drug consumption, I could not understand. In a way, I saw them as “normal” and in my ignorance, I never gave it a thought that they were affected. After a few incidents, I learned that I could not judge when they were on drugs. My own drug those days, Tegretol, to kill my imprinted pain during birth, and my lack of sense of smell during almost 50 years, made me disabled as a “police dog”.

It took 40 years in PT to realize the importance of AJ’s words in the extracts. How little we know of human needs, sufferings and behaviour.

Jan Johnsson