Damian Thompson: ‘Addiction is a messy and frightening reality’

The motion ‘Addiction is not a Disease’ received overwhelming support from a lively crowd at last night’s Spectator debate. Despite moving speeches from recovering addicts, Dominic Ruffy (of the Amy Winehouse Foundation) and fashion designer Trinny Woodall, the audience came out strongly in favour of Damian Thompson’s insistence that addicts are fundamentally people who ‘like something too much for their own good and crave its rewards’.

Theodore Dalrymple opened the debate for the motion by asserting that Mao Tse Tung was the greatest therapist of drug addiction: ‘Mao Tse Tung was by far the best therapist of drug addiction in world history,’ he said, ‘for he threatened to execute opium addicts if they didn’t give up – and 20 million people gave up.’ This remark was considered distasteful by Vik Watts. In a speech laced with historical references, Dr Dalrymple concluded that addiction was fundamentally a ‘pattern of behaviour’ and ‘not an illness’.

Vik Watts opened his remarks by waving a pouch of white crystals in the air (sugar), as he described the effects of ingesting toxic substances as being symmetrical with those of eating too much sugar.