For me, one of the most troubling aspects of the addiction conversation is society is the extent to which people wish to assign blame. The user, the family, society: someone must be at fault. This reflects a general tendency toward simplification that creeps into broad social questions. We’ve come to believe in the idea of finding one key to resolving complex problems, one foundational source of poverty or crime or addiction. We take sides, depending on our philosophical point of view. We find ways of bolstering the strength of our various positions. And in the current climate of conflicting research in many fields, it’s not difficult to find support for a given position.

But addiction, like most conundrums, does not lend itself to simple causes and solutions. It’s a dynamic involving a multitude of factors: social, familial, environmental, political, vocational, spiritual. As members of the human community, we are all responsible for the current growth and conditions of our societies. To assign sole responsibility for a given situation is to abrogate our collective participation in the world’s diversity.

In practical terms, I’m suggesting that substance users take personal responsibility for their addiction, that families take responsibility for their part in the evolution and resolution of addiction, and that society take responsibility for making the substantive changes required to reduce the damage caused by addiction. This is how society works: by way of connections between people, by way of truthfulness about our dependencies on one another. Blame poisons those dependencies, separates us, encourages us to break the bonds essential to healing.

Blame is not a useful contribution to the addictions conversation. We would do better to shoulder our part, not worry so much about what others carry or what they deny. We could be more self-appraising than we have been, more inwardly challenging and outwardly generous. We could acknowledge our interconnectedness and act from that center of knowing. We could be more humane.