Navigating uncharted territory is tiring; you constantly look for reference points, “polar stars” that can guide us, and, if not show us the route, at least reassure us about the DIRECTION to take.
My only “polar star”, at least from a theoretical point of view, is called Oliver Sachs.
He is a British neurologist and university professor, perhaps best known to the public for his book “Awakenings” (1979), followed by an extraordinary 1990 film adaptation, wonderfully played by Robin Williams.
Oliver Sachs’s approach is still considered “controversial” today, and his work “has not been free from harsh criticism, coming both from the scientific community and from outside”1.
The reason for my fondness for Oliver is due exactly to the most controversial point of his experience: The use of drugs and medicines with direct neurological and psychoactive effects on himself, in search of therapeutic indications for general use.
I immediately identified with Sachs: he experimented on himself with every kind of drug/medicine to fully understand its effects; I chose to do the same with the drugs most used today and deemed dangerous because they are addictive, precisely to find their weak points and guide people along a path of detox/de-addiction/recovery/reintegration.
More: Oliver Sachs himself suffered from neurological disorders; he had prosopagnosia2, and later loss of binocular vision due to a tumor, and not only did he make no secret of his conditions, but he liked to discuss them, even in public or even during interviews.
This too makes me feel a deep similarity with Sachs’s work: he was not ashamed of his conditions and, in general, of his flaws: he worked on them with great energy and in a logical/scientific way, and made public any information that could in some way be of general interest.
This is precisely the approach that I personally recommend with people affected by drug addiction; also considering the additional “conditions” present, they should be made responsible, not blamed.
1 See Wikipedia: https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Sacks