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The New York Times April 12, 1930
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LAYS DRUG ADDICTION TO MALADJUSTMENTS
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Dr. Lambert Tells Physicians It Is Not Due to Disease but to Emotional Instability.
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Drug addiction was described as essentially a response to psychological
necessity, rather than a disease, by Dr. Alexander Lambert, Professor of Clinical Medicine
at Cornell University, in a lecture yesterday to a group of physicians and social workers
at the Academy of Medicine. Fifth Avenue at 103d Street. Dr. Lambert was chairman of the
Mayor's committee on narcotics, which made a study of drug addiction last year.
Pointing out that many of those who use drugs are victims of an emotional maladjustment
similar to mild forms of insanity. Dr. Lambert said the State should be responsible for
their care and treatment in special institutions. Occupational therapy and freedom from
worry and care are the best means to accomplish regeneration among victims of the drug
habit, he said.
Dr. Lambert said the psychological basis leading to the habitual use of drugs was the
desire to escape from the wear and tear of normal living by those whose emotions ruled the
mind. Most users of narcotics, he said, have deficiencies in their personalities.
"The fundamental basis of alcoholic addiction and addiction to morphine is
essentially the same," he said. "It is not a question of will, but of an emotion
that is stronger than the will."
Recent research, he asserted, indicated that there was not a definite addiction disease in
regard to morphine, and that users of the drug differed from normal men and women only in
the lack of control over their emotions. He said that only 13 per cent of the drug addicts
studied by the Mayor's committee on narcotics had average stabilized personalities.
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