Why quit when you're still on meds?

CANADA’S bossy bootses are on the rampage. Their latest inspired idea? Banning smoking on the property of the country’s largest mental health centre, where a good smoke is all many patients have left.

Starting this July, patients at the three sites of Toronto’s Centre for Addiction and Mental Health will be forced to butt out, even outdoors, in the name of saving them from themselves. In addition to coping with their mental illness -- whether they’re bi-polar, schizophrenic, depressed, or even suicidal -- they’ll also be treated to the symptoms of nicotine withdrawal unless they want to remove themselves from the centre’s grounds.

How about a bit of compassion for our fellow human beings, who crave a little comfort from a reliable friend – even if that friend is a cigarette?

Now, I hate smoking as much as you do. It stinks, it wastes money, and it causes cancer. I’m glad I no longer have to breathe the noxious vapour from a sallow stranger’s Marlboroughs while eating my truck-stop pancakes, and don’t find myself wheezing any more while disembarking from an airplane or exiting a movie theatre.

I’m certainly old enough to remember the headaches I used to get at the office when my colleagues were still allowed to light up. I haven’t missed the scent of tobacco outdoors in West Vancouver, either, although I only learned this week that smoking is banned in its parks, beaches, playgrounds and sports fields -- just as the city of Vancouver plans to do this fall.

I’ve gotta say, though, all this banning feels like overkill. A walk in the park is supposed to be a walk in the park for everybody. If smoke from grandpa’s pipe or some wannabe-Rasta’s rollie wafts my way, there’s plenty of room for me to walk in a different direction, just as the vegans can relocate if the smell of my grilled meat makes them queasy. On beaches, the ocean breeze keeps air, clean or dirty, on the move.

Most people disagree with me, however. Everybody’s frightened of cancer and few of us like wading through sand pocked with cigarette butts in order to find a good spot to build a castle. “Smokers’ rights?” most of us say. “Who needs ’em?”

The reality, however, is that those who are hooked on smoking will find a way to do it. Do we want to drive them behind the curtains or into broom closets at the mental health unit? When people are ill, whether physically or mentally, why not let them enjoy relative comfort outdoors and unwind in the way they do it best? They’re only trying to hold on, for goodness’ sake.

Few of us need reminding that we all have unhealthy habits. My sick love of The Young and the Restless wastes time and appalls my friends. I’m personally offended by the frequent and rude intrusion of everybody else’s gadgets – Blackberries, cell-phones and the like -- and I don’t see anybody banning them. I am the rare holdout, but my husband Stanley is always obsessed with his latest handheld whatzit.

These things are totems to him. If a question arises at any dinner table – whether it’s “Which bus takes the most direct route to my intended destination?” or “In which year did William Shatner mercifully flee Canada,” Stanley whips out his iPhone to find the answer. I’m sorry, but it’s really annoying. To me, it’s just as irritating as having to listen to teenagers sharing their hook-up plans with everybody on the Seabus, or having to watch soccer moms have complex conversations on their hands-free phones while negotiating tricky left-hand turns with a carful of kids in front of my vehicle.

I’d like to yell “Just stop it!” at everyone, just as they might like to prevent me from parking in a slapdash way, or dictate how much cheese I’m allowed to eat so I don’t burden the healthcare system. It’s a free country, however, or so we like to claim. And all these exasperating compulsions are within the law, so we must put up with them.

Smoking is still legal, too. So we should also have to put up with it, at least outside, especially when the “perpetrator” is not just contending with addiction, but with mental illness.

You might argue that technological dependence is an illness, as well. That may have been the thinking at the International Center for Media and the Public Agenda, which recently asked 200 young University of Maryland students to give up their cell-phones, iPods, computers, TVs, radios and newspapers for 24 hours and report the results.

According to Tuesday’s Globe and Mail, the students did a lot of moaning. “Honestly, this experience was probably the single worst experience I have ever had,” wrote one sheltered soul. They reported mood changes, a sense of loneliness, and the feeling that they were “on a desert island”  -- although maybe that respondent was suffering from Survivor withdrawal. They felt “out of the loop.” At least one gave up, frustrated by the tragic inability to respond to Twitter messages. Some consoled themselves with non-prescription drugs, an option that’s probably not available (or advisable) for mentally ill people whose right to smoke is wrenched away.

In South Korea, Time magazine reports, a widespread fixation on Internet gaming has become a big problem. The country’s government has ordered a “nighttime shutdown” for gamers as of September, directing operators of the country’s three most popular games to block young people from playing more than 16 hours a day. In one notorious case, a three-month-old baby starved while her parents fed their virtual baby online. In another, a man allegedly murdered his mother because she kept nagging him to stop playing. In 2005, 10 people supposedly died in South Korea as a result of their passion for video games.

Those who object to the government’s restrictions point out that young people who are banned from playing games at night will do other harmful things, like drinking, or will skip school to play games during the day. Anybody who’s been a teenager knows there’s more than a wisp of truth to that.

The point is, to the addicted, compulsions feel like needs. Simply forbidding people from their beloved pastimes without any support doesn’t cure their addiction – there’s more to it than that. And denying mentally ill people this legal crutch in their moments of despair seems awfully punitive.

Sure, our intentions are noble. But where will society’s growing addiction to interference stop? And who has the power to stop it?

 

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