Heroin is a bad drug.  It ruins lives and kills people.  A young woman came to me a few years ago and confessed that she was using drugs.  I asked her what she was using, with the hope that it not be heroin.  Be LSD, marijuana, ecstasy, whatever.  I was hoping that she would say any drug but heroin, because she suffered a serious deficiency of happiness, and that is what heroin supplies, the feeling of happiness. 

Our American economy is a heroin addict.  We have lived too well for years on borrowed time and money, while we have desolated the manufacturing base.  Like a junkie, we look for a quick fix.  The delusion collapsed under the weight of real problems.  What will help? Jail time? Methadone?

I worked for a man who ran a  painting business.   He was a heroin addict.  He had been in jail for years.  Four years in prison, a few years off drugs, a few years out, relapse, prison again.  During that summer of painting, I would drive him over lunchtime to the methadone clinic, where he met other drug addicts and restarted his habit of buying, selling, and using.  All summer I drove him to the clinic thinking that he was getting off heroin.  By the Fall he was arrested.  I was back in college.  Methadone didn’t work. 

So what do we do with our drug-addicted economy? Imprisonment is off the table.  Dickens rightfully made the idea of such horrible social conventions as debtor’s prison unconscionable.  So what else can we do to get our economy off the heroin of credit?

The answer of the Democrats in power: continued methadone treatments.  The upside is that we will not have to suffer the soul-tearing upset of immediate withdrawal.  The downside is that we may never truly become free of the drugs that fuel our false happiness.  Most likely we will relapse.

The conservative answer: cold-turkey.  Tie the junkie to his bed, lock the door, give him lots of coffee and ibuprofen and step back.  Let his mind, body, and psyche heal itself.  Keep him on suicide watch.  Endure the tortured screams.  If he survives the ordeal, he has a very good chance of putting his life back together.  If not, at least we will know sooner than later that we are fighting a futile battle. 

The young woman who used heroin, died of an overdose.  She had too little love, too few friends, and too much emptiness.  She was looking for happiness, and could not tolerate the actual pain which the endorphin pleasantness promised to remove.  Our country is not much different from her and the painter.  We now have the option of pursuing a false utopia, through inflationary government bailouts, or we have the chance to redefine what can make us individually and corporately happy.  The days of cheap, safe heroin are over.