Cracking the Code: Genetics and Addiction with Dr. Evelyn Higgins

I wasn't born a liar, a thief, and a cheat. It took years of practice. I don't justify that for my addiction. Never drank. Never took a drug. Hated drug addicts. But the isms that I see in him, the obsessive compulsive behavior and the total self-centeredness, which I call the disease of addiction because even though I don't drink or drug, I would rent. She's 92, and I haven't drugged since 1986. I'm still obsessive and compulsive. I still have that hole in the stomach that what I call the disease of addiction. I was at disease with myself. I wasn't at ease with myself. That's why I grasped part of the disease concept because until '81, I thought I had a moral deficiency. The system told me I had a moral deficiency. The cops told me, the judge told me, the police told me. I had my first drug administrated in prison. I'd my first drug administrator in prison. I'd never taken a drug. Wow. And they put me on a drug called Ligactyl. That was my first drug ever as a 17-year-old boy. At 19, I started intravenous using heroin. Wow. Because in the '70s, heroin was the drug. Everybody would... Yep. Rolling Stones was singing about it. Eric Clapton was singing cocaine. Yeah, it's true. Yeah, I was trying to think of it. Heroin makes me feel like a man when I put a spike into my arm. Lou Reed. He was called Heroin. Yeah, yeah. He was called Heroin. You know, he makes me feel like a man when I put a spike into my arm. It was all about drug addiction, all through the '70s, and it was cool. We didn't know that you're going to destroy your life. We didn't know that you're going to end up in prisons and derelict and destitute. We didn't know that stuff. The rock stars were doing it.