title: Substance use intervention failure: a point of view or how the cure becomes the disease or an ode to experts on incurability or masking the disease, mitigating someone's pain but providing no basic cure/solution.
abstract: Substance use intervention, both in the private and public sectors, continues to be associated with failure. This paper makes the assumption that: 1) there is a need to systematically consider and explore FAILURE in its various parameters (definitions, characteristics, forms, shapes, potencies, densities, directions, tempos, levels, phases, meanings, and adhesiveness), sources, and "demands" in the broad area of substance use intervention; 2) we can learn from failure (categorizing its processes and outcomes, selecting foci for intervention, and failure's "veracity," status, transmittability and potential/actual usability over time); and 3) we should continue to repeat this process until there is little need to do so. As times and definitions change, there will never be an end to failure or the need to learn from failure. Failure is considered as a value, and having value, on a multidimensional, dynamic gradient (minimal to maximal), being describable, discernable, catagorizable, understandable, while being-culture-site-ideologically bound/influenced. Exploring FAILURE offers us-in our various substance use intervention roles-the opportunity to learn from what we have done and to more appropiately plan, implement, and assess what we may want and/or need to know and to do. Examples are given of ongoing sources of built-in substance use intervention failure.
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Einstein
mesh_terms: D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D006801:Humans; D013287:Illicit Drugs; D010043:Outcome and Process Assessment, Health Care; D010342:Patient Acceptance of Health Care; D011619:Psychotropic Drugs; D019966:Substance-Related Disorders / Q000523:psychology / Q000534:rehabilitation*; D017211:Treatment Failure
chemical_list: D013287:Illicit Drugs; D011619:Psychotropic Drugs