In their desperation and ignorance, the vast majority of addicts have repeatedly exercised will-power in self-denial of their drug to the limits of their physical endurance, and they know the futility and suffering of attempts based simply and solely upon the exercise of will-power. Experience has taught them actual facts concerning the physical action of narcotic drugs and concerning the results of insufficient supply of narcotic drug in a man who is addicted. The addict knows that he does not take a drug because he enjoys it. He knows that he experiences no sensuous gratification or other pleasure from its administration. He knows that he uses a narcotic drug simply and solely because he has to use it to escape physical incompetence and physical agony. As I said before, almost without exception the narcotic addict has proceeded of his own accord, or under the direction and advice of others, on the theory of exercising will power, and resisting temptation. With the few exceptions of those made in a very early stage and before addiction mechanism had become strongly developed and rooted in his physical processes, such efforts on the basis of this theory have been useless. It is practically impossible to argue successfully on the basis of theory with the man who has experienced facts. Narcotic addiction furnishes a class of patients who know more about their own disease than any other class of people. They can accurately estimate the extent of understanding and knowledge possessed by the man who is treating them, and they are desperately critical. Almost without exception, except for some of the true “underworld,” they desire above all else to escape from their condition. I know that this is not the popular conception and for the present may be by some regarded as heresy. Therefore, it is of essential importance that between the doctor who treats an addict of average intelligence and that addict must exist co-operation and understanding. As soon as this patient realizes two things--that the doctor does not believe his expressed wish to be cured, and that he interprets the patient’s desire for relief from suffering as simply a desire for more opiate and the expression of habit, vice or degraded appetite which should be controlled by the exercise of “will-power,”--there is an end to that patient’s confidence in that doctor, and to the help that that doctor can give to that patient. As I have written elsewhere, the opiate addict of average intelligence will co-operate with his medical adviser to the extent of his physical endurance, so long as he has any belief in that adviser’s understanding of his condition, and ability to help him.