During the past years I have had under my care a number of excellent and competent physicians of unusual mental and nervous balance and control in whom there could be no hint of lack of courage, nor of deficient will-power, nor of lack of desire to be free from their affliction. Possessing, some of them, unusual medical training and scientific ability, having added to this the actual experiences of opiate addiction, they with others have co-operated and aided in experiment, study and analysis, and the result has been in their minds as in mine, complete confirmation of the facts above stated. Primarily, there are two phrases I should like to see eliminated from the literature of opiate drug addiction. I believe they have worked great injustice to the opiate addict and have played no small part in the making of present conditions. It seems to me that to speak and write as we still often do of “drug habit” and “drug fiends” is placing upon the opiate addict a burden of responsibility which he does not deserve. If long ago we had discarded the word “habit” and substituted the word “disease” I believe we would have saved many people from the hell of narcotic drug addiction. I believe if it had not been for the use of the word “habit” that the medical profession would long ago have recognized and investigated this condition as a disease. A man, physician or layman, believes that he can control a habit when he would fear the development of a disease. Until now, however, the description has been “drug habit.” And the man who acquires one of the most terrible diseases to be encountered in the practice of medicine is unconscious of his being threatened with a physical disease process until this process has become so developed and so rooted that it is beyond average human power to resist its physical demands. In the near future, I earnestly hope the true story and the real facts concerning the opiate drug addict will become universally known. Without familiarity with them and understanding of them, and comprehension and appreciation of their disease, we shall never make real progress in the solution of the narcotic drug problem. From the present day trend of articles and stories in the newspapers and lay and medical magazines it cannot be doubted that the time is not far distant when in the lay press will appear, in plain, sober, unvarnished truth, the true story of the experiences and struggles of the opiate drug addict. I have marked a rapidly growing appreciation of fact and a steadily increasing activity in the investigation of conditions. This is sooner or later bound to be followed by intelligent public and scientific demand for competent and common-sense explanation and solution. CHAPTER II FUNDAMENTAL CONSIDERATIONS My earliest efforts in the handling of narcotic addicts were institutional. They were along the lines of forcible control, based upon the theory that I could expect no help nor co-operation from my patients.