Leadership Why Addiction Strategy Demands Social Overhaul

The Prime Minister’s recognition of young people who overcome addiction as “real warriors” and his call to give them a second chance can mark an important step for India’s public-health approach. It strengthens the voices of people in recovery and reflects a global shift toward involving lived experience as active partners in care. This is especially relevant in Punjab, where addiction requires responses that go beyond treatment and enforcement.

During a recent visit to Amritsar, public health professional Suneel Vatsyayan observed how informal yet meaningful interactions—such as between a Gen Z student and an environmentalist—highlighted the link between a “green Punjab” and a “healthy Punjab.” These exchanges reinforced a simple idea: prevention and recovery must be nurtured by society, like a living ecosystem.

A conversation with psychiatrist Dr JPS Bhatia further underscored how trauma can pass across generations and why addiction must be understood holistically, not only as a medical or law-and-order issue. This reinforces a long-held principle: prevention is social before it becomes a prescription.

While medicines can support treatment, recovery cannot be sustained by drugs alone. It depends on functional families, peer support, meaningful work, stable relationships, and communities that foster hope and belonging. Recovery is therefore a long-term social process, not a clinical endpoint.

Vatsyayan’s earlier work with the Navjyoti Delhi Police Foundation (now Navjyoti India Foundation) and the UNDCP-supported rehabilitation projects he led, demonstrated this shift in practice. By training recovering individuals and families as peer counsellors, the focus moved from “what is wrong with this person?” to “what can this person contribute to society?” Many participants later built peer-led initiatives across North India, showing the value of lived experience in recovery systems.

A similar message emerged from his meeting with Preet, a former Navjyoti participant who has remained drug-free for over three decades. His life reflects that recovery is not just abstinence, but rebuilding identity, relationships, and purpose. He also noted a growing concern that rehabilitation is becoming overly commercialised, with detoxification treated as an end rather than a beginning.

Policy discussions in Punjab echo these concerns. The Vidhan Sabha Committee on Government Assurances has highlighted that large-scale procurement of medicines, including buprenorphine, cannot by itself ensure recovery. It recommends strengthening counselling, rehabilitation, and psychosocial support, and measuring success by reintegration into a healthy, productive life rather than by medical outputs alone.

While government initiatives are moving toward a more integrated model, experts like Prof Aditya Parihar stress that lasting change will require stronger recognition of psychosocial interventions alongside medical treatment.

Vatsyayan’s wider engagements in Amritsar—with students, NGOs, health professionals, community groups and faith-based organisations—reinforced a consistent message: addiction cannot be addressed by the health system alone. Schools, families, workplaces, civil society and community institutions, all play essential roles in prevention and recovery.

These experiences also raise important policy questions: why are government rehabilitation centres often underutilised while private facilities remain overcrowded? Why is investment in medicines far greater than investment in social work, family support, and community-based recovery systems?

Recovery begins in treatment but is sustained in society. Prevention must therefore become social—rooted in families, schools, workplaces, peer networks, and community institutions. The true measure of recovery is not only abstinence, but the ability to rebuild dignity, relationships, purpose, and meaningful participation in society.

(The writer, India’s first female IPS officer, is former lieutenant governor of Puducherry)