The treatment of alcoholism that should not exist: Addiction, East German doctors, and Western methods in the German Democratic Republic

TL;DR

This paper explores how East German doctors adapted Western addiction treatment methods despite socialist ideology and lack of state support.

Contribution

It reveals the nuanced development of addiction treatment in the GDR, showing how local initiatives bridged ideological gaps with Western approaches.

Findings

East German doctors adopted Western therapeutic methods like therapeutic communities despite ideological constraints.

Treatment shifted from moralistic approaches to more specialized and individualized care by the 1970s and 1980s.

Local initiatives filled the state's neglect in addressing addiction, enabling knowledge transfer across the Berlin Wall.

Abstract

Addiction was considered ‘alien to Socialism’. At least, that was the narrative upheld by the socialist East German state, which thus followed the traditional argumentation of socialist and social democratic movements since the turn of the century. While the state clung to this ideological claim, the consumption and abuse of beer, spirits, and benzodiazepines continued to increase. However, there was never a central strategy for the treatment and prevention of addiction in the German Democratic Republic (GDR). The hesitation and ignorance of the state authorities created a vacuum that was filled by local initiatives and expert discussions aimed at improving the situation of people with addictions. In this article, I analyse the introduction of new treatment methods in a psychiatric hospital in the GDR and show that doctors, psychologists, patients, and local officials had certain freedoms to test new approaches, many of which originated in the West. Even though they had to adapt concepts such as the ‘therapeutic communities’ of British reformer Maxwell Jones to the specific socialist and East German context to avoid restrictions by state authorities, the Berlin Wall did not prevent the transfer of knowledge. This article, therefore, paints a nuanced picture of the therapeutic methods used to treat people with addiction in the GDR. From condemning individuals as outcasts of socialist society for socially deviant drinking behaviour and relying exclusively on aversion therapy and moral accusations, there was a shift towards a mixture of treatments that became increasingly specialised and individualised, especially in the 1970s and 1980s, comparable to Western standards.