Longtime smack addicts can have brain damage that puts them in a “primal state of compulsion” and leads them to steal, an addiction therapist testified Monday.
Dr. Nicholas Kardaras, executive director of The Dunes East Hampton, was called to testify in Manhattan Supreme Court on behalf of Scott Silverstein, 50, a lifetime heroin abuser with a prison record dating back to the early 1980s.
The doctor’s testimony is part of what may be the first test of “opioid use disorder” as a basis for an insanity defense, because it was only classified as such in the DSM, the authoritative book on mental illnesses, in its 2013 fifth edition.
Kardaras said studies show addicts are constantly “chasing that dopamine reward,” which alters their ability to reason and do anything but focus on getting more drugs.
Addicts maintain “walking, talking functionality but not a higher level reasoning so were in a primal state of compulsion,” he said at what’s known as a Frye hearing, after which a judge will decide whether to allow his testimony before a jury.
Silverstein’s attorney, David Cohen, wants to ask a jury to find him not guilty by reason of insanity on grounds he could not understand the consequences of his behavior or appreciate it was wrong.
Prosecutors are vehemently opposed to Kardaras, an addiction specalist with a Ph.D, testifying at trial and the psych defense, which is typically reserved for those with schizophrenia and other severe mental illnesses.
If Silverstein is found legally insane, he’ll be hospitalized for an unspecified amount of time and will avoid a prison sentence.
He’s charged with burglary and additional counts for breaking into a woman’s E. 85th St. apartment, taking a bag of belongings and threatening her with a crow bar before fleeing in Feb. 2012.
Kardaras testified that much of the research on neurological damage in drug addicts is “fairly recent because brain imaging is catching up with what clinicians already knew.”
The studies “speak to the fact that an extreme heroin addict has suffered brain damage and that brain damage impacts their decision making and consequential thinking.”
