What is ABSOLUTELY true is that you can't force a person off drugs who isn't motivated to quit for themselves. If you institutionalise someone who has no intention of stopping, all you do is take them out of circulation for while. The first thing those people do when they've completed their allotted stint in the rehab is run straight to the nearest dealer to score (and very often proceed to OD).
And in the case of street addicts in particular, they go back to the same life in the same circumstances with the same lack of any realistically attainable future and zero REASON to quit. Because what's being 'treated' is the symptom, not the core problem. Everybody is fixated on the person being 'drug free' as though that alone would magically sort them out, when more often than not the drug abuse is a reaction to other issues, not the main issue itself. Unfortunately there's neither the structure nor the will to tackle the roots of the problem. But hey, at least all those rehabs make money out of their wash-rinse-repeat clients...
You, are right about that. I have read 3 numbers(sort of) 9%, 10% and 5-10% for success rates of rehabs and the bs in Florida in particular, is a scam and takes advantage of a flawed part of the health care system( one of countless, but the UK is well, not exactly very good either.)
There is something thing in the law, my lousy but cheap health insurance doesn't cover rehabs and such. But many rehab operators and sober living places, in the rehab capital of America( florida) have so many crooks, some who run sober living houses and get drugs to the people their so back to rehab and an easy couple of grand for sending the addicts back for another 30 day $30,000 stay, that many insurance companies are stuck paying and the insurance and recovery system has so many crooked people in it. And everyone pays for their greed.
However, what about the crimes and homeless encampments, that plague the west Coast?.
I agree that simple possession shouldn't be a crime, but even Portugual doesn't allow legalized dealing.
There is also as Keif Richard's said on here a bipartisan war on pain patients, that is ridiculous here.
And in 2023, 118,000+ American died from illegal fentanyl and that is with Narcan widely available. My pharmacist gives it to me free, which is absurd considering, my script isn't big. My doctor even said He would put me on more, I have pain and should have died like 7 years ago, but he can't. There is a bipartisan war on pain patients and to give you some perspective, I read that in 2010 here(USA) 3000-4000 people died of heroin overdoses and Narcan was not available to average people and most states didn't have laws to protect overdose victims from small possession or being under the influence or the people who brought them in the hospital or called an ambulance, things have improved on that, noticeably but still could improve.
Even with the pill epidemic a while back the deathtoll, including suicides, mixing pills with booze and mixing pills, the death toll was over 100,000 less people and no Narcan( for the most part), then this fentanyl epidemic.
So I agree on a lot of your points, but you cannot have the disasters that are the cities that do nothing about crimes by addicts, junkies having taken over certain cities, ( San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Vancouver BC ect.) Also the idea of enabling people to use fentanyl is ridiculous. The government enabling them; honestly my family enabled me, and I had no reason to stop drinking, till I nearly died. Even then, only the legal system( DUI, when my liver really stopped working properly). I was forced into sobriety, for a while, then back to drinking, didn't care about death.
There has to be change, but I see current bipartisan war on pain patients and the let them die and enable the addicts as ridiculous.
Something very sinister is at work. I believe that both parties here, want the junkies( I am not trying to be derogatory, I am a opiod user, for pain.( oxycodone and was also on morphine, but gave up the script, when the pain lessoned).
Alcohol, which is my DOC, I cannot physically drink anymore, only becoming severely allergic, stopped me( other than at times when minor legal issues prevented me( random weekly piss tests), an underage offenders program when I was 19, was a joke.
I understand addiction, very well, I will not get into it but I know that only a person who wants to quit will.
I am against going after people for simple possession.
My trip to San francisco in 2002, was very nice, now I see what California has become, even though I could afford a trip there, I wouldn't want to go back, for free. The place has become a toilet, literally. When I was there, even though I stayed at a 4 star hotel (The Hotel Nico, which was very nice and the complimentary breakfast buffet, was great) which was close to the Tenderloin district, It was not the shit hole it has become. I could walk around at night with no fear. The aggressive pan handlers left me alone.
Which was good because I was drunk most of the time, and well, I was a potentially a very nasty drunk, if provoked. And yes I can fight,( or I could, I was younger and hadn't lost my muscle mass, from my nearly dying of when the alcohol abuse caught up with me) Besides, the street people there rarely have guns. Besides, they left me alone, which is good, because I would have beaten the shit out of them. So walking around at night after a couple of 40's was quite pleasant actually.
However, this idea of allowing people to camp out everywhere, free drug money, cigarettes and all there needs met, and enabling them and allowing the cities to trashed, isn't helping the small minority of homeless addicts, the regular people, the business owners and making the junkie lifestyle comfortable, is not harm reduction. I agree, that unless they are caught committing crimes, which is how a lot of people are able to get sober, I mean from hard drugs. They shouldn't be arrested.
I have compassion but also understand that enabling them has been a failure. Normalizing addiction is beyond foolish and will only make things worse.
I know what it is like, not as just a former alky( I cannot physically drink, thank you ALMIGHTY GOD), but opiods, benzos, and I am superstitious so I will not comment on my light gabapentin use, but throw in nicotine, and this is no way to live. I was supposed to be dead, but I got better, and now I am fucked.
I can only try and imagine what street junkies on fent go through, but enabling them will only dig them into a bigger hole and increase use and their misery and the misery they cause society. Cities, like Seattle, Portland, Vancouver, San Francisco and a whole bunch of other cities, shouldn't be ruined by a few people.
Enabling and normalizing addiction only causes more harm, but in a different way than the draconian policies of the failed war on drugs.
But here in America, it seems like both sides of the political isle have declared war on legit pain patients( I screwed up my pancreas also) and on the other hand seem to not give two shits, about what amounts to an annual deathtoll, that is greater on Americans, than all the young men who died in The Korean War and Vietnam combined.
Making people suffer and also not giving a shit about all the deaths and lives ruined is just plain sick. There has to be some middle ground, but this seems to be bipartisan so, there is no end in sight. Hopefully, the younger kids will avoid fent and increasingly traq dope, and hopefully the shaming and denying pain patients, effective relief will end.
if somebody doesn't want to do something (rehab in this case) that costs taxpayers money, they should be allowed to decline it. The surrounding society is not civilized, we're dehumanizing people and tossing them in a useless cycle of wasted money and time. Can you tell me how that's better than somebody getting high?
