Mother uses Ky. law to pull daughter from heroin

BlueHues said:
In a lot of places in the Western World it all comes down to whether or not "you're a danger to yourself and others", and some places extend that to mean using alcohol and drugs in a dangerous way, or even simply "not taking care of your basic needs".

It can be initiated in a few different ways. If a police officer or certain health-care workers or a court feels that you're acting in a "dangerous" way, they can usually have you "evaluated"....If you end up in the psych ward on an evaluation, you're interviewed and observed for a period of time...Usually, if you're calm and answering the questions in a clear, rational way, the doctor in charge of your case will cut you lose after only a couple of hours. If you're on drugs or acting like a weirdo in any way, you'll usually be held for 3-5 days for further observation. If in that time it's determined that you're okay, you'll be let go. If the doctor feels that you need to be held and treated for a longer period, you'll be given a court date to determine whether or not should be involuntarily committed and held until the court-date.

^This is actually very similar to being arraigned for a crime. You're allowed to have a lawyer defend you and present your side of the case and whoever is trying to have you committed is allowed to present evidence showing why you should be held. If it's determined that you should be held further, you're sent back to the psych-ward and given another court date about a month or so from then where the same thing happens, so it's essentially like a 30 day prison sentence!...You can also be forcibly medicated if you're involuntarily committed, which is the most evil thing of all IMO! Also, when you do get out, guess who has to pay thousands of dollars for the hospital stay?! In the US, the person held against their will is financially responsible!

Unless you are truly going "Bat Shit Crazy", you'll generally get out within a few days unless you're sent there because of a petition signed by your family or associates. For some reason, when it's your family trying to have you committed, it seems to carry a lot more weight than anything else, and if it's proven that you have a history of drug use and "mental illness", even if it's just depression and suicidal ideation, you'll usually end up in there for awhile until you can somehow convince them that you're okay!

It's a really fucked up law that I think a lot of people assume could never be used against them as long as they're not running naked down the street screaming, but it's a lot easier than you make think!

Having people involuntarily held because of drug abuse is controversial and definitely a "grey area" in the law that's interpreted differently in different cases and locales, but if it's your family or SO signing a petition against you, it's "crazy until proven sane"! Pretty fucked up....
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I've had this shit happen to me before. I got in a car wreck & admitted to having used drugs. After getting another DWI my parents met me in the waiting room & my blitzed dumbass finally agreed to stay in hospital "for one night" 8)8(. Four days later I got out of the rehab section with the doctors & nurses saying, "Oh wow lol, you actually didn't need detox meds!"
 
shimazu said:
I just don't get how you can be innocent until proven guilty and sent to rehab with no proof of a drug addiction. I guess they could UT you but on what grounds can they give you a UT?
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My mom is like the mom in this article, and for a period of my life when she found out I had relapsed and I wasn't trying to pretend to be totally clean, she would regularly call the police on me for no goddamned reason. I'm talking like 6 times over the course of a year. One time she did it and I was seriously not high, not doing anything crazy, and I was fucking 21 years old. The cops came and once they lured me out of my room, 4 grown ass men tackled me to the ground (me being a female). At that oint I became what they referred to as "combative", shocking right? Anyways I didn't even refuse a drug test, just told them I couldn't pee right that second could I have a glass of water? Their response (since I was already restrained to the bed via wrist and ankle bands) was to cut off my pants and panties and cathiterized me. Fucking insanity. And then I got even more "combative" and they tried to inject me without telling me what they were giving me, and being restrained I couldn't do much, which resulted in me being given a shot of an antipsychotic that I'd taken before and makes me agitated as fuck.

Following this, I was committed to a state hospital where I was held for 72 hours until my court date, where I begged to be released if I got a family member to drive me to the private hospital where my shrink practiced. I was in for 11 days total.

Oh, and I was given and $1,800+ bill for that ER visit.
 
^^Yeah, I don't know exactly how you were behaving, but cutting your pants and underwear off and catheterizing you is a traumatic event you could probably sue them for. It's really strange how they seem to do things that are completely unnecessary to punish patients who won't "comply" with them. A lot of the things they do are supposed to be a last resort but it seemed like they look for any excuse to restrain and medicate people the 3 times I've been...
 
Jesus sameoldfears that sounds awful. I know i had absolutly no rights when i was in the hospital after a suicide attempt. The floor i was on had a couple isolation rooms didnt look pleasant. In fact one of the guys i met there claimed that his father was upset he was on methadone maintenance so he got the court to commit him to the hospital. The judge even included a stipulation that he could not be given any opiates while admitted. Dude was in bad pain and couldnt even get the shitty darvocet taper they gave everybody else.
 
Wow that sounds awful. A catheter is invasive to say the least. Id hate getting antipsychotics injected. Yuck. Id inject about anything but pysh meds? No sir um I mean maam. But anyways I bet that was tramatic. Psych wards are no fun.

I signed in to detox once and it turned out to be a detox/psych-ward combo. It was progressive thinking. Get all the crazies in one section. It was the worst place to detox I found out very fast. Its bad enough to come off drugs or alcohol but to be surrounded by the mentally insane well thats worse. These people were nasty. The all stank and well were fucking nuts. No offense to the mentally ill but these people gave the homeless schitzophenic demographic a bad name.

I remember the whole time I was in their this lady kept asking about my earings and if she could touch them. I guess she had never seen stretched ear lobes before. Well when I had a seizure and when I came to and she has her fingers in my ear lobe hole and the staff is trying very carefully to drug her and pull her off me without ripping my ear off. There was a feller in there for taking a potato peeler to his fingers and needles to say he know longer had finger nails. They would change his dressing on the table we ate off of. I checked out of that place while I was still having DTs. I had called my gf and asked her to go to the dope man and buy alot of valium and to come pick me up. Id had enough of that place. I went home to finish detoxing of booze.

Detoxing in a psych ward was one of the worst experiences of my life. It was more fun to detox in jail/prison environments. The worst part was waiting to have a shrink ok me to go out and forcing me to stay until this asshole would stop playing golf and answer his cell. Id checked myself in and now I had to get permission to leave. Ive never not been able to leave a drug treatment program that I had signed myself into. It was an experience that left me feeling weird and at the time I really did not have the patience the situation demanded. I wanted to leave immediatly and well they took their sweet time. I was to succesfully peel off another patients fentynal patches and put them on myself without anyone noticing. I do believe he got a bit dope sick later but oh well. If I was in that place any longer I think I would have joined the mentally insane part of the ward as the whole experience left me feeling like my mind had been raped.

I did see one of my favorite dealers in there. She had a crack baby and she got locked up in the pysch unit, but after a week or two they let her go home with her kid. She was back to seeing every doctor in town about pain and anxiety in no time.
 
Foreigner said:
It's unethical to force someone into therapy. If this were any other kind of therapy, the court wouldn't allow it. Yet somehow because it's drug addiction, we dishonour the person's bodily sovereignty by removing the right to refuse.

Depending on the person, there's not much point in forcing them into rehab, because rehab is mostly successful only when the person is ready to face their issues. You can't force someone to be ready, and they are more likely to relapse later anyway.

I can see laws like this being abused for profit. Who is paying for the daughter's treatment, if not the family?
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In this case, the law in KY says that whoever files the petition to get the person sent to treatment has to pay. The girls family was responsible for paying because they filed the petition.
 
Thanks for the sympathies everyone, didn't expect so much of a response! Yeah it was excessively traumatic and I copped the day I got out so it was a total waste.

Literally every time my mom called the cops I got detained, taken to the eR, and eventually committed. Even when I was totally calm and passed their drug tests. I think it's absolutely absurd that it'o easy to get someone forcibly committed, and then I'm expected to pay the bill for the evaluation and the "treatment".
 
Captain.Heroin said:
What the fuck is the point of having a child that hates you? Serious question time.

I'd rather OD in my parents house with a needle in my arm and have them find me that way, than to actually hate my parents for life and shit like that.

Just saying.
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I will guess that saying "I hate you" to your parent(s) is far from a new thing. I really doubt it has much meaning
in the long run & any kind of decent parent is in it for the long run
 
thesameoldfears said:
Thanks for the sympathies everyone, didn't expect so much of a response! Yeah it was excessively traumatic and I copped the day I got out so it was a total waste.

Literally every time my mom called the cops I got detained, taken to the eR, and eventually committed. Even when I was totally calm and passed their drug tests. I think it's absolutely absurd that it'o easy to get someone forcibly committed, and then I'm expected to pay the bill for the evaluation and the "treatment".
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Honestly, I think I would not allow my mom to be very involved in my life anymore. I'm not saying I would necessarily hate her and never speak to her again but I would damn sure be independent of her enough that she would not know enough about what was going on with me to have any basis to call the cops on me or have me committed. After the first time of her doing it that would be it. Were you an adult with this kept happening?

Ok let me clarify that a little. If I were an adult and my mom (or anyone else) had done this numerous times I would not allow them to know anything about what was going on in my life that would give them any indications for some basis to call on me. If I want or come to a point that I need help, I will give you a call mom! Now maybe if you were on the streets, close to death or sleeping in the garbage dumpsters or something then fine....call.
 
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dopemaster said:
Wow that sounds awful. A catheter is invasive to say the least. Id hate getting antipsychotics injected. Yuck. Id inject about anything but pysh meds? No sir um I mean maam. But anyways I bet that was tramatic. Psych wards are no fun.

I signed in to detox once and it turned out to be a detox/psych-ward combo. It was progressive thinking. Get all the crazies in one section. It was the worst place to detox I found out very fast. Its bad enough to come off drugs or alcohol but to be surrounded by the mentally insane well thats worse. These people were nasty. The all stank and well were fucking nuts. No offense to the mentally ill but these people gave the homeless schitzophenic demographic a bad name.

I remember the whole time I was in their this lady kept asking about my earings and if she could touch them. I guess she had never seen stretched ear lobes before. Well when I had a seizure and when I came to and she has her fingers in my ear lobe hole and the staff is trying very carefully to drug her and pull her off me without ripping my ear off. There was a feller in there for taking a potato peeler to his fingers and needles to say he know longer had finger nails. They would change his dressing on the table we ate off of. I checked out of that place while I was still having DTs. I had called my gf and asked her to go to the dope man and buy alot of valium and to come pick me up. Id had enough of that place. I went home to finish detoxing of booze.

Detoxing in a psych ward was one of the worst experiences of my life. It was more fun to detox in jail/prison environments. The worst part was waiting to have a shrink ok me to go out and forcing me to stay until this asshole would stop playing golf and answer his cell. Id checked myself in and now I had to get permission to leave. Ive never not been able to leave a drug treatment program that I had signed myself into. It was an experience that left me feeling weird and at the time I really did not have the patience the situation demanded. I wanted to leave immediatly and well they took their sweet time. I was to succesfully peel off another patients fentynal patches and put them on myself without anyone noticing. I do believe he got a bit dope sick later but oh well. If I was in that place any longer I think I would have joined the mentally insane part of the ward as the whole experience left me feeling like my mind had been raped.

I did see one of my favorite dealers in there. She had a crack baby and she got locked up in the pysch unit, but after a week or two they let her go home with her kid. She was back to seeing every doctor in town about pain and anxiety in no time.
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Are you kidding me? You stole a legit patient's fent patch of their body and put it on yourself? Someone that may have been being treated for cancer pain or some other very painful condition? Knowing that more than likely the staff is not going to give that person another one?

Not trying to be confrontational but that is pretty effed up.....

That would be like stealing the fent patch off my grandad who is dying of cancer and leaving him to suffer...but I guess some people have different places at which they draw the line. I have been in WDs before, sick as a dog and would do a lot of things to get meds but to cause something like that..just couldn't do it...
 
missmeyet? said:
Are you kidding me? You stole a legit patient's fent patch of their body and put it on yourself? Someone that may have been being treated for cancer pain or some other very painful condition? Knowing that more than likely the staff is not going to give that person another one?

Not trying to be confrontational but that is pretty effed up.....

That would be like stealing the fent patch off my grandad who is dying of cancer and leaving him to suffer...but I guess some people have different places at which they draw the line. I have been in WDs before, sick as a dog and would do a lot of things to get meds but to cause something like that..just couldn't do it...
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I should have phrased that a bit better. He told me I could have them. He said he was be able to get some more patches if he asked for them and had a family member on the staff. Maybe I did take advantage of a person who was out of his mind, but I wasnt feeling well myself. He may have took pity on me, I really dont know. It was a long time ago. I just remember how fucked up I was from those patches.
 
missmeyet? said:
That would be like stealing the fent patch off my grandad who is dying of cancer and leaving him to suffer...but I guess some people have different places at which they draw the line. I have been in WDs before, sick as a dog and would do a lot of things to get meds but to cause something like that..just couldn't do it...
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I would (if I was in acute withdrawal). However, once I'd feel all warm and fuzzy again, remorse would probably kick in and I might feel compelled to say something.
 
Dopemaster, you typed out my first experience in detox to a T. I was in one of those psych Ward/detox combos as well... there was three of us only detoxing, we had a saying: if you don't come in crazy, you'll leave crazy. If you can leave ever." I too have stretched ears and had the odd woman trying to touch em. Its weird how close our experience was.
 
Bob Loblaw said:
I'm not bashing anyone; I'm just stating facts. I think maintenance is a great thing, but it's not the same as being clean.
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Your facts are dog shite. Maintenance is the same as being clean. I was a heroin addict for seven years and I have been on Methadone for four years. I am clean and no different than a diabetic that requires insulin to function.

My mother tried pulling me from heroin but she realized after a while I wasn't going to stop until I wanted to. Rehabs, detoxes, cold turkey, trying to keep me home, threatening to kick me out wasn't productive. She also did some research and realized that I wasn't just addicted; I needed the stuff to function. She didn't want me running the streets with shady people, overdosing (again) or getting arrested, so she would take me to go cop. Sometimes she would even give me cash to get right. If it wasn't for her I would be dead or in jail.

Eventually I got tired of the life and decided to try Methadone. From day one on the program I never touched heroin again.
 
szuko000 said:
^ if they were so in love they would stick through this thick or thin. My g/f actively uses in front of me and its not a big deal to me (clean for 7 months, well subs) fuck I even fix it and shoot her sometimes for fun

My point is if you actually love someone not only would you try to help but you would never view it as choosing heroin over you, because you were there and I bet you made poor decisions because of drugs. It's just like any other relationship obstical and if you can not be clean with someone using around you unles you live in a hole opiates will find you again. I feel putting myself as close to the needle as possible without slipping is like strength training for not using
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I agree with you actually. I know a lot of people dont but its nice to see I aint alone with this. When I was clean Id help people make up their shots or hit a vein for them, whatever, i didnt fucking care.

If Im gonna use, Im gonna use, whether the dope is 100 miles away or in front of me. If I aint gonna use, there can (AND HAS BEEN) a loaded syringe right in front of me all for me and I can easily turn it down. but thats really off topic, so nevermind.
 
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