Has anybody else observed the phemonenon where a junkie will be washed of all of their "street debt" upon going away to rehab?
I have seen this happen a few times, and I personally have let a few small debts slide after the person went away to rehab. I mean, it's kinda weird to ask someone that just got out of rehab to pay up for the 2 bags that they ripped you off for, especially if they are still clean. I think that this phenomenon feeds into some junkies rationalizing their actions when pulling the "I'll be right back" after you hand them some money to go cop some bags for you, since most of the time they are telling themselves that they are at the end of their run, and are going to be going to rehab soon so they might as well rip everybody off once before going, since they are about to pull the junkie version of declaring backruptcy by means of entering into rehab.
Now some of them definitely do this for way too long and they end up beaten or in jail (or both) before they make it into a rehab facility, but many of them are truly at the "end of the road" when they decide to start ripping people off, and it seems that many of them get away with it. I've only been ripped off by like 3 people, and each of them ended up in either rehab or jail, at which time I stopped pursuing them for their debt. One of them had their facebook wall blown up with people talking shit to them about ripping them off, but I never fed into that nonsense because doing so would be equivalent to saying "I gave this person money for drugs, and they did not give me said drugs," which lets the rest of the people viewing the post know that you are a junkie as well. The person ended up going to jail, and someone that had just gotten out of the same jail actually posted on the persons wall replying to someone asking where the kid was, saying that they saw him in jail and he had gotten his ass kicked several times by some people in there that he had ripped off on the outside. Once it was known that the kid got locked up, the messages suddenly stopped being posted, as if the "Department of Junkie Treasury" had suddenly relieved this person of their street dept to all other junkies.
Basically the same thing happened to another junkie acquaintance that ripped a bunch of people off before entering into rehab. This person never ripped me off, but I was one of the last people left that he was still on good terms with before going away, and he was hiding out in an undisclosed location so that he could safely rip off a few last people before going away, while the rest of the people after him did not know his whereabouts. What further confirms my theory is that recently (a few months after he got out of rehab) when I asked him about someone that was talking shit about him for ripping him off, he replied "oh, that was from before I went away to rehab," as if it no longer counted since he started a clean slate upon his discharge from rehab.
Obviously with certain dealers this will not fly, and the person will have to watch their backs so that said people will not find them after getting out, but a lot of fellow junkies seem to back off with their pursuit of lost funds at that time. That is why I refer to this as a suburban junkie phenomenon, since most real dealers are from the city, so the "Department of Junkie Treasury" seems to have limits to its jurisdiction, which end at city lines. I feel like the 12 steps of NA need to be ammended to include this, or possibly reword step 9 to go from saying "Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others" to instead say "Made direct amends to such dealers wherever possible, except when they are fellow junkies from the suburbs."
Does anybody agree or disagree with this, or have you observed something similar?
I have seen this happen a few times, and I personally have let a few small debts slide after the person went away to rehab. I mean, it's kinda weird to ask someone that just got out of rehab to pay up for the 2 bags that they ripped you off for, especially if they are still clean. I think that this phenomenon feeds into some junkies rationalizing their actions when pulling the "I'll be right back" after you hand them some money to go cop some bags for you, since most of the time they are telling themselves that they are at the end of their run, and are going to be going to rehab soon so they might as well rip everybody off once before going, since they are about to pull the junkie version of declaring backruptcy by means of entering into rehab.
Now some of them definitely do this for way too long and they end up beaten or in jail (or both) before they make it into a rehab facility, but many of them are truly at the "end of the road" when they decide to start ripping people off, and it seems that many of them get away with it. I've only been ripped off by like 3 people, and each of them ended up in either rehab or jail, at which time I stopped pursuing them for their debt. One of them had their facebook wall blown up with people talking shit to them about ripping them off, but I never fed into that nonsense because doing so would be equivalent to saying "I gave this person money for drugs, and they did not give me said drugs," which lets the rest of the people viewing the post know that you are a junkie as well. The person ended up going to jail, and someone that had just gotten out of the same jail actually posted on the persons wall replying to someone asking where the kid was, saying that they saw him in jail and he had gotten his ass kicked several times by some people in there that he had ripped off on the outside. Once it was known that the kid got locked up, the messages suddenly stopped being posted, as if the "Department of Junkie Treasury" had suddenly relieved this person of their street dept to all other junkies.
Basically the same thing happened to another junkie acquaintance that ripped a bunch of people off before entering into rehab. This person never ripped me off, but I was one of the last people left that he was still on good terms with before going away, and he was hiding out in an undisclosed location so that he could safely rip off a few last people before going away, while the rest of the people after him did not know his whereabouts. What further confirms my theory is that recently (a few months after he got out of rehab) when I asked him about someone that was talking shit about him for ripping him off, he replied "oh, that was from before I went away to rehab," as if it no longer counted since he started a clean slate upon his discharge from rehab.
Obviously with certain dealers this will not fly, and the person will have to watch their backs so that said people will not find them after getting out, but a lot of fellow junkies seem to back off with their pursuit of lost funds at that time. That is why I refer to this as a suburban junkie phenomenon, since most real dealers are from the city, so the "Department of Junkie Treasury" seems to have limits to its jurisdiction, which end at city lines. I feel like the 12 steps of NA need to be ammended to include this, or possibly reword step 9 to go from saying "Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others" to instead say "Made direct amends to such dealers wherever possible, except when they are fellow junkies from the suburbs."
Does anybody agree or disagree with this, or have you observed something similar?
![:\](https://bluelight.org/xf/BL_Images/Orig_Emoji/wrygrin.gif "wry grin :\")
