Originally Posted by
Andante 
I found that as long as I kept trying to blame outside factors such as "the system" for my drunkenness, I stayed drunk. No amount of "help" in the world could have made me stay sober. I had to truly, from the bottom of my heart, want to be sober more than I wanted to be drunk. I came to realize that sobriety is an "inside job," not something that can be provided by any external source. While alcohol withdrawal can be dangerous, using the fear of withdrawal complications as an excuse to keep drinking is ultimately just a red herring. In order to stop drinking, first you must stop drinking. I wish you the best with getting through the withdrawal phase safely -- the fact is, most people do -- but the responsibility for getting sober and staying that way rests solely with you. Not with the ER, not with your GP, not with a rehab, not with "the system." You.
I'm in Canada where we have free healthcare. There are government funded inpatient rehab centres and detox. But this doesn't solve much, we still have homeless addicts. An addict needs to be willing to get clean. They would have to physically go to the free GP office and say "hey, I got a problem with addiction and I want medical help and to go to rehab". For many addicts, they never even reach this step. The GP would fill out the necessary paperwork to help get the addict into rehab. Because the government understands that a lot of people try to ride the system eg. Homeless addicts would try to check into rehab during the winter months so they have shelter but once springtime hits, they all check out and back to using. The government wants to see some sort of commitment from the addict so they have a wait list in place on an urgency basis. They want to see that an addict will go to AA meetings, free counselling the government offers etc. before they send them to rehab because let's face it, to keep one person in a 60 day rehab facility is expensive! The government spends about $20,000 per person, and that's coming out of tax payers!