A provocative, interesting tidbit I found....
Member
Thread Starter
Join Date: Dec 2011
Location: Dallas TX
Posts: 2,282
A provocative, interesting tidbit I found....
Why do we still believe that letting drug addicts "hit rock bottom" is a good thing?
Our densely populated, low-income neighbourhood of the Downtown Eastside in Vancouver has 16,000 residents and about 6,000 injection drug users. Day after day, I’ve seen kind, funny and gentle people lose their families, get sicker, become more isolated.......
BY LIZ EVANS PUBLISHED 31 OCTOBER, 2013 - 14:08
Drug users at Insite, a legal supervised injection site in Vancouver.
Including people living with addiction into society should not be revolutionary thinking in 2013. However, in many ways the addict is the modern-day “n****r, a term used to dehumanise, alienate, torture and abuse a group of other human beings. Today, people who use drugs – “junkies” – are expected to suffer, then blamed when they do, and if they die there is almost a collective sigh of relief.
Understanding the work that my organisation, PHS, does with addicts on the streets in Vancouver can best be explained by introducing you to one of my teachers. Tilly was a waif-like, 40-year-old aboriginal woman who I met in my early twenties. Her hollow cheeks and deep-set dark eyes were childlike, imploring and innocent – in spite of her “experience”. Locked in a room and malnourished as a child, Tilly was addicted to prescription pills by the age of 11. By the time she was 15 she had tried to end her life by slitting her throat with a kitchen knife.
When I met Tilly she was working in the sex trade, injecting heroin and cocaine, and drinking. One night she was raped and beaten, and as I held her in my lap, bloodied and broken, I rocked her like a tiny bird. She told me through her sobs that it was her fault. I felt her emptiness and I understood her cries. Hers were not the cries of a criminal but of a wounded soul who felt her life was worthless.
Our densely populated, low-income neighbourhood of the Downtown Eastside in Vancouver has 16,000 residents and about 6,000 injection drug users. Here, I started running a 70-room housing project in 1991, and for 23 years I have seen the human fallout of our collective ignorance. Day after day, I’ve seen kind, funny and gentle people lose their families, get sicker, become more isolated and die.
The people I have come to know and grown to love have helped me heal myself. My own white, privileged family was not unfamiliar with tragedy. My mother suffered her own pain and left us when I was a child. I knew what it was like to feel empty and alone.
We hear all the time how addicts are selfish liars who steal from their families, cause pain, smash car windows to steal things and get into fights. We have created brutalising conditions that result in addicts being vilified and that cause enormous harm. However, I have also experienced a unique window into the resilience, humanity and strength of people trying to survive while actively addicted.
Throughout the 1990s, alongside my partner and my colleagues, I had to go against the common logic of the day as we wrestled over how to help. We intuitively gravitated to the belief that people might be able to do better if survival wasn’t so hard, and over the years we have succeeded in creating spaces that are tolerant, respectful and inclusive – where people struggling with addiction can live, find social membership, a sense of belonging and the basics.
This flew in the face of the received wisdom that said people had to “hit rock bottom” or society was somehow “encouraging them”.
As the death toll from drugs mounted in 1997, we rebranded our community “the Killing Fields”. The number of drug users developing HIV was on a par with Botswana; meanwhile, more than 400 drug overdoses happened in our province in just one year. The level of grief was profound, so we flew in experts from around the world to talk about things that we could try: supervised injection sites, heroin maintenance, harm reduction.
Drug users themselves used their voices and parent groups spoke out. Brave politicians stood up and some lost their careers. Gradually the public became educated through extensive media coverage and community debates. By 2003, the tide had shifted and on 21 September we opened North America’s first legally sanctioned supervised injection site, or “Insite”, as a partnership between our non-profit organisation and our local health authority. We saw people come in to what felt like a sanctuary – out of the back alleys to indoors, where users could inject their drugs under the supervision of a nurse.
Over these past ten years almost two million injections have happened here, and 14,000 individuals have come in. Each year, 400 referrals are made into treatment. The staff revive, on average, 40 people a month who overdose and not one person has died.
Today, we have a more sophisticated understanding that an individual, while addicted, still has the right to live. We have created places like our dental clinic, art gallery and bank, and social enterprises that are reshaping the landscape. For example, with over 4,500 members, our community bank (a partnership with Vancity Credit Union) offers savings and checking accounts to people who are unwelcome, banned or followed by security guards in conventional financial institutions. New units of housing have been funded by our provincial government, targeting the most vulnerable homeless and addicted.
Health-care services have been established that are relevant to people actively using drugs. Social enterprises have been created to give people – addicted or not – jobs, at the vintage clothing store, chocolate and coffee roasters, art studio and retail store, commercial laundry and pest-control company.
For those of us who remember how dark it felt 20 years ago, there is much to celebrate in Vancouver in 2013. People in our community are living ten years longer.
Tilly was kind, sensitive, gentle and generous, but in the end she died of Aids because no one had cared enough to make sure she had access to a clean syringe. As a society, we told her that her life didn’t matter and she believed us.
It’s time to stop punishing and start creating solutions to the walls of intolerance and hatred we’ve built. These steps, though seemingly small, can create a new social context, one that redefines the addict from a non-person to a person, a criminal to a citizen, someone “diseased” to someone who just needs love, belonging and a community, just like me.
================================================== ==
Don't shoot me! I didn't write it.
This comes from ( gasp!!!!) .....CANADA!!!!!!!
I keep trying to help my fellow countrymen understand that there ARE countries other than
the good 'ole USA on this planet.......although many of them remain unconvinced.They think
Canadians come from somewhere north of northern Minnesota------exactly where....they are
unsure.
Our densely populated, low-income neighbourhood of the Downtown Eastside in Vancouver has 16,000 residents and about 6,000 injection drug users. Day after day, I’ve seen kind, funny and gentle people lose their families, get sicker, become more isolated.......
BY LIZ EVANS PUBLISHED 31 OCTOBER, 2013 - 14:08
Drug users at Insite, a legal supervised injection site in Vancouver.
Including people living with addiction into society should not be revolutionary thinking in 2013. However, in many ways the addict is the modern-day “n****r, a term used to dehumanise, alienate, torture and abuse a group of other human beings. Today, people who use drugs – “junkies” – are expected to suffer, then blamed when they do, and if they die there is almost a collective sigh of relief.
Understanding the work that my organisation, PHS, does with addicts on the streets in Vancouver can best be explained by introducing you to one of my teachers. Tilly was a waif-like, 40-year-old aboriginal woman who I met in my early twenties. Her hollow cheeks and deep-set dark eyes were childlike, imploring and innocent – in spite of her “experience”. Locked in a room and malnourished as a child, Tilly was addicted to prescription pills by the age of 11. By the time she was 15 she had tried to end her life by slitting her throat with a kitchen knife.
When I met Tilly she was working in the sex trade, injecting heroin and cocaine, and drinking. One night she was raped and beaten, and as I held her in my lap, bloodied and broken, I rocked her like a tiny bird. She told me through her sobs that it was her fault. I felt her emptiness and I understood her cries. Hers were not the cries of a criminal but of a wounded soul who felt her life was worthless.
Our densely populated, low-income neighbourhood of the Downtown Eastside in Vancouver has 16,000 residents and about 6,000 injection drug users. Here, I started running a 70-room housing project in 1991, and for 23 years I have seen the human fallout of our collective ignorance. Day after day, I’ve seen kind, funny and gentle people lose their families, get sicker, become more isolated and die.
The people I have come to know and grown to love have helped me heal myself. My own white, privileged family was not unfamiliar with tragedy. My mother suffered her own pain and left us when I was a child. I knew what it was like to feel empty and alone.
We hear all the time how addicts are selfish liars who steal from their families, cause pain, smash car windows to steal things and get into fights. We have created brutalising conditions that result in addicts being vilified and that cause enormous harm. However, I have also experienced a unique window into the resilience, humanity and strength of people trying to survive while actively addicted.
Throughout the 1990s, alongside my partner and my colleagues, I had to go against the common logic of the day as we wrestled over how to help. We intuitively gravitated to the belief that people might be able to do better if survival wasn’t so hard, and over the years we have succeeded in creating spaces that are tolerant, respectful and inclusive – where people struggling with addiction can live, find social membership, a sense of belonging and the basics.
This flew in the face of the received wisdom that said people had to “hit rock bottom” or society was somehow “encouraging them”.
As the death toll from drugs mounted in 1997, we rebranded our community “the Killing Fields”. The number of drug users developing HIV was on a par with Botswana; meanwhile, more than 400 drug overdoses happened in our province in just one year. The level of grief was profound, so we flew in experts from around the world to talk about things that we could try: supervised injection sites, heroin maintenance, harm reduction.
Drug users themselves used their voices and parent groups spoke out. Brave politicians stood up and some lost their careers. Gradually the public became educated through extensive media coverage and community debates. By 2003, the tide had shifted and on 21 September we opened North America’s first legally sanctioned supervised injection site, or “Insite”, as a partnership between our non-profit organisation and our local health authority. We saw people come in to what felt like a sanctuary – out of the back alleys to indoors, where users could inject their drugs under the supervision of a nurse.
Over these past ten years almost two million injections have happened here, and 14,000 individuals have come in. Each year, 400 referrals are made into treatment. The staff revive, on average, 40 people a month who overdose and not one person has died.
Today, we have a more sophisticated understanding that an individual, while addicted, still has the right to live. We have created places like our dental clinic, art gallery and bank, and social enterprises that are reshaping the landscape. For example, with over 4,500 members, our community bank (a partnership with Vancity Credit Union) offers savings and checking accounts to people who are unwelcome, banned or followed by security guards in conventional financial institutions. New units of housing have been funded by our provincial government, targeting the most vulnerable homeless and addicted.
Health-care services have been established that are relevant to people actively using drugs. Social enterprises have been created to give people – addicted or not – jobs, at the vintage clothing store, chocolate and coffee roasters, art studio and retail store, commercial laundry and pest-control company.
For those of us who remember how dark it felt 20 years ago, there is much to celebrate in Vancouver in 2013. People in our community are living ten years longer.
Tilly was kind, sensitive, gentle and generous, but in the end she died of Aids because no one had cared enough to make sure she had access to a clean syringe. As a society, we told her that her life didn’t matter and she believed us.
It’s time to stop punishing and start creating solutions to the walls of intolerance and hatred we’ve built. These steps, though seemingly small, can create a new social context, one that redefines the addict from a non-person to a person, a criminal to a citizen, someone “diseased” to someone who just needs love, belonging and a community, just like me.
================================================== ==
Don't shoot me! I didn't write it.
This comes from ( gasp!!!!) .....CANADA!!!!!!!
I keep trying to help my fellow countrymen understand that there ARE countries other than
the good 'ole USA on this planet.......although many of them remain unconvinced.They think
Canadians come from somewhere north of northern Minnesota------exactly where....they are
unsure.
Member
Join Date: Mar 2013
Location: Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Posts: 146
I think this is positive.
This post made me feel positive, mainly the compassion and humanity of the author.
Regardless of the "disease", we all deserve to be treated humanely by both organizations and society in general.
My MH issues have been treated with disgust, ignorance, blame by those around me. It took me years of struggling through despair, exhaustion and self-hate to find an organization that is doing all to help me.
Society needs more of this compassion and tolerance toward eachother in general, and even more so toward the suffering.
Regardless of the "disease", we all deserve to be treated humanely by both organizations and society in general.
My MH issues have been treated with disgust, ignorance, blame by those around me. It took me years of struggling through despair, exhaustion and self-hate to find an organization that is doing all to help me.
Society needs more of this compassion and tolerance toward eachother in general, and even more so toward the suffering.
Nature Girl
Join Date: Mar 2002
Location: By The Lake
Posts: 60,328
This Canadian (from Ontario) is glad you posted that article, Vale, as it truly does show compassion for the person by lessening the danger of the disease.
Vancouver fought long and hard for this, and truthfully, when I first heard of it my reaction was "How is supplying an addict with needles and dope going to help anything?" It does, it keeps them alive long enough to maybe, just maybe make the decision to change. For the 400 in the study, that found recovery, that is 400 less deaths on the street for another statistic that breaks our hearts.
Is it a perfect solution? Nope, far from it. The perfect solution would be to get every one of them off drugs completely. But it is "a" solution that helps. What the study here doesn't say but is true...safe injection sites also lowers the crime rate and saves lives that might have been lost in the commission of a crime such as robbery.
I hate the very concept, I hate that people use every day, I hate what addiction does to the addict to their loved ones and to society as a whole...hate it, but cannot turn a blind eye to it because it is there every day for every one of us to see all too clearly.
And if that addict that is saved today, from death by disease or violence or despair...if that addict is my son, I say bravo Vancouver! And "thank you".
Hugs
Vancouver fought long and hard for this, and truthfully, when I first heard of it my reaction was "How is supplying an addict with needles and dope going to help anything?" It does, it keeps them alive long enough to maybe, just maybe make the decision to change. For the 400 in the study, that found recovery, that is 400 less deaths on the street for another statistic that breaks our hearts.
Is it a perfect solution? Nope, far from it. The perfect solution would be to get every one of them off drugs completely. But it is "a" solution that helps. What the study here doesn't say but is true...safe injection sites also lowers the crime rate and saves lives that might have been lost in the commission of a crime such as robbery.
I hate the very concept, I hate that people use every day, I hate what addiction does to the addict to their loved ones and to society as a whole...hate it, but cannot turn a blind eye to it because it is there every day for every one of us to see all too clearly.
And if that addict that is saved today, from death by disease or violence or despair...if that addict is my son, I say bravo Vancouver! And "thank you".
Hugs
One Day At A Time
Join Date: Nov 2012
Location: The Middle Distance
Posts: 197
I will never forget bringing my daughter to a public hospital when we picked her up last year from another city because she called and said she was done and wanted to go to rehab. She had drugs with her (unbeknown to me until I found the pill cutter after she left). She was with us for about three weeks until she went to rehab.
I took her to the hospital one day because she was really psychotic from shooting meth and I was afraid she would hurt herself. I didn't know what to do with her. I was afraid to leave her alone.
Anyway the staff at this public hospital treated her so kindly that I just cried and I never cry. They were so professional. They tested her for HIV, listened to her concerns about the worms under her skin, prescribed an antibibiotic for an infection she had. The doctor did fuss at her for not being honest at intake by saying she was not on any drugs because the benzodiazapines showed up in her blood work. She made me leave the room when she spoke with her though, because of her HIPPA rights.
When we left I looked one of them in the eye and said "Thank you for your professionalism and more than anything your kindness" and she just shrugged her shoulders and said "It's all in a day's work" and smiled.
In the city where my daughter lived she got used to being treated like trash not worth recycling and she didn't even want to go to the hospital any more.
She entered rehab a week later and has been there for more than a year. Maybe addicts are responsible for some crime in our society and they are a bit of a drain on services, etc. but they are still human beings and sometimes they just need to feel worthy of being treated with a little respect and kindness. I am still filled with gratitude when I recall the humanity the employees at that hospital showed her.
I took her to the hospital one day because she was really psychotic from shooting meth and I was afraid she would hurt herself. I didn't know what to do with her. I was afraid to leave her alone.
Anyway the staff at this public hospital treated her so kindly that I just cried and I never cry. They were so professional. They tested her for HIV, listened to her concerns about the worms under her skin, prescribed an antibibiotic for an infection she had. The doctor did fuss at her for not being honest at intake by saying she was not on any drugs because the benzodiazapines showed up in her blood work. She made me leave the room when she spoke with her though, because of her HIPPA rights.
When we left I looked one of them in the eye and said "Thank you for your professionalism and more than anything your kindness" and she just shrugged her shoulders and said "It's all in a day's work" and smiled.
In the city where my daughter lived she got used to being treated like trash not worth recycling and she didn't even want to go to the hospital any more.
She entered rehab a week later and has been there for more than a year. Maybe addicts are responsible for some crime in our society and they are a bit of a drain on services, etc. but they are still human beings and sometimes they just need to feel worthy of being treated with a little respect and kindness. I am still filled with gratitude when I recall the humanity the employees at that hospital showed her.
Nature Girl
Join Date: Mar 2002
Location: By The Lake
Posts: 60,328
PresentTense, your words touched my heart. 
Active drug addicts that commit crimes to get their drugs...and most do at one time or another...end up in jails, sooner or later. Our jails are full of people who go in addicted to substances and who have commit crimes. Legal Injection sites help reduce the need to commit crime to get the drugs and needles, and free up the government money spent on incarceration which frees up money for rehabs and other services that can actually help our addicted loved ones.
Legal injection sites reduce the need for women to prostitute themselves and face the dangers that brings, to get drugs. We have all heard the horrific news reports of how so many have "disappeared" and come to harm or death...this risk would be reduced as well.
Again, it's not a complete solution, it's not even one that brings us comfort, but it is helpful in some way and that's a good start. It's an ugly picture, addiction and the street, and one that is too easy to turn away from. But it is there, my son, your daughter, someone's father, all loved ones lost to addiction...but never forgotten, not by this mama.
Hugs
Active drug addicts that commit crimes to get their drugs...and most do at one time or another...end up in jails, sooner or later. Our jails are full of people who go in addicted to substances and who have commit crimes. Legal Injection sites help reduce the need to commit crime to get the drugs and needles, and free up the government money spent on incarceration which frees up money for rehabs and other services that can actually help our addicted loved ones.
Legal injection sites reduce the need for women to prostitute themselves and face the dangers that brings, to get drugs. We have all heard the horrific news reports of how so many have "disappeared" and come to harm or death...this risk would be reduced as well.
Again, it's not a complete solution, it's not even one that brings us comfort, but it is helpful in some way and that's a good start. It's an ugly picture, addiction and the street, and one that is too easy to turn away from. But it is there, my son, your daughter, someone's father, all loved ones lost to addiction...but never forgotten, not by this mama.
Hugs
Member
Thread Starter
Join Date: Dec 2011
Location: Dallas TX
Posts: 2,282
I spent more years than I care to admit in a martial
capacity----so people just naturally assume my political
composition is......shall we say ....hard?
Alas it is not so. I have seen people pushed past their
failure point on numerous occasions---and after awhile
the whole John Wayne, kick their arse thing is just shown
for what it is-----a fantasy held and daydreamed of by
cubicle dwellers the world over.
Don't get me wrong. I am no pacifist. There ARE problems
( and people) whose 'work' in the world is best solved with a
500 pounder delivered adroitly and professionally through a
window.
The part that hit me hardest was her going to her death
thinking it was ALL her fault.....and she deserved this ignoble
end.
Are we so hard, so unfeeling, as to rob this poor soul
of her dignity? Even as we "go to church" or whatever to
prove what good humans we are.
I tire of this. I hunger for 'operational compassion'---
not the phony pat yourself on ghe back/ photo-op kind.
Is the Vancouver experiment valid? I am not a professional
in this area and would not be so foolish as to offer an opinion.
in my field of expertise I am often subtly pissed when 'others'
offer up their views on complex subjects that they know
virtually nothing about.
Or......she was a worthless piece of dung that the world
is better off without.Good riddance to her and all like her.
I don't believe that----and never will.
And I tire......oh boy do I tire! .....of the phony tough
and their bullcrap phony hard diatribes.
My thesis is they would fare extraordinarily poorly in
the REAL tests of life......that noone escapes whatever their
station.
capacity----so people just naturally assume my political
composition is......shall we say ....hard?
Alas it is not so. I have seen people pushed past their
failure point on numerous occasions---and after awhile
the whole John Wayne, kick their arse thing is just shown
for what it is-----a fantasy held and daydreamed of by
cubicle dwellers the world over.
Don't get me wrong. I am no pacifist. There ARE problems
( and people) whose 'work' in the world is best solved with a
500 pounder delivered adroitly and professionally through a
window.
The part that hit me hardest was her going to her death
thinking it was ALL her fault.....and she deserved this ignoble
end.
Are we so hard, so unfeeling, as to rob this poor soul
of her dignity? Even as we "go to church" or whatever to
prove what good humans we are.
I tire of this. I hunger for 'operational compassion'---
not the phony pat yourself on ghe back/ photo-op kind.
Is the Vancouver experiment valid? I am not a professional
in this area and would not be so foolish as to offer an opinion.
in my field of expertise I am often subtly pissed when 'others'
offer up their views on complex subjects that they know
virtually nothing about.
Or......she was a worthless piece of dung that the world
is better off without.Good riddance to her and all like her.
I don't believe that----and never will.
And I tire......oh boy do I tire! .....of the phony tough
and their bullcrap phony hard diatribes.
My thesis is they would fare extraordinarily poorly in
the REAL tests of life......that noone escapes whatever their
station.
Member
Join Date: Jul 2010
Posts: 13,497
Vale
Thank you for posting this. It is very encouraging to read ,and I hope that more places like this will be available to those suffering.
I have always believed that if becoming homeless, hitting bottom, was helpful, there would be a lot fewer homeless people.
I guess I am a bleeding heart. While I hate what those who love an addict go through, I hate too the misery and pain of the addict.
I work retail, and our security catches a lot of addicts who are stealing to get their next fix. I breaks my heart to see them treated as scum, even sometimes called such. I must defend our police, though, as most of them have seen enough of it to know that they are suffering and not pieces of crap, and usually treat them with compassion, and encourage them to get help. Heroin use is very common in my town.
And yes, they often steal, because they need their relief from their drug sick pain. Most are poor, and for the life of me, I do not know why anyone would try heroin, when most know it is really bad stuff! Maybe other drugs led the way, I don't know.
I have seen them hopeless and sad... knowing they were going to jail again, that their kids were going to go to social services. I have seen how a person with other warrants will do something really crazy, to get their fix. its a sickness, not a moral defect.
I watch people sometimes, walk out the door with a sandwich or something to eat. Its not my place to catch them, and we dont know their story. my heart breaks for those hungry, for any reason.
I see them pick up cigs, and I will NOT pour water in the outside ashtray, like the nasty lady at the grocery down the street. God forbid that those who judge harshly should ever find them selves so down and out. as you said, they would not fare so well, I believe that too.
If a person in pain from cancer saw a drug on a shelf, which would help their pain, do you really think that they would not steal it if that was their only means to get relief? the pain of addiction must be very real, very bad, for people to risk anything to ease it.
Not all drug addicts abuse others.. even sober, non addicts abuse people. I am sure drugs don't help though, and I believe it often leads to abuse of many kinds.
People fall through cracks too often, in our country. I bet that of those who fall, hit bottom, its harder to get up, from that low point, than maybe a higher place, like the one you posted about.
Thank you for posting this. It is very encouraging to read ,and I hope that more places like this will be available to those suffering.
I have always believed that if becoming homeless, hitting bottom, was helpful, there would be a lot fewer homeless people.
I guess I am a bleeding heart. While I hate what those who love an addict go through, I hate too the misery and pain of the addict.
I work retail, and our security catches a lot of addicts who are stealing to get their next fix. I breaks my heart to see them treated as scum, even sometimes called such. I must defend our police, though, as most of them have seen enough of it to know that they are suffering and not pieces of crap, and usually treat them with compassion, and encourage them to get help. Heroin use is very common in my town.
And yes, they often steal, because they need their relief from their drug sick pain. Most are poor, and for the life of me, I do not know why anyone would try heroin, when most know it is really bad stuff! Maybe other drugs led the way, I don't know.
I have seen them hopeless and sad... knowing they were going to jail again, that their kids were going to go to social services. I have seen how a person with other warrants will do something really crazy, to get their fix. its a sickness, not a moral defect.
I watch people sometimes, walk out the door with a sandwich or something to eat. Its not my place to catch them, and we dont know their story. my heart breaks for those hungry, for any reason.
I see them pick up cigs, and I will NOT pour water in the outside ashtray, like the nasty lady at the grocery down the street. God forbid that those who judge harshly should ever find them selves so down and out. as you said, they would not fare so well, I believe that too.
If a person in pain from cancer saw a drug on a shelf, which would help their pain, do you really think that they would not steal it if that was their only means to get relief? the pain of addiction must be very real, very bad, for people to risk anything to ease it.
Not all drug addicts abuse others.. even sober, non addicts abuse people. I am sure drugs don't help though, and I believe it often leads to abuse of many kinds.
People fall through cracks too often, in our country. I bet that of those who fall, hit bottom, its harder to get up, from that low point, than maybe a higher place, like the one you posted about.
Member
Thread Starter
Join Date: Dec 2011
Location: Dallas TX
Posts: 2,282
One of the reasons I parted with so much is I knew she was
"making her living" shoplifting. Every dollar was that much
less she had to steal that day. Her skillsets as a professional
thief were evidently substandard-----as evidenced by a long
petty theft rap sheet.......as she rapidly morphed from
unemployed to unemployable. She finally ended up selling
stolen crap on Craigslist with her full face clearly visible....
....... hardly the MO of a master thief.
I don't condone what they do in any form----but if I were to
hold your head underwater for an extended period, you
WOULD capitulate to ANY demand imaginable to get that
breath of air........and I do mean ANYTHING.
To inform an entire subsector of a civil populace that they
are worthless subhumans is not just poor policy----- it is
stupid policy and we will be reaping the sour fruit of this
mishandled holocaust for many generations.
Tough and smart is a great combination.
Tough and stupid is a LOUSY one.
They are human beings, not trash.
"making her living" shoplifting. Every dollar was that much
less she had to steal that day. Her skillsets as a professional
thief were evidently substandard-----as evidenced by a long
petty theft rap sheet.......as she rapidly morphed from
unemployed to unemployable. She finally ended up selling
stolen crap on Craigslist with her full face clearly visible....
....... hardly the MO of a master thief.
I don't condone what they do in any form----but if I were to
hold your head underwater for an extended period, you
WOULD capitulate to ANY demand imaginable to get that
breath of air........and I do mean ANYTHING.
To inform an entire subsector of a civil populace that they
are worthless subhumans is not just poor policy----- it is
stupid policy and we will be reaping the sour fruit of this
mishandled holocaust for many generations.
Tough and smart is a great combination.
Tough and stupid is a LOUSY one.
They are human beings, not trash.
Member
Join Date: Dec 2013
Posts: 413
I support the Vancouver needle exchange program and am glad for the lives that it saves. That said, I visited the Downtown East Side neighborhood in Vancouver last year, and it was the saddest place I have ever seen. Imagine a ghetto of 20,000 drug abusers, all in an area about a mile square..... people end up in this vicinity from all over Canada. And the majority of Vancouver residents avoid the neighborhood like the plague. I don't think there is anything comparable in the United States -- maybe New York's Bowery or Times Square 30 years ago, but not today.
But getting back to your point about helping people, it's not always so easy. I did my best to help my partner with his addiction, even when he started stealing from me. I paid for several rehabs, therapy, many things. Eventually he ended up with a police record and I very nearly lost my own job in finance when word got around. I could have kept helping him, but had I done that I would have gone down with him. In the end I had to protect myself and detach. This was one of the hardest things I have ever had to do.
It's not that I think he is (or they are) a worthless subhuman. But I see very clearly the toll that living with addiction took on my own life. For absolutely no gain. He's still out using. I protect myself now.
But getting back to your point about helping people, it's not always so easy. I did my best to help my partner with his addiction, even when he started stealing from me. I paid for several rehabs, therapy, many things. Eventually he ended up with a police record and I very nearly lost my own job in finance when word got around. I could have kept helping him, but had I done that I would have gone down with him. In the end I had to protect myself and detach. This was one of the hardest things I have ever had to do.
It's not that I think he is (or they are) a worthless subhuman. But I see very clearly the toll that living with addiction took on my own life. For absolutely no gain. He's still out using. I protect myself now.
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Join Date: Sep 2013
Location: Somewhere out there
Posts: 2,249
Thank you for sharing this very provocative piece. Wow. Imagine that, a place for addicts where they are shown compassion and care.
I think this is a really helpful program in the long run because it will hopefully keep them alive and quite possibly get some clean. Most importantly it saves lives. I work in the healthcare profession and can tell you the people who work in the ER see this frequently. Some are very kind and compassionate. Others are just the opposite. They are of that mindset that drug addicts CHOOSE to do drugs, therefore it is their own doing and not the same as grandma coming in with chest pain. As the article states, society wants to be rid of them like cockroaches. They are not looked upon as human beings. No one bothers to hear their stories. While I have never been cold hearted to anyone, I admit until going through this with my son I had no idea what families of drug addicts went through. I had no idea the toll it took on them and I had no idea who the drug addicts were. You mean every day people are actually addicted? Sure, I knew they "did" drugs but I thought hey, they are too smart to get addicted. As you can see I had a lot to learn. I take that with me. I learned a very important, valuable lesson. I wish everyone understood.
I think this is a really helpful program in the long run because it will hopefully keep them alive and quite possibly get some clean. Most importantly it saves lives. I work in the healthcare profession and can tell you the people who work in the ER see this frequently. Some are very kind and compassionate. Others are just the opposite. They are of that mindset that drug addicts CHOOSE to do drugs, therefore it is their own doing and not the same as grandma coming in with chest pain. As the article states, society wants to be rid of them like cockroaches. They are not looked upon as human beings. No one bothers to hear their stories. While I have never been cold hearted to anyone, I admit until going through this with my son I had no idea what families of drug addicts went through. I had no idea the toll it took on them and I had no idea who the drug addicts were. You mean every day people are actually addicted? Sure, I knew they "did" drugs but I thought hey, they are too smart to get addicted. As you can see I had a lot to learn. I take that with me. I learned a very important, valuable lesson. I wish everyone understood.
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Thread Starter
Join Date: Dec 2011
Location: Dallas TX
Posts: 2,282
I think each of us, if we were honest, could completely identify with
BOTH polar views held by these health professionals on the front line
of this scourge.
1.You did it (or at least initiated it) yourself.......you stupid idiot!
2. We imagine ourselves enlightened beings----willing to be open
to (at least the idea) of compassion.
So goes the very difficult concept of duality. Two things seemingly at odds with one
another....but both being true at the same time.
As I have written before, it is so easy ( and terribly tempting) to slaughter an Army
that your side has just defeated. They killed your buddies, and every fibre of your being
wants to eliminate every last one of them----as painfully as possible.
But we don't do that anymore. Over the ages we learned that increasing the net
world hatred by murdering captive combatants is a bad thing. Do you think that young
soldiers Mom will ever forgive you? No, she won't.
But she will remember her son treated with dignity, provided food/shelter/medical
aid, and Red Cross communication with loved ones. No, not a room at the Ritz (You DID
lose the war----so you DON'T get the spoils!).
I guess that was the whole point of the article as I saw it. We don't treat our fellow
human beings with dignity for THEM.......we do it (selfishly!) for US.
Until he died, my father used to tell me again and again of the US Army corporal
who would secretly meet him in a dark corner of a DP camp and give him chocolate.
Strictly verboten and sure to cost him his 2 stripes if caught.
Still, he did it. Neither my father nor I will ever know who this dumbass kid was,
but neither will his kind act ever be forgotten by my family. It was the first time my
father ever had any contact with the west.
BOTH polar views held by these health professionals on the front line
of this scourge.
1.You did it (or at least initiated it) yourself.......you stupid idiot!
2. We imagine ourselves enlightened beings----willing to be open
to (at least the idea) of compassion.
So goes the very difficult concept of duality. Two things seemingly at odds with one
another....but both being true at the same time.
As I have written before, it is so easy ( and terribly tempting) to slaughter an Army
that your side has just defeated. They killed your buddies, and every fibre of your being
wants to eliminate every last one of them----as painfully as possible.
But we don't do that anymore. Over the ages we learned that increasing the net
world hatred by murdering captive combatants is a bad thing. Do you think that young
soldiers Mom will ever forgive you? No, she won't.
But she will remember her son treated with dignity, provided food/shelter/medical
aid, and Red Cross communication with loved ones. No, not a room at the Ritz (You DID
lose the war----so you DON'T get the spoils!).
I guess that was the whole point of the article as I saw it. We don't treat our fellow
human beings with dignity for THEM.......we do it (selfishly!) for US.
Until he died, my father used to tell me again and again of the US Army corporal
who would secretly meet him in a dark corner of a DP camp and give him chocolate.
Strictly verboten and sure to cost him his 2 stripes if caught.
Still, he did it. Neither my father nor I will ever know who this dumbass kid was,
but neither will his kind act ever be forgotten by my family. It was the first time my
father ever had any contact with the west.
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Join Date: Jan 2009
Posts: 864
The question is does treating a person as capable, with respect, with love and kindness and as a human effect things in a positive way? Well sure it does, how could it not. But does that mean one will get clean and find recovery because of it? I don’t know there, because of the inside job factor.
But what I do know is that there is really no reason to feed a just another junkie mentality. And surely those who are stuck in that aren’t all that healthy themselves.
Clean needle exchanges I do support, they protect more than just the user. They protect the families who do that, they would never … Another mentality that is scary, it won’t happen to me.
Handing out condoms I am all for as well, way outside addiction. Along with the education that comes with programs such as these.
There are also safe using guides to shooting drugs, wet houses, heroin assisted programs … just depends on where you are in this vast world. Harm reduction is an important facet in addiction. Suboxone and methadone are harm reduction tools as well, and any harm reduction program can be a tool toward recovery because there is an education and support that comes into play with the programs.
I wrote about this, not in a very nice way either about the perception of those who watch. I ask if all you see is just another junkie, will that then be all you have in front of you. I do ponder what would be if one saw something different. And as always that isn’t about anything other than what you wish to have in your own heart.
Everyone has a story. One of the ones that impacted me the most was one I sat listening to as a young teen, on the bus heading to the shore on a hot summer day. Me being me I get up from my seat and go sit in the back with a homeless man. Very blunt and direct ask if he is ok, because someone one made a smart ass comment and changed seats because of him being there. He was a very soft spoken man. Who spoke with love for his wife and child killed in a tragic accident. Showed me pictures he carried of them. He was a professor, who was devastated and couldn’t find a reason to care anymore. He was well within his right not to. He was a really brilliant man, who spoke of his love of books which I could relate to, and was shocked that I had read some of what I had did so young, just as I might have been at the time shocked that he was as educated and well spoken as he was.
I know this deeply set some of who I am and plays a huge part in my view.
There is change in the air … one person at a time nudged enough to think out of the box they locked themselves in…
But what I do know is that there is really no reason to feed a just another junkie mentality. And surely those who are stuck in that aren’t all that healthy themselves.
Clean needle exchanges I do support, they protect more than just the user. They protect the families who do that, they would never … Another mentality that is scary, it won’t happen to me.
Handing out condoms I am all for as well, way outside addiction. Along with the education that comes with programs such as these.
There are also safe using guides to shooting drugs, wet houses, heroin assisted programs … just depends on where you are in this vast world. Harm reduction is an important facet in addiction. Suboxone and methadone are harm reduction tools as well, and any harm reduction program can be a tool toward recovery because there is an education and support that comes into play with the programs.
I wrote about this, not in a very nice way either about the perception of those who watch. I ask if all you see is just another junkie, will that then be all you have in front of you. I do ponder what would be if one saw something different. And as always that isn’t about anything other than what you wish to have in your own heart.
Everyone has a story. One of the ones that impacted me the most was one I sat listening to as a young teen, on the bus heading to the shore on a hot summer day. Me being me I get up from my seat and go sit in the back with a homeless man. Very blunt and direct ask if he is ok, because someone one made a smart ass comment and changed seats because of him being there. He was a very soft spoken man. Who spoke with love for his wife and child killed in a tragic accident. Showed me pictures he carried of them. He was a professor, who was devastated and couldn’t find a reason to care anymore. He was well within his right not to. He was a really brilliant man, who spoke of his love of books which I could relate to, and was shocked that I had read some of what I had did so young, just as I might have been at the time shocked that he was as educated and well spoken as he was.
I know this deeply set some of who I am and plays a huge part in my view.
There is change in the air … one person at a time nudged enough to think out of the box they locked themselves in…
Member
Join Date: May 2014
Location: Chicago, IL
Posts: 232
I support harm reduction programs 100%.
I am trying to extricate myself from a two-month relationship with an active crack addict I have known for about a year. Everything people have said on this site comes true every day. Every day, he gets worse. He has gone from kind, loving, gentle, decent, humane, to talking about selling meth to kids--in a span of two months. Sometimes I look at the calendar in a daze. I remember moments of striking decency from three weeks ago, from two days ago--those moments become rarer and rarer as he gets more lost.
There was a brief period where he was raging at me and saying nasty things. I took some advice and began to validate his feelings and to respond with love and empathy. It DID change things between us. I stopped being a target. He stopped with the insults almost completely. I was with him two nights ago and he talked all night long about the horrible things he's been doing. Things I really didn't want to know about. His cognitive functions are slipping at an alarming rate--he doesn't remember anything accurately anymore. He manufactures memories from ten years ago of things his father knows DID NOT HAPPEN. He manufactures memories of things that happened between us. This is not intentional. His system is flooded with so much alcohol, pot, and crack that he can't distinguish reality. The next morning, after talking to me and holding me all night, he went into such a rage that I had to run out of his apartment. Nothing I do is helping. If I don't get away I'm going to be hit.
I am trying to take things slow as I decide how to proceed. Somehow he still has never tried to find out where I live and has not borrowed or stolen from me. Somehow, he still refuses to get a phone--I think he's petrified what would happen if he owned his own phone. He talks about how crack is the most evil things ever, and how crack dealers deserve a bullet through the brain, but meanwhile a rock is sitting in the drawer, waiting to be smoked the moment I leave.
Things that seem very typical of hardcore drug users:
1. He was raped as a child by his stepfather--a man his mother is still with.
2. He was tossed from foster home to foster home and beaten.
3. He experienced multiple concussions in adolescence.
4. He is without job skills or prospects and is just lucky his adoptive father adores him and gives him a home. Before he was taken under his adoptive father's wing, he was homeless. I experience my life as an adventure full of comfort and promise--I have a career, great friends, interests, I can go on trips. He experiences himself as powerless and cried out to me when we were discussing the wisdom of his becoming a dealer, "I'm tired of being a nobody." I can viscerally feel his pain at being degraded for being an addict. I dearly wish people wouldn't speak to him like that--it doesn't help. At the same time, I UNDERSTAND everyone's frustration at what W.'s addiction is doing to our lives. I'm just lucky not to be his provider or to be living with him.
I can't be the one to help him, but doesn't W. deserve help from society as someone who was never given a chance? Why are jail and death the prime alternatives? He needs rehab, but so much more than rehab--he needs intensive therapy, job skills, safety, friends he can trust. He is very, very lost.
If I was a stronger swimmer I would stay. I'm not though. It's too heartbreaking to watch W. go down. I pray he doesn't go down further and I pray he doesn't take anyone with him.
I am trying to extricate myself from a two-month relationship with an active crack addict I have known for about a year. Everything people have said on this site comes true every day. Every day, he gets worse. He has gone from kind, loving, gentle, decent, humane, to talking about selling meth to kids--in a span of two months. Sometimes I look at the calendar in a daze. I remember moments of striking decency from three weeks ago, from two days ago--those moments become rarer and rarer as he gets more lost.
There was a brief period where he was raging at me and saying nasty things. I took some advice and began to validate his feelings and to respond with love and empathy. It DID change things between us. I stopped being a target. He stopped with the insults almost completely. I was with him two nights ago and he talked all night long about the horrible things he's been doing. Things I really didn't want to know about. His cognitive functions are slipping at an alarming rate--he doesn't remember anything accurately anymore. He manufactures memories from ten years ago of things his father knows DID NOT HAPPEN. He manufactures memories of things that happened between us. This is not intentional. His system is flooded with so much alcohol, pot, and crack that he can't distinguish reality. The next morning, after talking to me and holding me all night, he went into such a rage that I had to run out of his apartment. Nothing I do is helping. If I don't get away I'm going to be hit.
I am trying to take things slow as I decide how to proceed. Somehow he still has never tried to find out where I live and has not borrowed or stolen from me. Somehow, he still refuses to get a phone--I think he's petrified what would happen if he owned his own phone. He talks about how crack is the most evil things ever, and how crack dealers deserve a bullet through the brain, but meanwhile a rock is sitting in the drawer, waiting to be smoked the moment I leave.
Things that seem very typical of hardcore drug users:
1. He was raped as a child by his stepfather--a man his mother is still with.
2. He was tossed from foster home to foster home and beaten.
3. He experienced multiple concussions in adolescence.
4. He is without job skills or prospects and is just lucky his adoptive father adores him and gives him a home. Before he was taken under his adoptive father's wing, he was homeless. I experience my life as an adventure full of comfort and promise--I have a career, great friends, interests, I can go on trips. He experiences himself as powerless and cried out to me when we were discussing the wisdom of his becoming a dealer, "I'm tired of being a nobody." I can viscerally feel his pain at being degraded for being an addict. I dearly wish people wouldn't speak to him like that--it doesn't help. At the same time, I UNDERSTAND everyone's frustration at what W.'s addiction is doing to our lives. I'm just lucky not to be his provider or to be living with him.
I can't be the one to help him, but doesn't W. deserve help from society as someone who was never given a chance? Why are jail and death the prime alternatives? He needs rehab, but so much more than rehab--he needs intensive therapy, job skills, safety, friends he can trust. He is very, very lost.
If I was a stronger swimmer I would stay. I'm not though. It's too heartbreaking to watch W. go down. I pray he doesn't go down further and I pray he doesn't take anyone with him.
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Join Date: May 2010
Location: USA
Posts: 13,560
I believe so many come from broken homes. I would be interested in the successful rate of rehab of these people. I say that not because I think they don't deserve it, for I do. I simply know that the relapse rate for an H user or meth user is so high. These drugs are soooo addictive. I guess my thing is how do we educate someone enough to get them not to try it in the first place. I wish I knew the answer, but I don't. I am saddened by the tragedy that addiction causes. I agree, everyone has a story. Everyone deserves kindness.
Member
Join Date: May 2014
Location: Chicago, IL
Posts: 232
Doing more to prevent child abuse and to create more income equality and a better social safety net with better mental health services would make a dent in the drug problem, in my opinion. I think some of the terrible rates of relapse for crack and meth could be related to the bleakness of life without prospects.
I think someone like W. could MAYBE benefit from medically supervised dosages at the same time intensive therapy is happening. At the least, some of the harm might be reduced--and some of the onus taken off of his family to solve all problems.
I think someone like W. could MAYBE benefit from medically supervised dosages at the same time intensive therapy is happening. At the least, some of the harm might be reduced--and some of the onus taken off of his family to solve all problems.
Member
Thread Starter
Join Date: Dec 2011
Location: Dallas TX
Posts: 2,282
Long before I had this addiction misadventure,
I knew "a junkie".
She just wanted to get high.
That's all I knew of her. Didn't give her a second
thought. Later on, I found out that she had lost
her only child--- who had choked to death on a
piece of licorice.
Shortly thereafter, her life came undone.
Sometimes, there is more to the story than
we know.
Now, in my memory--- she is a Mom who lost
her only baby.....all that was dear to her in all
the world....
......not "just a junkie"
I knew "a junkie".
She just wanted to get high.
That's all I knew of her. Didn't give her a second
thought. Later on, I found out that she had lost
her only child--- who had choked to death on a
piece of licorice.
Shortly thereafter, her life came undone.
Sometimes, there is more to the story than
we know.
Now, in my memory--- she is a Mom who lost
her only baby.....all that was dear to her in all
the world....
......not "just a junkie"
Member
Join Date: Jul 2013
Posts: 1,854
Originally Posted by chicory 
Vale
Thank you for posting this. It is very encouraging to read ,and I hope that more places like this will be available to those suffering.
I have always believed that if becoming homeless, hitting bottom, was helpful, there would be a lot fewer homeless people.
I guess I am a bleeding heart. While I hate what those who love an addict go through, I hate too the misery and pain of the addict.
I work retail, and our security catches a lot of addicts who are stealing to get their next fix. I breaks my heart to see them treated as scum, even sometimes called such. I must defend our police, though, as most of them have seen enough of it to know that they are suffering and not pieces of crap, and usually treat them with compassion, and encourage them to get help. Heroin use is very common in my town.
And yes, they often steal, because they need their relief from their drug sick pain. Most are poor, and for the life of me, I do not know why anyone would try heroin, when most know it is really bad stuff! Maybe other drugs led the way, I don't know.
I have seen them hopeless and sad... knowing they were going to jail again, that their kids were going to go to social services. I have seen how a person with other warrants will do something really crazy, to get their fix. its a sickness, not a moral defect.
I watch people sometimes, walk out the door with a sandwich or something to eat. Its not my place to catch them, and we dont know their story. my heart breaks for those hungry, for any reason.
I see them pick up cigs, and I will NOT pour water in the outside ashtray, like the nasty lady at the grocery down the street. God forbid that those who judge harshly should ever find them selves so down and out. as you said, they would not fare so well, I believe that too.
If a person in pain from cancer saw a drug on a shelf, which would help their pain, do you really think that they would not steal it if that was their only means to get relief? the pain of addiction must be very real, very bad, for people to risk anything to ease it.
Not all drug addicts abuse others.. even sober, non addicts abuse people. I am sure drugs don't help though, and I believe it often leads to abuse of many kinds.
People fall through cracks too often, in our country. I bet that of those who fall, hit bottom, its harder to get up, from that low point, than maybe a higher place, like the one you posted about.
Thank you for posting this. It is very encouraging to read ,and I hope that more places like this will be available to those suffering.
I have always believed that if becoming homeless, hitting bottom, was helpful, there would be a lot fewer homeless people.
I guess I am a bleeding heart. While I hate what those who love an addict go through, I hate too the misery and pain of the addict.
I work retail, and our security catches a lot of addicts who are stealing to get their next fix. I breaks my heart to see them treated as scum, even sometimes called such. I must defend our police, though, as most of them have seen enough of it to know that they are suffering and not pieces of crap, and usually treat them with compassion, and encourage them to get help. Heroin use is very common in my town.
And yes, they often steal, because they need their relief from their drug sick pain. Most are poor, and for the life of me, I do not know why anyone would try heroin, when most know it is really bad stuff! Maybe other drugs led the way, I don't know.
I have seen them hopeless and sad... knowing they were going to jail again, that their kids were going to go to social services. I have seen how a person with other warrants will do something really crazy, to get their fix. its a sickness, not a moral defect.
I watch people sometimes, walk out the door with a sandwich or something to eat. Its not my place to catch them, and we dont know their story. my heart breaks for those hungry, for any reason.
I see them pick up cigs, and I will NOT pour water in the outside ashtray, like the nasty lady at the grocery down the street. God forbid that those who judge harshly should ever find them selves so down and out. as you said, they would not fare so well, I believe that too.
If a person in pain from cancer saw a drug on a shelf, which would help their pain, do you really think that they would not steal it if that was their only means to get relief? the pain of addiction must be very real, very bad, for people to risk anything to ease it.
Not all drug addicts abuse others.. even sober, non addicts abuse people. I am sure drugs don't help though, and I believe it often leads to abuse of many kinds.
People fall through cracks too often, in our country. I bet that of those who fall, hit bottom, its harder to get up, from that low point, than maybe a higher place, like the one you posted about.
Over the weekend I went to a webinar at Smart recovery based on the craft approach. Oh you would have loved bits of it I think. How Kindness and Science Help People Change. Im going to post some of my thoughts later, but one thing I realized is its unfortunate but as a society many draw a line and say this is where normal is at. This is baseline. Then we look at people who have addictions and how they are living and say ' you are not normal, your so far below baseline and I cant have anything to do with you until you pull yourself up by the boots and get back to baseline and stay there for a year?' Hit your bottom, climb back up. BUT society doesn't recognize how hard it is to climb back up, all the steps it takes and sometimes a helping hand is necessary, acts of kindness to show they are human and deserve love and compassion. The other side of baseline, there is still life, it has value, and sometimes needs nurturing or it shrivels up and dies.
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