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Gotta take issue with the “addicts don’t recover unless something drastic happens” - that’s the ‘rock bottom’ type myth that prevents addicts from getting the support they need and incentivizes further alienating them from society.
I was a heroin addict and then a hard-core alcoholic and I’m two years sober. The ‘drastic thing’ that happened was that in the misery of addiction I would try to get clean and fail and then try… and fail… and try another way… and fail… until one day I tried…and succeeded. The silver bullet was actually just that I had enough support and the bare bones resources so that my attempts had a fighting chance of working.
There’s a Citations Needed episode that gets into this if anyone wants to listen.
The “rock bottom” concept is basically just asking drug users to die.
By drastic I also mean support, or some kind of big event or lifestyle shift. I definitely don’t mean some guy locking you up somewhere. I’m sure there is people who just did it with no external support and nothing big happening just by deciding they’re gonna stop, I just don’t think it is very common. I don’t think users have to hit rock bottom, on the contrary, it is much more difficult if that happens. Which is why I said in my other post it is much better if you are battling addiction and you have a home, as opposed to battling addiction while being homeless. That would be an example of the drastic change that could happen for example, finding a home after being homeless. I guess just saying “drastic” and leaving it at that wasn’t a very good way to phrase that.
Gotcha, yeah I was too quick to assume you meant “drastic” in terms of negative consequences, but you’re right something drastic that increases their hope for a potential future does precipitate a lot of recoveries!
