CantTrip [she/her]
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.
Haha, no, I’m a recovered heroin addict and work with addicts and this approach of “I’ll only ever help you if you submit to a round of withdrawals to show you’re worth helping,” is only one attitude among many.
I think some recovered addicts look back on their own experience and think “yes when I got sober it was because things were really awful and I finally got serious and other addicts can only get clean if things are awful enough [rock bottom myth] …and if they fail they are not ‘serious.’”
Perhaps that was indeed true for you, but it wasn’t for me and it’s not for many people. I made several extremely serious attempts at sobriety before I was successful. The time I got and stayed clean was not the lowest point in my addiction history.
The most important thing in my mind for helping addicts is making them feel like they are still a part of a community and they have value and that getting sober would mean they could connect to that community even more and fufill all that potential. So… treating them as adult human beings.: “If I had the money to spare to help you, I would, because i know you’re in a tough spot, but I’m trying to be there for a few different people… and I can’t be of financial assistance, only emotional and transport assistance.” Which is true… if I were a millionaire I’d absolutely give them money. Withholding money and resources does not cure addiction. We wish it were that simple. Research shows addicts are more likely to recover if they have more resources. actually. So much for rock bottom…
I also hope you’ll look at the research on different ways of treating opiate addiction. “Inpatient” is usually not the most effective treatment model. Outpatient, Medication- Assisted Therapy (buprenorphine/Suboxone) over 1-2 years combined with one- on- one addiction counseling has the highest success rate. It allows addicts to learn how to be sober in the context of their own lives, and avoids withdrawals - severe withdrawals decrease success.
I respect you and your experience, which is why I think it’s worth discussing the differences in approach.
I’m glad you commented these thoughts. I’m a recovered addict who works with addicts and I commented my experiences in reply to amethystamiss too.
Myself and many addicts get clean after many attempts… and the successful attempt is usually when there’s some hope and support in the picture. The opposite of rock bottom.
It’s hard as a recovered addict to even wrap your head around how you came to be successfully sober after so much hardship and failure to do so. I can see why many just adopt the AA/NA mythology of “I finally hit rock bottom,” or “I finally took responsibility for my addiction,”… it’s an easier narrative than “my tenth attempt was good timing, a decent treatment model, and a dose of luck,” which is how it feels to me.
I’m a huge proponent of giving addicts resources regardless of their sobriety or even their intentions regarding sobriety. One of the most important messages to them is that they are still a part of society, they are not broken off from it… that there’s a decent life waiting for them on the other side.
I definitely wanted to get sober. I think most people who say they want to get sober are telling the truth. It’s just very, very hard to accomplish. There’s a lot of immediate suffering for what’s hopefully a long term payoff - and that’s the exact opposite of the addiction mindset, you know?
So I kept trying, and eventually succeeded. I definitely used again after the worst period (which you can only identify in retrospect). I learned a little each attempt and the final one was a lucky combination and I had a shred of hope for the future.
Which is why I really think giving addicts resources, support, and hope is a better bet than the framing that negative things are happening and will keep happening until they get sober. (And I’m not saying it’s a dichotomy and you’re all about the latter).
And of course you can and should only help in the ways that are safe and healthy for you. It’s so common for recovered addicts to want to work with other addicts but it has its dangers too, which we must stay vigilant about. Not helping because it’s unhealthy for you is a good enough reason all in its own! It’s independent from the question of whether or would help or hurt the addict.
Dude you are having a fit right now and the desperation with which you accuse someone disagreeing with you of being sheltered is disturbing.
I’m truly sorry you grew up in a situation with lots of violence born out of poverty and have had to deal with lots of trauma. But using that as justification for defaulting to violence in every tense situation… while understandable,…is messed up.
I don’t claim to know or understand your situation, but I’ve been mugged at gun point, etc. too I’m coming from a place of legit critique and not mockery
Yeah there was more disgusting things but I think it’s prudent to stand firm against people who try to garner support for reactionary/ racist/ fascist notions by claiming it’s endemic to their experience of living in poverty. I see it too much… “calling out to attractive women is just how it is in my neighborhood lol you rich kid scolds wouldn’t last a day here.”
And the you see even true blue leftists rally around that because (a) the current American online left does trend college-educated white so there’s collective guilt and (b) the left purports to value lived experiences as valid in building a world-view
And yeah lived experiences are valid! But when that results in a claim that is reasonable for someone in a extremely powerful and well- equipped organization to use lethal force against someone in a systemically oppressed and brutalized community because of a knife… no no no no no
I think all this says is your interactions with homeless people have been limited - they are all complete strangers to you and you only talk to the most socially brazen ones beggjng (when you’re forced to) - and that’s just a function of your relatively high socioeconomic level.
If you were born into a poorer family, you’d have friends-of-friends and maybe even family who’ve dealt with homelessness and see a whole lot of “common ground”. Homelessness would have been a very real possibility during portions of your life, your parents thinking about how living in the car or at motels would work, or which people if any they could stomach to ask to move in with briefly.
In the last neighborhood I lived in, there was a man who lived in a few of my neighbors houses, in almost a rotation, with doing handy work in their yards as thinly veiled optics for everyone’s sake, and he was like just another neighbor in every way.
Anyway I was wrong before - your comment does say one more thing about you… you gotta redevelop your empathy! Even if your only interaction has been with “pushy” strangers, you should feel for that suffering, acknowledge how you don’t understand the path to that point very well because of the circumstances you were born into/some good luck, and feel the urge to fight and protect the most vulnerable among us. Your focus on your own inconvenience is a result of decades of capitalist propaganda that has been very effective on you.
In 2016, we had Pat McCrory who was nationally infamous for the anti-trans and minimum wage bathroom bill and also coal ash corruption. It fucked up our state’s economy to the point where 2016 was a referendum on him, so Roy Cooper won the Gov., but Dems got wiped out otherwise.
Huh, so weird. It’s like actually material consequences as a result of an action campaign worked, but just repeating “they are bad. we are good” didn’t?