The so-called War On Drugs
Recently, I have had the terribly frustrating experience of trying to find a detox facility for a friend of mine. He needs one to kick a heroin habit. He is well motivated and has regularly attended Narcotic Anonymous meetings. I am in the Los Angeles area of So. California. You would think that in this quite progressive large city that there would be enough detox facilities so that any junkie who wanted to, could immediately get clean and then get into a treatment facility.
My experience is that for a price, all the facilities would take him. This indicates to me that they were not filled up. As a person with no resources to pay the $250-350 per day fee they were requesting, he had to wait for between a week to three months, depending on the facility, to get a free “county bed!” “What should I do in the meantime,” he asked them. Most suggested that he continue to shoot heroin until he gets in or that he should find some sedatives and try to detox himself.
For a country that has this aggressive criminal enforcement War On Drugs program. It is absolutely outrageous that anyone who wants to stop using should be made to spend one additional moment putting him/herself in harms way, emotionally, physically or criminally!
I have previously written about how to really conduct this War so that it would really have an impact (see http://la-youth.org/war .) Although I wrote it for the first Clinton presidential campaign, it is still totally valid today and still not followed as national policy. It basically calls for not another person to be arrested until there are enough treatment slots available for them to be sentenced to as an alternative to jail. At least here in California, the voters did through referendum what the legislature refused to do and now first time drug offenders are offered treatment in lieu of jail time.
When I wrote that paper, people who wanted to detox had no problem finding a facility to take them in. To my knowledge, there are approximately the same numbers of beds available now as then, so it must be that there are more people who are wanting detox that is causing the waiting lists. That is the good news. The horrible news is that there is no place for them to go. In my extensive experience, the urge to go into recovery is a time limited one for most addicts. These windows of opportunity are usually the result of some very traumatic incident in their lives. Because addicts know no other way of dealing with bad feelings than using more drugs, any extra frustration caused by having to wait for detox, will close the window and they will be doomed to another cycle of using. What a pity!
This is the first posting to my new megaphone to the world. I have been around this planet for the last 61 years. I have made it a point to do and see and learn about everything that I can. My experience is quite broad and includes: working with street kids and young adults on their own for about 35 years; press photography for 20+ years; Air Force officer (inc. Viet Nam); motorcycle racer; collecting of poisonous and non-poisonous snakes in Viet Nam; entrepreneur; Hypnotherapist; Neuro-Linguistics Practitioner (NLP); Foster father to 14 kids over the years and father to one amazingly talented and loving son.
As I listen to the news and here all the commentaries, I can’t understand how the obvious is obviously not obvious to them. I intend in this column to put my views out to all who would like to read them. I’m new to this blogging stuff, so I don’t know is you can reply to my postings. If you can’t you can always email me at jason@jasonpix.com.
