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I'm of the strong opinion that rehab probably doesn't work most of the time. If someone has an addictive personality, they will probably fall into the same bad habits after they get out of rehab.
Note I'm not saying that rehab never works, just that it doesn't seem to happen too often.
Look at that little punk that killed 4 people while drunk driving back in 2013. He had to go into a rehab program & was told he couldn't drink, then was recently caught on video playing "beer pong".....
The solution?! Just don't get addicted in the first place. Easier said than done, I'm sure - but, as I said in a previous post, I think all of us have the potential to be addicted to something damaging - we just have to strong and resist the urge to do something that will possibly ruin our lives & the lives of those around us...
There appear to be quite a few folks excusing bad behavior on here. I myself live & work in a big city & see the results of addiction on a daily basis. Many of these people are dangerous. If you had to deal with them as much as I did, you would soon realize this.
It's very easy to sit behind a keyboard & type away how you sympathize with people like this & feel sorry for them. But, if you were the victim of a crime committed by one of them and/or had to deal with their bull%#@%$ on a daily basis, I'm sure that you would be singing a completely different tune.
You make the common mistake of thinking that feeling sympathy equates to excusing behavior.
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My addict brother passed a little over a week ago. Last time I tried to have a relationship with him was four years ago, after being estranged for 25 years, because he had been at that time clean for about two years. It didn't last. I don't even know how he died because we haven't spoken, but it doesn't really matter whether he OD'd or got a dirty UA and got sent back to prison where he died of medical neglect, or maybe he ate his diabetic kidneys into failing, or the hepatitis finally shut down his liver, or maybe his crazy junkie girlfriend actually killed him. It doesn't matter. May he rest in peace, finally.
There will always be a certain amount of people "in the wood pile" meaning with addictions like drugs, alcohol, gambling, etc. The answer is not to treat them like criminals, nor to ban the product, but to treat the addiction.
Take most of the money spent on "the war on drugs" and spend it on treating those addicted and there would be much less crime as a result of drugs.
Completely agree. But, I will always think that addiction - drugs or alcohol, are usually the result of despair, mental illness, childhood sexual or physical abuse, or poverty
Completely agree. But, I will always think that addiction - drugs or alcohol, are usually the result of despair, mental illness, childhood sexual or physical abuse, or poverty The "War on Drugs" is total BS.
I agree, addicts are not bad or weak they are broken.
Just saying stuff like, "don't get addicted is not and answer to the problem". Drugs degrade our society those people are out there doing what ever they can get the drugs which means they are robbing and stealing.
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I don't agree that drug addiction is a disease. We all want to feel good but most of us don't turn to drugs for that.
Taking Drugs is a choice and getting addicted to them is a side affect.
There's physical medical evidence that you're wrong. Addicts start with different wiring, wiring that can be predicted with brain scans with about 80-90% predictive accuracy. As someone else on here said, the vast majority of addicts are "broken." Some are born that way, more are made that way through horribly dysfunctional childhoods. In most cases, blaming an addict is not only not productive, but not accurate. Sometimes the secondary behavior of addicts requires avoiding them, but when that's not the case rejecting an addict is contributing to what caused them to become active addicts.
Quote:
Originally Posted by kell490
Just saying stuff like, "don't get addicted is not and answer to the problem". Drugs degrade our society those people are out there doing what ever they can get the drugs which means they are robbing and stealing.
Not all addicts steal. A decent percentage never steal, and even among those who do it's a relative minority who steal on a regular basis.
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How do I feel if an addict dies? If it's someone who I wasn't aware was an addict, I feel the same way I'd feel about anyone who died unexpectedly. That it's due to addiction doesn't really change that.
When it's a close friend who dies due to their addiction, it's still sad but I, and I imagine most close friends and family of addicts, have generally already grieved because of overdoses or close calls or worrisome, self-harmful behavior. In that instance my sadness has already been mostly processed in advance and the remaining feeling is more one of resignation and frustration at the lack of quality treatment for the causes of addiction. Most of the addicts I've known or know have suffered abuse or rejection of the sort I can barely even fathom, so some part of me also finds comfort that that person's demons die with them.
I've had two close family members and a close but distant friend die from herion overdoses..
It was sad they died, I however was not sad. I knew for years it would eventually happen...
When it finally did, it was expected..
All three were in multiple treatment programs, detox facility's and had friend and family support..
Unfortunately for some the pull of the needle is too strong..
Did I love them? Yes I did.. I do not miss them or the drama they caused in my life over the years..
Thankfully they no longer suffer..
I suppose the stock answer is "relieved, unless it is someone I know." Heroin is the latest scourge. Some think it's just bored affluent teenagers and the usual junkies. But these days it is also those who got addicted to prescription painkillers and turned to heroin after their prescription ran out. At first it seems easy, even cheaper than prescriptions.
But tolerance builds up. Just as most junkies started out by shooting up on weekends, then daily then several times a day.
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It's very easy to sit behind a keyboard & type away how you sympathize with people like this & feel sorry for them. But, if you were the victim of a crime committed by one of them and/or had to deal with their bull%#@%$ on a daily basis, I'm sure that you would be singing a completely different tune.
I do deal with an addict on a daily basis. I'm also a board member on a state-run citizen oversight committee that oversees, among other things, the application of and adherence to our state's mental health code, which means many of our cases involve addicts. The rate of dual diagnosis between addiction and mental health issues is very high, and while some situations involve people whose drug use created mental health issues, more of them involve people with mental health issues who become drug users and drug abusers. The idea that they're self-medicating is more clear to me now that I have experience in the area than it ever was as an academic theoretical concept. I understand how people get burned out and lose their capacity for sympathy for hard cases, but for every spoiled rich kid who had no previous history of mental illness, who had loving parents but made bad choices that destroyed their life, there are ten or twenty cases of people with pre-existing mental illness that most of the time is accompanied by a history of violent physical and/or sexual abuse during their childhood.
Some of us know what we're talking about and still are capable of human sympathy. As someone else said, sympathy doesn't mean liking, much less excusing the bad behavior.
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