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Opening Arguments

Canadian club

I suppose this is one way to deal with the problem of the alcoholic homeless -- just keep them soused. It conjures up possible solutions for all kinds of problems, doesn't it? Leave it to the Canadians.

Posted in: Current Affairs

Comments

Scott
Thu, 01/05/2006 - 7:39am

Reminds me of this:

http://www.vch.ca/sis/

Steve Towsley
Fri, 01/06/2006 - 1:22am

This seems to be the season for odd experiments on addicts and alcoholics.

Recently I read of a group which is promoting a regimen that switches alcoholics over to Vicodin. The group's research indicates that hydrocodone can produce the required feeling of euphoria while producing fewer behaviors which adversely affect the general public than alcohol. (That may be true to a point, if you can keep the alkie from drinking on top of the hydrocodone or taking too many tablets. People on Vicodin don't wear lampshades on their heads, at least. But somebody might have to apologize to Rush Limbaugh.)

Then there is that new free public housing for homeless alcoholics where they can continue to drink as usual. I can't recall where that new halfway house is, but apparently it's already full of drunks who were formerly discriminated against by other dry-only projects. One assumes there is a certain amount of turnover at this new wet house, so the waiting list probably moves right along.

And now we have Vancouver offering the SIS program for addicts, and Ottawa offering the free-drink-per-hour deal -- programs whose primary purpose is pointedly not to help anybody sober up, but to save public health resources.

And that is the new wrinkle here. None of these programs is a treatment for addiction. The claimed benefits accrue to almost everybody else. Almost.

The fly in the ointment is, alcoholics and addicts hurt everyone they come in contact with, whether drunk, high, or hung over. They are the bull in their own china shop, the elephant in their family's living room. People are psychically trampled, emotionally gored, and soul murdered around alcoholics and addicts. Sometimes people get physically injured or killed. Kids get abused. This sort of thing is routine and for as long as the addict can continue to function, his life and theirs always gets worse and even more painful.

So, if you subsidize public addiction, you are enabling addicts to continue torturing ex-spouses, parents, children, friends and employers. All these victims have too many problems already and they will last long enough without giving their alkies and addicts extra vitamins. Victims are flushing the hated drugs and pouring the toxic alcohol down the sink at every opportunity (at least until they get to Al-Anon). How should they feel about sanctioned free doses of the poison being provided to their loved one down at the corner out-patient clinic? How should they feel about a wet hotel that enables the drunk to avoid detox and rehab?

There are, no doubt, some addicts out there who would die more quietly and cheaply if buffered by such programs as these, and maybe some who have no friends or relatives left to torture. If they insist on dying that way, there's not much to be done. But a life of addiction is hardly ever a victimless crime, and anyone enabling an addict to stay loaded is almost certain to be aiding and abetting further heartache somewhere.

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