Watch any heroin documentary and you’ll see the addicts are desperate to stop. They lament the harm they’ve caused to everyone who cares about them. They know death is a possibility anytime they use. They keep narcan on hand because they realize they or a friend may need to be revived from an OD. Even when they have gone through rehab and are clean, they have to constantly fight the urge to use again. It sounds like a pretty horrible life and they do want to give it up.
One of the saddest stories I saw was in Heroin: Cape Cod. A young mom who was a former addict was living in support home with her young kids. She was clean for a long time and was so happy and proud to be a mom. But in the followups at the end, they said she died from an OD after being in the documentary. I have a hard time imagining how strong the pull of the drug must be for someone like her to go back.
It shows how we really need to treat addiction as a mental/physical health problem rather than a criminal act.
I was reacting purely to the photo and the incredible degree of child abuse and neglect that it depicts. Just driving in such a drugged condition could have ended in tragedy. When was the baby fed last? Diaper changed? Most of all, how hot was it in that car? That photo raises a lot of questions for me.
they never existed. ‘50s sitcoms are not documentaries on post-war America. The sooner we come to terms with the fact that the 1950s weren’t all "golly gee whiz, Wally, dad was real sore on account’a’ I forgot to take out the trash" the better.
That yours was a knee-jerk reaction that did not consider context or the nuances of why the situation came to be is clear.
You say it raised a lot of questions for you, but they’re apparently rhetorical ones. Others have tried to explain facets of this situation to you and you’re disbelieving or uninterested b/c it doesn’t fit what you already believe.
Their actions endangered a child. That’s all that matters. There’s is nothing in this world more important than a parent’s responsibility to properly supervise and raise a child.
I could care less about their addiction or desire to change. Both of them have long arrest records.
Hopefully the child will be taken from them and they can shoot up all they want.
Thank goodness these assholes passed out before they got on the road and endangered the lives of their kid and other motorists. Their own lives, fuck that. They clearly don’t care about their own lives it they’re putting that shit in their bodies before getting into a car.
Hope the kid winds up in a good home with nice, non brain dead new parents.
The problem with removing a 4 year old from junkie parents is that, in our current society, there is almost no chance that kid will wind up adopted and living permanently with a good family (however you define that). The most likely fate of such a child is to be passed from foster home to foster home until they are cut loose on their own at 18 to survive or not as they can. That is what actually happens most of the time.
Older child, drug addict bio-parents - that does not fit the notion of a perfect baby that is the most in demand sort for adoption.
That’s why most places stopped automatically terminating parental rights for addicts - most of the time the kids weren’t doing any better than leaving them with the parents and trying to supervise the family via various social services. As long as the child isn’t in immediate danger of death the kid will probably be left with the bioparents.
Actually they did exist and in large numbers. That was my childhood along with all my friends. We came from WW-II era parents who behaved just as you saw on those shows. And it carried through into the 60’s.
they’re mostly gone now and we’re left with your version of reality. That would explain the negativity focused on op and not on the parents in the article.
You can’t know that about your friends, because you didn’t live with those families.
I’m sure some of you have read “To Kill a Mockingbird”. If you haven’t, the book, which is set in the mid 1930s, has a minor character who is a morphine addict. And how about the PBS miniseries “Prohibition”? If anything, alcohol abuse, and its social consequences, was even worse a century ago than it is now.
I had heard that he was her grandson. Sorry.
p.s. I’m surprise the OP didn’t mention “Father Knows Best”. It was revealed later that IRL, Robert Young was an alcoholic, and the young girl who played his daughter was an incest victim.
Are those the questions that were raised for you by these pictures? B/c they sound like opinions you already had instead.
As I sit here w/ the local Air Force base’s Taps recording bouncing off the mountains down to my ears I disagree w/ your opinion that ‘There’s is (sp) nothing in this world more important than a parent’s responsibility to properly supervise and raise a child.’
I can know that about them because because we did live at each other’s house. There are no secrets in a close knit community. Ive stayed in touch with friends since the 2nd grade and I’m in my 50’s.
You’re completely clueless of what life was like when I was growing up.
Yep, I used to play at several of my friends homes. Sometimes ate lunch there. The kids mom threw a blanket over the dining table to make a play fort for us on rainy days.
Our cub scout den meet weekly at one of the kids houses. The kid’s mom supervised us and had various activities planned. Served snacks too.
Middle class homes were very much like what was depicted on TV. Obviously real life wasn’t perfect and there were unhappy homes. Broken marriages. But overall it was a great time to be a kid in America.
It isn’t so much as Liberals refuse to acknowlege this Utopia, but rather, Liberals acknowledge the obvious truth that this “Utopia” was standing on the backs of those living in hell.
“He was later identified as Pasek’s son.”