The problem you run into with this line of thinking is that most of these people have kids. Anything you do to punish the parent will also punish the kids who are innocent in the whole situation. What do you do with the mom with a functioning addiction to painkillers who has two kids under the age of 4? How do you expect her to go to rehab? I think in this situation you really do need to think of the children.
True. You always have to take circumstances into account, which would argue for case workers to have more authority to expand or reduce help.
Of course, you could take more kids away, but that’s not working out so well either since the government is really shitty at taking care of kids under its supervision.
That’s why I said it was a mix.
Oh, please.
And this is a stunningly naive statement. You clearly know very little about addiction.
And it resembles a naivatee on the part of many conservatives about poor people in general too. They say things almost as silly as “If poor people find themselves on the streets, they should just call their limo driver and get picked up.”
You’ve switched topics. Your original assertion was that withholding food stamps for cause them to volunteer for treatment.
And it’s probably alot more expensive in the long run to take kids away than to try to preserve families. Also, taking kids away is not exactly pro-family.
No it’s not, and personally I think the government is too biased towards taking kids away given how bad the system is to kids. IMO, unless a parent is seriously abusing a kid, they are better off at home than in the system. Heck, turning them into child soldiers might be better than the system.
I’ve seen that proposed many times and one of the main problems is that it’s expensive to fund an effective treatment programme.
And you can’t realistically say people have to turn up to a treatment at a specific time when you acknowledge that their addiction makes such a regular schedule unfeasible, even though it might be a good idea a while down the line.
Addiction often comes along with other issues, too - perhaps the addiction is because of their illness. Then punishment seems less helpful.
As a recovering alkie who also assists other alkies/addicts get clean and has watched more than a few die, I have to say the absolute worst thing you can do for an addict or alcoholic is give them things. It doesn’t matter if it is food, money, clothing, etc, they will find a way to exchange it for their poison of choice. (The exception is food, if you give it to them, make sure they eat it in front of you, otherwise it will probably be traded for booze/drugs. As far as food stamps go, the crack dealer who I knew in my old apartment had his place packed with food, none of which he bought. It all came from his clients and their food stamps. That guy ate well, his clients, not so much). The success rate for recovery for alcoholism/addiction is not good, the best programs are in the range of 10-15%.
For addicts/alkies, the desire to get sober has to be there. That sounds pretty simple, however it isn’t. The life of drugs/booze has to be more painful than the alternative, life without drugs/booze. That sounds simple unless you are the one with that naked NEED in your brain that doesn’t stop. Anything that makes life easier for the addict/alkie is bad.
If you want to help an addict/alkie, get them to a halfway house, hospital or treatment center that can control the environment. There are halfway houses in most places that will take in addicts/alkies even if they aren’t employed. I know, I lived in one for a while. Offer to get them to an A.A. or N.A. meeting. If they are going through withdrawl or are likely to, get them to a hospital. But for gods sake, don’t give them anything that they can sell or trade. Because they will sell or trade it for their fix.
And, as sad and horrid as it sounds, if the addict/alkie would rather die then get clean, well then you have to let them. I hate it. I’ve been to numerous funerals of alkies who couldn’t get clean. I’ve consoled a man (an alkie himself) after his alkie son killed his wife (the sons) and then himself. I’ve been to the prison to talk to men who are going to spend the next 10, 20 or whatever years confined to a cage due to their addictions. I’ve listened to alkies after they have totally destroyed their lives and the lives of all those that they loved yet won’t quit their addiction. As I said, I hate it. But until someone comes up with a better solution to addiction, there isn’t much you can do.
In fact, I have spent a few hours this week talking to my niece whose fiancee is having addiction issues. I’ve told her exactly what I said here with one small addition, I told her that she had to be perpared to walk away.
Slee
I wasn’t saying you should give them things. I was saying that taking away food stamps and thinking that alone will get them to go into rehab is naive.
The larger point is that you DO give them something - intervention, and rehab, and support. Their life is not entirely in their own hands. They need at least some help of some kind.
Sure, and I’m just saying taking away food stamps isn’t enough to make life worse with the drugs or booze than without it.
Yes. It takes more than just taking away some food stamps - alot more.
I wouldn’t put it that way. Many people would rather die RIGHT NOW (before a fix, say), but we don’t just let anyone kill themselves without trying to help them, at least for a while. But if you’ve tried and tried and tried…
Yes, sometimes they will die and you can’t help them, but that’s a little different from just giving up. But yeah, with some you still have to give up eventually.
Thanks for your stories, they are enlightening.
I don’t want to derail this thread but I highly disagree. If you want to go into this further we ought to take it to another thread
You are welcome. I’ve become a hard ass on this particular subject as I’ve seen up close how damaging some peoples good intentions can be.
Slee
Well sure, especially when you take into account how stupid some people were to be born into families that did not have the resources to help them out of their addictions.
Like I said before, if we’re willing to pay to put druggies in jail(and force them to go there), we should pay to put them in treatment instead(and also force them to go there).
Addiction is a mental illness. We commit the mentally ill if they are a danger to themselves or society. Commit addicts to live-in treatment centers as an alternative to prison.
Having access to mental health care and addiction treatment would be a great start! You could clean up a bunch of people without even forcing them. The wait lists for public rehab facilities is often years and years long.
Adaher is right.
Mind. Blown.
Unfortunately continued poverty is not the result of a single poor decision, but an endless series of them.
I used to work with homeless people men, primarily vets. They would disability checks every months which were comparable to what people earned a decent salaries ($2-3k). Not great; but enough to support a single person in an area where the cost of living was rather low.
They didn’t have children or their children were already adults. They didn’t own vehicles and while they had some bills, most were rather minor amounts monthly or semi-annually. Their medical care was picked up by the government and they lived in SRO (Single Resident Occupancy) hotels which were roughly $100-125 per week or around $450 per month if paid monthly.
Invariably, these individuals would get their checks, spend the majority within a few days to a week and then have no money for the remainder of the month. More than a few times they would give money to hangers-on would would specifically prowl the bars seeking them out when they knew that they had money and who would then ignore them when they broke. Many were forced to live under bridges, overpasses and in homeless camps until their next check came the following month.
These were adults, who had some mental issues and a few emotional issues, but who were also capable of making rational decisions and weigh the consequences of their actions. Instead of deciding that “Hey, I don’t want to sleep under the bridge this month” they would follow the same course that they had the previous months and found themselves in the same position in which they had been.
Poor people a rational individuals. They know that their actions have consequences and yet they often don’t care about those consequences until after they have made poor decisions. Or they engage in “magical thinking” that allows them to believe that those consequences will somehow avoid them.
Do the middle class and wealthy engage in the same behaviors?
Certainly…many do.
However, they also have a decent financial cushion, job skills, a clean arrest record and social network which will assist them if their daydreams start to intrude upon their reality.
The poor do not.
Life is unfair. If you are poor you have to learn to accept that (you never to like it) and plan your life accordingly. If you do not, then you’ll remain poor.
[QUOTE= adaher]
Like I said before, if we’re willing to pay to put druggies in jail(and force them to go there), we should pay to put them in treatment instead(and also force them to go there).
[/QUOTE]
What is the recovery rate for people who are forced into treatment?
Regards,
Shodan
Lack of money is more often a symptom of a person’s problems than the cause of it, at least long term. Everyone gets down on their luck from time to time, but the most valuable asset most of us have is ourselves. That’s why it’s called “human capital”. Even if we lose our jobs, we are still worth on the market what we were worth before, we just have to find a new buyer for our services.
But if you aren’t worth much in terms of your value to an employer, then that’s the real issue, not how much money you have.
I realize that’s been addressed by the issue of parenting and how it’s not really their fault, but that’s a philosophical argument where there’s no right answer. Really, this thread could have been ended a long time ago with the answer, “Who knows?” It could be all genes and environment, it could be that we have total control over our circumstances based on the choices we make.
No freakin’ clue. But I’d bet it works better than prison.
No, I mean a real cite.
Regards,
Shodan
I agree completely. Thanks.
That’s a good question. I don’t have my work computer handy, but I’ll check later on today to see if I can find some hard numbers. But the nutshell is: it depends. How treatment is mandated and by what body; how it is enforced and by what body; and the nature of the treatment all factor into rate of successful outcomes.
NIDAsays:
But I have not yet laid eyes on the studies they’re talking about.