Now you’re talkin’. The armed forces will sort his ass out right quick.
A psych ward is not that easy to get committed to on purpose. That doesn’t mean people are safe or immune from it happening, or that the folks who run them are particularly good at sorting out the Genuinely Dangerous from the rest of us (they aren’t), but it takes a fairly sophisticated plan with some co-conspirators to get yourself locked up as a result of your own intentions.
Then if you do succeed, you will sure as fuck discover that you are not in control of the process. In case you missed the earlier memo:
• You do not get to check yourself out if and when you decide you’d like to leave. Not your decision to make.
• Neither are very many other decisions. Depending on venue, you may technically possess the right to refuse mind-altering medications, but such rights, where they are indeed granted to involuntary inpatients, are easily attenuated even within the official structure. More so in practice.
• If you’re thinking you can get yourself booted out at any time by ceasing to “act crazy”, get past that. Acting as if you do not believe you belong there is a pretty effective way to trigger some clinical attention that you may not appreciate.
There is no hell on earth worse than being given the wrong medications for a mental illness that you do not have. How can your brother be sure they will give him just sedatives? It doesn’t work that way. They might mistakenly give him something that would cause anxiety beyond anything he could possibly imagine.
begging, stealing, and sleeping in random places > jail or psyche ward. You dont have to completely support him, just let him sleep at ur place when its so cold he would die.
You know, I’m not usually the kind of guy to suggest the “join the army” solution to life’s problems, but this guy sounds like Candidate 1A for that particular option.
Most likely by discharging him quickly as “unfit for military service”.
He’d have to do something pretty henious to be guaranteed immediate and lengthy jail time if he doesn’t have a record- ask him to do something like rush the white house with a machine gun instead of harming someone if he goes this route. Jail also I believe has the much higher chance of anal rape than a mental ward, so I’d probably chose that one over jail if I had both options.
Anyone who actually wants to go to prison, or into a psych ward in order to avoid work is nuts, and pretending to be nuts is simply their expression of insanity.
By the way, the drugs you get in the bin are not fun.
Hanging around with unsuccessful criminals isn’t all that much fun, either.
But, it seems on the face of it that your brother qualifies as pretty much exactly like the folks he is trying to room with. Crazy, lazy, useless, and wishing he were dangerous.
Sucks being him. He should change that, but he probably won’t. Don’t help him.
Tris
He’s right. Why should the military have to put up with someone like this? They’d be more likely to just boot him. If he was just a guy with no skills and no direction who wanted to make something of himself, that’d be one thing, but this guy seems to have some fucked up ideas about life.
You said “don’t ask” why he’s unemployable. Well, I’m asking. I think it’d help us give you better advice if we knew exactly what it is about him that makes him so unemployable.
I’ve known people who had pretty fucked up lives who were able to turn it around. It’s not out of the question. What, specifically, is the deal with this guy?
Maybe he’d be better off joining a loony religious cult. There’re lots of them where they all live together doing loony, cultish stuff.
Hey, he doesn’t sound like a great applicant for the military…but it may help him turn his life around. Drill Instrcutors ain’t gonna put up with any shit, so it might force him to get his act together.
But this is silly. Why is your brother unemployable? We HAVE to ask. Does he have some medical disability? He can get on social security if he’s really genuinely disabled. Does he have some psychiatric disability, but one that wouldn’t get him genuinely committed? Does he have drug or alcohol problems? Is he a lazy bum? Is it that he can’t find work in his chosen field?
Unless he’s genuinely disabled, he CAN find a job at WalMart or whatever that pays $7.00/hour. If the problem is that he’s unemployable because he’s a lazy bum, then maybe the crappy job won’t work. But even if he’s a lazy bum, isn’t working 40 hours a week at some dead-end shit job preferable to 24/7 lockdown in jail? At least he’ll have 128 hours left in the week to smoke pot and hang out. Or if he’s a hardcore pot smoker, can’t he at least work his way up to selling pot? Be an entrepreneur?
You want to give this guy a gun, let him represent us overseas, and pay him with your tax dollars? No thank you.
Either way it’s going to cost taxpayers money. I’d say there’s a chance the military might put a little bounce in this turds step. I guess it wouldn’t be your tax dollars paying for him in the can or at the funny farm. I guess you could always come back with “well jails and hospitals are paid for by the state”. Maybe if he goes to jail he’ll learn how fun and easy it is to be hateful and violent, then he can be everybodys problem.
P.S. Who gives a flying rats ass anyway? The op never came back so obviously he dosn’t give a crap. Once again I should have kept my opinion to myself.
Thats the simplistic view that everyone in the military carries a weapon and is running around on a battlefield. He could choose a job as a cook or in logistics and learn a skill. Of course, he’d have to want to succeed, but that could be said no matter what job military or not that this guy chooses.
That’s the thing - the military in no means wants this guy, recruit shortage or not, unless he has, you know, hidden depths. Which I somehow doubt.
If the guy really, really is “unemployable”, then he’s not going to find a job in the military, because the military can’t use people who are physically disabled, mentally disabled, substance abusers, or so lazy that they’d prefer sitting in jail 148 hours a week to standing around at WalMart for 40 hours a week.
Imagine a job where you were locked in a jail cell with a bunch of criminals for 40 hours a week. Pretty bad, right? Now imagine that you can’t go home when you’re shift is over. Wouldn’t working at WalMart 40 hours a week be better?
Walk into a bank, pass a note to a teller saying, “I have a gun, please hand all the money over from your drawer.” Take the money (they will give you the money) go sit outside with the gun by your feet and surrender when the police show up.
I have no idea about the rest of the country, but here in Virginia that’d solve his housing concerns for the foreseeable future.
X2
Nothing to add.
No, prisoners in this country actually get a mattress and some blankets. Yeah, the food is gross, but not much worse than we force our military to eat.