WRITER - The Tyee -
Wired to Lose - Part 3 (Continued)
Now in these tales lie several issues. The first is how narrow is the view of regional health authorities and municipal planning committees that they cannot see past their petty rule books and see that their communities are drowning in the tears of parents begging for treatment options. They cannot or will not grasp the larger picture. We have an epidemic of drug problems. Someone is willing to help. What can we do to help the helper? Instead they reach for the tape measures and building code bibles. Blindness.
You think this is theory or cant? A recovered addict has been running two recovery homes in South Vancouver. All of his resident clients are clean and sober. You might think he’d be given the Key to the City. Instead, he had one of his homes shut down last year because it had an extra sink in the basement. He put ten people back on the street. Blindness.
The second issue is that the Circle has been locked. At this point in our collective history, all of the social agencies, all of the levels of government, all of the hospitals, all of the invested parties have joined hands. They want mastery over these issues, they want control and they have it. After all, what if something goes wrong? The only problem is they are not doing anything recognizably useful. The City of Victoria, the capital city of the province of British Columbia, has one bed for young meth addicts, one! The document known as The Vancouver Agreement, which every politico and his cousin will praise as if it is Holy Writ, has bound every bureaucrat in a dance of liasing, interfacing, conferencing and god know what social intercourse to no known end.
The treatment programs that I created 40 years ago right here in Vancouver could easily be repeated, but they could never be built in the same way. In those days, before the Noose of Inaction tightened, we simply opened houses, began businesses and started programs without asking permission. We did the Right Thing and dealt with the fallout afterwards. The result is a legacy of reversed lives, lives lived clean and sober and drug free.
Today, we argue pointlessly about the merits of Harm Reduction initiatives like the safe injection site. Some believe this is enabling addicts to remain addicts. Others believe this is a reasonable first step, while we prepare the addict for treatment. But it is a dead argument, because there is no treatment.
Some contend that treatment is the most expensive of the four pillars and that it is, quite simply, too expensive. And they are right if you believe in the Medical Model, if you believe that treatment centres are mini-hospitals staffed by doctors and nurses. Yet anyone who knows the slightest thing about addiction recovery can show you over and over again that the best, the most effective treatment centres are those run by recovering addicts themselves! And these programs are cheap and affordable at any level of government. The very same moneys that go into welfare and similar payments can be utilized, per person, to pay for this kind of meaningful and lasting recovery.
If, like the Mayor of Vancouver, you believe that addicts and prostitutes are hopeless, then give them more drugs and keep them oppressed and stupid. Wrap yourself in flags, and, in an almost perverse form of passive-aggressive behavior, chain the addicted to their chemical wheelchairs.
If, on the other hand, you recognize that addicts are your children, your brothers and sisters and cousins and aunts, then, please, write your MLA, write your MP, write your City Council member and demand Treatment. Demand a New Beginning, demand some political courage, and demand hard-nosed compassion and old-fashioned common sense.
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