“To be concerned is so much more constructive than to be worried.”
“Every time we make a real decision,
we find out who we really are, because we make use of our own priorities and values.”
“The problem is not that there are problems.
The problem is expecting otherwise and thinking that having problems is a problem.”
“Kindness is more important than wisdom,
and the recognition of this is the beginning of wisdom.”
“Anxiety and depression are tolerable if we don’t get anxious and depressed about being anxious and depressed.”
“Sometimes we must make a serious effort to be frivolous.”
“To understand children, we must have some memory of how we felt as children.”
These quotes by Theodore Isaac Rubin psychiatrist and author
~~oo0oo~~
Jessie is smoking tik and woonga. That was a shock. I’m sticking with her and supporting her, trying not to lose contact with her. Reading up a lot. I decided to talk, not keep quiet. The first five people I told, four came up with immediate solutions and advice. The fifth listened, empathised, offered an ear and said, “Good Luck, It’s A Long Haul.” He’s a medical specialist doc living with a drug addict child. His and his son’s addiction journey started around forty years ago.
I remind myself: Jess is addicted to tik, woonga AND very addicted to her boyfriend – completely under his sway; Jess takes herself to him – he does not drag her there – although she sometimes says he keeps her there, sometimes when she SAYS she wants to come home; sometimes, though, she admits she decided not to come home despite telling me she was coming; Nothing is clear, though. The truth is a serious casualty of addiction – there is a lot of lying, a lot of blaming, a lot of confusion and uncertainty; and there’s wishful thinking and hallucinations! And there’s love. Lots of love too.
Both Jess and her bf, and others who live with them, suffer from paranoia and hallucinations visual and aural, so when they see and hear things it’s not at all clear if they saw it in real life or in hallucination – most of what each of them say they’ve heard is aimed ‘against them,’ so paranoia would explain that; Jess is aware that nasty things said against her are possibly real, possibly imagined. And again, the lying . . .
Then I also remind myself that Jess has a wonderful time with him and his family when all is well; Mom, Aunt, Uncle, brothers, a loving sister. They sing and dance and laugh and get drunk and get high and have a wonderful time and she loves them and is loved by them; Especially the ladies there – Sihle’s sister, Mother and Aunt – treat her very well; So the lows are horrible, but the highs beat the boredom she feels at home.
And I remind myself of that socially acceptable substance right on top of this list. The acceptable one. The one I grew up with.
And I remind myself of the criminal disgrace of the failed, yet ongoing “War on Drugs.” And of how the only places who have reduced drug use and drug crimes are countries that have ended the lie of a “war on drugs” and significantly decriminalised drug use, instead helping drug users with their lives. Who see drug use as a disease, to be treated by healthcare workers, not as a ‘bad choice’ to be stamped out by policemen who are not trained in anything other than arrests and throwing users in jail. They are not equipped to do the very difficult task of talking to users who are high. They’re incentivised to make arrests, so they ‘raid’ and arrest. In the process, all thoughts of a police service go out the window. Instead of assisting their citizens, as they swore to do when they qualified as police officers, the system – and the industry that fuels the system – sets them against them.
An example of unintended consequences and misguided laws: Codeine is freely available in South Africa, you can buy it almost anywhere. We have a fairly low annual prevalence rate of opiate use at 0.3%. In the United States where all opiates are strictly regulated, the prevalence rate is almost double, at 0.57%.
Tolerate drug use!? Legalise all drugs!? What MANIACS would do that!? Well, let’s pretend we’re lawmakers. And let’s be honest with ourselves and decide which of the drugs we would make illegal if we were making the decisions. Of course, we’re honest people and we want what’s best for our people, right?
To make it easy, let’s say you can only make ONE drug illegal. Which one on the HARMS CAUSED BY DRUGS list below would you choose? Start at the top and count down and choose the one you would ban (even though banning never works). You’d ban the top one, right? The one that causes most harm?
Food for thought, right? Remember how the strict prohibition of alcohol went? It hugely strengthened the mafia. Now they’ve lost their alcohol income. But they’ve replaced it with illegal drugs.
So let’s decriminalize drugs, regulate their use and safety and put healthcare workers in charge. Read up on Portugal’s experience when they decided the ‘War on Drugs’ was not only a failure, it made things worse!
Is Portugal’s Drug Decriminalization a Failure or Success? The Answer Isn’t So Simple
https://substanceabusepolicy.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13011-021-00394-7
https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2024/0712/portugal-drug-decriminalization-harm-reduction
~~oo0oo~~
Thoughts:
“God save us from the people who want to do what’s best for us.”
“There’s a certain class of people who will do you in and then remain completely mystified by the depth of your pain.”
~~oo0oo~~
As for addicts – they have their own challenges – and thoughts:
“You can’t save us from ourselves because those who make a perpetual muddle of our lives don’t appreciate your interfering with the drama we’ve created.
We often want your poor-sweet-baby sympathy, but we don’t necessarily want to change. Or anyway not right now.”
“Sometimes I wonder what the difference is between being cautious and being dead.”
“Insecure people have a special sensitivity for anything that finally confirms their own low opinion of themselves.”
These quotes paraphrased from private investigator Kinsey Millhone, female protagonist in author Sue Grafton‘s novels.
~~oo0oo~~
We’ll get there, guys.
~~~oo0oo~~~
~~~oo0oo~~~
I strive for kindness AND wisdom, so on 6 July I passed my course on Addiction and Recovery, so now I’m an expert! Can a complete cure be far off!? Stanford University’s Psychiatric Dept had a six week online course and I just got my results. Learnt a lot and very gratified that expert opinion and the evidence points AWAY from the destructive ‘War On Drugs’ and harsh law enforcement.
TREATING the disease of addiction is the way forward, working with the addicts – each one an individual.
~~oo0oo~~
Update Nov 2024: Jess has been rehabilitating herself since May 2023. Her longest spell on her medical treatment is the last 14 months, in which she has been with me throughout. Well done Jessie Pops!