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Here in New England, it’s hard to get through a news cycle without at least one mention of the region’s opioid epidemic. Every media outlet covers it; governors are creating task forces faster than you can count; and the presidential candidates expect daily questions on the matter, often from parents who lost a child to an overdose. (Notably, Jeb Bush’s daughter has struggled with addiction for years, and Carly Fiorina’s stepdaughter died of an overdose.)
There are already assisted living accommodations like you describe available. I know two ex-addicts who have lived in such a facility. They were both impaired mentally and physically after years of chronic alcohol and marijuana abuse.
One has since passed; he died at around the age of 55. The other is probably about 60 and has lived in the facility for 10 years. He was indigent and his family has limited resources, so I assume Medicaid or something like it is picking up the tab.
You know, I haven’t thought of the guy I know for a long time. It’s a case of addiction that would break your heart.
His father was a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic and an alcoholic; of his four kids, three have battled substance abuse and / or mental illness.
The son, my friend, was the kindest guy I ever knew. He tried mightily to quit drinking and smoking pot more times than I can count, sometimes remaining sober for long stretches. But he would always relapse.
His father eventually committed suicide by hanging himself in his trailer. It was my friend who found him. After he’d been dead for a week. In August. There’s a back story of what drove his father to suicide that is just wild, but that’s a story for another day.
I knew then and there the gig was up; any energy left to fight his own demons was gone. And the family was exhausted.
One sister remained committed and managed to get him into the assisted living facility where he now lives. Last I heard he was doing okay; I’m certain without the structured environment and care he would have been dead long ago.
From Propublica:
The latter statistic is probably the more accurate, as the former includes drugs (like vicodin) that contain both acetaminophen and opiates, but let’s make it easy and call it 500 deaths from acetaminophen.
So, in answer to your question, Massachusetts has about twice as many deaths from opioids annually as does the nation from tylenol each year.
The Founders’ intent was for the states to delegate specific, enumerated powers to the federal government. That is, if a power is not explicitly granted by the federal constitution, then the federal government has no authority over it. As Midge said, one of the negative consequences of the Bill of Rights has been to sow some confusion into the matter (which isn’t to say that the Bill of Rights wasn’t worth it).
Now, whether the states and local governments should act under similar principles (i.e., only be empowered to do specific things, rather than only prohibited from doing certain things) is a little more complicated, though I’ve pretty strong feelings that it should.
Seconded.
I’d be surprised if the latter were both true and connected to legalization. It’s my understanding that a lot of the pressure to increase potency/concentration comes from prohibition, on the grounds that it’s a lot easier to smuggle and hide the concentrated stuff than its alternative.
If you’re trying to sneak booze in somewhere it’s not allowed, you’re better off going with liquor than beer.
I don’t know any libertarians who think that children should be treated just like adults. That is a total straw man. Children have virtually no rights – legal or personal. It’s not just that they can’t legally drink alcohol, or drive, or enlist in the military, or sign a binding contract. Every aspect of their life is controlled by adults. They are told what to eat, when to go to bed, whether they can go out and play, what they can watch on TV, and on and on.
I don’t believe that you actually want adults to be treated that way. And I can’t imagine who you think should have the authority to come into your home and tell you to go to bed or to do your homework. We do not care for children by prohibiting adults from doing anything that children are not free to do. That’s an argument that people trot out when they have no real argument. Straw man.
And, by the way, what is this “libertarian nirvana” stuff? Libertarians do not want or expect nirvana. Unlike socialists or some religious people, we do not believe in Utopia. Utopians are the people who envision some perfect society, and try to impose it on everyone else. By force.
Libertarianism is about what is right. It’s about morality. It is a philosophy that addresses how a government (that’s the guys with the guns and billy clubs) should treat its citizens. It is a philosophy that says that government is necessary, but tyranny is wrong, and tries to balance those principles.
The alternative is what Manny has been arguing here. Raw power. Nietzsche. The government has the power to do something, and that’s the end of the story. No consideration is given to whether it is right, or fair, or just to do that thing. If it’s not banned in the Constitution, then Woohoo! Anything goes.
You don’t have to believe in nirvana to believe that morality should play a role in our most important and most dangerous social interaction – that between the state and its citizens. It is not Utopian to believe that the state should be constrained not just by raw power, but by principle.
I will respond later today with what I would like to see as requested. Sitting at Driver services at the moment
My mom would have loved you! Going through her papers after she died, I found a letter to the editor (unpublished I imagine) with a pretty good rant about how alcohol causes a lot more damage than smoking. And yes, she died of lung cancer, but she was 88 and had been smoking heavily since 16. By some calculations I guess she should have lived to 110 but she would have rather smoked, I think.
OK, I see the distinction. I’m thinking about laws over all. Either way, the libertarian approach was never part of the US government, or even envisioned. It doesn’t matter to me whether say drugs are restricted on a federal level or a local level. Society would be better off restricted. The people still have the right to make laws which restrict freedoms, as long as they don’t violate the bill of rights.
My thought was purely a speculation; I don’t know one way or the other. But we’ve long had prohibition on pot and never had this potency out there. It’s only now that it’s become legal in places and legally prescribed as a medicine in many states where it has all of a sudden changed for the worse. The coincidence is noteworthy.
Could you let me know where this is? Is it just for addictions or mental illnesses as well?
I have a loved one who is, at the moment, in a very expensive, very wonderful residential treatment program that I wish more young people with mental illness could have access to. As it happens, this isn’t for addicts —not enough external control—but it has successfully taught people with mental illness to live real lives. With support, but real lives all the same. That’s what we want for our brothers and sisters, isn’t it? That they get to live real, whole lives.
One of the many lessons learned from my mentally-ill loved one is that mental illness doesn’t happen in a vacuum. The disordered brain functions (or fails to) in a particular social context. To name the most obvious example, a schizophrenic Catholic is more likely to hallucinate the Virgin Mary than to hallucinate, Kwan Yin. And a mentally-ill person raised to be kind, self-disciplined, honest, hard-working and trusting will be all those things, to the best of his/her ability, and this will be a very good thing. My particular loved one, despite her illness, made a conscious decision to avoid drugs and alcohol because, as she put it, “I knew my brain chemistry was already complicated enough.” Among other things, she knew how to think in terms of “brain chemistry…” I am so grateful she wasn’t raised to think “a martini is the answer to all problems” or “if I hear voices in my head, it must be God… or Satan?” and that she wasn’t a party girl (social stress + drugs anyone?).
Kate : I am on the road for the next couple of days; I will respond to you via pm when I return. I do know the facility is in San Pedro CA.
In answer to the question of what I want to see, let me dismiss Fred’s reducto absurdum snark. I am not for forcing people addicted to Oreo’s into treatment. Nor do I see dragging people smoking into treatment. While it is good and well to be snarky, it does not advance the debate. However, in this post I will clarify why all addictions are not created equal.
Smoking is an addiction, and it may be one of the hardest to break. It certainly is one that many people suffer from. While it does have long term effects, it does not significantly impair functioning on a day to day basis for those that are addicted. The same applies to caffeine.
When I am talking about proscribing liberty, I am talking about those addictions that cause day to day dysfunction. People chronically missing work because they are hungover. Running up debt to buy drugs. Using dirty needles. Trading sex for drugs.
While smoking might shorten your life, it does not impair your functioning on a day to day basis until the future when the side effects kick in.
Now, onto Bryan G. Stephens, tyrant who presumes to take away the liberty of men already slaves.
What I would like to see is illegal drugs continue to be illegal. This is not to punish, but to give us a chance to intervene by the courts. It seems the easiest pathway, and far safer than having the state define impairment.
This does mean that drinkers are going to get less chances to be forced into interventions, though DUI seems a good pathway. Personally, I think if someone gets a second DUI, it is clear that he has a problem.
With the courts, I want to use the threat of incarceration to get people to choose treatment instead. Those programs need to be funded, and supported. There needs to be safe housing and assistance with employment to support the therapy.
These arrests and convictions should not show up on a background check as long as the person is following the rules.
Until we have medications that can block or reverse the effect addiction has on the brain, I believe this is the best we can do. It is a more expensive strategy than “Just make it all legal and let God sort them out”, but it is more humane in the long run.
True. I also think it’s well to point out that mentally-ill people, to the extent that their illness remains poorly-controlled, are unlikely to reap as many benefits from staying sober, self-disciplined, honest, and hard-working as they would if they were sane. (There are so many ways mental illness can screw up your life, even when all the conventional moral niceties are observed.)
As I said earlier, if a person stays in bed all day because he’s high, or because he’s perfectly sober but mentally ill, either way, he’s still dysfunctional.
So, while I believe “I’m so messed up already there’s no way I should get involved with drugs, too” is a healthy attitude for a mentally-ill person to have, I can also see how a mentally-ill person might succumb to despair and think, “Sobriety and virtue have rewarded me so little because I’m so messed up. What’s the point of staying good anymore?”
Definitely. This is why it seems such a miracle to me that my loved one was able to think so clearly and choose so sensibly. She’s described her symptoms to me, and all I could think was “I would take anything—ANYTHING—to make that stop.”
And her mental illness causes suffering and is disabling—I am not claiming that being raised to be (or destined by the luck of the genetic draw to be) a fine human being makes mental illness anything other than what it is… but even for a person with a mental illness, it remains an advantage to have the things that we all try to give our kids: a sense of self, an assurance of being loved and supported, a good education, a degree of self-discipline, a work ethic, and so on. This, along with a generally agreeable personality, some creativity and intelligence, allows my loved one to take advantage of what opportunities life does afford her.
Incidentally, knowing what I know now, I would definitely advise any pregnant woman or young mother with a family history of mental illness (moi aussi) to make a top priority of just being happy, by any means necessary (including medication). That sounds silly, I know, but when I was a young mother I was always trying (usually in vain) to achieve things, and making myself miserable (and arguably, stressing out my fetuses/children) in the process.
And what of the doctors who are unnecessarily prosecuted and accused of being “Dr. Feelgood” because they are doing their best to help those suffering from chronic pain to live full productive lives?
NO, NO, NO! (or rather Yes, presuming you actually follow all the Amendments)
This is precisely why James Madison didn’t want a Bill of Rights. He was frightened that people would start to think that they were only granted the rights spelled out in the Constitution. The 9th Amendment* should ensure that such a misconception does not exist but is, sadly, routinely ignored.