Quote:
Originally Posted by Russic
I adore that gif and if you'd like to use it to describe me it would be some much-needed levity in this thread.
I actually feel like you and I probably agree on more than you'd realize. You've clearly had some heavy experiences and you sound like you were an excellent friend/family member to somebody and I'm sorry it didn't work out.
I completely empathize with compassion fatigue and have zero hesitation saying I'd be swimming in it if I had to walk in your shoes. It's for that reason I don't really judge or blame anybody for their opinions in this thread (despite what my tone may have you believe). We're all just a tangled mess of experiences trying to figure it all out.
When I say I don't think we have it in us to rehabilitate the current crop of drug-addicted people out there, I'm not claiming it's because people are sh*t and don't care, it's because the level of care required is beyond what we can reasonably offer. We've all got spouses and jobs and kids and problems... it's not like any of us are swimming in bandwidth.
When I originally made my comment that nobody even views these people as people, I wasn't necessarily saying you all need to dig in and find compassion, but rather that I think we're further away from a solution than most realize. This problem is 400-level physics but we haven't even nailed down subtraction yet.
The facts are unkind. The percentage of people who can kick an opiate habit is depressingly low. The only people who seem to be able to succeed are in high-paying careers and have pre-existing social circles to help them. Your average street person? If anybody knows the true figure please share, but I think it's lower than 1%.
This is why I take such a pessimistic approach to the current wave of addicts. If I've given you the impression that I think you need to just do some breathing exercises and find some empathy then I apologize because I wasn't clear. It is likely too late for the vast majority of them.
This is why I believe my focus needs to be on the drug wave that's coming in 20 years by doubling our efforts for the families and kids who haven't gotten into this mess yet but are on the wrong trajectories.
For the violent ones in the current crop, I do feel they need to be removed from society and incarcerated. It only kicks the can down the road, but it's probably the only solution we've got in the short term (and even then it's probably far more complicated than we realize).
You make a good point about asylums. We deemed them cruel (because they were run cruelly) and got rid of them without replacing them. Today if you have schizophrenia and a family unable to care for you, how do you even stay off the street?
Anyways, I'm sorry for what you went through. Sounds like an impossible situation and you tried more than most would.
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All good. Would be nice to fill in the vagueness with some colour, but public forum and all hah.
Since drugs got us into this mess, just maybe they can get us out. I'll smoke a bowl tonight and pretend it was me jumping out of a tent and wrestling snarling packs of wolves away from hapless tourists.
Good post, though. What a ####ty problem.