Thinking About Addiction

To make the CMHC system a reality, we’d need— hold your breath, this can be scary— a national plan that requires stable funding.

It makes little sense to criticize our “system” of mental health care, when it’s only a system in some places. In the national sense, it isn’t a system at all, and never has been.

It’s a spiritual program that addresses emotional growth alongside behavior change.

As far as funds for prevention and treatment, we can look to our experience with problem gambling. Most states where gaming is legal have turned out to be pretty stingy.

When you give in to panic, you find yourself with two problems rather than one: The thing that’s scaring you, and the fact that you’re panicky and can’t reason clearly.

It’s not hard to see how the combination could result in retirees with serious, life threatening drug problems.

It also suggests that the ‘return to heroin’ rate among former maintenance clients may be even higher.

Somebody who shows up six months later, sick, asking for another admission to the hospital, is in their eyes a failure.

The system here isn’t designed to help a sick addict get off (and stay off) alcohol and drugs. It’s designed to process people in accordance with the expectations of society.

Nobody should have known about this in the first place. Somebody broke Josh’s confidentiality, and sources within the team are a prime suspect.