Big question: Where is drug/alcohol abuse headed where you work?

[mycrofft]

Drug/alcohol abuse:Where is it headed where you work?

(I'm particularly interested in our correspondents outside the USA with emphasis on "SW Asia/Middle East", Europe and Britain/Ireland/Scotland, Canada, etc.
Elk Oil started a thread which has led to responders sharing more about their experiences than we often read or hear:
http://www.emtlife.com/showthread.php?t=24727
Now, what are the trends you see through your personal experience regarding patients presenting with chemical abuse/addiction ("the high life"), and what do you think about societal responses where you are?

NOTE: multiple answers are enabled and the poll does not disclose who said what. Please write comments too!
And for those who currently have a problem or are in recovery, good luck to you, if you share that you are braver than I would be.

 

[mycrofft]

Cat got your tongue?

 

[Melclin]

Harm reduction approaches seem to have worked well in Aus, NZ and the UK. I'm a big fan of them. I hear great things about suboxone in particular.

Generally speaking, I think its a basic human condition to wanna get wasted. You take one away, something else (?worse) will take its place. I think the best thing to do is to allow a number of reasonably harmless (?weed) ways of getting wasted and provide, within reason, the resources required to protect people from their own stupidity.

 

[firetender]

The future of substance abuse is SECURE!

I am personally pessimistic/optimistic about the future of substance abuse/intoxication where I live and work

Just so you know, these statements are too ambiguous to answer, as in
I'm very optimistic about the future of substance abuse/intoxication where I live and work because nothing will stop it. It's part of our wiring to seek out getting loaded. I'm pessimistic about the damage heaped upon the already impaired by a legal system whose primary job appears to be to make sure our jails are full with predominatly people in the lower socio-economic classes with an emphasis on people of color.

 

[bigbaldguy]

I'm pessimistic about the damage heaped upon the already impaired by a legal system whose primary job appears to be to make sure our jails are full with predominatly people in the lower socio-economic classes with an emphasis on people of color.

Or to put it another way if you're poor and non white you go to prison for an ounce of weed but if you're rich and white you generally get to run over 1 or 2 people in your car while drunk before anybody thinks you have a "problem". Poor people use street drugs and that is why they are illegal. Middle class and rich college kids get to go to the doctor and get their meth in nice clean perfectly legal tablets while poor folks have to score theirs on the street and suck it out of a pipe. I work in a heavily drug tested profession and I know people who have been fired for smoking pot on their day off but I work with people every week who are blasted to the gills with prescription xanax while at work but no one says anything because somehow it's ok if the doctor gives it to you. It's a clear double standard.

 

[firetender]

And for those who currently have a problem or are in recovery, good luck to you, if you share that you are braver than I would be.

I would be surprised to find any change in my estimate of consistent substance (non-specified) or other forms of self/other-abuse (at least OFF-DUTY) amongst our ranks from what it was in my day.

I say 20%, is that conservative enough?

It's something that has never been ready to be honestly spoken about; and most certainly not on a public Forum.

But it wouldn't hurt to have something set up where such things could be anonymously and honestly looked at by us all. We all know others who behave like that, and many more of us, myself included, have had our personal lows.

 

[mycrofft]

Agreed Firetender

Nurses (others?) in some states have a "diversion program" where those with a chemical problem can seek treatment with mitigation of damage to their record, although going to Diversion can make you uncompetitive for hiring despite the fact that basically you have been certified as being clean, versus the rest of us coming off the street.

I've been impacted by impaired co-workers, but on the other side, much of my work for six years was all about treating "detoxers", so I might just have owed them my job.

Personally/subjectively, I don't like being around stoners anymore, especially since the big thing here is the "crack or uppers and violence" scene.

 

[Luno]

To the party, and we're all going...

So when is this party with the booze and drugs, I'm so there... But seriously, I'm absolutely ashamed of the apologistic culture that's developing in public service. At the end of the day, the simple truth is there is a law, which they have decided to transgress. Not in as a form of civil disobedience because they feel the laws are unjust, and protesting their rights, but due completely to selfishness.

Now if I was speeding and I received a ticket, would that be because the laws are unjust, or possibly I haven't had the social standing (race, economic, education, sexual orientation, etc) which lead me to believe that laws are created to hold me down, or some other BS (not bachelor of science) excuse that we create for people who do not care about themselves or who they affect.... No, I would have gotten a ticket for being dumb, and my careless disregard for societal rules. If I can't afford to pay the ticket, I would lose my license, and if I needed my vehicle for work, I could possibly be unemployed. If my work required a driver's license, and I couldn't obtain one, and I wasn't able to obtain work, I could quite possibly become homeless.

Now is that chain of events because I am not a white male, I was raised in a single parent, addict, welfare home, with more children than money, and didn't have the opportunity to attend college right out of high school? Or is it because I am a single parent, from a disproportionately represented minority, that is oppressed by inadequate healthcare and poor education as a product of western European colonization and discrimination? Possibly because I have been robbed of my heritage and culture by a religiously dominated government, that destroyed my culture, demeaning us as savages and heathens, even banning our language...

The simple answer is the chain of events is due to personal stupidity. There are definite disadvantages to life, and we all face them. However, the excuse of the day, whatever it might be (affirmative action, racism, sexism, economic discrimination, etc...) is still just that, an excuse, because you have failed. You could have tried harder, and you might have succeeded, but you didn't and rather than accepting responsibility for personal inadequacies, it's always easier to make excuses.

These people are breaking the law. You break the law, you take your chances. If you don't like it, fight to change it. And before people start whining about how hard it is to get something changed, remember anything worth having is worth fighting for. And please quit making these excuses for the "poor people" who can't do any better. They are a product of our society. In previous times, stupidity got you dead, quickly. Now it just gets you on Jerry Springer and a sound byte for a political campaign....

 

[Melclin]

Its not apologistic, its realistic.

I agree with diversion and harm minimisation not because I feel sorry for these people but because I feel sorry for the innocent people they hurt. So I'm all for whatever the best way of stopping a rise in crime, the spread of drugs, IVDU diseases, etc.

The fact of the matter is that zero tolerance and large prison sentences just doesn't work to stop the problem. Its very small minded to think, "Yus! Locked up the bad guy, job done, problem solved". The difference between thinking like a beat cop and thinking like a public health expert.

People always say, I don't want my tax dollars put into giving junkies drugs. I always think, I'd prefer to put my tax dollars towards a solution that works rather than one that doesn't.

 

[mycrofft]

How about this (tongue in cheek)

1. House arrest bracelet.
2. Gov. moves you to cheap aprtment and pays the rent (cheaper than jail)
3. All the dope you can use while you stay at home.
4. Nothing but "Meals on Wheels" while you are thus incarcerated.

My recollection of the experience of some countries where drugs were dispensed as therapy was that dopers flocked there (Denmark? Sweden?). Here, prescriptions for maintenance meds and detox meds, written by unscrupulous outpatient "rehab mills", are traded like currency between abusers, and needle exchange means keep on shooting drugs, maybe steal someon'e rig, trade it in, then sell the fresh one or your old one to buy dope.

What is the tide of society?

 

[mycrofft]

We all done here?

Hmmmmmm?

 

[mycrofft]

Fresh horses for the poll....what do you new folks think?

This one became a runaway too. I was (favorably) impressed by the quality of the comments.

 

[WuLabsWuTecH]

In some places where I work, the economy has hit hard, and so when people are idle, they turn to "evils." I have seen a lot more teenagers lately with drug related illnesses and I would guess there is a correlation to the lack of jobs for them to do after school.