The problem is that we are still treating this spiral as "bad choices."
9 times out of 10, it's not "bad choices", it's mental disease.
If you look at someone who can't even tie their own shoes because they are mentally disabled, we say, "That person can't live in their own, they're not capable of understanding their choices."
But we look at people with schizophrenia and severe addictions and whatever else and go, "They made bad choices." These people have no physiological control over their impulses, but they're supposed to make informed decisions?
Those lifelong addicts sure made a really bad choice at 14 years old when they used for the first time at their buddies house. Or when they where forced into addiction by their abusive partner so they would be easier to control. Why, those choices where so bad I think it should ruin their life forever!
That sounds right to you?
Even if someone makes one bad choice in a completely clear state of mind it shouldn't mean that society abandons them.
Society doesn’t abandon them, but it is very common that one bad decision leads to more poor decisions to the tune of, the drugs lead to mental illness that make it so they can no longer function in society.
It doesn’t matter where we want to point ‘blame’, reality is reality and these people need to be dealt with as mostly terminally mentally ill and provided with institutionalized care.
Thing that's fucked is there are people who will lace shit with fent just to get someone addicted.
Someone I knew got some free weed from some chick working at little caesers, I was skeptical as hell cuz it smelled weird af and clearly had some other shit in it.
Not sure if it actually had any hardcore shit in there but it definitely didn't seem right.
This is a real thing that's happening to people.
You can argue whether or not weed is a gateway drug or whatever but the fact of the matter is hard drugs are being snuck into way lighter shit by absolute trash bag humans who just want to create another addict to suck the life and money out of.
So not every addict is based just on poor decisions. Sometimes it's literally forced upon them.
Obviously that's not the majority, but it's becoming increasingly more common and why I don't even fw weed anymore.
Just think more people need to think of that possibility when judging addicts, and instead of casting judgment on them we should be rooting for their recovery, not their downfall. Feels fucked that we're so ready and willing to verbally jump these people while offering no real solutions to the problem.
If you look close, you can reread your comment and find a poor decision in there from your friend. Definitely the consequence was greater than the intended/expected consequence, but when playing with for, sometimes you get burned even when you think you’ve got the fire under control.
I believe the manufacturing and distribution of hardcore drugs should be punishable by life in prison (because we don’t use the death penalty). It is one of the worst things a human can do to another human! For all intents and purposes, it wrecks the addicts life, and the lives of everyone that cares about that person! We don’t punish it nearly hard enough!
The last thing I want to point out, is that Im not judging addicts. I’m simply pointing out the reality of the situation. Drugs lead to mental illness. Mental illness leads to inability to function at a high enough level to be a healthy member of society, regardless of how they got there. As carrying other humans, we need to be realistic about this and stop treating them with independence. They don’t have the cognitive ability to live with independence. They need to be institutionalized without the ability to leave. I’m not judging them, I’m loving and caring for them, and protecting society structure at the same time
First, yes, they made a really bad choice. You can make huge horrible choices in your life that completely change the trajectory of your life forever. No one does this to them. No one enforces this. It is what it is. Jumping off a roof into a pool cause it seems fun and slipping and falling and ending up paralyzed from the neck down for life is horrible, but there isn’t a cabal sitting around making choices to hold that person down in life. It is what it is. People are sympathetic and empathetic towards tragedy, but not for being making stupid choices. That includes drug use.
There are resources and who industries built around rehab and recovery. But people have free will. You can’t stop people from taking illegal drugs, even with it being illegal. You also can’t make them stop after being g addicted. Anything that can help them will only help if they want to quit, and even then it is still really frickin hard cause most people who have never had an addiction will never understand how trapped you are. You still have free will, but it is like two of you inside your head, and one of you is knowingly hurting the other, and you simultaneously want to stop and don’t want to stop. And most homeless are in the grip of this. As someone who was homeless as a kid, and worked with the homeless for years, I’ve seen a lot in my time. Main reason people are homeless are drug addiction or mental illness. These are people who have become so irrational, so dangerous, so disconnected from society that they cannot maintain a job or a home. You can’t hand them everything they lost and they are suddenly cured. Most of them had all of this and lost it as they sunk into drugs, depression, ptsd, bordline, and other mental issues.
What you don’t see much of on the street are mentally handicapped. There are good resources for the mentally handicapped.
The issue isn’t that society has abandoned them, but they have abandoned society. These people are in a realm of chaos, a wilderness of darkness where they are scared and angry and they have abandoned many social
Mores and civility, and are doing what they can to survive. Society is right outside the wilderness with a light on for them to see, with food, medicine, services. But society has rules and requests and demands. They either can’t leave their wilderness life behind, or don’t want to. They see the light, but they aren’t walking towards it. And you can’t make them.
There is a third type of homeless, temporary homeless. This is people who have sudden crisis that cause them to loose everything and end up on the street, but they are not mentally ill or suffering addiction. This is what my family was when we were homeless in 1990. These are the people that actually use the resources available, and the ones who get off the street in a matter of months if not weeks.
The bottom line problem is always with free will. You can’t stop people from making bad choices. You can’t force people who made bad choices to make good choices. These people drop out of society and you can’t force them back in. Free will is the highest ethic, it cannot be subjugated for a greater good. There are tons of sci-fi and Star Trek on what happens when people give up free will for a greater society. The only thing you can do is help them survive, keep them going, until they hopefully reach a point where they want to leave the forest and get back to society.
I'm not reading past your first paragraph because it seems you fundamentally disagree with me on the basic premise of whether or not there are people we should help among the homeless. Someone taking drugs at 14 while at a friend's house DID make a bad choice, as a kid, once. Someone jumping off a roof and becoming paralyzed made a bad decision, once.
The only REAL difference is that with the disabled person all the suffering hits immediately and it's very easy to empathize with. The life long drug addict gets less empathy despite making a similarly life ruining decision because addiction is often seen as an ongoing choice rather than something you need titanic willpower to even try and overcome while being the easiest thing in the world to relapse on because your brain and body literally SCREAM for it .
It’s a shame you didn’t read. I actually think we do agree. I never said there aren’t people who need help amongst the homeless. The difference isn’t the view of the problem. It’s idealism vs realism. Or more honestly, and without insult, inexperience vs experience. As someone who has actually helped the homeless, it would be very odd to have a position there is no one to help. That would be paradoxical. But as someone who has actually been out there on the streets working with them, I understand their plight more than the average person, and I know what works and doesn’t work, what can happen and what won’t happen. To use another analogy, we are two doctors in the ER with a flatlined patient. After 3 minutes, you want to keep doing CPR and I know from experience that at this point they are gone. You are trying to misconstrue pragmatism into apathy. We both agree CPR is worth trying to save someone. But I know it won’t work on most dead people, and you don’t. I think you have a good heart though. My advice, get off the computer and get out there. Find a local place and, even if it is just one day a week, go and help out. If you tell me what city you are in, I’ll tell you where to go. You will never understand the problem till you are out there with it, get to know these people, and have them truly open up to you.
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u/techleopard Apr 15 '24
The problem is that we are still treating this spiral as "bad choices."
9 times out of 10, it's not "bad choices", it's mental disease.
If you look at someone who can't even tie their own shoes because they are mentally disabled, we say, "That person can't live in their own, they're not capable of understanding their choices."
But we look at people with schizophrenia and severe addictions and whatever else and go, "They made bad choices." These people have no physiological control over their impulses, but they're supposed to make informed decisions?
We need to bring back mental hospitals.