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As someone who's studied addiction pretty closely, withdrawing further of what support an addict has is, IMO, far likelier to push them further into addiction a

As someone who's studied addiction pretty closely, withdrawing further of what support an addict has is, IMO, far likelier to push them further into addiction and increase the odds of an overdose. The notion that addicts need to "hit rock bottom" as it were is harmful and counter-productive. Many addictions are a result of some combo of social isolation, use of the drug to self-medicate for mental/physical issues, or good old depression. Sure, some people hit rock bottom and get clean. Others just die. The second group is larger. What most addicts need is some sense of stability in their lives, social/community support, and safe places to use along with clean drugs and paraphernalia to taper themselves off with. However despite being demonstrably the reliable way to get people out of the addiction hole, it offends the sensibilities of the mainstream and is therefore quite politically unpopular.

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potato3732842 2y ago
Almost all non-functioning addicts in my observation (and casual workplace exposure to statistics) get clean or get dead on a couple year timeline (and yes, many get clean only to get addicted and then non-functioning addicted again). Almost nobody indulges non-functioning addiction for years on end without becoming a statistic. The people who seem to be are people who are getting clean and getting re-hooked or otherwise making some serious effort to fight it. Family and friends' ability to support these people seems to be decreasing and forcing an increased number of addicts to speedrun it. People who would be moving in with a relative and casually trying to stay clean over months before backsliding, using up that support resource, spending months living on the streets and couches before deciding to fight the addiction again to in my limited view be more inclined to go all out fighting the addiction sooner now that the support is scarcer. As I'm sure you know, a subset of people who are further along in the journey in states where public policy permit this and make it easy do sometimes use hospitals as short term shelter/food/care. Some of these people go around many times. I have decent visibility into these people by virtue of sitting 4ft from someone who spends their workday dealing in tracking this stuff for hospital regulatory compliance purposes (in the northeast where the climate is not kind to the homeless FWIW). There are a lot more people showing up to ERs today saying "I have nowhere to go, I'm suicidal, the drugs are a problem, I need to be clean" these days than there were ~2yr (just eyeballing it on that number) ago when it was far more rare for the last part of that sentence to make a showing and it was far more routine for people to basically go through the motions to get discharged, blow off any after care and show up in the system again a few months later. Edit: I use the distinction non-functioning in the first paragraph to separate out the functioning alcoholic and all the people who spent the 00s living a normal life while popping opioids their doctor prescribed them.

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potato3732842 2y ago

Almost all non-functioning addicts in my observation (and casual workplace exposure to statistics) get clean or get dead on a couple year timeline (and yes, many get clean only to get addicted and then non-functioning addicted again). Almost nobody indulges non-functioning addiction for years on end without becoming a statistic. The people who seem to be are people who are getting clean and getting re-hooked or otherwise making some serious effort to fight it. Family and friends' ability to support these people seems to be decreasing and forcing an increased number of addicts to speedrun it. People who would be moving in with a relative and casually trying to stay clean over months before backsliding, using up that support resource, spending months living on the streets and couches before deciding to fight the addiction again to in my limited view be more inclined to go all out fighting the addiction sooner now that the support is scarcer. As I'm sure you know, a subset of people who are further along in the journey in states where public policy permit this and make it easy do sometimes use hospitals as short term shelter/food/care. Some of these people go around many times. I have decent visibility into these people by virtue of sitting 4ft from someone who spends their workday dealing in tracking this stuff for hospital regulatory compliance purposes (in the northeast where the climate is not kind to the homeless FWIW). There are a lot more people showing up to ERs today saying "I have nowhere to go, I'm suicidal, the drugs are a problem, I need to be clean" these days than there were ~2yr (just eyeballing it on that number) ago when it was far more rare for the last part of that sentence to make a showing and it was far more routine for people to basically go through the motions to get discharged, blow off any after care and show up in the system again a few months later. Edit: I use the distinction non-functioning in the first paragraph to separate out the functioning alcoholic and all the people who spent the 00s living a normal life while popping opioids their doctor prescribed them.