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As someone with several drug related felonies on my record, I can do nothing but applaud the efforts of this CEO, although on a different level I wonder if any

by cubano 12y ago

As someone with several drug related felonies on my record, I can do nothing but applaud the efforts of this CEO, although on a different level I wonder if any adult working a minimum wage job isn't living a very bleak existence anyway, and in fact isn't being exploited for having a brain disorder we currently call "addiction" The problem with people who let drugs seriously affect their life is that...they let drugs seriously affect their lives, and at least from an employment point of view, where what matters is robot-like conformity and compliance, this is just not-to-be tolerated or even risked. The sad, sad irony of this is that according to very recent studies[1], the very thing that made us addicts is the very prescription that society has deemed our punishment to be. Talk about cruel and unusual. I wish I could say I don't struggle with relapse, but one of the few things worse then being an addict is being a lying addict. Being unemployable by most metrics and having to constantly struggle to survive sure doesn't help with that battle. [1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari/the-real-cause-of-addicti_b_6506936.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari/the-real-cause-of-... [edits]

Stratoscope 12y ago
Thank you both for the courage to post this, and for the link to Johann Hari's article. It is a real eye-opener. (If anyone is tempted to skip it because of the HuffPo link, take my word for it, this is well worth reading.)
- gadders 12y ago
  Don't skip it because it's HuffPo, skip it because it's Johann Hari. He's a plagiarist and a cyber stalker. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Hari http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Hari
  - Stratoscope 12y ago
    Yikes, I didn't know that, thanks for pointing it out. Still, I think it would be a mistake to skip the article because of who wrote it. As I said, it was a real eye-opener for me, and I'm glad I read it. I'm even glad I bought Hari's book Chasing the Scream. (I didn't even do my usual Kindle free sample, just a one-click purchase on the spot after reading the article, quite unusual for me!) You did have me worried for a moment, though: do I want to support someone like that? But he seems to recognize how he screwed up and is trying to make things right, apologizing to the people he mistreated, releasing the audio interviews used in the book, etc. http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/jan/02/johann-hari-interview-drugs-book-independent http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/jan/02/johann-hari-int... http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2015/01/26/interview-johann-hari-on-fking-up-and-the-war-on-drugs/ http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2015/01/26/interview-johann-hari-o... I too have done some things in the past that I'm ashamed of, and I'm grateful that the people involved forgave me. Perhaps Hari is a bit like the other people in this discussion and deserves a second chance?
    - mseebach 12y ago
      Maybe he deserves a second chance, but he doesn't seem to have changed his ways much. http://www.jeremy-duns.com/blog/2014/9/7/kdgwxcbsned1rknh0h3zdvqrebxa3x http://www.jeremy-duns.com/blog/2014/9/7/kdgwxcbsned1rknh0h3... The last section, "Update", is of particular interest to you, as it relates directly to the audio transcripts from Chasing the Scream.
  - namenotrequired 12y ago
    So why should we skip it? Does it make the article invalid? If he's a liar, I might think differently, but the mistakes you mention seem irrelevant to me.
  - sgift 12y ago
    Do you have any hints that he plagiarised this article or do you follow the principle of "misbehave once, be damned forever"?
  - DanBC 12y ago
    Weird to see a positive article about the benefits of letting people who have served their time get back into work juxtaposed with your post saying, essentially, Burn him he's a plagiarist.
    - Natsu 12y ago
      If you read that, it wasn't just plagiarism, he actually made up stories, whole cloth. That said, I've worked for a factory. Many of the hires on the floor were for people with records of various kinds. It did help the higher-functioning people turn their lives around, which was quite encouraging. But we also had people who did stupid things and got arrested for things like domestic violence charges, which were related to their drug use.
    - hueving 12y ago
      They are two different things. One is directly related to the job. The other is being a felon for an unrelated reason. I wouldn't mind someone being a teacher if they got caught with pot 20 years ago. I would mind if they raped a few kids. The point is that if their crime was related to the job, it's fine not to trust someone to do that same job again. That's not the same as never employing them for anything.
  - cubano 12y ago
    Wow, can the meta-irony of this particular point be any deeper? Good thing there will always be a job waiting for him at the bakery. "Following the release of his book, Chasing the Scream, in 2015, Hari gave a number of interviews where he expressed regret for his actions. In order to quell doubts about his reporting, he also released full audio copies of sources he interviewed for his book. In an interview with the Little Atoms podcast, Hari also stated that he would apologise to Nick Cohen and Francis Wheen."[1] I think the article is exceptionally well-written, personal, and informative, and gave me, as someone intimately involved with all things addiction for 30 years, fresh perspective. The fact that he seems to be currently deeply in love with an active addict may be motivation behind the piece, but it takes little away from the insights. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Hari https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Hari [edits]
    - Stratoscope 12y ago
      While we're talking about people who did bad things in the past and got a second chance... How about John Carmack? > As reported in David Kushner's Masters of Doom, when Carmack was 14, he broke into a school to help a group of kids steal Apple II computers. To gain entry to the building, Carmack concocted a sticky substance of Thermite mixed with Vaseline that melted through the windows. However, an overweight accomplice struggled to get through the hole, and opened the window, setting off a silent alarm and alerting police. John was arrested, and sent for psychiatric evaluation (the report mentions 'no empathy for other human beings' and describes Carmack as 'a brain on legs'). Carmack was then sentenced to a year in a juvenile home. Carmack's comments (from 1999): > I knew I wanted to work with computers from a very early age, but there were also a lot of other stereotypical geek aspects to my life growing up - phreaking, hacking (nobody called it "cracking" back then), rockets, bombs, and thermite (sometimes in not-so-smart combinations), sci-fi, comic books, D&D, arcades, etc. > I was sort of an amoral little jerk when I was young. I was arrogant about being smarter than other people, but unhappy that I wasn't able to spend all my time doing what I wanted. I spent a year in a juvenile home for a first offence after an evaluation by a psychologist went very badly. > I went to a couple semesters of classes at the University of Missouri (UMKC), taking nothing but CS classes, but it just didn't seem all that worthwhile. In hindsight, I could have gotten more out of it than I did, but I hadn't acquired a really good attitude towards learning from all possible sources yet. > I dropped-out of college to start programming full time, but trying to do contract programming for the Apple II/IIGS post 1990 was not a good way to make money, and I only wound up with between $1k and $2k a month. Not having enough money is stressful, and I did some things I didn't want to. I wrote a numerology program for a couple hundred bucks one time... > Softdisk publishing finally convinced me to come down to Shreveport for an interview. I had been doing contract work for Jay Wilbur and Tom Hall, so I knew there were some pretty cool people there, but meeting John Romero and Lane Roath was what convinced me to take the job. Finally meeting a couple sharp programmers that did impressive things and had more experience than I did was great. > After I took the job at Softdisk, I was happy. I was programming, or reading about programming, or talking about programming, almost every waking hour. It turned out that a $27k salary was enough that I could buy all the books and pizza that I wanted, and I had nice enough computers at work that I didn't feel the need to own more myself (4mb 386-20!). > I learned a huge amount in a short period of time, and that was probably a turning point for my personality. I could still clearly remember my state of mind when I viewed other people as being ignorant about various things, but after basically doubling my programming skills in the space of six months, I realized how relative it all was. That has been reinforced several additional times over the seven years since then. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Carmack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Carmack http://games.slashdot.org/story/99/10/15/1012230/john-carmack-answers http://games.slashdot.org/story/99/10/15/1012230/john-carmac...
  - pcthrowaway 12y ago
    yeah, let's not read the article on barriers to employment because of past offenses written by someone who is presumably trying to make it as a writer with a record of criminal offenses.
  - arsenide 12y ago
    Why are you judging the merits of an article by the author and not the content?
    - ars 12y ago
      Because if the subject matter is in a domain that is outside someone's expertise they don't really have a way to judge by the content. It's possible to make really good arguments for things that are simply untrue. So instead we judge by the author - i.e. is the writer at least trustworthy.
      - arsenide 12y ago
        I will certainly agree: there should be more skepticism for such at article by a known untrustworthy author. Does that mean we should immediately dismiss something written by him? Your advice is good to take in general: don't trust what you read without judging both the credentials of the writer and the content the writer is putting forth. But to dismiss it based only on the author is shortsighted. I see nothing in your reply specifically about the content of the article, does anything else truly matter? Sure, take the author's history and intentions into consideration, but at the end of the day the content is what matters.
  - Dylan16807 12y ago
    What cyber stalking are you talking about? This page only talks about plagiarism and wikipedia vandalism. Making negative edits about people you don't like on wikipedia involves exactly zero stalking. Is information missing here? And it sounds like the 'plagiarism' was him using quotes he did not personally acquire, which is pretty minor and wouldn't turn me away from reading anything.
    - emiliobumachar 12y ago
      Hypothetically, imagine gadders would now edit some public information about you with lies, because you criticized him. Would that not feel a little bit stalky?
      - Dylan16807 12y ago
        So let's say we got in a big argument and then he went to my github profile and called me a poopy head and a bad coder. I would find that obnoxious, I would find it harassment if he kept doing it, I don't think I would find that stalky.
  - seivan 12y ago
    The irony of you letting a man hang to dry in a post about atonement. http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/jan/02/johann-hari-interview-drugs-book-independent http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/jan/02/johann-hari-int... C'mon dude.
icebraining 12y ago
Interesting article, thanks. As a Portuguese, and having been close to someone who was addicted to heroin, I know that besides clinics, we also had houses in the countryside where there were small communities where people trying to recover could stay for a few months, with very regular visits by specialist psychologists helping them. I don't know how effective they were or if they still exist, but it seems to jive with this idea of establishing human connections.
- stretchwithme 12y ago
  Change of scenery is an important thing when trying to break out of a bad pattern. Novelty is actually processed by a different part of the brain than whatever rut we may be in is. The book Iconoclast explains that even moving furniture around can put us into a more creative state, because our creativity is activated by novelty.
  - shasheene 12y ago
    See also: http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2015/01/05/371894919/what-heroin-addiction-tells-us-about-changing-bad-habits http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2015/01/05/371894919/what-he...
  - wavefunction 12y ago
    And getting them out of their "social" situation of hanging out with other addicts. Addicts reinforce each other's habits.
    - cubano 12y ago
      Addicts are very lonely people whom are simply trying to connect with people but have some sort of synaptic wiring issue that prevents them from successfully doing so without the use of powerful pharmaceuticals (or anything that releases dopamine, really) that both create false bonds of dependency and mood-altered states. That is why research shows over and over that creating new environments and new "friendships" (the cornerstone of AA and NA) is of crucial importance. It's so hard for "normal" people to see and understand this because (from my personal experiences)... 1. the addict often seems like the life of the party (at least in the beginning of the story) and no one thinks that person is lonely. 2. normal people, for the most part, discover and nurture these connections so automatically that they can't understand how it could feel for it not to work, thus addiction is totally baffling to them. To me, the crown jewel of Neuroscience would be to come up with a successful treatment to addiction that worked directly on the brain and didn't require the complete overhaul of your life that inpatient and outpatient treatment demand.
thaumasiotes 12y ago
> I wonder if any adult working a minimum wage job isn't living a very bleak existence anyway, and in fact isn't being exploited for having a brain disorder we currently call "addiction" Assuming you consider 28 years old to be "adult", I can confirm that there are such adults.
rdl 12y ago
I wonder if a Silicon Valley tech company would care about drug related convictions. I don't think possession/distribution/etc. alone would really be an issue (except if it were extremely recent and potentially ongoing), but clearly "I was high and raped/killed my neighbor" would, and either could arguably be "drug related". "Was an addict and broken into cars to get money for drugs" would be a more interesting corner case; nonviolent property crime. I think "in the past" for sufficiently large values of past might be fine.
- stretchwithme 12y ago
  If they care, one major reason is an employer's liability for everything an employee does. Perhaps if you could insure your company for each employee, it would be clearer whether you should hire someone and employers would take more well-justified risks on people.
- MichaelGG 12y ago
  Taking "drug convictions" into account is a form of discrimination. If the FDA revoked the licensing of Prozac or the DEA scheduled it tomorrow, suddenly tons of people would be guilty of drug-crimes. It'd criminalize being depressed. The same is true for the current state of drug laws. We're criminalizing people with anxiety, with existential pain, stress, curiosity, etc. What's different about stealing cars for money for medications, versus stealing cars for money for bread? Or robbing to afford rent? Are people that steal money for opiates less likely to cause a work incident than people that steal money to fund a kickstarter campaign? Medical issues should only be taken into account if they're relevant to the job at hand, which, at a tech company, is relatively rare. Otherwise, acceptable job performance should be the only measurement considered as far as medical is concerned.
  - ars 12y ago
    > What's different about stealing cars for money for medications, versus stealing cars for money for bread They are totally different! Someone stealing for bread, i.e. to survive, will never consider crime if they don't absolutely have to. So they may have committed a crime, but they are not a criminal. But someone stealing for drugs demonstrate a level of selfishness that does make them a criminal, i.e. someone who does not care about other people. This is something will not change even if they have enough money to buy their drugs. That selfishness does not go away.
powertower 12y ago
It's a bakery, requiring little to no skills, and nothing more than being able to repeat physical activity, and only 35% make it through the program (a 10 month on-the-job job). I don't think this is the "success" story it's being made to be.
- cubano 12y ago
  Sure it is. The most obvious metric of its "success" is the simple conditional 35% > 0%. And while I agree, the motivation behind the CEO's thinking is based on bottom-line thinking, and not do-gooder motivation, its still nice to see SOME outside-the-box thinking on this issue.
  - carapace 12y ago
    "Brady also said that it was immaterial whether or not open hiring was a better way to do business. His goal is to make sure his business also helps the community and helps people out of poverty. With that goal, there’s an imperative to try new things. “There’s a lot of recognition that the things people have been doing aren’t working,” he said."
    - powertower 12y ago
      When you pay a low wage for a job that literally anyone of the street can do after about 10-30 minutes of training, you can hire and fire all day long, it will not affect your bottom line. So it is true that it's immaterial to his business - whether it's open hire, or day laborer, or something else. But I'm not sure how exactly this method helps anyone? Because most of the employees are gone after 10 months. Does this mean they've made enough money to move into a better job? Or does this just reinforce the stereotypes about convicts, drug addicts, and the mentally ill?
- jimkri 12y ago
  >only 35% make it through the program. That is better than not having the program at all and having the addicts stay where they are. I think it is a success, because helping one addict is successful and now that person is a beacon of light. Other addicts will see that they are doing something productive, they got clean, and that maybe, they can get clean and get a job too. I think there's more to it than just who made it through the program.
rsanek 12y ago
This article is garbage. As others have pointed out, the author is a repeat plagiarist [1], and the point that he makes in the article is heavily based around the Rat Park study - one that has struggled to be replicated [2]. The clickbait title doesn't help things either. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Hari https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Hari [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park
- cubano 12y ago
  Garbage is probably somewhat strong, but I agree about the title. I suppose, like so much these days, it all depends on your POV and ingrained confirmation biases whether you believe research about the incorrigibility of addicts or the hope of rescue. My thoughts on this whole "Shoot the messenger, he's a plagiarist" line of thinking is that we live in a remix society, and certainly in music, producers and artists are given wide leeway to come up with new ways to use old sounds with no repercussions. I wonder if the ability to take old written content and present it in a fresh, persuasive way shouldn't be given the same respect.

by cubano 12y ago

Stratoscope 12y ago

Thank you both for the courage to post this, and for the link to Johann Hari's article. It is a real eye-opener. (If anyone is tempted to skip it because of the HuffPo link, take my word for it, this is well worth reading.)

gadders 12y ago
Don't skip it because it's HuffPo, skip it because it's Johann Hari. He's a plagiarist and a cyber stalker. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Hari http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Hari
- Stratoscope 12y ago
  Yikes, I didn't know that, thanks for pointing it out. Still, I think it would be a mistake to skip the article because of who wrote it. As I said, it was a real eye-opener for me, and I'm glad I read it. I'm even glad I bought Hari's book Chasing the Scream. (I didn't even do my usual Kindle free sample, just a one-click purchase on the spot after reading the article, quite unusual for me!) You did have me worried for a moment, though: do I want to support someone like that? But he seems to recognize how he screwed up and is trying to make things right, apologizing to the people he mistreated, releasing the audio interviews used in the book, etc. http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/jan/02/johann-hari-interview-drugs-book-independent http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/jan/02/johann-hari-int... http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2015/01/26/interview-johann-hari-on-fking-up-and-the-war-on-drugs/ http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2015/01/26/interview-johann-hari-o... I too have done some things in the past that I'm ashamed of, and I'm grateful that the people involved forgave me. Perhaps Hari is a bit like the other people in this discussion and deserves a second chance?
  - mseebach 12y ago
    Maybe he deserves a second chance, but he doesn't seem to have changed his ways much. http://www.jeremy-duns.com/blog/2014/9/7/kdgwxcbsned1rknh0h3zdvqrebxa3x http://www.jeremy-duns.com/blog/2014/9/7/kdgwxcbsned1rknh0h3... The last section, "Update", is of particular interest to you, as it relates directly to the audio transcripts from Chasing the Scream.
- namenotrequired 12y ago
  So why should we skip it? Does it make the article invalid? If he's a liar, I might think differently, but the mistakes you mention seem irrelevant to me.
- sgift 12y ago
  Do you have any hints that he plagiarised this article or do you follow the principle of "misbehave once, be damned forever"?
- DanBC 12y ago
  Weird to see a positive article about the benefits of letting people who have served their time get back into work juxtaposed with your post saying, essentially, Burn him he's a plagiarist.
  - Natsu 12y ago
    If you read that, it wasn't just plagiarism, he actually made up stories, whole cloth. That said, I've worked for a factory. Many of the hires on the floor were for people with records of various kinds. It did help the higher-functioning people turn their lives around, which was quite encouraging. But we also had people who did stupid things and got arrested for things like domestic violence charges, which were related to their drug use.
  - hueving 12y ago
    They are two different things. One is directly related to the job. The other is being a felon for an unrelated reason. I wouldn't mind someone being a teacher if they got caught with pot 20 years ago. I would mind if they raped a few kids. The point is that if their crime was related to the job, it's fine not to trust someone to do that same job again. That's not the same as never employing them for anything.
- cubano 12y ago
  Wow, can the meta-irony of this particular point be any deeper? Good thing there will always be a job waiting for him at the bakery. "Following the release of his book, Chasing the Scream, in 2015, Hari gave a number of interviews where he expressed regret for his actions. In order to quell doubts about his reporting, he also released full audio copies of sources he interviewed for his book. In an interview with the Little Atoms podcast, Hari also stated that he would apologise to Nick Cohen and Francis Wheen."[1] I think the article is exceptionally well-written, personal, and informative, and gave me, as someone intimately involved with all things addiction for 30 years, fresh perspective. The fact that he seems to be currently deeply in love with an active addict may be motivation behind the piece, but it takes little away from the insights. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Hari https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Hari [edits]
  - Stratoscope 12y ago
    While we're talking about people who did bad things in the past and got a second chance... How about John Carmack? > As reported in David Kushner's Masters of Doom, when Carmack was 14, he broke into a school to help a group of kids steal Apple II computers. To gain entry to the building, Carmack concocted a sticky substance of Thermite mixed with Vaseline that melted through the windows. However, an overweight accomplice struggled to get through the hole, and opened the window, setting off a silent alarm and alerting police. John was arrested, and sent for psychiatric evaluation (the report mentions 'no empathy for other human beings' and describes Carmack as 'a brain on legs'). Carmack was then sentenced to a year in a juvenile home. Carmack's comments (from 1999): > I knew I wanted to work with computers from a very early age, but there were also a lot of other stereotypical geek aspects to my life growing up - phreaking, hacking (nobody called it "cracking" back then), rockets, bombs, and thermite (sometimes in not-so-smart combinations), sci-fi, comic books, D&D, arcades, etc. > I was sort of an amoral little jerk when I was young. I was arrogant about being smarter than other people, but unhappy that I wasn't able to spend all my time doing what I wanted. I spent a year in a juvenile home for a first offence after an evaluation by a psychologist went very badly. > I went to a couple semesters of classes at the University of Missouri (UMKC), taking nothing but CS classes, but it just didn't seem all that worthwhile. In hindsight, I could have gotten more out of it than I did, but I hadn't acquired a really good attitude towards learning from all possible sources yet. > I dropped-out of college to start programming full time, but trying to do contract programming for the Apple II/IIGS post 1990 was not a good way to make money, and I only wound up with between $1k and $2k a month. Not having enough money is stressful, and I did some things I didn't want to. I wrote a numerology program for a couple hundred bucks one time... > Softdisk publishing finally convinced me to come down to Shreveport for an interview. I had been doing contract work for Jay Wilbur and Tom Hall, so I knew there were some pretty cool people there, but meeting John Romero and Lane Roath was what convinced me to take the job. Finally meeting a couple sharp programmers that did impressive things and had more experience than I did was great. > After I took the job at Softdisk, I was happy. I was programming, or reading about programming, or talking about programming, almost every waking hour. It turned out that a $27k salary was enough that I could buy all the books and pizza that I wanted, and I had nice enough computers at work that I didn't feel the need to own more myself (4mb 386-20!). > I learned a huge amount in a short period of time, and that was probably a turning point for my personality. I could still clearly remember my state of mind when I viewed other people as being ignorant about various things, but after basically doubling my programming skills in the space of six months, I realized how relative it all was. That has been reinforced several additional times over the seven years since then. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Carmack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Carmack http://games.slashdot.org/story/99/10/15/1012230/john-carmack-answers http://games.slashdot.org/story/99/10/15/1012230/john-carmac...
- pcthrowaway 12y ago
  yeah, let's not read the article on barriers to employment because of past offenses written by someone who is presumably trying to make it as a writer with a record of criminal offenses.
- arsenide 12y ago
  Why are you judging the merits of an article by the author and not the content?
  - ars 12y ago
    Because if the subject matter is in a domain that is outside someone's expertise they don't really have a way to judge by the content. It's possible to make really good arguments for things that are simply untrue. So instead we judge by the author - i.e. is the writer at least trustworthy.
    - arsenide 12y ago
      I will certainly agree: there should be more skepticism for such at article by a known untrustworthy author. Does that mean we should immediately dismiss something written by him? Your advice is good to take in general: don't trust what you read without judging both the credentials of the writer and the content the writer is putting forth. But to dismiss it based only on the author is shortsighted. I see nothing in your reply specifically about the content of the article, does anything else truly matter? Sure, take the author's history and intentions into consideration, but at the end of the day the content is what matters.
- Dylan16807 12y ago
  What cyber stalking are you talking about? This page only talks about plagiarism and wikipedia vandalism. Making negative edits about people you don't like on wikipedia involves exactly zero stalking. Is information missing here? And it sounds like the 'plagiarism' was him using quotes he did not personally acquire, which is pretty minor and wouldn't turn me away from reading anything.
  - emiliobumachar 12y ago
    Hypothetically, imagine gadders would now edit some public information about you with lies, because you criticized him. Would that not feel a little bit stalky?
    - Dylan16807 12y ago
      So let's say we got in a big argument and then he went to my github profile and called me a poopy head and a bad coder. I would find that obnoxious, I would find it harassment if he kept doing it, I don't think I would find that stalky.
- seivan 12y ago
  The irony of you letting a man hang to dry in a post about atonement. http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/jan/02/johann-hari-interview-drugs-book-independent http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/jan/02/johann-hari-int... C'mon dude.

icebraining 12y ago

Interesting article, thanks. As a Portuguese, and having been close to someone who was addicted to heroin, I know that besides clinics, we also had houses in the countryside where there were small communities where people trying to recover could stay for a few months, with very regular visits by specialist psychologists helping them. I don't know how effective they were or if they still exist, but it seems to jive with this idea of establishing human connections.

stretchwithme 12y ago
Change of scenery is an important thing when trying to break out of a bad pattern. Novelty is actually processed by a different part of the brain than whatever rut we may be in is. The book Iconoclast explains that even moving furniture around can put us into a more creative state, because our creativity is activated by novelty.
- shasheene 12y ago
  See also: http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2015/01/05/371894919/what-heroin-addiction-tells-us-about-changing-bad-habits http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2015/01/05/371894919/what-he...
- wavefunction 12y ago
  And getting them out of their "social" situation of hanging out with other addicts. Addicts reinforce each other's habits.
  - cubano 12y ago
    Addicts are very lonely people whom are simply trying to connect with people but have some sort of synaptic wiring issue that prevents them from successfully doing so without the use of powerful pharmaceuticals (or anything that releases dopamine, really) that both create false bonds of dependency and mood-altered states. That is why research shows over and over that creating new environments and new "friendships" (the cornerstone of AA and NA) is of crucial importance. It's so hard for "normal" people to see and understand this because (from my personal experiences)... 1. the addict often seems like the life of the party (at least in the beginning of the story) and no one thinks that person is lonely. 2. normal people, for the most part, discover and nurture these connections so automatically that they can't understand how it could feel for it not to work, thus addiction is totally baffling to them. To me, the crown jewel of Neuroscience would be to come up with a successful treatment to addiction that worked directly on the brain and didn't require the complete overhaul of your life that inpatient and outpatient treatment demand.

thaumasiotes 12y ago

> I wonder if any adult working a minimum wage job isn't living a very bleak existence anyway, and in fact isn't being exploited for having a brain disorder we currently call "addiction" Assuming you consider 28 years old to be "adult", I can confirm that there are such adults.

rdl 12y ago

I wonder if a Silicon Valley tech company would care about drug related convictions. I don't think possession/distribution/etc. alone would really be an issue (except if it were extremely recent and potentially ongoing), but clearly "I was high and raped/killed my neighbor" would, and either could arguably be "drug related". "Was an addict and broken into cars to get money for drugs" would be a more interesting corner case; nonviolent property crime. I think "in the past" for sufficiently large values of past might be fine.

stretchwithme 12y ago
If they care, one major reason is an employer's liability for everything an employee does. Perhaps if you could insure your company for each employee, it would be clearer whether you should hire someone and employers would take more well-justified risks on people.
MichaelGG 12y ago
Taking "drug convictions" into account is a form of discrimination. If the FDA revoked the licensing of Prozac or the DEA scheduled it tomorrow, suddenly tons of people would be guilty of drug-crimes. It'd criminalize being depressed. The same is true for the current state of drug laws. We're criminalizing people with anxiety, with existential pain, stress, curiosity, etc. What's different about stealing cars for money for medications, versus stealing cars for money for bread? Or robbing to afford rent? Are people that steal money for opiates less likely to cause a work incident than people that steal money to fund a kickstarter campaign? Medical issues should only be taken into account if they're relevant to the job at hand, which, at a tech company, is relatively rare. Otherwise, acceptable job performance should be the only measurement considered as far as medical is concerned.
- ars 12y ago
  > What's different about stealing cars for money for medications, versus stealing cars for money for bread They are totally different! Someone stealing for bread, i.e. to survive, will never consider crime if they don't absolutely have to. So they may have committed a crime, but they are not a criminal. But someone stealing for drugs demonstrate a level of selfishness that does make them a criminal, i.e. someone who does not care about other people. This is something will not change even if they have enough money to buy their drugs. That selfishness does not go away.

powertower 12y ago

It's a bakery, requiring little to no skills, and nothing more than being able to repeat physical activity, and only 35% make it through the program (a 10 month on-the-job job). I don't think this is the "success" story it's being made to be.

cubano 12y ago
Sure it is. The most obvious metric of its "success" is the simple conditional 35% > 0%. And while I agree, the motivation behind the CEO's thinking is based on bottom-line thinking, and not do-gooder motivation, its still nice to see SOME outside-the-box thinking on this issue.
- carapace 12y ago
  "Brady also said that it was immaterial whether or not open hiring was a better way to do business. His goal is to make sure his business also helps the community and helps people out of poverty. With that goal, there’s an imperative to try new things. “There’s a lot of recognition that the things people have been doing aren’t working,” he said."
  - powertower 12y ago
    When you pay a low wage for a job that literally anyone of the street can do after about 10-30 minutes of training, you can hire and fire all day long, it will not affect your bottom line. So it is true that it's immaterial to his business - whether it's open hire, or day laborer, or something else. But I'm not sure how exactly this method helps anyone? Because most of the employees are gone after 10 months. Does this mean they've made enough money to move into a better job? Or does this just reinforce the stereotypes about convicts, drug addicts, and the mentally ill?
jimkri 12y ago
>only 35% make it through the program. That is better than not having the program at all and having the addicts stay where they are. I think it is a success, because helping one addict is successful and now that person is a beacon of light. Other addicts will see that they are doing something productive, they got clean, and that maybe, they can get clean and get a job too. I think there's more to it than just who made it through the program.

rsanek 12y ago

This article is garbage. As others have pointed out, the author is a repeat plagiarist [1], and the point that he makes in the article is heavily based around the Rat Park study - one that has struggled to be replicated [2]. The clickbait title doesn't help things either. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Hari https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Hari [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park

cubano 12y ago
Garbage is probably somewhat strong, but I agree about the title. I suppose, like so much these days, it all depends on your POV and ingrained confirmation biases whether you believe research about the incorrigibility of addicts or the hope of rescue. My thoughts on this whole "Shoot the messenger, he's a plagiarist" line of thinking is that we live in a remix society, and certainly in music, producers and artists are given wide leeway to come up with new ways to use old sounds with no repercussions. I wonder if the ability to take old written content and present it in a fresh, persuasive way shouldn't be given the same respect.