War on Drugs Leaves Addicts in Cold

Hey, I know where George Bush can put those battleships he’s decided not to have patrol Peruvian waters.

He can anchor them off places like Newport Beach and with a flick of the executive pen transform them into safety nets for the millions of victims who will fall through the cracks in his $8.5-billion War on Drugs.

You see, very little of that huge sum of money--about 7%--is earmarked for treatment or prevention. The bulk of it is to take care of the cops and the robbers--wages for the cops, prosecution and prison for the robbers.

I don’t object to the goals, mind you, just the way the pot is going to be divvied up. The people who support the whole system with their money and their souls are left shaking out in the cold.

Not that they all want to get off the stuff today, but I’m willing to bet that most of them do. And at some point, they all want to get clean. It’s tough to do, though, especially if you’re hooked on cocaine or, worse, crack.

The experts will tell you a small window of opportunity opens for these people every now and then when either desperation or illness allows them to see themselves as they really are.

That’s when they also see that they need help and will seek it.

“A day or two goes by and you’ve lost them,” says Chip Pope, a program supervisor for Orange County’s Alcohol and Drug Education and Prevention Team (ADEPT).

“When they’re ready for treatment, there had better be some treatment available.”

And there’s the rub.

There is and there isn’t treatment available in Orange County.

It’s kind of a complicated picture and depends on how sick you are. Experts in the field of chemical dependency say that about 60% of those hooked on booze or drugs can get off the stuff through therapy and such self-help organizations as Alcoholics Anonymous or Cocaine Anonymous.

For them, help is a phone call away. There are no guarantees, and frankly their odds for recovery aren’t all that hot, but that first step is the big one.

The problem comes with the other 40%, the people who are in such bad shape, as a therapist friend says, “they can’t find the doorknob.”

“They absolutely require medical treatment; their livers are diseased or their blood pressure is dangerously high, they are totally disoriented or they have the DTs. There is no way they can just stop because it could kill them.

“They need to be hospitalized and kept in a hospital for weeks and sometimes even months.”

Now, strangely enough, there are hundreds of rooms available in private hospital chemical dependency wards throughout the county. Some estimates are that up to 60% of those beds are available all the time.

So, if you have the money, you can have a whole wing of a hospital to yourself with a large staff thrown in.

I said money, not insurance. The days are gone when insurance companies wouldn’t blink at a 30-day stay in a treatment center with bills ranging up to $40,000. For the most part, they’ve applied the brakes and have placed heavy restrictions on chemical-dependency patients.

The blank checks are gone, and some of the companies that smelled the money a few years ago and made treatment a business, kind of like Fuller Brush, could well go with them.

OK, how about beaten-down alcoholics or drug addicts out there who must rely on public services? What are their options?

Not much--especially if what they need is medical care or residential treatment.

“We have two residential care facilities we can refer people to,” says Bill Edelman, manager of the drug program for the county’s Health Care Agency, “but they are full. There are waiting lists for both of them.”

For people who need medical care, the best the county can do is send them to the hospitals that accept Medi-Cal patients. Of course, they won’t be treated for their addictions, just for their specific medical problem.

How about all those empty beds in private facilities? “We are forbidden by law from spending any of our funds at for-profit hospitals,” he says.

And as limited and terribly underfunded as Edelman’s agency is, it does a yeoman’s job, offering counseling services, out-patient care and direction.

It strikes me that at some point we must recognize that the drug problem is a people problem and not strictly a crime issue; and that all the cops and courts in the world aren’t going to solve it alone.

As Edelman says, “We must think of people who abuse drugs and alcohol as members of our family, as brothers and sisters, as nieces and nephews, and stop classifying everyone who abuses as evil.”

This isn’t in any way to say he condones drug or alcohol use. He doesn’t, of course, but he’s asking us to recognize that the abusers are also the victims. To humanize the issue.

“There’s not a lot of empathy for drunks or druggies,” he says, pointing out that public attitudes have a lot to do with the lack of funding help for them.

When you stop and think about it, my idea for the battleships isn’t all that crazy. You sure wouldn’t have any petitions from people not wanting a treatment center in their neighborhood.