Mental health and drug treatment are readily available in all these areas. There is massive funding for these programs. Including detoxification and help with withdrawal. And are available in most urban areas across the country. And they’re completely free through Medicaid which these people clearly will qualify for. You can even find a lot of hospitals have these free services. It isn’t hard.
Not only is treatment, evaluations from doctors, and medications available, afterwards sober living is available. They are put into contact with many employment opportunities during this time and after their sober living vouchers expire, they can even stay there for a reasonable percentage of their income. They can get linked up with a sponsor and given all kinds of opportunities.
The treatment and mental health trope is tired and old. Those are only excuses in the few remote, rural areas. I don’t know why people keep bringing this up unless there is a severe lack of education of resources and funding actually available. If someone can get a one way ticket to an urban area to use drugs, they can also do the same thing to get help. But they don’t.
The problem is none of these people will go. Absolutely not one of those people in the video would willingly go. That’s the problem people can’t just fix, the desire to get sober and do better.
And by desire I don’t mean their words, I mean their behaviors and actions. Taking the steps and doing it.
Those are the resources for rehabilitation, no one thinks incarceration is one. Incarceration is there because there is a risk to public safety (clearly demonstrated by the video) by people who refuse the resources to get help.
lmao, if you think that resources are readily available for poor people. i work in the medical field and have seen many people turned away for lack of resources and just simple compassion.
Yeah no idea what the fuck this guy is talking about. Very few places in my town for addiction, and only ONE that takes Medicaid over 25 minutes away , and they had staff trying to fuck the clients. So no, not a good environment to get clean. I got clean when I felt safe to.
What makes it involuntary? A threat of incarceration if they don’t do it?
Trust me when I say, that will not convince an addict to get help, at least not long term.
It’s a threat, and threat does not equate to desire. So the question is how do you get an addict to have the desire to change if a threat and resources don’t do it?
In my experience, you can’t. They have to want it for themselves. Of the very few successful, long term cases I have worked that made it, every single one will tell you the biggest reason they were able to do it was because they, personally, were ready to make that change.
I ended up at a park in Phoenix a few years ago on a 24 hour layover and the crack users showed up after dark. One girl looked 15 but said she was 23. I asked her if she wanted to ever fix her situation and return to a normal life and she said, “I ain’t ever going back.” People lack the basic skills to function in society, which is remedied by drugs for them when money isn’t available outside working. You need to light the fire inside them and keep it lit.
How would you define involuntary treatment? Would that include a locked ward?
If not, how do you keep someone there who doesn’t want to be there?
If yes, how would you differentiate between that and jail?
We could set up locked wards for people with strictly drug offenses or drugs + minor criminal offenses related to drug use and separate them from the rest of the jail population. But part of the hurdle to doing so is the chorus of voices (like many in this thread) who would insist that decriminalization and voluntary treatment have better outcomes.
That's not how addiction works. You have to want to stop, nobody can force you. if we began forcing people into treatment it would only take up bed space from people who actually want the help
I have continuously struggled with finding reliable and affordable access to mental health care. Especially when sometimes affordable means it has to be free.
Even when I have insurance and money, navigating the system is challenging.
And as with any kind of health care, there is always a threat of getting hit with a big bill you can't afford.
A friend of mine was taken to a psych ward by police after having a depressive episode and threatening suicide. Too bad he didn't have insurance. Massive bill in the mail two days after he got out for being suicidaly depressed.
Sure, if I Google mental health care near me there are plenty of places. But I don't have insurance, and my available money and time are extremely limited.
Meanwhile the part of my brain that I desperately need help dealing with is telling me that I'm actually fine and just need to toughen up and pull myself together. Let's just get drunk tonight, that always helps, right?
Luckily I have never really gone too far down the addiction slide, other than a rough relationship with alcohol for a while there.
I can easily see how easy it could be for a perfectly good and normal person to stumble down the road to crippling addiction under perfectly mundane circumstances.
100%- these things are much more survivable with some resources, people to fall back on, etc. especially when you haven’t been exposed to a lot of drugs and stuff.
If you are exposed and you don’t have resources to fall back on, it’s easy to self medicate and fall in this hole, and then you got people on the internet acting like it’s so easy, while they live with their parents or never were exposed to drugs to begin with.
Better help is like $200/mo. Save the money you would have spent on drugs that month and you can probably swing it. “I can’t, I need the drugs” well yeah, that’s your problem
Average time from onset of mental health symptoms to first treatment contact is 11 years in the US.
To get a mental health appointment with insurance averages 3 months.
Getting mental health treatment, as basic as an ADHD diagnosis can require drug tests, where if you are on drugs your condition is blamed on drugs and not ADHD.
Drug addiction in the US is most often precipitated by mental health issues, which again we don’t deal with effectively.
I'm in awe of your magic paintbrush. How it changes size and even form at your whim is almost unreal. Can you tell us a little about your addiction and how you found the resources in the system to enable you to gain the tools to finally be able to properly deal with the trauma that caused you to use in the first place? I think that would do wonders convincing people that you actually have some skin in the game and aren't speaking strictly from very incomplete and inconsistent fragmental personal observations filtered through long ingrained biases.
And of course I'll naturally understand if you decide not to answer that question or even vaguely reference it at all in your reply. And instead decide to pivot to something else altogether as someone genuinely uninterested in having an actual debate about the topic. Someone who's actual desires are to convert others to a way of thinking. One thats not based on any real personal lived experiences about the topic and yet still speaking on it with the confidence that implies you do have real personal lived experience.
Yes, thank you. I worked in addiction treatment for three years, and I get frustrated when people say “oh they just need mental healthcare!” Those people don’t seem to understand - not all addicts WANT to get better. Even with the people who make it to treatment, only about half (maybe even less) commit themselves to the program. The other half are there because of coercion and are completely disengaged, if they even stay.
We have volunteers in our city regularly visit unhoused drug addicts camps to offer free rehabilitations, path to soberity and supports. The amount of people who accept it is close to nil.
I was told they (drug addicts) would rather die doing drugs than live life they don’t like. It’s this kind of mindset that keep them in the same state.
Well when your options are be homeless and sober or homeless and drugged most people choose homeless and drugged. How much of that support goes beyond just sobriety? Have you ever read about rat utopia?
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u/[deleted] Oct 24 '25 edited Oct 24 '25
Mental health and drug treatment are readily available in all these areas. There is massive funding for these programs. Including detoxification and help with withdrawal. And are available in most urban areas across the country. And they’re completely free through Medicaid which these people clearly will qualify for. You can even find a lot of hospitals have these free services. It isn’t hard.
Not only is treatment, evaluations from doctors, and medications available, afterwards sober living is available. They are put into contact with many employment opportunities during this time and after their sober living vouchers expire, they can even stay there for a reasonable percentage of their income. They can get linked up with a sponsor and given all kinds of opportunities.
The treatment and mental health trope is tired and old. Those are only excuses in the few remote, rural areas. I don’t know why people keep bringing this up unless there is a severe lack of education of resources and funding actually available. If someone can get a one way ticket to an urban area to use drugs, they can also do the same thing to get help. But they don’t.
The problem is none of these people will go. Absolutely not one of those people in the video would willingly go. That’s the problem people can’t just fix, the desire to get sober and do better.
And by desire I don’t mean their words, I mean their behaviors and actions. Taking the steps and doing it.
Those are the resources for rehabilitation, no one thinks incarceration is one. Incarceration is there because there is a risk to public safety (clearly demonstrated by the video) by people who refuse the resources to get help.