About “Forced Treatment” and Homelessness

I need to comment on the political pressure to force people experiencing addiction into treatment. Superficially, it seems to address a problem in society, but the reality is that this is a political approach to the wrong problem. 

Is addiction (and the deaths resulting from a toxic drug supply) a problem?  Absolutely.  Is this a solution to the social issues that are being assigned to addicts?  No.

Let me explain myself. 

Let’s assume for a moment that forced treatment will actually work, and produces a stream of people who are now former addicts.  Most of the people we are going to push into these programs are likely homeless, and therefore living fairly rough lives.  If they’re “lucky” they might be able to sleep in shelters, or have a room in a decrepit old hotel now being used as housing.  (Neither environment is exactly a good place to live - and a lot of the same factors that lead to drug use exist in both). 

At the end of the treatment program, we (theoretically) are going to release these newly sober people back into society.  Guess what?  You’ve just released a “newly sober” homeless person back into the same environment they were in before.  How long do you think it’s going to be before they relapse when suddenly all their old buddies are around, and urging them to participate in the same activities?  

Sure, creating these “shiny” facilities that we can sweep the homeless people into makes all the suburban types happy -  they don’t have to look at the people who have ended up at the bottom of the social and economic ladders any more. 

But, unless you are addressing all of the issues that lead to homelessness in a constructive manner, guess what?  You’re just creating the same “revolving door” problem that we complain about in the criminal justice systems.  Once that door starts spinning, not only do you have problems with relapse, but the risk of overdose goes up as well.  Oh, and let’s not ignore the effects of “institutionalization” that happen when someone spends extended periods in an environment where they have little or no control over their daily existence.

There are a myriad of issues that need to be addressed:  housing, income, mental health, addiction, socialization (including integration with society), and a dozen other factors.  Treatment for addiction is but one facet of a much more complex problem that we need to think about intelligently.  Reactionary politics aimed at people freaking out over seeing a discarded syringe somewhere is missing the point, entirely.  

These problems didn’t appear overnight, and they won’t “go away” overnight because suddenly we give police the ability to round people up and force them into treatment.  At best you’re sweeping things under the carpet and hoping they’ll go away on their own after that.  They won’t.  They don’t.  The solutions to these problems require all of us to take notice and realize that the systems we live in aren’t working the way they should and major change is needed. 

When a person working full time can’t afford a decent place to live, we have created a problem - and no, the “invisible hand” of the free market isn’t going to fix that.  There are fundamental problems in our society that are the precursors to homelessness and addiction.