The Hostile Effects of Prisons and "Treatment" Programs on Drug Addicts

Addicts leave certain treatment programs damaged. Here in Denver, "PEER 1" (a notoriously ineffective and brutal, but enduring Therapeutic Community for drug addicts, or "TC") seems to have blessed the city with a number of psychologically and emotionally maimed graduates. Ms. Margo Coleman, MA, CACIII, who was the dual-diagnosis coordinator at the "Crossroads to Freedom House," at Arrowhead Correctional center, - a "Therapeutic Community" that shares a certain amount of ideological ancestry with PEER 1 - scoffed at this accusation. She countered that "They were doing drugs, so the damage was done a long time before they ever got there."

One doesn't need to think about it all that hard, to see that as in days past with witches, homosexuals, the "mad" (mentally ill), and "hysterical" (unhappy and sensitive, or independent and fractious) women, the sick and injured addict is "fair game" at this point in history.(see Ceremonial Chemistry: The Ritual Persecution of Drugs, Addicts, and Pushers by Thomas Szasz).

I have searched prisons, within the walls themselves and also in the offices and the corridors of these larger, minimum-security facilities that our cities have become, and at least where this game ("drugs") is played; genuine "innocent victims" seem to be in very short supply

(Of course, as always, there is one group that truly has no choice in these matters. That group of course is children; they can't even walk out on abusive, drug-addicted parents without, one way or another, starting a chain reaction of clumsy, and predominantly inhuman and procedural events).

The visible behaviors of "drug users" and "addicts" may be nauseating to the uninitiated observer. Even the experienced user may find in that occasional "moment of clarity" that 12-step groups speak of, that his or her surroundings have become truly squalid, and that while not all of his or her companions are thieves and back stabbers, everyone seems to be in poor health.

To me, almost all of the addicted women I know are still beautiful, and not in the sense implied by the truly obscene and exploitative "heroin chic" trend of a decade or so ago (I really don't remember exactly when that was going on, although I saw an article condemning it as recently as 1999). Some are emaciated, some pale and some dark, sinuous with tattoos and dark eyeliner, broadcasting an anesthetized sexuality, for any number of reasons (prostitution isn't anywhere nearly as common among addicts as the media depicts it to be) -with these women I find an excitement in making eye contact, a flash of life's flame through a momentarily clear widow, framed in lines of knowledge. The maturity and experience, bought and paid for with tokens of pain and battle, and the credentials left behind in the skin, inseparable from the scholar, speak of rarified knowledge gained at a cost few are willing to pay. It is a damaged beauty that draws me in, and makes me want to share my dope with the "junkie chick," to sit up and talk all night, then finally go out and get another hit if the funds are there at sunrise. It's so much better than getting high alone, (at least on certain occasions; other times I find that solitude is the ideal).

All of us have heard of AIDS, even though at this late date, much confusion over the epidemiology, treatment and life expectancy, and sadly enough, morality of the disease remains. The fact remains though, that within the continuum of injections and crack hits we live in, "externalities" like protected sex, and long term consequences such as HIV and HEP-C are placed in some allegorical pigeon-hole, to be opened and looked at "later." The damage, meanwhile, is done,

So really, I suppose that Ms. Coleman meant that the therapeutic practices which, when described to me seem closely related to the treatment of hostages by terrorists, or dissident political prisoners by repressive regimes, are applied to long-term drug users, the worst possible result (outside of physical injury or death) would merely be the creation of additional psycho-emotional scar tissue atop the many pre-existing layers already borne by the user. She may have a point. Whatever the underlying reasoning may be though, causing addicts to suffer is generally considered to be an acceptable practice. Whether packaged as "help" or "punishment," done in the name of a "greater good," or a "higher power," there is a deeply rooted idea that in and of itself, tampering with the keys to the pleasure/pain machine by ordinary individuals, solely for the satisfaction of their own impulses to pleasure and away from pain, is some sort of moral abomination. As the current policies of control and prohibition in America define the priorities of "drug morality," an addict "getting high" or "getting a fix," is considered to be a greater evil than the under-treatment of pain in seriously or terminally ill patients.

The damage has been done. The damage to me now I measure in nights of fitful sleep, missed heartbeats for no apparent reason, and trips to the kindly methadone doctor, as a humble supplicant to a licensed shaman, and as long as I can "stay with the program," he will give me enough of "the only thing that works" to get me through twenty four hours with the inflamed and hungry spot I feel near the base of my skull sleeping and silent. Since I have no plans to travel, and the state more or less owns me as I write this, it seems not to be that big a deal. Only if I go to jail could this become problematic, and the Dr. says they do OK, with getting people their methadone in the county jail these days, although he makes no guarantees. But each little threat of reincarceration that presses on the thin ice of my Intensive Supervision Parole causes my heart to race like a barely sub-lethal shot of cocaine.

They can't decide exactly what is wrong with me, but methadone withdrawal in jail has slapped many layers onto the tentatively diagnosed PTSD which makes me fall to pieces at times, and lose that discernment, that refined, survival-attuned reasoning just at the times when I need it most.

I come home from a long day of work, followed by an NA meeting and I find my friend sleeping in her car in front of my apartment building. I knock on the window, wake her up and let her know that it's OK to come up and stay the night. The women's shelter has just kicked her out on the basis of a random, "hot" UA. She says that the methadone won't "hold" her yet, and this I believe, she is a large woman, with a large habit. But the self-appointed and anointed keepers of "caring" have seen fit to banish her for this fact. I find myself briefly frustrated with her too, but I remember it is nothing different than anything I have ever done. I just wouldn't have checked into a shelter to begin with, especially one that subjected its residents to random UAs, like a prison or halfway house. She stays the night, and I sleep on the floor, she gives me a ride to my methadone clinic in the morning and then she is gone again. I choose to believe that all will be well with her in the long run.

Unfortunately, there is little in the preceding scenario to satisfy those in search of lurid drug-horror pulp and puke-romance, but there's always plenty of time for that. What horrifies me most is what the "Peer 1" survivors say. It goes something like this, and it is usually said in the context of a discussion of small, but harsh and immediate injustices:"Nothing you or I can say will ever change that."

The damage has been done, and now they believe this, and as soon as they believe it, it becomes true. I wonder how many more people would have needed to believe in Hitler to make his victory inevitable. I wonder also if all these years after Hitler's death, he has had the last laugh anyway. Torture, genocide, mass imprisonment of classes deemed inferior by "experts," and brilliantly sadistic experiments involving these same populations certainly all seem to be as popular as they ever have been. American superiority will be established in time in all areas, and anyone who thinks that clowns like Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Saddam Hussein, and all their less prolific but equally depraved colleagues will be remembered as "the greatest" in any practice has already been proven wrong by numbers that already exist

Nothing you or I can say will ever change that.

Dawdling, doddering through a slow "off-day" in this latest phase of my incarceration I remind myself that: a. I am still doing time, and, b. truly privileged, in that I am allowed to be my own jailer, locking myself in at night, and releasing myself in the morning, an electronic device hooked to my phone line and my ankle letting "them" know that I am indeed doing a good job of keeping myself locked up. I can't go back to the state prison system and expect to have a computer with high-speed internet, as well as my own kitchen, bath, and telephone, in my cell. The rent on this apartment and unending cycles of hoop jumping, appointments, evaluations, and fees seem paltry prices to pay when the situation is viewed in context, and I then seem truly blessed. On top of these blessings, the powers that be give me free drugs. Not the methadone, of course; that would be a bit too much to ask. But they are paying for some medications, including one that costs about 260.00 for a month's supply. I'm not sure what it's actually doing to me yet, but at this point, taking legal drugs is as important to my freedom as abstaining from the illegal ones; as long as they're paying for it, why not?

The above observations are admittedly subjective, one-sided, and opinionated. Those on "the other side" have a right to state their case if full, without censorship, disruption, heckling, group shaming or any of the rest of it. So they shall have their chance, if they choose to accept my offer here.

(Since I wrote the above, I've stopped using methadone and illegal drugs; my views on the subject remain the same, however.)

Reference:
Ceremonial Chesmistry: The Ritual Persecution of Drugs Addicts and Pushers
Thomas Szasz, 2003
Syracuse University Press, Syracuse NY