The clinic looks like an innocuous storefront in Vancouvers squalid Downtown Eastside district, Canada's most impoverished neighbourhood with more than 5,000 heroin addicts concentrated in a 10-block area.
Addicts bring in drugs purchased illegally on the street, and self-inject them under medical supervision. There are onsite emergency services in case of overdose and staff nurses and counselors to provide health care and referrals to rehabilitation facilities.
Worldwide, about 50 similar clinics operate routinely, mostly in Europe.
Okay this is where I ask the Liberal bus to pull over so that I can get off. When it comes to drug use I am afraid that I am pretty conservative. However I , in no way, have ever supported the war on drugs that rages in this country. I would never throw a drug user in the same cell as a murderer or rapist. I think that serious drug users need medical help and not incarceration. But that is just me.
I actually have the exact same feelings concerning alcohol abuse which killed my father just last year.
If you drink a glass of wine or have a beer or two a couple times a week then I have no bone to pick with you. And if you smoke pot every once in a while then I would not pass judgement on you either. However if you drink several drinks every single night or smoke pot daily or partake of anything stronger, then I am afraid that we will never see eye to eye.
You see I have a problem with people who look for a crutch to get through life. I have very little sympathy for those who know that their behaviors are self destructive and yet they continue down the path to their own destruction.
Why waste your gift? Being here is miraculous, why dull the experience? I savor even those uncomfortable experiences because I know that they strengthen me. I don't like to hurt but when it is over I know I will have improved in some way. I choose to look at what I have rather then what I do not. I know that I may be some freak of nature but it makes my life seem fulfilling.
What drug can make your heart fill up like the smile of a child? What alcoholic beverage makes your skin tingle like the first kiss of a lover? There are no substitutions for living your life aware and unmedicated. Trust me.
(And with that I step off of my soapbox.)
amen...and you can get up that soapbox anytime you want...and we out here in Blogatopia will clap and cheer..( you didn't hear it?...hmm, listen again..put your ear right up to the screen..hear it yet?)
ReplyDeleteand yes, Time is Gift...
life a miracle....
too prescious....keep bloggin it....
We have made huge advances in understanding addiction neurobiology in recent years. Please understand that addicts like your father or the junkies in Canada, have neurochemistries which respond differently to alcohol or marijuana or heroin than normal people's.
ReplyDeleteThere are other factors at work, but the neurobiology of the disease is the driver for all that behavior you don't understand.
If you want to help addicts get clean, giving them a clean, safe place to shoot up an effective way to do so. And isn't that the point? To help others less fortunate than ourselves?