patrick.net

It's not about giving away free apartment units.



But jail also saved my life. Not only was I able to break the chains of physical heroin addiction, but I also got a lesson in life that you couldn’t put a price tag on. I learned how to be grateful for many things, like taking a hot shower anytime I want, and sleeping on a real mattress. Being able to eat anything other than jail gruel is something I will never take for granted. When I find myself on the brink of self-pity and ingratitude, both of which are precursors to relapse, it’s much easier to realign myself and smile at the thought of how great my life is today compared to the hell I put myself through.

Moreover, in jail, I developed social skills I’d never learned, including handling the most precarious people in society. Shame and consequences are good at changing behavior. If it weren’t for getting cut off from everyone who loved me and locked up in a cage for a few months, I’d be dead today. ...

But for people who can’t quit, who destroy their relationships with family and friends, and regularly break laws to feed their addiction, being arrested and mandated treatment is our best answer. Addicts need a system that provides them with long-term treatment and recovery as an alternative to long-term incarceration. Many addicts need one to two years of forced abstinence in a program with cognitive behavioral therapy, sobriety-based community building, and, most importantly, employment and independent living training. ...

People want to make homelessness about housing, and to some extent it is, but not in the way many people believe. Everyone living on the street once had housing and lost it. Some lost it because they are seriously mentally ill and won’t take their medicines. A tiny number are there because of poverty, but they’re also the easiest to help.

The truth is that most people living on the streets are just addicts like I was. They had homes, as well as families and friends. They lost them all because some combination of life’s hardships and drug use gave them a psychiatric disorder. The good news is that there is a solution. The bad news is that it’s not giving them their own apartment unit.