“How are you?” I asked, looking up from the desk. “I’m sick, to tell you the truth.” She was a trim, attractive young woman of around 20, dressed in the style, with a beautiful smile in spite of feeling sick from opiate withdrawal..
I was in a methadone clinic for the first time in a couple years, and realized that a client had been hollering with violent intent in the lobby. That’s against the rules, but not unheard of in a methadone clinic. My young friend nervously and fearfully slid across a rack of documents toward the corner. She said she had issues, I would guess raised in a violent or somehow abusive household, which is a safe bet with people who become hopelessly addicted to drugs at such a young age.
That sort of background for the young opiate addict is common among women. There’s no quicker, more effective way to feel really good than by using an opiate, so it’s a great escape from an abusive life…or any other life if you like.
Addicts who came to methadone clinics for help in the early 1990’s and before were self-avowed heroin-injecting addicts. These days it’s oxycontin, pills, smoking heroin…that sort of thing. Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of used, abused and discarded spikes lying around, but fewer people need to stick a needle in their arm to get tremendously high when the heroin is good enough to smoke, like it was in Viet Nam.
The clinic director, a friend of mine, advised that when people came to his clinic years ago, more of them truly wanted to get well, and they had a tendency to come, get serious about treatment, and if methadone treatment was going to work for them, it did. They stayed in treatment, followed the rules, led better and sometimes productive lives free of street drugs. These days it’s different. People come, they get over being sick (withdrawal), and then are back on the street copping dope or in doctor’s offices scamming prescriptions. These days, something’s different. Perhaps bottoms aren’t low enough, perhaps there’s too much enabling available in our society. More addicts these days are willing to go to any lengths to get and stay high, including methadone clinics to avoid withdrawals till something can be stolen and sold for another fix of the good stuff.
Being in active addiction on the street is a lot of work. Typically the road into chronic addiction, being mostly high, is more fun than the road coming out of addiction. The road out of addiction is plagued with cravings, romancing the elements of old life style that brought pleasure and typically, relapse. A person living in the middle of their recovery is working hard every day just to stay clean and sober. It ain’t easy.
What’s this mean to you? It’s simple. When an addict is active and on the street, the typical way to make a living is stealing your stuff. Since this person needs a fix every day, he needs to steal every day. After a while this affects the community. If there’s a methadone clinic in the neighborhood, they probably help a few of their clients stay off street drugs, in spite of the trend outlined in this discussion. These clients have a shot at getting jobs, they have therapy to help them keep the job and go through life, and they are in a form of recovery.
Do something nice for your local methadone clinic. At the very least, the clinic’s presence increases the likelihood of your car being in the driveway tomorrow morning.
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