Yesterday, I thought the world had come to an end. The Headline in the Vancouver Sun newspaper was so bold and so large and so simple, I thought it was the return of the Plague. "DAY ONE" was the trumpet announcement.
This morning we found this: "He murdered them, he butchered them and he disposed of their remains."
Now clearly the trial of a man who is alleged to have killed 6 women, and who most of us believe has killed at least 30, is worthy of coverage. It is big, it is expensive, it is full of lurid and horrible detail. And the job of a newspaper is to report on exactly such atrocities in our communities.
But this?
Page after page of photos and diagrams.
SOON I WILL ADD A DAILY POLL FUNCTION TO THE BLOG.
But, until then, you tell me: The Sun coverage is 1) excellent? 2) way over the top? 3) beyond hysterical? 4) appropriate? or 5) an abandonment of all reason.
The following paragraph is a direct quote from the New York Times online this Sunday morning.
AS PROMISED YESTERDAY, HERE IS THE 2ND OF A 3-PARTER, PUBLISHED ORIGINALLY ON APRIL 17, 2006 ON www.thetyee.ca. THIS ONE EXPLAINS WHY I CLAIM TO HAVE OR BE AN "AUTHORITY" ON THE SUBJECT OF ADDICTIONS.
WIRED TO LOSE
A comprehensive examination of How to make the problems of Addictions Even Worse
PART TWO
Last week I showed you the Mayor of Vancouver’s central beliefs about drugs, alcohol, prostitution and addiction. Now I’ll show you mine.
In 1967, by a series of comic accidents, I became the founder and executive director of a residential treatment centre for addicts, alcoholics, ex-cons and others. I was 24 years old. I was playing the saxophone, writing poetry, playing tennis and driving a taxi.
Lester Pearson was the Prime Minister of Canada. Mr. Pearson created a kind of domestic Peace Corps, modeled after Vista in America. The idea was to engage educated urban youth in the pressing social issues of the day – poverty, crime, the elderly, native problems. The program was called The Company of Young Canadians, and I was steered in its direction by my late friend, Bob Hunter, who only a few years later would become one of the original founders of Greenpeace.
I began by meeting a group of Native Indians in the B.C. Pen. The recidivism rate at that time for aboriginals was around 97%, and these fellows said they wanted to get out and stay out. They believed the answer lay in having their own halfway house, one that was entirely self-governing and self-financed.
On January 5, 1967, I met a native inmate named Richard, who had served his time and was being released from the Pen. He was a killer, and I was an underachieving Russian-Jewish Canadian from the North End of Winnipeg. Together we set out to change the world. Ha!
A year later, and with the help of Vancouver City Savings and the Lions’ Club, about a dozen of us moved into a house in Fairview Slopes. There were both men and women and most were native, although we had already admitted a few non-native heroin addicts.
The program was simple. Two rules: No chemicals of any kind at any time, and No violence or threats of violence. Break the rules and say goodbye. Yes, you could try again tomorrow, but there was no discussion about today; if you broke one of these cardinal rules, you were gone.
The following year we bought a mansion in Lower Shaughnessy. Now there were 20 and 30 and 40 people, men, women and children. And, although the Two Rules were still inviolate, the program was no longer simple.
We owned and operated a Shell Gas Station, a women’s Beauty Salon, a Pizza restaurant and a specialties advertising company. Resident members were engaged in almost hectic activity 24 hours a day, 9 days a week: seminars, schooling, group therapy, individual counselling, cooking, music making, football, billiards, softball, concerts. Every weekday, recovering addicts spoke openly and passionately about their lives to school kids, churches, business and community groups.
Within four years from our beginnings, the program had grown to over 125 people in residence and a budget in excess of $1Million. The fifth year, we duplicated the program in Winnipeg. That program continues to thrive today in a modified and much expanded version, serving courts, aboriginals, women, children and the original target group of alcoholics, addicts and ex-convicts.
I spent 10 years at this work and I saw hundreds of addicts – let me say it again, hundreds – stop using, change their behavior, never return to jail and live significantly new and different lives. The work was, literally, self-help. No doctors, no shrinks, no social workers. In fact, when we were asked about these kinds of professionals, we used to say, “Oh, we help them too!”
I never saw a heroin addict take more than 48 hours to kick a habit. I never saw anyone have a fit, swallow their own tongue, or walk through walls.
Were we able to help everyone? Of course not. Our success rate remained constant at around 25%. But there are three important things to remember about that number: 1) According to basic Judeo-Christian belief, “If you save one human soul, you save the world!” 2) A batting average of 250 will get you into Cooperstown (Baseball hall of Fame) and a return of 25 cents on the dollar will make you Canada’s next billionaire. 3) Our per bed costs were comically low, less than $20,000 per annum, because this was not a “Medical Model.”
This program used the same basic tenets as Alcoholics Anonymous and all of the subsequent 12-Step Programs. The tone was always Tough Love. The message was, “You’re not sick. You’re stupid. Get smart. Make some new and better choices. We know that’s easier said than done; but we’ve done it and we’re right here beside you.”
My primary interest in the endless Addiction Debates is Treatment, Treatment and more Treatment. I know from personal experience that Treatment is possible and affordable. I have known every Mayor of Vancouver and Premier of British Columbia for the past 40 years. Even though Treatment is touted as one of the Four Famous Pillars, I have yet to meet one Mayor or Premier who is prepared to invest in Treatment.
Gordon Campbell’s highly promoted $8Million for meth treatment is a cruel illusion. Once the money is divided amongst the many Health Authorities, once the administrators therein are covered, and once the advertising and Public Relations initiatives are paid for, this stunt amounts to a spit in the ocean.
Parents in B.C. are in tears.
In the third and final installment in this series, I will introduce you to some people who have tried to create Treatment options for addicted youth. I will also demonstrate how they have been discouraged and defeated by unwieldy bureaucracies and wrongly invested politicians, who mouth “Treatment,” but who are clearly unwilling to pay for it.
THIS, THE FIRST OF 3 ARTICLES, WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED AS "MAYOR WIMPS OUT ON DRUG TREATMENT" ON APRIL 16, 2006 ON www.thetyee.ca. THE NEXT DAY, AND THE DAY AFTER THAT, 2 MORE ARTICLES FOLLOWED EXPLAINING FIRST, HOW I CAME TO MY POSITION ON THESE MATTERS, AND FINALLY, ON WHAT TO DO ABOUT ADDICTIONS IN OUR COMMUNITIES.
I AM RE-RUNNING THESE PIECES TODAY, TOMORROW AND FRIDAY A) BECAUSE THE PROBLEMS ARE STILL OVERWHELMINGLY BEFORE US; AND B) THE MAYOR IS ABOUT TO UNLEASH YET ANOTHER NUTTY PLAN.
YOUR COMMENTS WILL BE APPRECIATED. LEAVE YOUR URL AFTER YOUR SIGNATURE.
WIRED TO LOSE
A comprehensive examination of How to make the problems of Addictions Even Worse
The first in a three-part series.
Love the guy. Helped get him elected. But, let’s be honest. On this subject, at least, he’s on the other side of the moon. He’s so far out that one day they’ll name a new planet after him.
I speak of the Mayor of Vancouver, Sam Sullivan. And I speak of Addictions. Drugs and alcohol. Heroin, cocaine, crystal meth, booze. Even his handlers have told him to be quiet on this topic. How do I know this? I know because they have told me so.
Nobody in the known world shares the good mayor’s unique perspective. How could they? No one else is in a wheelchair. No one else believes that the wheelchair is the best metaphor for understanding addictions.
And how do I know this? Because I have had this exact discussion with His Honor many times over many years. The last time was on the phone recently when I was verifying my notes taken in his office on the third floor of City hall just before Torino. The first time was in an annoyingly pretentious and mediocre restaurant on West 10th Avenue about five years ago. On that first occasion, I became so angry that I actually jumped up at the table and started hollering. Sam loved this. There is the perennial teenager about him that just gets such a kick out of seeing grown men turn stupid. These days I am calm in the face of his nuttiness. I love the guy. I tell him he’s wrong. And he tells me that one day I will see that he’s right.
Here’s what the Mayor of Vancouver believes about addictions.
“I am in a wheelchair. When I was 19, I did something stupid on the ski slopes and I broke my neck. For quite a while I lay in a hospital bed and bemoaned the fact that now I was a quadriplegic. Eventually, I tired of that. I asked myself “What can I do now?” Here I am years later, the Mayor of Vancouver. It would have been unbearably cruel for someone to suggest that one day I would walk again. I had to face up to my reality and deal with it. And I have.
Now, addicts are like me. They have a disability. And they will always have this disability. It is a waste of time and money to pretend to them and to ourselves that they will ever change. So what we should do is make them more comfortable! Remove the criminality, give them their drugs and let them choose what they do want to do next.”
I told him about The Sobels. Of course, he hadn’t heard of them. But anyone with an even passing interest in the subject of addictions should know the story of Dr. and Mrs. Sobel.
The Sobels were a husband-and-wife team of clinical psychologists practicing at the University of Toronto in the 1980’s. The wanted to prove that they could teach alcoholics how to become “social drinkers.” Their dedication and passion convinced the University to build a “bar” in the department, in spite of the fact that the U of T is smack in the middle of one of the liveliest downtown neighbourhoods in the western world, replete with many a lively joint.
The Sobels spent two years teaching hundreds of drunks to “sip.” Finally they were on the cover of Time Magazine. But not for any of the reasons that they or you or Mayor Sam may have predicted. After two years of work, hundreds of thousands of Canadian tax dollars spent, and much wringing of hands, the Sobels confessed that their work was 1) a complete failure, 2) misguided from the beginning, and finally, amoral!
They said, in effect, “We were wrong to do this. We hurt people. We’re sorry.”
The Mayor was unmoved.
The gist of my discussions with the mayor is this. I want to know if we, in the City of Vancouver, are actively and rigorously working to create Treatment for drug addicts. The Mayor, who clearly believes that Treatment is usually expensive and most often ineffective, dodges and weaves in his answers. What becomes clear is that he has a bias and No Plan.
“I believe we should ask the addict what he needs from Society. The cocaine addict will tell you that if he could chew cocoa leaves, he would get just enough of a fix to keep him from stealing.” This is what the Mayor of Vancouver told me.
When you ask the Mayor to get away from theory and abstractions and tell you in plain English if he is committed to Treatment, if he supports Treatment, if the City has plans for Treatment, if Treatment is high on his agenda, he says the following.
“There are several types of addictions. Some are emotional, some are physical. For some people, this problem will heal itself. In time. Meanwhile, we should keep them healthy, so that when they’re ready they can get back to life.”
So you ask the Mayor again to please be specific and tell us if he has any real plans for treatment. He says, “Give people the tools to manage. Some can do it with abstinence and counselling. Others seem to require a low maintenance amount of drugs.”
You try again to get a comment on Public Policy. Is Treatment high on your agenda as Mayor of Vancouver?
“Yes, but it shouldn’t be paid for by property tax-payers. Drug treatment is not for tax payers.” Huh?
“There are long term problems you can manage,” the Mayor continues, “and problems you can fix.”
But are you putting money into Treatment? How much treatment? What kind of treatment?
“Oh, we’re moving with Coastal health to get more beds, but this is clearly a provincial responsibility.”
Are you vigorously pursuing Gordon Campbell to create Treatment in Vancouver?
“Well, there are many options we should look at.”
In David Lean’s epic movie, “Lawrence of Arabia,” there is this wonderful exchange between Arthur Kennedy playing a journalist and Omar Sharif as a Saudi Prince:
“Did I answer well,” asks the warrior prince.
“You answered without saying anything – that’s politics,” says the writer.
Before leaving for the Winter Games in Torino, the Mayor was heading downtown to meet with five prostitutes. He wants to give them free heroin. Well, nothing’s free, is it? You’ll pay for this, and your grandmother who has to pay for her own needles to inject her insulin will pay for this.
So I say to the Mayor, “Let’s say I agree with this scheme – which, as you know, I decidedly do not – but, let’s say I do. Then what? You’ll give the girls dope, and that will lead to breaking the whole cycle of their street whore culture, jobs, schools, what?”
“Not my concern,” he says. “People gave me the wheelchair. What I did with my life was my problem.”
The Mayor knows that in his case, the notion of “Hope” would be an ugly illusion. He has now projected this idea onto all people with addictions, and for them, he abandons Hope. He offers instead what he considers a comfort.
Cold comfort, indeed.
The Mayor believes that prostitutes’ problems and addict’s problems are insoluble and that these problems should be managed. The Mayor is enshrining slavery.
In the next installment in this series, I will explain how I came to my own position on these issues. In the third and concluding piece, I will outline how some people are trying to help, and how they are hindered at every turn by unwieldy bureaucracies and plain, flat ignorance.
REVISIT THE ONE GREAT AND TRUE HERO OF THE RECENT AMERICAN REPUBLIC...AND THEN PONDER THE INTRACTABLE STUPIDITY OF THE SOVEREIGN STATE OF UTAH, WHICH DOES NOT RECOGNIZE THIS DAY.
As you can see above, the "I have a Dream" videos have been now been posted not once, but twice. Enjoy, and Remember to Remeember.
I thought I had up-loaded Dr. King's unforgettable "I have A Dream" speech. But, such is the learning curve for the novice blogster. Apologies. These kinks will in time iron themselves out.
What is more important is to remember to remember one of the great Heroes of the Last Century. In spite of the FBI compiling rooms full of specious "evidence" to damn this great man, and in spite of the murderous piece of irrelevance who killed him, Dr. King remains for many of us an astonishing beacon of Light and Hope. How urgently we are need of more of him. How desperately do we all need to pull ourselves up to his level of commitment and humanity.
And great Shame on the soveriegn state of Utah, who in their whiteness, have chosen NOT to celebrate Martin Luther King Day. With straight, pale faces, their legislators went to work today. And these are people who boast of their religious integrity.
What if they had stayed home and talked to their children about the drama and thrust of Dr. King's work?
We were all blesssed that he lived within our time. Our sadness at his passing and at what he might still have accomplished continues undiminished.
