He/she is “just an addict” is an attitude far to prevalent in our society because so often underneath the addict lies a whole other world or person.

Based on my experiences and observations I have come to the conclusion that if we want to be efficient and effective in dealing with addiction and homelessness we need to move away from current practices and towards the best practices in the field of mental health. This will require adopting a much longer view of treatment and recovery; in many ways adopting a much more holistic view of what constituted recovery and being healthy.

I knew someone while he was in his addiction, saw him off to treatment, back from treatment and as he struggled with sobriety and dealing with his mental illness sober and without the use of illegal drugs. It is and was an incredibly painful struggle for him, and in some ways for me.

I know just what a mess his head is in because my head was in just such a mess not that many years ago and I have to admire his tenacity in staying sober and not using drugs to escape what is going on in his mind. I am thankful that the way my head works would not permit me to seek escape through mind-altering substances. Perhaps even more thankful that experiences in my youth had taught me that for me, unlike most, there was no escape into oblivion via drugs.

This is the struggle almost all of the homeless and addicts face in getting their lives back on track and why we need to begin using a long term mental health recovery model to be effective and efficient.

Experience had lead me to the conclusion that we had to change the way we think about, plan and deliver services to the homeless. Still I was blown away by the personal store told by a new friend, who when I asked if I could relate her story in my writing said if it would help someone I was welcome to post it on billboards around the lower mainland.

She was a heroin addict, one of those viewed as “just an addict”. The first time she cleaned up she fell back into addiction. The second time she cleaned up she stayed clean and thus had to face her inner demons sober and without heroin.

Obsessive/compulsive disorder and agoraphobia, can I ever relate. Maybe it was hearing in her story of the struggle we shared with these mental illnesses that struck such a cord with me. Once again I could only be thankful that mind-altering drugs was not a route that promised me escape from my mental demons and so I had avoided addiction.

Listening to her story was wrenching, illuminating and life affirming. But it left me more convinced than ever that we need to change our way of thinking, planning and focusing on addiction recovery. It was supporting to find in conversation that she too felt that we needed a much longer term, more mental illness recovery model in haw we approach and deal with addiction.

Perhaps the most telling and thought provoking statement she made in reference to addiction was “…its less painful”. Heroin addiction, being a heroin addict was less painful than dealing with her mental illness. I wonder how many of those who would have judged her “just an addict” would have the intestinal fortitude to deal with those mental demons that come with mental illness without escaping into addiction?

We need to change. We know our old and current approaches are not resulting in attaining effective and efficient outcomes for the homeless, the addicted. To just mindlessly continue doing what we have done in the past is insane behaviour, even more insane is to do more of what is not working.

It is time for leadership willing to embrace change, risk and new ideas to be applied to helping those suffering the blight of homelessness and/or addiction.

The following is a reply to an editorial in the Abbotsford Post, Tuesday September 18, 2007. I have posted a copy of the editorial below the reply

So, Mr. Ron Taylor’s solution to drugs is terrorism?

The reason that threats from “woolly faces” work is that they are terrorists and everyone knows they have and will kill for no other reason than they think you should die. So while Mr. Taylor is praising these terrorists for their ability to frighten drug dealers, he should remember that this ability came at the price of the sectarian violence he appears to cavalierly dismiss.

I am sorry but years of terrorist attacks on innocent bystanders; the deaths of thousands of men women and children; bombings; people shot because of their religious beliefs; people shot for saying or writing something someone disagreed with; are not, to me, an acceptable price to pay, even if Mr. Taylor seems comfortable with this because it makes threats made by the terrorists to drug dealers believable.

One week Mr. Taylor is praising our brave troops for fighting terrorists in Afghanistan and then he turns around and advocates turning terrorists in Canada as a solution to the drug problem. This would seem a little disingenuous and somewhat lacking in ethical consistency.

In keeping with the flow of ill considered babble, he laments the failure of the current system of criminal rehabilitation. Now when I see the failure of rehabilitation, whether criminal or addiction, I suggest looking around and trying practices that have been successful in other jurisdictions in achieving recovery or rehabilitation. Mr. Taylor suggests we forget about rehabilitation and concentrate on whipping our criminals into top physical shape, which would … make them better and more dangerous criminals.

So in the world Mr. Taylor fondly envisions, not only will we have the gang violence and shootings currently plaguing the lower mainland, we have the terrorists he wants to loose on our streets and the physically honed criminals he wants our prisons to churn out – all of these groups better armed than the police.

It is no wonder he supports the Canadian Armed Forces being in Afghanistan – we are going to need battle-hardened experienced guerrilla/terrorist fighting troops to retake our streets.

Mr. Taylor: solutions are not really solutions when they turn serious social problems into a societal disaster. Except to politicians who in their search for simple, easy solutions will thoughtlessly advocate anything that sounds good, no matter how negative the consequences would be.

It is this insistence on simplistic solutions to complex problems that have no easy, quick or perfect solutions that has us floundering with crime, the drug trade, rehabilitation and recovery. We just might want to try applying rational, realistic thought and planning which has demonstrated an ability to solve complex problems.

I do have a final question for Mr. Taylor: just what dictionary were you using that defined justice in terms of being dispensed by terrorists?

Lessons from Belfast:

One benefit of traveling as I am at the moment is the opportunity to see how other communities deal with the same problems we face. So, it was irresistible to explore why areas of Belfast that were the centres of violence during the sectarian conflict now have virtually no drug dealing, no break-and- enters and almost no instances of paedophilia, all severe problems for us.

A good place to start the search was Taughmonagh Social Club in a staunchly Protestant area of Belfast, once a known gathering place for the Protestant militias during the troubles. Not an easy place to get people to talk even when introduced by a member. But a good place to start because a once prevalent problem of drug dealing has totally disappeared.

The community became concerned because one individual was selling drugs to youngsters. He was twice warned (nobody would admit by whom). He had excuses – he’d just lost his job, and he had marital problems. But the community just didn’t care – enough was enough. Men with “woolly faces” (the local slang for balaclava-covered faces), apprehended him, questioned him in their own inimitable fashion and found heroin and crack in his possession.

He was hauled to a public area, his shirt stripped off, hot tar was poured on him and then the feather contents of two pillows was added. A notice was pinned around his neck saying “I am a drug selling scumbag.” The police were unable to find the offenders (local feeling is they didn’t try very hard), while the individual left the country and now lives in Scotland. Drug dealing in the area stopped overnight. In another case in a nearby Catholic area, a paedophile was beaten and then locked in a van with four pit bulls for over an hour. He is considered unlikely to reoffend.

These are not isolated instances. Known break-and-enter offenders, drug dealers and those committing crimes of violence are routinely beaten. In these areas crime is almost non-existent, although there is some tolerance, for instance sale of marijuana is considered benign. Are there lessons for us?

Obviously, vigilante justice can’t be supported (although I must admit an attraction to introducing paedophiles to pit bulls). However, brutal though these actions are, they do disprove a common mantra that “more severe sentencing won’t solve the problem.” It just depends on the severity of the punishment.

A few extra months in prison won’t solve the problem, but how about a different kind of punishment that makes the whole experience very unpleasant? The equivalent of army basic training for a few months, Spartan living conditions, out of bed at 5 a.m., run ragged until exhausted each day, no TV, no so-called “treatment programs” with virtually zero success rate. Such sentences would offend the more sensitive of our citizens and would cause some unemployment among psychologists and sociologists but the evidence from those jurisdictions that have implemented such schemes is that they work.

Perhaps when rehabilitation fails and when our justice system seems to favour offenders over victims, it is time to scare the hell out of the bad guys.

Ron Taylor is a former Mission councillor who remains active in community affairs. Abbotsford Post

I read the blog below and the question it posed and felt the need to answer it:

I am greatly concerned about how drug use is affecting our communities. It worries me that young children are taking drugs and becoming addicted. how do we get our youth out of the pattern of drug addiction after they are addicted at for example, age 15?

As a First Nation educator I am working on changing the worldview of our youth for them to look into education as a viable option. instead of taking drugs for it could and probably would be a long road to get out of that to get back on the Red road

It is my experience that addicts – no matter what their age take drugs as an unhealthy way to deal with what, to avoid a long and involved listing, I shall simply call issues. Examples would be mental illness, the effects of growing up in an alcoholic household or environment, feelings, abuse etc.

Over the past several years I have been dealing with my mental health and growing up with alcoholism and it has and is a long, uncomfortable, often painful journey requiring a lot of effort and willpower.
Having been homeless and currently working at an shelter I have observed that those who go to treatment and get sober without dealing with the underlying issues they have, soon fall back into using.

Feel pain, unhappy, etc? The quick easy solution is to take a pill in our society. The reason so many fall back into addiction is that we do not provide the counselling and support they need to deal with their issues in a healthy manner and build good mental health habits.

Not just those with addiction either. As I worked to restore my mental wellness I observed that most of us have some kind of issue(s) that we should learn to deal with in a healthy way.

We forget or ignore the importance of the Spirit in our lives – at out peril.

It worries me that youth today seem to think the only way to party or have a good time is to get drunk or stoned. I am not claiming that when younger I and friends did not get drunk, merely that it was not the whole idea of partying to get high.
We seem to have, pretty much society as a whole, forgotten how to have fun without mind altering substances.

I recently read an article with which I agree that stated the only real “solution” to drug and alcohol problems is very long term and lies in raising healthy kids. Mentally healthy kids who when feeling sad, mad or upset have the tools and skills to deal with these negative emotions instead of turning to drugs for escape (temporary escape).
I went through a course at Triangle Resources a few years ago and was left wishing that the life skills and self knowledge had come to me as a youth.

My experiences with addicts, the mentally ill, my own mental illness (If I could and did catch the unhealthy mental attitudes and thought patterns of an alcoholic parent, then it follows that parents and society can pass mental unhealthiness on) and issues have convinced me that at the middle school level we need to have life skills courses. Imparting knowledge on anger, self esteem, that happiness is an inside job etc.

Not an easy task, but it is a necessary task if we want to raise a truely healthy and balanced generation – and end the human nissues that lead people to drugs as a dead end solution to their pain.

Forrest Gump was certainly correct with “Stupid is as Stupid does”. This point was thoroughly demonstrated by a Seattle radio host whom I had the misfortune of listening to on a CNN news report I had caught about a thoughtful approach to homelessness underway in Seattle.

I do not watch a lot of TV or CNN but as I was channel surfing for a way to kill some time inside out of the baking heat I caught the words homeless and Seattle as I flipped by CNN and having a strong interest in homeless issues felt compelled to stop and see what was going on.

It turned out that Seattle had developed a 59 (?) unit building to house the city’s worst homeless alcoholics. They defined worst as those who made the most hospital visits and had the most police interactions. In other words they defined worst as those homeless alcoholics who cost the most dollars to deal with.

For $13,000 a year Seattle had reduced the hospital visits by each individual from 3 – 4 a week to one a month and interactions with the police to near zero. Being Canadian I have to leave estimating whether this represents savings in the $$$100,000’s of dollars or $1,000,000+ to Seattle citizens and those more familiar with American medical costs. In any case this approach is saving Seattle taxpayers umpteen thousands and thousands of dollars per year.

In the middle of this report was a Seattle radio host criticizing this approach and calling for an end to the program. I am not sure whether this radio host was demonstrating his desperation for ratings or a complete lack of common sense, good judgment and financial wisdom. At any rate it was a pitiful sight and left me wanting to pass along this suggestion to the desperate or dumb host:

If you truly feel that strongly about this approach and want to end the program then step up and take responsibility. The solution is for the citizens of Seattle to pay for the first $13,000 of expenses, the current amount taxpayers are paying, for each and every person who would be in this housing tax- savings plan. You, and any other Seattle taxpayers foolish enough to agree this innovative housing approach should be shut down, will be responsible for paying the hundreds of thousands, millions of dollars incurred because they are once again homeless.

That is to say put YOUR money where YOUR mouth is; or put another way: put up or shut up!