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US: A Christmas Story

The only reason I'm at home this year instead of in jail -- or worse, dead -- is because California voters said 'treatment not jail.'

Five years ago, I was in jail during Christmas and in the full grip of drug addiction. Family, Christmas, all of that was second to my addiction and I was heading nowhere. When I was re-arrested four years ago I figured I would go just go back to jail, a place that I had been in and out of for years. However, since my last time in jail the voters said "treatment not jail" and this time things worked out differently.

I went into treatment and began the long path of getting my life back in order. I was 40 and had been using drugs, including heroin and methamphetamines since I was 14. Breaking the bonds of addiction was not an easy thing. Long-term addicts will have mental health issues and I was no exception. Going to jail did not address this basic problem. I needed to be stabilized mentally, which my treatment provider did. I was diagnosed as being bipolar and was placed on lithium so I could begin to understand what needed to be done to get clean.

To illustrate what a difference Proposition 36 makes, when I was arrested in 1990 the attitude was "you clean up or go back to prison." The problem with that mentality was that it did not take into account someone who had been in the throes of addiction for well over a decade. I had just lost my brother and dealt with it the only way I knew how, by self-medicating. Trust me, breaking addiction is a process and it doesn't happen overnight. There was no way that I had the life skills. Prison also was not a deterrent for drugs. People in my own cell were dealing drugs.

Proposition 36 funding is due to expire this year and the politicians are already trying to make cuts and add jail time to those who backslide. Yes, Proposition 36 can be improved but cutting mental health service funding and adding short jail sentences are definitely not the way to do it. The voters wanted Proposition 36 passed and are behind treatment instead of incarceration. The clear message of the voters is to make this work Apparently some of these politicians don't get it, but I know because I've lived it.

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Posted by: SoulRiser
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Posted in: News on December 19, 2005 @ 12:00 AM

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