[astonmartinrx371]

Karma Yeshe, kind of has a point with addiction in some ways, to most
recovering addicts theres a kind of "bottoming out" process, as someone whose suffered addictions myself one reaches a point where the sheer mess of things reaches the point where you can't go on, however if adequate support systems are not in place in the community it can lead to further addiction problems.

I gave up drugs after spending 10 weeks in a psych hospital after, I found it easy to give up after they were a contributing factor into developing psychosis. I moved to another city and got a place in supported accommodation for people recovering from psychiatric problems. The place was very badly run I didn't engage with the staff because I was still very psychotic and they really didn't make much of an effort to resolve the situation. There were two alcoholics there who didn't really have much in the way of problems with mental health and the staff despite knowing my past history of addiction were quite happy to let me start drinking with them and the whole cycle started again.

As for letting people suffer well its not just on them your inflicting suffering - its there family, friends and the community. Plus by letting the addiction carry on in the case of hard drugs or multiple addictions your risking the death of the addict. Its a tough call and one I wouldn't like to make but thats from my perspective on the bottoming out process. But you can put someone through the most expensive rehab in the world but until something in them wants to give up they won't. Some people also never bottom out.

With regards to prison, I've known plenty of people who've been to prison, I've never seen it really rehabilitated by it, just further brutalised, dehumanised and made a better criminal, particularly in the case of traumatised young people, further brutalising them at crucial stages in their development is a life long recipe for trouble.

With the long stretches given in America it might be different but thats just management really, take the person out of society for a very long time. Prison doesn't just dehumanise the prisoners but the guards as well. I knew a former prison officer who became an alcoholic as a reaction to the stress of the job.

I've also heard about the brutality of prison officers - someone i knew who had a partially severed finger in prison was told by the guard to stick it you know where! I don't have the answers I'll leave that to wiser minds but I just thought I'd share some perspectives from experience.