Last night we were watching a wonderful movie I highly recommend, “At Home at the End of the World,” based on a book I absolutely adore by Michael Cunningham (pre-“The Hours”) Unfortunately, we were interrupted midway by a phone call by a tweeker (not someone I know well) who was crashing and panicked about what to do, as he couldn’t return to his recovery house and had a staph infection on his arm—a common result of needle use.
It is very, very difficult to know what is best to do in this situation. Those of us in recovery are taught that part of keeping ourselves sober is to always keep our hand open to the addict/alcoholic reaching out for help. At the same time, it has been my hard-learned experience that addicts who are trying to get sober are rather more likely to pick up if they know that at the end of a three-day binge, they can depend on someone to nurse them through their crash and help them pick up the pieces.
Ultimately, protecting them from the bearing the full brunt of the consequences of their use, in my opinion, ends up enouraging chronic relapse. Sometimes a addict needs to spend a night wandering the streets, desperate, or to be hours alone being (mis) treated in an E.R. to learn to associate picking up with its attendant perils, uncushioned by anyone.
What makes this tough love so tough is that drug and drinking binges, particularly meth-fuled ones, can be dangerous—to the binger and to others in his path. Sometimes active intervention by a third party or parties is a matter of medical necessity. But otherwise, I am more inclined to let the abuser to face the consequences of his slip without running to his aid. I think it greatly increases the chances that next time he is tempted—and he will be--he’ll make the call he needs to make before he picks up, when my help can really make the difference.
And this, I might add, applies to me as well. Prison sucked, in a big way, but I had no one to blame—including the informer who turned me in—on where I was but myself. It’s too bad I had to learn the hard way that I was not in some special category of those who somehow don’t suffer the consequences of their actions, but it was something I did have to learn, and take complete responsibility for.
The young man in crisis ended up finding a couch for the night and we haven’t heard back from him yet. We were able to watch the rest of the film.
MCO 2005
P.S. SEVERAL HOURS LATER: Hot Air Balloon found out the young man in question has been arrested for hitting two parked cars, and not while driving his own car, either. Luckily, no one was hurt, but see what I mean about the dilemma about whether or not to intervene? Someone completely innocent could easily have been injured or killed.
