There are a lot of addicts out there and in the best of times they cause a lot of problems both for their immediate social circle and society at large. Post-SHTF addicts will be one of your most pressing problems and you’re going to have to deal with them.
Like always I’ll tell you what my credentials are to talk about this. Firstly I wrote about crime for a long time and when you cover crime long enough you’ll see that the majority of crime in this country involves drugs. That’s not to say drugs caused the crime just that drug use and drug culture is involved in criminality. The second is I’m 20 years sober and have helped at least two people get clean.
It’s a difficult process.
I’m going to use non-clinical language to make this simpler but I am going to use some jargon which will make remembering these point easier. I’m going to break addicts into three categories and describe their characteristics and the potential treatment. But first I want to make something clear.
You are doing/have done no favors to addicts in your life by helping them. You are literally killing them with kindness. Even things like buying them food or giving them a place to stay is just making you feel better about the situation but in fact you’re paving the road to their eventual OD. Addicts don’t realize they need to change until they hit rock bottom.
You should help their children by keeping them safe, and separated, from their addict parent. In my experience writing about criminality I’ve found there are two kinds of female heroin addicts – women who drop their kids off somewhere safe and disappear and women who pimp out their kids. Do not let a junkie be responsible for kids. Also homeless addicts tend to cluster around certain areas and if left unchecked will basically live there waiting for dealers. Eventually this will cause a “homeless” problem:
In political jargon our “homeless” problem is a nicer way of saying we have millions of addicts and mentally ill people overwhelming our system. But that’s a subject for a different time.
So for our purposes addicts will come in three categories and the treatment for each in an emergency situation will be different. You have:
Physically addicted addicts – These are people on highly addictive substances that have dangerous withdrawal symptoms which can (but doesn’t always) lead to death. Heroin, opioids and many “helpful” psych meds fall in this category. When heroin addicts used to (I’m not sure if they still do) describe themselves as “sick” when they needed a fix it’s because they literally were. Every time a physically addicted person uses a countdown begins to when they will basically become near fatally ill which is why pill poppers and dopers (as we olds call them) commit so many crimes. Big pharma is responsible for much of this through the opioid over prescription epidemic. End stage alcoholics develop physically dependence to the point they can die if they don’t drink. This is called the DTs and features hallucinations which makes them very dangerous to be around.
Female and younger male addicts will often turn to prostitution because it’s the quickest way to ensure they have the money they need for their next fix. All will steal given the chance. Human trafficking gangs prey on these women so there is an added layer of danger to for those around an addict.
These people need medical monitoring and sometimes intervention to get clean. This often includes either tapering them off the drug or replacing it with another like methadone or suboxone. In a post collapse scenario it’s likely they’ll simply run out and go “cold turkey” which in the best of times is not very effective. With heroin users in particular the most dangerous withdrawal symptom will be the diarrhea and vomiting which will dehydrate them to the point of organ failure. In some cases the heart rate and blood pressure will elevate so much they go into cardiac arrest. Tapering them off whatever their addicted to is the best case scenario
If you have addict like this you can’t ditch, unfortunately you’ll need to restrain them and keep them hydrated. You also might have to use CPR in the extreme. Because in this situation the addict didn’t want to get clean it’s unlikely they’ll pass up chances to use again in the future. Because many sold themselves for a fix their self esteem is low enough that they’ll see themselves as bad people and will begin to act accordingly – including betraying you to a dealer. So be aware and don’t let them talk to some “friends” or go about alone.
Psychologically addicted addicts – These are people whose withdrawal symptoms are in their head and only dangerous related to how violent they act or how panicked they get. Drugs like cocaine are psychologically addictive. These addict have pursued their fixes in the same way as other addicts but don’t get “sick” when they don’t use, instead they become anxious and upset while developing a “overwhelming” desire to use.
These people can be effectively dried out in an emergency but they will still have withdrawal symptoms like shaking, chills and a host of other things that their brain is telling them is happening to their body. Though their bodies don’t need the drug they can hyperventilate themselves into some sort of medical episode. In general treating them like a heroin addict is a good idea but their medical outcome in an emergency will be better.
Coke and speed users in particular tend to have years of higher functioning than other addicts and speed is prescribed by doctors to kids for ADHD disgustingly. This can be a negative in that coke and speed addicts tend to gravitate toward nightlife work (working in bars or stripping) and mid level criminality (embezzlers or con artists) so their social circle can be problematic for preppers and they’ve often crossed people for money who may take a opportunity to get payback in a chaotic time.
Speed withdrawal can cause depression and paranoia as well as psychotic episodes so be ready for a fight if you have a person who needs their “ADHD medicine” in a survival scenario. Coke users have vivid nightmares when their coming off. They begin to slow down to the point that they’re easier to physically deal with.
Drug habituated individuals – This usually applies to pot smokers and binge drinkers. They aren’t addicts but are habituated to using on a regular basis. Often they live a lifestyle based around getting drunk or high – think the 35 year old who lives with their parents sitting in a basement playing games and getting high all day. They do share one thing with addicts that makes them hard to treat, that is maturity level.
In addiction recovery we tell people that basically you stopped emotionally maturing the day you got addicted – which is why so many addicts act like teenagers. Part of the sober lifestyle is that recovering addicts have a lot of growing up to do. It’s clearly more complex psychologically than that but we keep it simple so addicts can embrace the process. Habituated people have that same problem. When you watch a Dr Phil with some adult living like a child while smoking pot this is what’s going on. But for this to work these people need enablers and habituated people have a lot of them. Enabling looks like this:
Or this:
With habituated people you will skip right over the detox and move to the part where you’re dealing with a spoiled, entitled douchebag who demands you take care of them while taking a hot steaming shit on you – in other words a teenager.
Binge drinkers often end up in AA and benefit greatly but most could just stop if they want. Both pot smokers and binge drinkers tend to not have developed social skills so they use their drug of choice as a social crutch or coping mechanism. For both I’ve found that having a big brother/big sister relationship with them is important. In an emergency giving them something to do, praising them for minor things and discreetly monitoring them is what I’d advise. Unfortunately you’re going to have a extra child in your bunker with people like this.
If you ever quit smoking you’ll get a sense of how these people feel. When I quit smoking (I picked it up in recovery) I started feeling awkward while walking around or chit chatting. I was used to having something in my hands. When standing at a crosswalk I used to light up waiting for the light, once I couldn’t I felt like everyone was starting at me. A lot of my socializing was taking breaks with co-workers to grab a smoke. When I quit smoking my socializing declined almost as much as when I stopped drinking.
These people will feel that awkwardness to a greater extent, they have trained themselves in an almost Pavlovian way to comfort themselves with drugs or alcohol and in a highly stressful situation this will add further pressure on their already fragile, undeveloped psyche.
I personally have very limited interaction with addicts these days and I encourage you to take the same tact. But you might have a loved one who you refuse to leave to their own fate so I wrote this out. If you really love them though you’ll help them get clean by cutting out the enabling.
https://www.instagram.com/oldtimeypistolero/
Source link
Author Rob Taylor
