Tough Love For Addicts?
Tough love for addicts, taken to extremes, becomes brutal. Now some excuses are just that. Excuses. But there are some difficult realities about addiction that should not be brushed off as an excuse. There are genuine hardships involved, and we’ll never be able to effectively deal with addiction until those are recognized, and we stop blaming the victim so much. Thus, I’m against depriving drug addicts of their welfare benefits in the name of tough love.
By the way, such a bill as Kentucky’s House Bill #208 not only denies food stamps, but also Medicaid (Medical Assistance) for anyone testing positive for drugs. So don’t be so sure that medical assistance will be available for all of these people. The argument supporting ‘tough love’ presumes that this assistance will be accessible. So I thought you should know that it may not be. See the following links:
http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/302702
I wonder what proponents would say if someone starves to death because of this bill’s restrictions? Would they say, “Oh, we were just doing tough love on him / her and he didn’t make the cut. Too bad, so sad.” Could you live with yourself, knowing that some have died due to this ‘tough love’? If we as a society are going to take public funds from the addicts, then morally, we’re obligated to provide recovery facilities for them, and not allow them to languish in the streets, begging, harassing passers by for money, and so on. Tough love for addicts is by no means the only way to address the problem of addiction, but it certainly is among the most brutal and careless ways. It’s easy. That’s all. Just cut ‘em off and let ‘em sink or swim. Yea, right.
At any rate, the gripe against tough love for drug addicts is likely a moot point as the may be dead on arrival and not be passed because of the logistics and costs of implementing random drug testing. See the following for details on this part of the story:
http://www.topix.com/forum/city/irvine-ky/TB0O3KDDFS8JDBJ53
Those addicts that have recovered however, should not assume that just because they were successful that ANYONE (read that EVERYONE) can do it. Others may have legitimate hardships that the successful did not, and the successful likely had some insights or other help that that the less fortunate did not. Curious that recovering drug addicts support most ardently the doling out of tough love to other addicts less fortunate than they.
I watch lots of Dr. Phil (*smile*), read much, and have experienced life with some close friends as well as lovers, who were also addicts. But never once in all that, could I deem it appropriate or helpful to apply the sort of extreme tough love that the Kentucky bill proposes. I could not completely cut them off from their aid. Doing that would be tantamount to simply sweeping the problem under the rug.
I personally have helped no addicts through the whole process of recovery. But I’ve read and witnessed enough accounts from those who have, to know that it’s wrong to employ a tough-love-only strategy. I don’t care if a person has helped 200 addicts. If they claim that we should just pull the plug on all aid to the drug addicted, then in my mind, they’ve become entirely incredible. It’s never right to turn a blind eye toward a problem. It’s just too easy under the guise of tough love, to neglect those who need help the most.
I wonder if there are any large-scale studies that show this tough-love approach to be any more effective at breaking addictions than the aid-based, more helpful approaches and interventions. I’ve never seen any, and I’ve been following the media for decades. In fact, the “strong points” about tough love would be perhaps more believable if the supporters could offer such data.
Does tough love for addicts (by that I mean the total cutoff of aid to the addict) really work? Or is it just something that people support who wish not to be bothered with other peoples’ problems? I believe it’s the latter because this approach makes it easy for people to just not get involved, requires the least resources, and it reduces the problem somewhat because many die. It’s cheap. But, it’s very risky as well. Tough love is TOUGH because it has a big negative side; people have, are, and will die of neglect because of it, and this is unconscionable.
Further, as I noted earlier: If you turn away too many of the poor like this, then you risk increased crime, and in extreme cases, small-scale uprisings. Further, more crime means that you’d have to pay more money to house these people in jails, which costs far more than just giving them their food stamps ($50,000 per year verses what? Perhaps $2000 or $3000 a year in food stamps?). In my estimation therefore, the ‘tough love’ approach may be pennywise, but is quite pound foolish.
A “stern NO” to a child who goes near a hot stove won’t kill him. THAT tough love is not nearly as tough as the sort of thing we’ve been discussing. So while it’s appropriate to slap a child on the hand to prevent him from coming to further harm, I don’t believe that the same is true for risking the death of an addict by taking his means of obtaining food away from him.
Indeed, we should not support giving the addict more drugs so he might escape the withdrawal symptoms. We should however, not just totally leave him out in the cold by taking away his food stamps. If ‘tough love’ means forcing the addict to withdraw from the drugs, then I agree with it. But if ‘tough love’ means letting the addicts languish in the streets without food, then I’m against it. It really depends on what we mean by ‘tough love’.
Further, while Dr. Phil uses that “tough love” phrase a lot, I don’t believe he would support a total cutoff of aid to the addicted. His ongoing help to that Ted Williams fellow is proof that he supports a more proactive and compassionate approach. He did not say to Ted, “Well, we’re just going to let you rot on the street until you come around.”
While I may not know firsthand all that an addict goes through during his withdrawal stages, I contend that many things do not require extensive experience to understand, and this is one of them. Further, I know of very few addicts in the thralls of their disease who would say, “Sure, go ahead. Take my food stamps away.”
Intent is one thing. But effect is quite another. While we may love someone through our tough-love tactics, that love is of little consequence if the person dies because of it. Tough love is highly over-rated.
For more details about the tough love movement to take public assistance away from drug addicts, see my Drug Testing For Food Stamps piece.
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Tags: Tough Love Addiction