Here, sitting while waiting for an answer once again, I start writing. I have thought about it many times, but I haven't done it, although today I am. I do it so I don't scream or, perhaps, so I don't cry from helplessness, a feeling that surely many people have experienced.
I don't want to be a victim; in fact, I hate and reject those who claim family traumas to justify their decisions. Every day that the sun rises on the horizon, many people go out, well, we go out, in search of answers to our needs. Many find them because it really depends on themselves, at least when we only talk about material things. But many others don't achieve it.
Many others seek answers in the public administration, from the closest one, be it city councils, health services and even in the justice system itself if necessary. Every day that passes, they realize that the system does not work correctly when it comes to a problem of drug and/or alcohol addictions, not their own but of a loved one. This type of problem generates a self-destruction of the person, without them being aware of it, and affects their entire closest environment.
You knock on one door and then another asking for help, and the answer is always the same: "We can't because he doesn't want to."
With that phrase begins the ordeal of a mother, a father, a brother/sister, cousin or even a friend who tries to help their loved one. They go in procession from one administration to another, to the health center, to the hospital and to the justice system itself, trying to force him to love himself, but in all of them they encounter the same wall:
"If he doesn't want to, we can't do anything."
Some dare to say that, if he wants to die like that, so be it. Without a doubt, the lack of empathy and, above all, the lack of legal tools that allow those who have that empathy to force a person to love themselves, to try to alleviate their condition, or even, when their state is totally irreversible, to have a dignified death with palliative care that prevents them from suffering.
But the phrase "it is his own will" is laughable because, if there is something that alcohol or drugs do, it is to nullify your will, your cognitive capacity to discern what is right from what is wrong, to the point that, if you committed a crime, it is considered a mitigating circumstance. But then, if committing a crime is a mitigating circumstance because you didn't know what you were doing, why is it that when you take him to a doctor and ask for a voluntary discharge in a state of intoxication, it is considered that you do know what you are doing?
That is the drama that many families live every day: we don't find an answer while we see how our loved one slowly withers until they are reduced to bones and, finally, pass to the Garden of Eden. And you are left without believing in the system that should protect you and your loved ones, and you are left with the unanswered question:
Why can't the justice system or even a doctor force a person to be admitted to a center that treats their addictions by force? Why is it preferable to send him to a prison after committing a crime than to force him to go through a center that helps him to heal and prevent him from finally committing crimes in search of money to buy drugs or alcohol? Why? Why?
And many other questions that remain when it is too late: What did I do wrong that I couldn't help him? Why couldn't I prevent it? Why hasn't anyone helped me?
You are simply left without an answer, and therefore, it occurs to me to ask for a legislative change that allows a doctor or a judge to order the mandatory admission to addiction treatment centers for these people who do not leave drugs.
Without a doubt, to combat the problem of drugs we must prevent there from being addicts, and this would be the first step. Putting them in a prison for having committed a crime under the influence of drugs does not alleviate the problem, but rather aggravates and complicates it over time.
