Mental Illness

cawacko said:
Where you here people who have loved one's who are addicts you often hear there is very little you can do until the person truly decides they want to help themselves. Now i'm not saying that to let families off the hook but I'm sure we've all heard stories from addicts themselves that so no matter how much people tried to help them it wasn't until they made the decision they weren't going to get better.
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Absolutely. It's called rock bottom. Some survive, some don't. It's the sad reality of addiction. What can help though is when there are more services available for those that do want help and if enough have that availability it does change the community. There will always be some who ar to far gone. It's just a sad part of the realities of life. As a society we can mitigate these outcomes by having more available opportunities than we currently have.
 
Right said:
There's no question that a family with an afflicted adult has a moral obligation and I think for the most part live up to that, or try to.

Having lived with this second hand, my mother's brother was a functioning addict. Former Marine Sergeant, crashed his MG and the VA took him for a two-year ride on the morphine roller coaster. When he got out he graduated college, became an accountant with the Ford Motor Company, single, lived frugally and max'd out his stock portfolio with Ford matching investments. I don't know how many millions he had but enough to attract a certain type of woman who eventually worked him back into drugs and disenfranchised him from first his friends, then his family, then legally married him even though they never lived together. Even with medical and legal resources that my family has we couldn't bring him back to reality and he died alone. His estate, including long-held family property, went to his gold digger "wife".
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Wow, sorry man. That's a bitter story. That truly sucks.
 
crowonapost said:
Absolutely. It's called rock bottom. Some survive, some don't. It's the sad reality of addiction. What can help though is when there are more services available for those that do want help and if enough have that availability it does change the community. There will always be some who ar to far gone. It's just a sad part of the realities of life. As a society we can mitigate these outcomes by having more available opportunities than we currently have.
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I'll speak from a SF perspective. We have spent millions on services to try and help people with very little to show for it. (now life is on going so we're never going to not have homeless people or people down on their luck of course). So it goes back to should we force people to get help? There's a huge 'homeless advocacy group' in SF so I think many are aware here of the services that are offered.

Again, no easy answers.
 
Right said:
Back in the day we had large state mental hospitals where thousands were deemed incapable of making decisions for themselves so housed there. Anyone who understand the lyrics to Fire and Rain or has watched One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest will have at least one side of the story.

(I grew up a few miles from where James Taylor was committed. As kids we used to ride our BMX type bikes in the woods behind the buildings and saw dozens of old numbered graves behind the fenced area of that compound, so I'm sure lots of weird shit went on there.)

Then the so-called miracle drugs came around which allowed most of these people to function within the range considered normal so they got out and lived with their families and in some cases become productive citizens who could take care of themselves. Now it's somehow fashionable to have a problem but don't take the prescription and society is supposed to be OK with that. Obviously the pendulum has swung too far to one side and the situation has to be reevaluated and changes made. Yeah, that will mean some folks won't have rights that they think they should but if you are of reduced mental capacity and can't live a normal life that doesn't give you the right to be a nuisance to the rest of society.
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Lol, they make for good ghost hunting episodes!
 
SmarterthanYou said:
just curious, but what about the responsibility of the family members with regards to someone who may be homeless or mentally ill......or even a drug addict?
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I've seen 2 close friends who took responsibility for their drug addicted and/or mentally ill family members get sucked dry of everything they saved for their
retirement and their own care in their old age....
It ain't worth the cost....
 
set up a death lottery

Applicants can come to some central building, where they enter a pressurized chamber. Then you run a random number generator such that 1 in 10 applicants will "win" the lottery and be put to death via hypoxia.


It's painless, and without worry. Applicants would literally go to their deaths with a feeling of hypoxia-induced euphoria.

To entice applicants, you award the other 90% that the random number generator doesn't decide to kill a monetary sum of say, 1k.

1,000 dollars is a lot to these types of people. :)

Desperate people will keep going back for their stipend until they win the lottery and go off to sleepyland. :)

Given a population of ~6500 homeless drug addict headcases:

The number of people who are homeless in San Francisco is 6,686, according to an official count by the city of San Francisco in 2015.
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http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/San-Francisco-homelessness-by-the-numbers-10767735.php


You can bring a population of 6500 down to a population of 100 after only 40 iterations, (a nearly total wipeout) with a cost of only ~6.4 million dollars. That has to be super cheap compared to other ways of dealing with the problem.
 
cawacko said:
I'll speak from a SF perspective. We have spent millions on services to try and help people with very little to show for it. (now life is on going so we're never going to not have homeless people or people down on their luck of course). So it goes back to should we force people to get help? There's a huge 'homeless advocacy group' in SF so I think many are aware here of the services that are offered.

Again, no easy answers.
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I know, you are right. There are no easy answers. I have directly dealt with mental illness with an ex. It was the worst case of borderline Personality disorder. Would not wish the experience on anyone. It literally took 3 forced hospital stays in 3 different states by local law enforcement to get her to deal with and take medication. The only thing that stabilized the mania was medication and she was hell bent on never taking it because Gawd was gonna' save her & everyone was out to get her. Crap like that. Turns out the state did intervene, did take her rights away and it was finally the thing that got her stabilized. All because she changed her doctor and stopped taking her medication.
 
Imperator said:
set up a death lottery

Applicants can come to some central building, where they enter a pressurized chamber. Then you run a random number generator such that 1 in 10 applicants will "win" the lottery and be put to death via hypoxia.


It's painless, and without worry. Applicants would literally go to their deaths with a feeling of hypoxia-induced euphoria.

To entice applicants, you award the other 90% that the random number generator doesn't decide to kill a monetary sum of say, 1k.

1,000 dollars is a lot to these types of people. :)

Desperate people will keep going back for their stipend until they win the lottery and go off to sleepyland. :)

Given a population of ~6500 homeless drug addict headcases:


http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/San-Francisco-homelessness-by-the-numbers-10767735.php


You can bring a population of 6500 down to a population of 100 after only 40 iterations, with a cost of only ~6.4 million dollars. That has to be super cheap compared to other ways of dealing with the problem.
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There is a common sense practicality in this that many will not get.
 
Imperator said:
set up a death lottery

Applicants can come to some central building, where they enter a pressurized chamber. Then you run a random number generator such that 1 in 10 applicants will "win" the lottery and be put to death via hypoxia.


It's painless, and without worry. Applicants would literally go to their deaths with a feeling of hypoxia-induced euphoria.

To entice applicants, you award the other 90% that the random number generator doesn't decide to kill a monetary sum of say, 1k.

1,000 dollars is a lot to these types of people. :)

Desperate people will keep going back for their stipend until they win the lottery and go off to sleepyland. :)

Given a population of ~6500 homeless drug addict headcases:


http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/San-Francisco-homelessness-by-the-numbers-10767735.php


You can bring a population of 6500 down to a population of 100 after only 40 iterations, with a cost of only ~6.4 million dollars. That has to be super cheap compared to other ways of dealing with the problem.
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And you could reprocess the bodies and feed them to the 100 that are left, saving even MORE money. ;)
 
crowonapost said:
I know, you are right. There are no easy answers. I have directly dealt with mental illness with an ex. It was the worst case of borderline Personality disorder. Would not wish the experience on anyone. It literally took 3 forced hospital stays in 3 different states by local law enforcement to get her to deal with and take medication. The only thing that stabilized the mania was medication and she was hell bent on never taking it because Gawd was gonna' save her & everyone was out to get her. Crap like that. Turns out the state did intervene, did take her rights away and it was finally the thing that got her stabilized. All because she changed her doctor and stopped taking her medication.
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Sorry you had to go through that.
 
cawacko said:
Sorry you had to go through that.
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Oh that's nothing. That was AFTER I left the nightmare. lol. I'm not sorry at all. Life's been great. If I told you all the fucking hell I went through before, you'd understand why I divorced and never looked back.
Either way, thank you for the kind thought cawacko.
 
crowonapost said:
Oh that's nothing. That was AFTER I left the nightmare. lol. I'm not sorry at all. Life's been great. If I told you all the fucking hell I went through before, you'd understand why I divorced and never looked back.
Either way, thank you for the kind thought cawacko.
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Not to derail the thread but did you have any inkling about this side of her when you dating?
 
crowonapost said:
Wow, sorry man. That's a bitter story. That truly sucks.
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Thanks but I turned out OK. He was 17 years older and when I was about 7 or 8 or so, during his leaves, he used to take me along to see his buddies in Southie. Even though we were from the 'burbs they liked him because he was a vet, Irish and tough as nails. This was back in the mid 60's, and I remember tooling around in a '60 Impala, which by then was a beater.

Later on when he was working for Ford one of his perks was new car every 6 months or so. This was the late 60's and early 70's, so you can imagine what kind of cars he was driving. He had a Mercury Cougar with a 428 and every option. I'd ride in the passenger seat and he was all on the gas or the brake. HE liked to pull in for gas and have the kid check the oil, then watch the kids face as he opened the hood. He had a long succession of cool cars, eventually into the yacht-sized Thunderbirds and Lincolns of the late 70's. His dad, my grandfather, born in '04 the same year as the Model T, drove every single one of them at least once.

In HS he hired me to build a large deck on the back of his house and we spent several days together. I remember meeting is gold digger. He had made reservations at a decent restaurant (I had to shower and change my clothes before we went) and we supposed to have dinner with his "girlfriend". She showed up 30 minutes late and ordered two meals, to go. I remember looking at her with disgust and she accused me of ogling her. When her food came all boxed up she left, and that was the last time I ever saw her.

She worked my uncle for years and the poor bastard would never listen to anyone how absolutely toxic she was.

The big sting is knowing that whore is sitting on a big inheritance that should have gone to his real family.
 
NOVA said:
I've seen 2 close friends who took responsibility for their drug addicted and/or mentally ill family members get sucked dry of everything they saved for their
retirement and their own care in their old age....
It ain't worth the cost....
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the drug addiction can't be dealt with familial wise, as it falls squarely upon the addict. the only thing the family can really do is try to help when the addict actually wants help. mentally ill, if its not bad, then family help can be done, but the family has to make the decision of whether or not to institutionalize said member.
 
crowonapost said:
I know, you are right. There are no easy answers. I have directly dealt with mental illness with an ex. It was the worst case of borderline Personality disorder. Would not wish the experience on anyone. It literally took 3 forced hospital stays in 3 different states by local law enforcement to get her to deal with and take medication. The only thing that stabilized the mania was medication and she was hell bent on never taking it because Gawd was gonna' save her & everyone was out to get her. Crap like that. Turns out the state did intervene, did take her rights away and it was finally the thing that got her stabilized. All because she changed her doctor and stopped taking her medication.
Click to expand...

That's rough, especially because someone you were married to.
 
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