Tough love.
“They’ll have to hit rock bottom.”
“If you don’t quit drinking, you’re out of here …”
Mental health therapist Mike Pond doesn’t like any of the sayings.
“'Out of here,' often ends up out on the streets,” he told the first Community Dialogue on Homelessness, Thursday in Maple Ridge.
“No one should have to hit rock bottom.”
Pond, who’s had his own struggles with alcoholism, doesn’t like any of the approaches.
Studies show that treating people that way only makes their addiction worse.
“In no other life-threatening illness do we kick people out for relapsing.”
Families practising 'tough love' have lost children to the streets, he added.
Pond was one of four panelists at the first of four sessions on homelessness, put on by the City of Maple Ridge in the Arts Centre Theatre. The sessions are a prelude to the proposed construction of a homeless shelter and housing complex at 21375 Lougheed Hwy.
Pond told of his own alcoholism, in which he lost his home, family and practice and spent two years on the streets and in recovery homes of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.
“We will not put a significant dent in homelessness until we treat addiction effectively.”
Homelessness and addiction are entwined and the former can’t be solved until the latter is addressed, he told the audience.
One way of getting public support for that is to show the amount of money that’s wasted in responding to treating the outcomes of addiction and homelessness.
He also said he was only offered faith-based 12-step Alcoholics Anonymous programs, which he said don’t work for most people with concurrent problems.
“This is a failure of the health-care system.”
Meanwhile, doctors, politicians and judges insist on focusing on AA-type programs.
“Until addiction is treated as a medical problem … we will not solve the homelessness problem. I know your loved ones deserve better. I won’t stop until they get it.”
Pond’s story is shown in a CBC documentary "Wasted," in which a brain scan shows his brain involuntarily craves alcohol.
UBC psychiatrist Dr. Michael Krausz pointed out that only 17 per cent of all the costs of addiction, such as police and medical care or homelessness, is spent on treatment.
“Why don’t we turn that around?”
Mental health and addiction services are the least funded in the health-care system, he added.
Krausz added that two-thirds of the people who are homeless or addicted have had some kind of trauma during childhood.
“We’re not seeing the suffering behind that.”
A lot of what people do to themselves isn’t pleasant.
“The question is why are they doing it?”
It’s not that complicated to realize that some people will need help.
The health-care system doesn’t focus on people who are shy or feel themselves to be failures, he added.
“So next time, if you meet a homeless person or if you meet someone who is severely addicted, please remember, they all carry a story with them. And they all have a lot of very tough experience.”
But there always will be homeless people, although addiction and mental illness are the most common causes of homelessness.
“We will never eradicate it. It was here 10 years ago, but you didn’t recognize it.”
Retired teacher Jan Topniak told the panel she’s spent a lifetime trying to get help for her brother, who was eventually diagnosed with schizophrenia.
“It took over 45 years for him to be properly diagnosed.”
Another family members is a drug addict with mental health issues. She’s met people who became addicted through traumatic events.
Don’t be ashamed, she told others.
“We live in a society of hurt people and we need to help everyone.”
She said schools need full-time counsellors.
She told Doug Bing, MLA for Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows, that proper help is needed for students in the elementary field.
Bing, along with several Maple Ridge councillors, were in the audience.
Nav Chhina, one of the panelists, related his own struggles with addiction and said there has to be help for kids in grades 7 and 8 – a time when they are trying to fit in and find their way in life.
He had started drinking in the last year of high school, despite coming from a strict family background.
“I was a bit insecure. I was overweight.”
The booze eased those feelings.
“For once in my life, I didn’t feel so constricted.”
He always felt he had to do well and and not let his family down.
“As soon as I had a little bit of alcohol, I was free. Just for a little bit …”
While he was at UBC, and partying four nights a week, he finished his business degree. Life was great.
“Then things took a serious turn.”
One serious motor vehicle accident followed another.
“And that’s when I got introduced to Percocet.”
The drug not only eased physical pain, but emotional pain.
Then a close friend died. He felt he deserved better in life.
Painkillers then led to heroine. He lost his condo and car and pawned his possessions.
“At one point, I was doing $9,000 cash a month of heroine,” he said, voice breaking.
“The people I was hanging out with were the most awful people. I had nothing to give. I tried to overdose so many times, I just wanted to end it.”
His parents eventually got him into long-term treatment.
But, he noted, if someone smokes and gets cancer, they’re not denied medical help. And if someone eats too much and gets diabetes, they get help.
“I didn’t do Percocet with the intent of one day ripping every single person off.”
Chhina used to think that homeless people deserved what they get.
UBC professor Paul Kershaw, with Generation Squeeze, said more people are at risk of homelessness as house prices skyrocket.
In 1976, it took someone five years to save up a 20 per cent down payment on a house. In Vancouver, that process will now take 23 years.
“For my generation, the housing market is breaking down, pushing homes out of the reach of the vast majority,” let alone those at risk because of addiction or illness.
Meanwhile, someone between 25 and 34 makes $9,000 a year less than a generation ago.
Kershaw said he’s proud of being Canadian, but this country has high levels of poverty and homelessness compared to other countries.
“I think one of the conclusions we have to draw is that Canadians really suck at reducing poverty and homelessness.”
But, he noted, Canada has done well at reducing poverty for seniors, because policies were followed that benefit all seniors.
“What we do is we individualize the problem.”
That results in people looking down on poor people rather than seeing it as a wider issue.
But a national housing strategy that benefits everybody would get widespread support and political will and also help homelessness, he said.
“If we just focus on street homeless, I’m worried that Canadians are going to repeat our problems that we’ve done for decades. We need a different way to create the political will.”
• The next Community Dialogue on Homelessness takes place Oct. 26, 7 p.m. in the ACT and deals with legal and policing issues.