Give our loved ones the help they need
Published Monday, May 28, 2007

Susan Hanley Lane
Life In The Middle

What do courts, guidance counselors, psychiatrists, police, social workers, hospitals, emergency rooms, prisons, psychiatric units, probation officers, bail bondsmen, judges, lawyers, doctors, nurses, prison guards and pastors all have in common?

Answer: Every one of them has to deal with the messy and painful aftermath of substance abuse.

For every alcoholic or hopelessly hooked drug addict you see, there are at least a dozen people who are directly affected by the addict's or the alcoholic's unquenchable need for the high that can never satisfy.

I know. I grew up surrounded by a whole family of them. Being one of the few sober ones in the crowd is not a pleasant experience, but it taught me something that most people would never guess. More than anyone else wants it for them, the addict herself, the alcoholic himself, want to put their poison down.

They just don't know how.

That's where treatment comes in. Studies have shown that every dollar spent on substance abuse treatment saves seven dollars that would have been spent cleaning up the aftermath of untreated substance abuse.
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Yet, unbelievably, the North Carolina General Assembly this week cut substance abuse treatment out of a bill it passed to give mental health care parity with other diseases that require serious medical treatment.
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Contributor: Don Phillips
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