"Wet Houses," where hopeless alkies go to drink til it kills em

One sunny November afternoon, a drunk staggered up to the building's front door.

His clothes were a mess, his eyes were bloodshot, his words were slurred, and he smelled like a bathroom in a cheap bar. Most any treatment center in the state would have immediately kicked him out.

He ran into St Paul's director Bill Hockenberger at the entrance. "Hey, Bill!" the man said, hoisting a 12-pack of beer. "I went shopping!"

"All right!" said Hockenberger, as he held the door open.

http://www.twincities.com/ci_16774107?nclick_check=1

Wow, grim stuff!

"I drink," he said quietly, "until I kill the damn day off."

Done that before, could count the times on one hand but still, too many times.

i think this place is amazing and compassionate

^^^ agreed

Yeah. I had never heard of this before, but a hospice model makes sense, the same way it make sense for the elderly who are dying. At a certain point, just a small amount of care, some comfort...it seems like the decent thing to do.

But this is a society where people get to make their own choices, however bad they are," Miles said. St. Anthony's, he said, "is a rational response to meeting people's needs." ... The approach, manager Hockenberger said, isn't treatment at all, but a "harm-reduction model."

Seems like the key bit of the whole article, and ought to be taken as advice for our response as a society to so many things. But isn't.

damn it must be hard to work there

c.a.d. otm

what a wonderful piece. and very pleased that there's an admirable quotient of sanity in the comments beneath.

like philosophically from one angle, generally, I agree, it is so compassionate and awesome to say, if you are who you are and you're going to do what you do let's all be honest about it and provide you with a place where the possibility that you'll hurt others will be minimized and you can just tunnel in -- but my care-provider instincts say, Jesus, no, no, nobody's actually hopeless, even the most hopeless case can get better, the whole concept of the hopeless case is kind of antithetical to lots of stuff I believe both from a nursing/caretaking perspective &, like, spiritually

i agree that no one is hopeless, but on the other hand not everyone gets better

I think the key is that the guys they discussed were all in their 50s and 60s, which is pretty much endgame for terminal alcoholism. If we were talking about guys in their 30s or 40s there would be a huge, huge grey area.

in a wider sense the gradation of the harm reduction model seems saner than the binary busybody problem solving approach and could prob benefit the whole world in a multitude of ways

hadn't heard of this place, but i spent some time with a doc here which is kinda the same deal.

Residents must have 20 or more admissions to detox centers in the last three years, two or more attempts at chemical dependency treatment, and have been homeless the majority of the last five years. Other indicators of eligibility include physical deterioration and evidence that the individual is incapable of self-management due to alcohol use.

like philosophically from one angle, generally, I agree, it is so compassionate and awesome to say, if you are who you are and you're going to do what you do let's all be honest about it and provide you with a place where the possibility that you'll hurt others will be minimized and you can just tunnel in -- but my care-provider instincts say, Jesus, no, no, nobody's actually hopeless, even the most hopeless case can get better, the whole concept of the hopeless case is kind of antithetical to lots of stuff I believe both from a nursing/caretaking perspective &, like, spiritually

but the thing is, this place DOES give these ppl hope - i feel like that's the whole point its detractors miss. these ppl are alcoholics and they don't want to change. it's not so much that they can't get help, but they don't want it. the only hopeless part of their situation, imo, is being homeless in a city that can get miserably cold in winter, not having a bed to sleep in and not getting enough to eat.

these places seem like a win-win situation to me: they're cost-effective, so they should keep the public happy, and they're safe so they make the lives of these guys just a little more bearable.

in a wider sense the gradation of the harm reduction model seems saner than the binary busybody problem solving approach and could prob benefit the whole world in a multitude of ways

Exactly what I meant. Also related to the "public health" model.

is the gender breakdown of long-term alcoholism skewed this heavily male-ward?

this place DOES give these ppl hope - i feel like that's the whole point its detractors miss. these ppl are alcoholics and they don't want to change. it's not so much that they can't get help, but they don't want it.
I understand what you're saying here, and it's not that I disagree. What is soul-crushing to me, and antithetical to the part of me that believes (and works) for people to overcome insurmountable odds, is the idea that people who want to hurt themselves should be given up on at some point because that's "what they want.". It's just hard to stomach, I guess.

It's not that I disagree with the idea that it's economically more viable -- it is! It's also safer for them to have somewhere warm and safe to go. I guess it's hard to shake the feeling that providing this service is also a tacit "we're giving up on you". It's just not what I do in my job, which requires a bottomless pit of optimism sometimes. To say it's ok to give up on people means that what I do is pointless, and that smarts.

This article made me so sad more than anything else.

i feel like giving up on them would be pushing them out in the street and letting them fend for themselves and die a miserable, horrific, lonely death in a snow-filled gutter. these people don't want anyone's help, they don't want to be forced to do things they don't want to do. and in being that way, they are giving us - the public, the society they actually do belong to - a chance to show true compassion and acceptance and kindness.

it IS sad to read about, la lachera, i totally agree. i would hate to have this kind of life happen to anyone i care about, but it's also uplifting to know that there is an organisation out there that really cares about the needs of this group of people.

I'm not disagreeing with any of that -- I agree with you that it's better for them to have a place to stay, etc. I totally 100% agree. I just have trouble -- emotionally, personally -- accepting that people cannot be convinced to change their minds about what they want. It's just depressing. That's all. I realize that it's fundamentally true that not everyone's mind can be changed; I just have trouble seeing people make that choice even as strangers in an article. It's a super difficult place to work, I'm sure.

i actually feel more optimistic about things knowing this place and others exist. i think it is more like giving up on them to continue making them go to treatment, usually through court order on probation or something where the alternative would be going back to jail, when they don't want it and it's not going to work. it gives them some kind of agency in their life when they have nothing else to make them feel ok.

It's true --I've agreed with this over and over.

I think we're talking about two different planes here. One is reality, where everything we're saying makes sense and is true. There's another plane, one that puts aside those realistic considerations, and without those realistic concerns in mind, it's basically a place for people to kill themselves. And that's profoundly sad no matter how you look at it, realistic/economic concerns aside. It's tough to swallow, is all I'm saying. Not that I won't swallow it or support it, just that it's philosophically difficult. For me.

I guess last resorts are always going to be a little dark. That's why they're last resorts.

i don't feel like they're the only ones killing themselves though, and it isn't starting with them moving into this place. i think these are people who have suffered for a long time due to the actions of others (people or institutions) also. it is sad because everything is sad. i have become a v pessimistic person about this kind of thing i guess, addictions and mental illnesses

LL: In a tiny, tiny way, with none of the judgey-ness and 100x more of the good stuff, the...near-compulsion you feel to reach/help/save people and not give up on them might be like how crazy Christians feel about getting the rest of us to see our potential as Children of Christ through salvation and right living, or whatever crazy trip they happen to be on.

Your willingness to accept a harm-reduction solution as having benefits for people who believe something different from you even though you personally abhor it is exactly what the Evangelicals do NOT do. I think that's real tolerance and I admire you so much for that and for your optimism and hope for people.

Last night I drank to forget. I can't remember anything but I had to call my folks to give me a ride home... or they detected I was drunk and came and got me. Thinking about what people must of thought of me last night, where I was, is torture. And I've googled the nearest mental hospital for "mental health and substance abuse treatment" a couple times today mainly because I like the idea of living free and being able to try to write a movie because there is no distractions (besides the classes). I know what it's like there and I hated it. And yet I have the tab open for the place.

I drink at most twice a month over the past 6 months. And every time I blackout.

there's a samuel beckett story ('short prose piece'?) called "the lost ones", which describes a big cylindrical room in which people sort of blindly shuffle around going nowhere; and there are some ladders in the rooms, and high up on the walls are all these little nooks and tunnels to nowhere, and so people wait in lines at the base of the ladders and then when it's their turn they take the ladder and carry it over to whatever hole they want to climb into and chill out for a while. but if you stay up there too long, sometimes the people waiting in line get impatient and walk off with the ladder, leaving you stranded (although they're also pretty good about bringing it back when they notice that you want to come down). and then at one point he describes people falling asleep in the nooks, and other people coming up to check on them, and thumping them on the back to wake them up.

for some reason this thread made me think of that.

Ok I have written and deleted like three five versions of this post, but basically:

* Thank you Laurelita. I've never been a believer in any organized religion or deity or w/e, but I do believe that people can decide to try to improve their lives (esp. in this country!) when they want to. Seeing someone decide that they don't want to is like watching someone drive a car into a wall. It's hard. (Please note: I am just talking about the decision one makes to change one's life circumstances -- success in actually changing the circumstances depends on so many different factors that it's ridiculous to think that we have any control over all of them. I am just talking about a person's belief in him/herself and the value of his/her life. I guess basically I am a self esteem evangelist.)

* I don't "personally abhor" anything (well, maybe Dick Cheney, Xe/Blackwater, international arms smuggler Viktor Bout, bigotry, hatred, etc.), but actually seeing anyone fully give up on themselves is haunting.

it is sad because everything is sad.
this

While I do think that there's something genuinely kind and noble in establishing a place like this, it also seems really risky, just opening that door. Here's why: you know who would have gone to this place, and died there, if he'd known about such a place while he was drinking? Raymond Carver. You know what I mean? Or maybe John Berryman, or Jackson Pollock. Plenty of people who instead ran into the barrier of, fuck, I can degrade the shit out of myself but I can't drink myself to death in a gutter, and that's where I'm headed, so I must change. You sort of have to wonder whether the "no-hopers" in this place who've been through detox 10 times are actually 5 more detoxes away from a great miracle. That's a saying they have in AA/NA -- "don't leave before the miracle happens" -- and there is something to it. I also believe that people have the right to live as they see fit, but at the same time...it's a thorny question, to me.

Please NB tho people who know me to be combative I am just discussing concepts that this raises for me, not goin' "this is bad!" or anything -- I just think there are ideas worth reflecting on when considering this place.

for each of those cases, you have to ask how many died in circumstances so much worse than what's being offered here though?

this place is for people with no money/family/etc. not for world-renowned drunks. they had options. these people don't.

x-post

and if you have been drinking rubbing alcohol and mouthwash on the streets foe decades, man, this must seem like such a blessing.

anyway, its an eye-opening story! didn't know such a thing existed.