Dr. Keith Humphreys

Now, there are many people who are uncomfortable with that, like you're going to use pressure to put someone into treatment, isn't that really unethical?

Well, if someone with Alzheimer's disease wanders away from a nursing home, we go find them and we bring them back whether they want to or not because we assume that the disease is affecting their judgment.

So if they think they can survive out there, they're wrong and so we take them back whether they want to or not.

Well, the same thing is true, absolutely true of addiction.

It dramatically changes our judgment, impairs our judgment and without pressure many people will not stop using.

There's a study I like to quote by Doug Polson and colleagues of people seeking help for alcohol treatment.

And why this is a good one is because alcohol is legal, right?

So it's not the war on alcohol made them go.

Alcohol is legal.

But he asked all of them, has anyone leaned on you basically to quit drinking in the past year?

And 91% of them said yes.

The wife said...

I'm moving out with the kids if this continues.

The boss said, you show up drunk one more time, you're fired.

My lawyer said, this is your third drunk driving arrest.

You better get into treatment so the judge might take some mercy on you.

They're pressed in in a way you don't have to press people to seek care for, say,

chronic pain, you know, chronic pain sucks, everyone was happy to leave chronic pain, but people are ambivalent about giving up substances because again, it's rewarding, that's why people do it.

And so that press is necessary.

And so we're going to have to do that with the sort of criminally involved homeless addicted population, we're going to have to get comfortable with protections for sure, protections for civil rights, need to give them quality care, but to push them into treatment where they can regain their reason