Detox has been closed - when can we expect the first death?

Well, well, well! And where are addicts and drunks supposed to get emergency help now? Don't count on Detox any more, because it's been shut down. From forty to eighty persons used to be helped to detoxify themselves over a week followed by a week's stay while planning a program-assisted turnaround.

Now, only ten beds are available at P.I. - Washington, and then only for two days. I call that a housing program, not a recovery program.

So, what will happen to the folk who depended on Detox? Some of them just won't make it, I'm afraid. I think that a likely outcome is that deaths will occur that are attributable to the lack of an effective, sizable and recovery-oriented detoxification unit. Already people are showing up at the Detox site without the will or the money necessary for getting across and uptown and getting into PI - Washington. God help the poor addicts of this city. No one else, in my opinion, cares for them at all.

Who is responsible for this outrage? In my opinion, lay it at David Catania's feet. He has been after the discontinuation of direct substance abuse treatment by the District Government for a long time. And now he has gotten his way - creating misery in the process, misery for which he is responsible. His objective - contracting everything out - does not, in my opinion, meet the needs of the kind of patient APRA treated. It is classic right-wing Republican dogma to do away with as many government-run programs as possible, especially in fields like substance abuse treatment and prevention and mental health. Punishment is all addicts and alcoholics deserve, in this vindictive worldview. As a result, APRA staffers are now going through a very significant RIF, along with many others both in the Departments of Health and Mental Health. Some of the best and kindest DC Government employees I've ever known worked at APRA, and I should know because I served as APRA's Patient Advocate for 18 years before I retired. That job, too, has been eliminated, and now there's no one left looking out any longer for the needs and rights of some of this city's most vulnerable patients. And let's not trick ourselves into believing that DC taxpayers won't have to pay good money when wrongful death lawsuits are lost because of these policies. You will, oh, yes, you will! It's a sorry, crying shame