My Frustrations with Humanity

I have labored, really labored, to improve the lives and conditions of others for almost 20 years. There have been a great number of individual triumphs – lives turned around, families restored, jobs saved, and lessons taught. And yet, the 21st century has seen a fair share of horrors and 2020 has been utterly disastrous for so many people all over the world. When one takes a hard look around, it is easy to get frustrated. Exhausted. To even consider packing up and isolating in a forest on a mountain in order to avoid falling to despair. In good times and bad, I often seek solace and answers from literature.

In the prologue to the Wife of Bath’s tale in The Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer offered up the following line that I often think about: “The wisest man minds his own business and does not worry about the conduct of the world.”

Because if you worry about the conduct of the world, you will be perpetually frustrated and often aghast. I can understand why someone would just want to retire to their library or garden or “sail away from the things of man” (this is a line from the terribly underappreciated Joe vs the Volcano).

Huckleberry Finn had enough of humanity to decide that he wanted to float away on a raft because civilization was terrible. Life on the raft with Jim was wonderful, and every time he went ashore he was yet again confronted with awful examples of human greed, racism, selfishness, anger, and violence. In the middle of Twain’s novel, Huck observed a group of townspeople tarring and feathering two con men and said, “Well, it made me sick to see it; and I was sorry for them poor pitiful rascals, it seemed like I couldn’t ever feel any hardness against them any more in the world. It was a dreadful thing to see.  Human beings can be awful cruel to one another.” By the end of the novel, Huck’s alcoholic and physically abusive father is dead and Jim is freed, yet Huck decides to leave civilization anyway and make out for “the territory.”

Like Twain, Shakespeare despised the mob (not the Northern NJ Italian type) because they were rash and violent and fickle. At the start of Julius Caesar, the people are out in the streets celebrating Caesar’s latest triumph. Marullus and Flavius, two Senators, engage a few of them in conversation before Marullus chides them, “O you hard hearts, you cruel men of Rome, Knew you not Pompey?” Because they used to cheer and celebrate Pompey before he was defeated by Caesar. Throughout the play, Shakespeare does not take a stance for or against Caesar, but he clearly has great disdain for the quick turns that humans take and how easily they cheer other people’s destruction.

Throughout human history, religion has sought to temper these violent impulses and drive away the worst aspects of humanity while encouraging kindness, charity, and peace. In theory.

In the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, many of the absolute worst people who beat and murder slaves are “pious souls” and “devotional” and one is “a class leader in the Methodist church.” Not only has religion failed them, but it is used to prop up these heinous people. Some of them even use religion to justify their abhorrent behavior. His autobiography provides such a devastating indictment of American Christianity that Mr. Douglass felt the need to explain it in the appendix: “between the Christianity of this land, and the Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest possible difference – so wide, that to receive the one as good, pure and holy, is of the necessity to reject the other as bad, corrupt and wicked.” While American Christianity (in all its many flavors) is far more enlightened in 2020 than it was in 1845, there is still a rampant hypocrisy that seeps out of churches throughout the land.

In the excellent show Good Omens (written by Neil Gaiman), there is a scene in episode three where an angel and a demon are watching the Crucifixion. The demon asks the angel what Jesus said that so offended those around him. “‘Be kind to each other,’” the angel informs him. “Yeah,” the demon replies, “that’ll do it.” It’s a funny and scathing moment.

As a student and now teacher, as a reader and now writer, as a therapist who engages in work on the micro, mezzo, and macro levels, I am continually reminded that people are amazing at pushing their perspectives and largely being unable to see other people’s sides. Most people that I talk with about culture, society, politics, work, religion, gender, race, sexuality, or class tend to lead with and focus on their experiences and their grievances, rather than listening to others. People love to tell others how to live. Again, I’ll cite Twain: “Nothing so needs reforming as other people’s habits. Fanatics will never learn that, though it be written in letters of gold across the sky.”

I got sober at 19 with the help of treatment and ongoing therapy and AA meeting attendance. AA was brilliant in that it had me focus on myself, my problems, my flaws, my behavior, my part, and what I could change. I was exposed to the the Prayer of St. Francis, which provides excellent advice:

Grant that I may
Not so much seek to be consoled as to console
To be understood, as to understand
To be loved, as to love
For it is in giving that we receive
And it’s in pardoning that we are pardoned

About ten years ago, I was counseling a student at Rutgers who was a finance major who had a job lined up with a Fortune 500 company. His plan was to spend a couple of years there and then to get his MBA so that he could return to Wall Street and acquire more power and make “some real money.” With that line, he summed up the true religion of modern America (go read Ayad Akhta’s Junk and then you and I can talk). I remember thinking about how there are some people that don’t deserve my help; I understand that few people will actually engage in meaningful work that improves the lives of others and leads to the betterment of society, but I think that people should at least follow the Hippocratic oath when looking for work: “Do no harm.” I wrestled with the notion of whether or not I should help someone who would profit off the work of others while contributing nothing to the world, and in fact, possible working on destabilizing the economy and getting rich while others have less and less. I ended up giving him the exact same attention and care that I would have anyone else.

This piece isn’t written for everyone. In fact, it is for a minority of people. Those that are good and that are trying to better the lives of others. Not in theory, but in practice (years ago, I was friends with someone who had an astonishingly distorted view of himself. He thought he was a wonderful person, but he was incredibly selfish and argumentative and ended driving a lot of people, including myself, away). It is easy to be frustrated. At any time. But certainly now, in 2020. Not just with the pandemic or systemic racial injustices or economic disparities, but a litany of other problems too, including, most significantly, climate change.

Thoughts of giving up or quitting and sailing (or floating or hiking) away are normal. And rational. But these feelings and this debate are not new. J.D. Salinger wrote about it The Catcher in the Rye. Holden Caulfield was horrified with society. The book was published in 1951 and as a rich young white male, he was certainly in that era’s great winners’ circle. He had, in fact, been exposed to very little and was still thoroughly upset. Near the end of the novel, he meets up with a former teacher of his, who offers some wonderful advice that I also often lean on:

Among other things, you’ll find that you’re not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior. You’re by no means alone on that score, you’ll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You’ll learn from them — if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It’s a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn’t educational. It’s history. It’s poetry.

Of course, the advice is muddied when that same teacher starts petting Holden on the head while he is sleeping. Holden wakes up and runs off, thus further alienated from people. Still, the advice is very good. It was a brutal stroke for Salinger to give that to the reader and then have the speaker attempt to molest the protagonist.

I am frustrated with people and Americans in particular (this has been a two decade thing, by the way). The news is upsetting, comments at the end of articles are often sickening, and the selfishness and conflict that seem to pervade so much of our modern world understandably urges me to throw up my hands and say “Enough with the lot of you” and leave the mess because, in Roger Water’s words, “it’s not easy, banging your heart against some mad bugger’s wall.”

Humanity is the mad bugger. Clearly.

And yet. I choose to stay. And work. And help. And hope. I am inspired by the work of others; by their effort, their care, their perseverance, their stories. It is possible to hold the conflicting thoughts that humanity is often terrible and yet I’m going to stick around and help them anyway. So, don’t give up. We keep trying til the very end. Just make sure you stop and smell the roses, walk among the lillies, watch the sunsets, and laugh a bit.

Police Are Serving on the Frontlines of the Heroin and Opioid Epidemic

*note: I wrote this in March of 2017 for a website that is now defunct. I stand by the sentiments herein. I have been thrilled with the police response to working with people with substance misuse disorders and the willingness of many departments to change their longstanding procedures. I believe that with proper recruitment, training, and supervision, the profession can continue to evolve and improve.

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In 1971, President Richard Nixon declared the war on drugs. There was a brief respite under President Carter (who unsuccessfully called for the decriminaliziation of marijuana), and then President Ronald Reagan ratched up both the rhetoric and incarceration rates while also cutting funding for treatment. Presidents GWH Bush and Bill Clinton continued to spend billions trying to arrest away the drug problem. The roots of the modern opioid epidemic began during the Clinton and Bush II administrations with the aggressive marketing of pain killer by companies like Purdue Pharma. While incarceration rates have gone down the last few years, the United States continues to be, by far, the number one jailer in the world in both rates and total numbers.

The Vera Insitute of Justice estimates that the US spends about $75B a year on corrections, and this does not include capital building costs or pensions and benefits for corrections workers. For that money, over 66% of ex-offenders are arrested again within three years and almost 50% return to jail or prison within that same time.  It has been a terrible return on the public dollar.

Despite the money spent on incarceration, drug overdose rates in America have increased from about 23,000 in 2002 to over 50,000 in 2015. Drug counselors, law enforcement, policy experts and politicians started sounding the alarm at the end of the last decade. The Massachucettes Bar convened a Task Force in 2008 and released a report. Other states and counties followed (I chaired the NJ Heroin and Opiate Task Force in 2012 – you can read our report here). Forward thinking governors  began to pay attention, and both Democrats (Pete Shumlin –VT, Andrew Cuomo – NY) and Republicans (John Kasich – OH, Chris Christie – NJ) accepted the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid Expansion and instituted new policies to combat the epidemic (the implimentation of Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs, Needle Exchange Programs).

I have trained thousands of law enforcement officers in multiple states (I’ve also provided counseling to many). Whenever I conduct a training, I ask them why they joined the force. While answers like “I was in the military and missed the uniform and comraderie” or “It’s a family business” or “It is a good job with benefits,” the most common answer has always been “to catch bad guys” or “to help my community.” Police have been the action arm in the failed war on drugs for decades. Not only has it not been effective, but it has burned out a few generations of cops. The drug war violated the rights of many Americans (dis-proportionally people of color) and it inflamed conflict and negative views between minority communities and the police.

After decades of arresting
millions of people for small possession, 
law enforcement officers started to make changes on the local level.
Veteran police officers talked about how they had spent their careers busting
people for drug use and that the problem had only gotten worse. Other cops
stated that the focus on low level drug busts and arrest stats took the focus
away from more important crimes that required more work – burglaries, violence,
and sexual assaults. As drug overdose deaths continued to skyrocket this
decade, police officers began to carry Naloxone. Only a few departments used it
in 2012, but more and more added it to their basic equipment each year and now
it is standard in most departments throughout the nation. Police officers
administer naloxone to individuals who are overdosing more than any other
professional group.

While many veteran officers
support this change, young police officers often wonder “what is the point of
using Naloxone on a drug user?” Law enforcement officers occasionally express
frustration over administering Naloxone to the same individual several times
over the course of a few months, or reviving someone with a long criminal
history, or reversing an overdose of a person who has obviously been neglecting
their young children. This frustration stems from both a lack of training on
addiction and a overall macro level failure of public policy.

Naloxone was given to police
and first responders to reduce the number of overdose deaths. But there was no
initial follow up plan, so after a drug user was revived he was just sent on
his way. Over the last few years, a number of police departments (or county organizations)
have created programs to assist drug users after they have been revived. Over
the last three years, new programs (often called PAARI – Police Assistance
Addiction and Recovery Initiative) have sprung up around the country. Programs
like Angel in Gloucester, Massachucettes were set up to help heroin users get
into treatment instead of arresting them. Some programs have an embedded social
worker in the station (Arlington, Mass), while others hand out information
about treatment (START in Hunterdon and Somerset Counties, NJ), while others
take them to local hospitals and detoxes (Operation SAL in Camden County, NJ).
Most police departments have not developed a program yet to better handle the
people that they have revived. There are enough models that departments can
choose the one that best fits their department and municipality.

It is important that police
get training on this issue from someone that is knowledgeable about drug
treatment, state and federal policies, and also has a working knowledge about
law enforcement work and culture. In the last two years, there has been a
number of for-profit treatment programs that have attempted to train police and
set up relationships with departments in order to funnel clients with cadillac
insurance to their rehabs. Not even senior law enforcement leaders know the
difference between a non-profit program that uses modern data analysis and a
predatory for-profit program that has no interest in assisting indigent
clients.

The War on Drugs failed. Both
Democrats and Republicans have finally said so. Law enforcement knew it before
the polticians did. Now cops are the ones that have made the biggest change,
and they need proper training.