A safe place to drink, or just giving up? - CNN.com
Treatment center lets alcoholics drinkEditor's note: Are wet houses a way to keep late-stage alcoholics safe, or do they just give up on a treatable disease? For more on this debate, watch "Dr. Drew" on HLN, Wednesday at 9 p.m. ET/PT.
St. Paul, Minnesota (CNN) -- Nick Lott's clothes hang neatly inside his closet. His room is tidy and his bed is sharply made. He says it's "a blessing" that he even has his own room to keep clean.
"This is all I've got, really," Nick says. "It's clean, comfortable, safe -- that's a big thing."
His immaculate living quarters contradict his life, which was upended by his addiction to alcohol. And that's what brought him to St. Anthony Residence in the first place.
On the cinder-block wall next to his TV stand, Nick keeps a tally of how many days it has been since his last drink. At this moment, four days are crossed off the calendar. [...]
I wrote a whole thing here but it didn't post (argh). Anyway, the gist was that when we say that these folks' choices make them less deserving of the security we offer people who toe social and legal lines, we deem them second-class citizens. It's in our best interests to remember that social mores and laws can be changed at any time, and tomorrow it might be any number of other things that's deemed morally questionable or illegal. Some of those things might be things you or I think should be just fine. Shall we regulate what everyone can eat because some people can't control their food choices, and shall we relegate those whose lives fall apart around them due to those choices to life on the street? I don't think so, but an increasingly health-conscious nation with a penchant for making intrusive laws just might.
A quote from the liner notes in Frank Zappa's Joe's Garage:
If the plot of the story seems just a little bit preposterous, and if the idea of the Central Scrutinizer enforcing laws that haven't been passed yet makes you giggle, just be glad you don't live in one of the cheerful little countries where, at this very moment, music is either severely restricted...or, as it in in Iran, totally illegal.
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