Had a private in my company in the Army in 1976 who was an inhalant abuser. If he could not afford drugs he would drink shoe dye or whatever.
He had been medical-boarded out of the Army twice. Each time he went to the nearest recruiter and enlisted for the infantry signing bonus which he promptly spent on drugs. After a few days in Basic Training, they would realize that he had serious brain damage, and it would take the Army 6 months or so to board him out again. All this time he spent Uncle Sam’s paycheck on drugs.
One day a guy came into my office yelling, “CAPTAIN, STUSSEY’S DRINKING REGULAR GASOLINE AND GOIN’ CRAZY”.
He indeed had been sipping leaded gasoline out of a Coke can. He had defecated and smeared feces all over his body and the walls of the barracks.
We put him in the Psych Ward. On the day he finally was discharged from the Army I had an ambulance ready to take him to the State Mental Hospital for the Criminally Insane.
So I saved the taxpayers some money and put a stop to that re-enlistment do-loop.
That brings me back to my idea that we should have a Hospice for drug/alcohol addicts who don’t want rehab. Give ‘em a cot, some food, and all the drugs they want until they croak.
Today we force Grandma into a hospice where we pump her full of morphine until she’s gone. She paid into Medicare her whole life. Yet when some worthless druggie shows up with an overdose, we spend gobs of public money to save his life.
This state of affairs makes no sense.
Your post makes a lot of sense to me.
I, too, see no reason in trying to rehabilitate idiots like that.
I was going to ask you how the Army kept letting him back in, but I suspect that the answer would depress me.