April 12: Thielman, an addict, left jail yesterday, arrested again today for misconduct – I suspect he just wanted to go back, he was lost on the outside.
April 12: An addict wrapped in a sheet, found sleeping in the yard, below the water tower, in Oranjestad, was woken up by Police and made to leave.
April 11: An addict found a sleep on a mattress behind Fundacion pa Nos Comunidada, the local food bank, was woken up by Police and made to leave.
April 11: An addict found asleep at the wheel, in a car, at the side of the road, with a bag filled with drugs in his lap, hurled to jail.
April 11: A crime-fighting addict aborts an attempted robbery at a store on the boulevard, preventing beauty-products theft.
Thank you Awe 24 for reporting. Other news outlets don’t even bother to report these petty news items. Homeless addicts have nowhere to go, and nowhere to put their heads, but the street.
Every society deals with a certain percentages of the population that eventually becomes addicted to drugs and/or alcohol. Perhaps 10% or 15% of our population has a genetic predisposition to alcoholism and when that predisposition gets easy access to drugs and/or alcohol, following some traumatic experience, big or small, a person might find himself/herself travelling the trecherous road from occasional user, to habitual user, and later chronic user.
The formula is easy: Genetic predisposition + traumatic circumstances or events + access to mood altering substances = Disaster.
Of the chronic users, some find themselves in the street when their professional life falls apart, their family life evaporates, and their health goes to hell.
It’s a double whammy if alcoholism combines with a mental disorder or in some cases, mental illness, which it frequently does.
Research shows that in Indian and indigenous populations, the percentage of alcoholics and drug addicts grows, from 10%-15% to 20% and more.
Aruba has a very liberal and lenient attitude about the use of drugs and alcohol in the social circles, and totally rejects, refuses to deal with, and sinks into deep denial, when what is defined as social drinking, grows into a glaring challenge.
The addicts arrested get sent to the correction institute, which by default dries them up, then they are sent right back into the street. We have no halfway house, no rehab facilities, no structural way of dealing, let alone helping, people in crisis.
The correction institute is probably incapable of offering the spiritual guidance required to overcome addiction.
The courts may decree a sentence; but they do not have any rehab tools at their disposal. No treatment centers, no guidance counselors, not even a referral to a 12-step program.
Zero.
But thank you Awe24 for still reporting, which stems from a desire to fix, and provide solutions. You are pointing the huge vacuum out.
