nyc

alec ramsdell a_ramsdell at hotmail.com
Wed Jul 22 08:40:26 PDT 1998


Just a note or two-


> If drug and alcohol abusers work while
>they participate in treatment programs, the mayor said, about 30,000
>people would be removed

this is a tad draconian: getting addicts to work when they're getting maybe 1-3 hrs of shotty sleep a night, because of withdrawal symptoms? For heroin, sleeping patterns return to the norm gradually. There's a week or so of no useful sleep (maybe a total of an hour a night in fitful intervals), unless meds are used in detox, in which case it's meds-sleep, better than no sleep at all. It can take anywhere from a minimum 2 weeks to more than 6 weeks for the sleep pattern to regulate itself. And that's just for sleeping. From what I understand alcohol can be worse, if it's late-stage. Valium, actually, seems to be the worst in this regard.


> from welfare rolls.
>
> But treatment experts here said
requiring
>addicts and alcoholics to work can prove difficult.
>
> "I think that most of the people who
are
>in programs are chronically ill people who are really extremely broken
>down and are not people who are either psychologically, emotionally or
>physically in any
> condition to work," said Ira Kramer,

*After* sleeping, there's a whole host of other things to consider.

-Alec

who
>is executive director of the New York Center for Addiction Treatment
>Services.
> And welfare specialists reacted angrily
to
>the idea of classes for low-income mothers with newborns.
>
> "Any automatic assumption that simply
>because you are poor means you have to be taught how to be a parent is
>wrong," said Timothy Casey, assistant director of the Federation of
>Protestant Welfare
> Agencies.

-Alec

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