KEY POINTS:
Only those with ice in their veins would not have felt sympathy watching Millie Elder bury her head in her arms as she left court. Paul Holmes never said a truer word than when he told the media scrum that Millie is sick. She has a big hill to climb.
I supported a friend through drug and alcohol rehabilitation. That person, probably like Millie, had gone downhill for some time. I just thought it was bad behaviour. I didn't understand addiction is a disease like diabetes or heart disease, except addicts in New Zealand have few places to go for help.
Like anyone else with mental health problems, they're disgracefully neglected.
The person I love went into the private Capri clinic in Auckland. We were lucky to be in a position to find the $15,000 for the expert treatment this clinic provides. In hindsight, it was an investment and, if we hadn't turned to Capri and its chief executive Tom Claunch, that money would have paid for a funeral.
But New Zealanders without access to money are at the mercy of waiting to be seen at community treatment centres, where counsellors do their best in the face of overwhelming odds.
To this country's shame, successive governments have closed down certified residential drug and alcohol rehabilitation centres until we now have only two, in Auckland and Christchurch.
The wonderful Queen Mary Hospital in Hanmer Springs, where the Ministry of Health funded drug and alcohol rehabilitation and which saved hundreds of lives, was forced to close when the Labour Government or the Canterbury District Health Board (depending on who is pointing the finger of blame) pulled the plug on funding. There was an outcry, but to no avail.
Just last month, Wellington coroner Garry Evans called for more certified institutions. His comments came after a 45-year-old Petone woman drank herself to death because her family couldn't get her into treatment.
But the public are ignorant. One Wellington letter-to-the-editor writer blamed bad parenting for youth drinking and drug taking; the failure to point out right from wrong. How wonderful the world would be if we were all as perfect as this father. His sanctimonious attitude, however, will not prevent his children from getting Alzheimer's, just as perfect parenting can't protect some people genetically predisposed to addiction.
We're not talking here about binge drinking, or urban liberals smoking cannabis in their Grey Lynn villas. We're talking about roughly 10 per cent of the population with a genetic disorder which makes them physiologically unable to drink or do drugs. The Ministry of Health's policy of harm minimisation is a travesty. These people can never touch alcohol again, not even in cough medicine or desserts. They have the disease of more, as Claunch calls it.
I don't know if Millie is an addict, but expert counsellors will quickly determine if she's dependent or an abuser. There are seven criteria for dependency; you need meet only three to qualify as an addict.
So why are we ashamed of this? If Millie was found to have diabetes, or even chronic diarrhoea, would the media be so obsessed with her plight? Would those nasty schadenfreuders who contribute to blogsites be so gleeful in their condemnation?
Eighty per cent of our prison population has drug and/or alcohol problems. If we're going to do anything about this problem we have to talk about it and remove stigma and blame so sufferers can be treated. It's not about slack will-power, bad parenting, indulging kids as teenagers. It's a disease, and it can be managed. Today my friend is 66 days sober.
And rehab has its humour. At my first supporters' and families' meeting at Capri I was too stricken to speak, and wept into my hankie. After the meeting a man approached and said, "You remind me of that journalist, you know, the one who lives in Wellington, writes for the Sunday paper, was involved in politics."
He went on until I confirmed I was indeed that woman, thinking if this sobbing apparition bears such a resemblance to the photo above my column, the editor needs to change it.
But then again, though I'm not an addict, I took comfort (and daily continue to do so) from the addict's Serenity Prayer: God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.
We can change the lives for addicts, if only a government has the courage to reverse recent policies of chucking the mentally ill out into communities to struggle.
