I am catching up with posting online my articles.
The following part of my article about how our current system ( especially health care system ) approaches the problem of addiction will be mainly based on Poland as I was born in there.
As I said in the previous article, treating and assisting any heavily intoxicated person should be regarded as an emergency as the body is put under a lot of stress, is weakened and there is a high risk of death. Most of the doctors ( if not all ) understand it and in general they try to help these people though there are few very important issues here.
1. Sometimes or maybe even more often the doctors make the decision about treating intoxicated person is based on the decision between helping somebody who is sick and somebody who is intoxicated. And I would guess that here we could draw a pyramid which would represent that the cause of the problem is going "few levels" down. Thus there is a possibility that the hospital is "over crowded" with patients and the doctors must make the decision about whom to help. And because the general idea about alcoholic, drug addicts etc. is that it is their choice, while those who are sick are innocent victims and thus the doctors chose to not treat the intoxicated person and help those who are "really" sick. Unfortunately I have to say that this comes from very limited understanding and subjective judgment. Why do I say so ? Well... I work as a therapist of natural medicine and I have realized that most of the sicknesses don't just come out of nowhere but are the result of personal choices and decisions of people. And thus in reality everybody is directly responsible for their sickness - just those who get drunk or take drugs and at some stage they get addicted to it. Every decision carries certain consequences. The only difference could be that we are generally aware of the consequences of taking alcohol, drugs etc. and we are less aware of how our decision about what and how we live affects our health. And thus we believe that those who are sick are innocent victims who need to be prioritized over those who are intoxicated with alcohol or drugs. And this is how most of the doctors make the decision about whom to help especially in the situation with limited space in the hospital. It shows a limited understanding of the whole problem but for the moment this is the way it is and unless we change the whole system, we have to accept it for now.
To be continued...