Drug User Treatment Failure Blindness?

Abstract

An ethnographic case study of a “failed” single goal (abstinence) based individual and group therapy treatment of a New York City, Harlem-based, single, young-adult of color, IDU, mother, which ended in “death by overdose,” after a period of abstinence, is presented almost 50 years later, in which complex, multidimensional structural barriers, “normed,” consensualized, ideologically-driven preconceptions and an array of contextual, situational and relevant stakeholder factors, which may have resulted in intervention “failure blindness,” are reviewed. The need to introduce failure analysis, blindness and management, as well as success analysis, blindness and management, as integral parts of treatment planning, implementation and assessment is raised.

Keywords :

• abstinence
• failure analysis
• failure blindness
• OD
• pre-conceptions
• structural barriers
• success analysis
• success blindness
• treatment

Notes

3 The Rockefeller Drug Laws, signed into the New York Penal law by governor Nelson Rockefeller, May 8, 1973, were draconian in their purpose and nature, being the toughest drug laws in the USA, and covered the sale and possession of opiates, cocaine, and cannabis through a minimum punishment of 15 years to life in prison, and a maximum of 25 years to life in prison. The nonviolent crime of drug trafficking was put on a par with murder and they were applied inordinately to African-Americans and to a lesser extent to Latinos. These laws were revised to remove the mandatory minimum sentences in April 2009, allowing judges to sentence individuals convicted of drug offences to treatment or to short sentences.

4 Quality of Life “The notion of human welfare (wellbeing) measured by social indicators rather than by `quantitative' measures of income and production.” (United Nations); a person's experiencing of satisfaction with their being … increasingly introduced into medical care but not with substance user treatment.

5 A description of the introduction of heroin use to New York City's adolescent males, 1952–1956. Isadore Chein et al. (1964), The Road to H. Basic Books, NY.

6 Safe injection rooms.

7 When the inner city poor and disadvantaged—marginalized wasn't used then—are not economically '‘fluid'’ … and can't pay for a pair of pants at the listed price and are offered the munificent opportunity to pay $1/week for many weeks … during the 1960s … or higher priced food shops at independently owned convenient or “Mom and Pop” stores which did not allow for their nutritional needs to be met without extra costs. THEY become part of a legitimized social heist.

Caplovitz, D. (1967). The Poor Pay More. Colleir-MacMillan Limited. London.