Three Of My Friends Can't Seem To Get Off Drugs: Part Two

My Thoughts On Fiona

Fiona is not only a friend, but actually my ex-girlfriend from five years ago right before I got sober. We met in rehab, became friends, and wound up dating after we both got out. I graduated that rehab and went on to live in a sober living, while she left early against medical advice over an altercation. Leaving rehab early is a much easier decision to make when you have “better” options, and she happened to have a nice apartment with all of her bills being paid by her mother. My only option besides rehab was going back to being homeless, so obviously it was much easier for me to humble myself and graduate.

Fiona was kind, gorgeous, fun, and upbeat. She was full of energy and constructed a life that revolved around fitness. Despite her horrendous issues with alcohol, she managed to live an incredibly healthy lifestyle when she wasn’t drinking. And most of the time, she didn’t drink. The problem was that when she did, she’d burn everything down to the ground within 48 hours. I’d never encountered an alcoholic like her in my life. She was the sweetest soul I’d ever met, but every few weeks I’d come over her place after work to find an empty fifth of vodka in her apartment and an absolute monster stomping around through a path of destruction. On multiple occasions the fire department had to come after she nearly burned her apartment down. And then she would sober up, promise to never drink again, and be an angel for another few weeks before repeating the ritual.

I stayed sober through about six months of this, despite all of my sober friends telling me to end it. Everyone was in agreement that she was an amazing person, but her track record of destructive relapses made her a very unhealthy partner for someone early in sobriety. She needed to go back to rehab, and actually stay this time, but it’s very hard for someone to make this decision when the alternative is an apartment in a luxury building with all of your bills paid. She simply wouldn’t go.

I eventually relapsed for a brief moment with devastating consequences, and once she (rightfully) kicked me out, I had no other choice but to go back to rehab. Fiona and her mother saved my life by giving me no other option, and I’ve been sober ever since. Although I’m no better than Fiona, our journeys have been incredibly different since our departure from one another five years ago.

Arrests, hospitalizations, and multiple cross-country moves to escape her own self have plagued her story during this period. Despite having a few chunks of maintained sobriety, her relapses have been so detrimental that she is far worse off than when we last saw each other, and this breaks my heart. A women with such potential, beauty, and kindness in her heart is being taken from the world because of addiction. This is a human that could be such a positive addition to society if only she could stop drinking for good. That’s what makes this so immensely tragic, but I have faith that she will turn it around one day soon. She has reached a bottom so dreadful that I believe she’s on the precipice of renewal. And the world will be better off with the addition of a rehabilitated Fiona.

Fiona’s mother, another vibrant and loving woman, has struggled with how to approach the situation. She has admittedly enabled her for many years, and has finally given up on doing so. The amount of money, time, and mental health she has sacrificed for Fiona is ungodly, and it’s only resulted in Fiona winding up addicted to meth, living in a shipping container with a sociopathic ex-Burning Man nutjob. Fiona has reached a point where all the money in the world can’t save her. Even when her mother attempts to Uber her to an Air-BNB in order to get away from the chaos, it only results in the host having to call the police on her, or more often than not, Fiona disappearing and not even making it to the Air-BNB in the first place. She has completely lost her mind. And the police can’t arrest her or take her to a mental hospital, even after she states that she’s homicidal or suicidal. Back in my days of lunacy, you could always rely on getting arrested or committed to a psychiatric facility, but nowadays in this new era of “leniency”, Fiona can’t be intervened on. So she continues to rot away in that shipping container, delusional in a state of psychosis, and there’s nothing anyone can do.

This brings up the question of whether mandated treatment is ethical. I believe in Fiona’s case, it is. She has lost all mental agency in her state of meth addiction, and without arrest or mandated treatment, I’m not sure if she’s capable of coming to the conclusion of what she needs on her own. Without mandated treatment, the only realistic option is waiting for her to commit a severe enough crime to actually warrant an arrest, but this is obviously not ideal. It’s unfortunate that this is the best option we have right now in society. Fiona could stab someone, wind up in jail, and sure, detox from the drugs and become sentient, but at what cost? Jail will not rehabilitate her mentally, not too mention the possibility of losing years of her life confined to a cell. This is not the humane solution. Letting drug addicts slowly die while waiting patiently for them to commit a severe enough crime to garner intervention is not a viable solution. People like Fiona need to be mandated long term drug treatment now in my opinion, because the most likely outcome if not is death or prison. Death being more likely. Fiona deserves better, and we deserve the best version of Fiona. The same goes for most of the other homeless drug addicts we have in this country. Many of them are good people, and It’s a shame that we let them corrode into the worst versions of themselves.