I Almost Died Thanks to Progressive Drug Policies: Addiction in the Age Of Social Justice | Opinion

During my 10 years of hardcore drug addiction and intermittent chronic homelessness on the streets of Los Angeles—and by hardcore, I mean sleeping with a metal pipe between my legs on Skid Row—I lived out nearly every consequence of my heroin habit aside from death. Just like thousands of other addicts scattered across major American cities today, I was mostly allowed to break the law with impunity and slowly die in public view. But why? Why did we go from viewing addiction as a treatable disease to effectively promoting and abetting it?

In 1987, the American Medical Association (AMA) decided to label addiction as a disease; prior to that, it was handled as a criminal matter. At the time, this was quite progressive, a true social justice win for drug addicts that led to a medically-supported emphasis on recovery. And yet, in recent years, the radical neo-progressive movement has taken the homeless-addict class under its wing and entirely removed recovery from the equation—removing along with it any intention of actually fixing the problem.

It's part of a trend. Social justice never seems to to solve anything; it's merely a dishonest framework obsessed with manufacturing blame, which is always assigned to some sort of systemic problem. That's why they can't solve anything: Solving the problem from within "the system" would dismantle the entire ideology.

Instead, their radical policies in the realm of homelessness and addiction have only exacerbated both issues. The only visible "achievement" of places like San Francisco where the problem is most acute has been keeping both epidemics on life support. Billions of dollars have been laundered through the homeless-industrial complex, and many thousands of lives have been sacrificed. The local government has almost entirely outsourced the maintenance of homelessness and addiction to radically progressive nonprofits—to the tune of 1.1 billion dollars in 2021 alone. This was more than a 500 percent increase since 2016, despite homelessness increasing by 64 percent in the same timeframe.

Since then, spending has only increased, while the city's homeless population has continued to grow. Meanwhile, drug overdose deaths in San Francisco rose by 24.5 percent, to a whopping 806 last year, despite the city having the largest per-capita budget for "Harm-Reduction" in the country. The city also has the highest rate of overdose deaths, at 80 per 100,000 residents.

These are the kinds of numbers you get when an anti-social political movement co-opts homeless and addiction policy. Recovery and addiction treatment have been completely abandoned in exchange for a billion-dollar-a-year hospice program for homeless addicts to publicly die in slow motion.

Fortunately, I managed to sober up for good in 2018. I got off the streets just in time. Not only would the onslaught of fentanyl come to dominate the illegal drug market just a year later, but these cities' faux-progressive policies have only continued to add fuel to the fire.

During my tenure of debauchery, the foundation was laid with Prop 47 in 2014 and SB 1380 shortly after. Prop 47 allowed me to shoplift with impunity, which provided me up to $300 a day to grow my habit. SB1380 ended state funding for recovery-based housing programs that required sobriety, turning many rehabilitation and shelter options on Skid Row into unofficial drug dens. I was stuck with nothing to grab onto besides enough state-sanctioned rope to hang myself with.

A six-month jail sentence that I received for defending myself against a mugger allowed me to break my physical addiction to heroin for the last time, but the mental obsession persisted. After a few brief relapses, I wound up at a long-term, truly nonprofit rehab in North Hollywood where my entire life changed. Not only was I fully immersed in a community of hundreds of recovered addicts, I was given ample therapeutic treatment that instilled a lasting psychic change. I also received free recovery-based housing while getting the support I needed to gain meaningful employment. Even after securing a decent-paying construction job, I was allowed to continue living at the center.

A sense of self-worth developed as I built up a small nest egg before moving to a half-way house up the street. This in turn laid the foundation for me to slowly reintegrate back into society. By the time I was two years sober, I was living a fully-independent and productive life.

The fact that it took me so long to get actual help inspired some pertinent questions: Why was I never mandated to a long-term program in 2011 when I first became homeless on Skid Row?

Why did it take many years of incessant criminality to finally wind up in jail for long enough to kick my habit?

Why aren't we taking the billions of dollars we waste every year and building recovery compounds and job-training centers for the tens of thousands of homeless addicts in California and elsewhere?

Why are we handing out free tin-foil and crack pipes to people disintegrating in the gutter, rather than mandating them to long-term, comprehensive treatment?

Because these actions would actually put a dent in the problem, and social justice isn't in the business of solving problems; it's in the business of perpetuating them in the name of "dismantling the system."

Jared Klickstein is the author of Crooked Smile: What It Took to Escape a Decade of Homelessness, Addiction, & Crime, which published on June 25, 2024.

All views expressed are the author's own.