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Love is a selfless emotion.

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As I walked past the television an advertisement for the Alanon/Alateen Family Groups came on. This organization is about helping the families and children of alcoholism and addiction get healthy.

In recovering my own mental health I have come to an appreciation how much how we think affects our behaviour. I know that even if there had been a magic pill to cure my mental illness, taking it would have changed nothing. Having lived with the illness so long my thinking, my thought patterns, had become warped. “Curing” the illness would have accomplished nothing because I would have continued to think and act in the warped ways I had learned.

I am an adult child of alcoholism; I grew up in a household with an alcoholic parent. Children learn from their parents, are directly influenced by the environment they grow up in. I learned lots of bad ways of thinking, acquired a multitude of “-isms” that influenced and ruled my life and behaviours. The interaction between the “stinking thinking” I learned in my home life and my mental illness proved devastating, eventually consuming my life, myself and resulting in homelessness.

Recovery has been an interesting journey of learning, self discovery, growth and change. A significant part of my recovery has been to learn about and deal with the effects that being raised in a household with alcoholism had on my ways of thinking and perceiving the world around me. This knowledge has given me a keen appreciation of just how important it is to acknowledge and deal with the effects alcoholic or addiction have on children raised in that environment.

With the path my life has taken over the past several years I have a keen awareness of the extent that alcoholism and addiction exist in our society. Couple that with the experience and knowledge of the effects alcoholism and addiction have on children and I am left wondering why the local Alateen meeting is not overflowing with the children that simple mathematics tells us there are in need of help in dealing with and recovery from the effects alcoholism and addiction have had on their young lives and minds.

When I posed this question to an Alateen group I got some interesting and thought provoking answers. There is of course a thread of denial, of various forms and degrees, running through the “reasons” for parents not insisting their children seek out Alateen.

The “I am alright now and therefore everyone else will be or is” syndrome, ignoring the reality that you getting help to recover in no way helps those affected by your behaviour to recover from the effects of that behaviour. We are speaking of real life, not a fairy tale land of make believe and live happily ever after.

There is guilt, embarrassment and shame. Perfectly understandable human reactions, but not acceptable as excuses for not taking the actions you should.

You only compound the guilt when you let it prevent you form acting as you should. Those affected by your behaviour should be at the top of your amends list; especially children for your behaviours will have life long consequences for them – if you do not act to help them recovery healthy behaviours. You cannot change the past, you need to let it go or you will find yourself anchored to the past and to bad behaviours from your past. As uncomfortable as it maybe or may make you feel the amends you need to make is to help people recover from the effect your behaviour has had on them – including mentally and spiritually.

You need to deal with shame and embarrassment in the same manner as quilt, and as with guilt a major part of truly healing yourself is to help those your behaviour wounded to heal themselves. Shame and embarrassment – secrets, and we know you are as sick as your secrets. Secrets can be so very poisonous and the only true way to deal with them is to accept you behaviours and the results of those behaviours, acknowledging them, making amends as needed and cutting them free behind you so they do not poison the future.

Fear of what the kids will say and share about themselves, family and YOU. They will share what they need to share to get well – live with it. Groups such as AA, Alanon and Alateen only really work when one is able to share the truth and in a metaphysical and indefinable way – what you need to share or someone else needs to hear. Afraid they will speak of your insane behaviour? Get over it – and yourself.

Alateen is not about the parents, it is about letting the kids get healthy both mentally and spirituality. Non-sane behaviour is one of the consequences of alcoholism and addiction. Parenting is about doing the best you can in raising your children. Your past behaviour is just that – past and nothing you do will change that past nor make it cease to exist.

You can change the future. If you have any doubt about how important that is for your children, just ask any Adult Child of Alcoholism how important they know it is. There are good reasons that mental health professionals study the effect being raised in a home with alcoholism or addiction has and continues to have on children into their adult lives – and the lives of their children. There are many books and studies on how crippling and devastating be raised in alcohol, addiction or other unhealthy circumstances are on children and their lives.

If you love your children or grandchildren freely and without reservation and they have been affected by alcohol or addiction – get them to Abbotsford’s Alateen meeting. As an after word let me say that if a group or meeting would like to hear this message from the horse’s mouth – I know an Alateen or two who would be willing to speak – just be sure you really want to hear what they have to say.

Federal, Homeless, Municipal, Provincial

A child of five would understand this. Send someone to fetch a child of five. Grouch Marx

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A friend took me to Mission the other afternoon to visit the Union Gospel Drop-in Centre and speak to the people there as I had never been to the Drop-in. We found the leaders of the Union Gospel Mission’s mission in Mission out walking the streets and serving ice tea on a hot day as a way to reach out and stay in touch with their clients and those in need on the city streets.

While speaking to them about the homeless situations in both Mission and Abbotsford the subject of opening a Drop-in Centre in Abbotsford arose and I issued an invitation and urged them to pursue a place in Abbotsford since Abbotsford is sorely in need of an afternoon/evening drop-in/supper meal centre.

We also spoke of the benefits of adopting the wellness recovery action plan that Fraser (mental) Health puts on in communities in the FVRD and how a wellness plan would have significant benefits for those seeking recovery from addiction or those simply seeking to get their lives back on track form whatever had disrupted their lives.

Afterwards I sat down to have a coffee with some of the clients and chanced upon a copy of the new September/October issue of The Inner City Pulse, the Union Gospel Mission’s newsletter for the lower mainland. On page seven of this issue I found three stories about some rather interesting children.

A five year old who donated her birthday presents to benefit many other children who were in need. An eight year old, who seeing people living on the streets of Vancouver’s downtown eastside, collected blankets for these homeless people. An eleven year old who founded K.A.R.E. (Kids Actions Really Energize) to encourage people and local businesses to donate clothing and non-perishable food items for those in need.

I was contemplating these children as we crossed the Mission Bridge on our way back to Abbotsford, a community sadly in need of the lesson about generosity of the spirit which these children embody.

The children could also teach our self-styled leaders something about tackling seemingly overwhelming problems in society. They did not talk the situation to death; nor seek to study it to death; nor spend their energies saying all the right things but doing nothing. They did not pursue grandiose plans; nor seek a comprehensive solution where none exists; nor lose sight of the reality that at some point of dealing with a problem action is required.

These children took action to meet a need they saw.

The observer affect tells us that the act of observing will make changes on the situation/problem being observed. The uncertainty principle tells us that when we try to quantify the qualities of ending homelessness, these quantities can only be determined with some characteristic ‘uncertainties’ that cannot become arbitrarily small simultaneously.

You study a problem, you change the problem. The uncertainty principle defies attempts to measure or quantify the problem with exactness. Any action taken to put a plan in motion will change the nature of the problem and render the original plan moot.

Homelessness involves people and uncertainty: we are dealing with a chaotic system with its implications of little agreement about what should be done and even less agreement on how whatever should be done can be done.

Without starting you will never finish. We need to pick a point, any point, as the start point. With a place to begin we simply begin at the beginning and continue to the end.

The biggest hurdle to ending homeless and addressing other social ills is an apparent inability to start. A concept so simple a child can understand it and in understanding it set examples such as those above in how you end homeless – you start.

Addiction

Mr. Ron Taylor’s solution to drugs is terrorism?

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The following is a reply to an editorial in the Abbotsford Post, Tuesday September 18, 2007. I have posted a copy of the editorial below the reply

So, Mr. Ron Taylor’s solution to drugs is terrorism?

The reason that threats from “woolly faces” work is that they are terrorists and everyone knows they have and will kill for no other reason than they think you should die. So while Mr. Taylor is praising these terrorists for their ability to frighten drug dealers, he should remember that this ability came at the price of the sectarian violence he appears to cavalierly dismiss.

I am sorry but years of terrorist attacks on innocent bystanders; the deaths of thousands of men women and children; bombings; people shot because of their religious beliefs; people shot for saying or writing something someone disagreed with; are not, to me, an acceptable price to pay, even if Mr. Taylor seems comfortable with this because it makes threats made by the terrorists to drug dealers believable.

One week Mr. Taylor is praising our brave troops for fighting terrorists in Afghanistan and then he turns around and advocates turning terrorists in Canada as a solution to the drug problem. This would seem a little disingenuous and somewhat lacking in ethical consistency.

In keeping with the flow of ill considered babble, he laments the failure of the current system of criminal rehabilitation. Now when I see the failure of rehabilitation, whether criminal or addiction, I suggest looking around and trying practices that have been successful in other jurisdictions in achieving recovery or rehabilitation. Mr. Taylor suggests we forget about rehabilitation and concentrate on whipping our criminals into top physical shape, which would … make them better and more dangerous criminals.

So in the world Mr. Taylor fondly envisions, not only will we have the gang violence and shootings currently plaguing the lower mainland, we have the terrorists he wants to loose on our streets and the physically honed criminals he wants our prisons to churn out – all of these groups better armed than the police.

It is no wonder he supports the Canadian Armed Forces being in Afghanistan – we are going to need battle-hardened experienced guerrilla/terrorist fighting troops to retake our streets.

Mr. Taylor: solutions are not really solutions when they turn serious social problems into a societal disaster. Except to politicians who in their search for simple, easy solutions will thoughtlessly advocate anything that sounds good, no matter how negative the consequences would be.

It is this insistence on simplistic solutions to complex problems that have no easy, quick or perfect solutions that has us floundering with crime, the drug trade, rehabilitation and recovery. We just might want to try applying rational, realistic thought and planning which has demonstrated an ability to solve complex problems.

I do have a final question for Mr. Taylor: just what dictionary were you using that defined justice in terms of being dispensed by terrorists?

Lessons from Belfast:

One benefit of traveling as I am at the moment is the opportunity to see how other communities deal with the same problems we face. So, it was irresistible to explore why areas of Belfast that were the centres of violence during the sectarian conflict now have virtually no drug dealing, no break-and- enters and almost no instances of paedophilia, all severe problems for us.

A good place to start the search was Taughmonagh Social Club in a staunchly Protestant area of Belfast, once a known gathering place for the Protestant militias during the troubles. Not an easy place to get people to talk even when introduced by a member. But a good place to start because a once prevalent problem of drug dealing has totally disappeared.

The community became concerned because one individual was selling drugs to youngsters. He was twice warned (nobody would admit by whom). He had excuses – he’d just lost his job, and he had marital problems. But the community just didn’t care – enough was enough. Men with “woolly faces” (the local slang for balaclava-covered faces), apprehended him, questioned him in their own inimitable fashion and found heroin and crack in his possession.

He was hauled to a public area, his shirt stripped off, hot tar was poured on him and then the feather contents of two pillows was added. A notice was pinned around his neck saying “I am a drug selling scumbag.” The police were unable to find the offenders (local feeling is they didn’t try very hard), while the individual left the country and now lives in Scotland. Drug dealing in the area stopped overnight. In another case in a nearby Catholic area, a paedophile was beaten and then locked in a van with four pit bulls for over an hour. He is considered unlikely to reoffend.

These are not isolated instances. Known break-and-enter offenders, drug dealers and those committing crimes of violence are routinely beaten. In these areas crime is almost non-existent, although there is some tolerance, for instance sale of marijuana is considered benign. Are there lessons for us?

Obviously, vigilante justice can’t be supported (although I must admit an attraction to introducing paedophiles to pit bulls). However, brutal though these actions are, they do disprove a common mantra that “more severe sentencing won’t solve the problem.” It just depends on the severity of the punishment.

A few extra months in prison won’t solve the problem, but how about a different kind of punishment that makes the whole experience very unpleasant? The equivalent of army basic training for a few months, Spartan living conditions, out of bed at 5 a.m., run ragged until exhausted each day, no TV, no so-called “treatment programs” with virtually zero success rate. Such sentences would offend the more sensitive of our citizens and would cause some unemployment among psychologists and sociologists but the evidence from those jurisdictions that have implemented such schemes is that they work.

Perhaps when rehabilitation fails and when our justice system seems to favour offenders over victims, it is time to scare the hell out of the bad guys.

Ron Taylor is a former Mission councillor who remains active in community affairs. Abbotsford Post