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At St. Paul 'wet house,' liquor can be their life - and death

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Re: At St. Paul 'wet house,' liquor can be their life - and death

#5
I can see the point of a true hospice, where giving up is really the only thing left to do. However, alcoholism has no definable 'point of no return', at least not to my knowledge. Should we really 'give up' on people addicted to a substance, just to save a buck? How much is a human life worth?

Re: At St. Paul 'wet house,' liquor can be their life - and death

#7
Interesting. I can see how it would be appealing to long-time alcoholics (the "endless optimism" would get pretty sickening).

Not entirely sure what my stance is on it, though - it's essentially long-term non-profit euthanasia. It's what they want, but it's also what they want because they're addicted and it's re-wired their brain so drastically they'll do just about anything to keep feeding it.

On the flip side, rehabilitating someone who doesn't want to be rehabilitated to some degree is essentially throwing enormous sums of money down the drain, and drags that time of their life far lower than it was before. Instead, this offers them companionship and fewer insults (and keeps them in line) until they die, and that seems to be what many people want - what they have for shorter instead of something else which may or may not be better for longer.

If nothing else, it has jogged my thinker; I'll probably debate with myself for a while on this :)

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