Top Tweets for #CareIsNotCoerced

A handful will find recovery through forced treatment—the ones that likely would have engaged with it had it been handed to them on a silver platter (no barriers). But most (~70%, per drug court graduation stats) will be forced into treatment, get out, relapse, maybe OD, definitely go to prison. The abstinence of a few at the cost of destruction of the many. You’re saying a few people ceasing to use drugs is worth harming and potentially killing others. You’re a sick fuck if you think abstinence is more valuable than human life. Voluntary treatment works better. Drug users getting arrested for possession aren’t pilots and physicians, by and large. We’re the bottom of the barrel, the easy targets. The ones driving the beater cars that get profiled and pulled over. Mandatory treatment for us doesn’t work. You think my addiction isn’t already miserable? You think making me worse will make me better? People will get FELONIES for drug possession, in California. Their life will be ruined. Job prospects destroyed. Hope deflated. Hope is the foundation of recovery. No one should ever get a felony for drug possession, full stop, no caveats. Courts are courts, treatment is treatment, and gtfo with that. It took Portland police less than one week after the Measure 110 repeal changes—billed as a way to force more people into treatment—meant that most people arrested for drug possession will go straight to jail, not some fantastical “deflection.” My heart is breaking into pieces. The State tortured me. Kicking cold turkey, almost getting hit by a semi-truck while enslaved to pick up trash on the freeway, for the high crime of preferring an intoxicant other than alcohol. You ruined me. I lost my school, my EMT license, my job, my housing. I ended up homeless and destitute doing sex work. You forced me into treatment that I did not want, forced me into jail when that treatment failed to cure my affliction, and permanently associated treatment with handcuffs in my mind until I had to lean into the identity of being a junkie—I’ll reclaim the word, thank you very much—just to survive. Lean into my destiny: dying for my love. Singing Tracy Chapman in an orange jumpsuit on I-5 as cars whizzed by at 70MPH, months after a girl was hit and killed on that same crew, singing “two weeks in a Virginia jail, for my lover, for my lover.” Sure, she’s an abusive bitch. But she’s consistent, always there for me with a warm embrace. I loved heroin. I worked my ass off to never turn to crime to buy it. I did that. I succeeded. You called me a criminal anyway. So what’s the point, why fucking not? I wanted to die. You gave me a felony for drug possession and then another for RESIDUE not visible to the naked eye after an illegal search where WashCo Deputy DePetrio bold faced lied in a police report. Fun fact, he’s training other cops now, head honcho! Two felonies in two months. Six arrests. 35 days in jail over three stays. My first one voluntary, because I’m an idiot, I asked for it, thinking jail would save me. Later, a couple months for probation violations. And for what? An empty plastic bag. This is the path California is choosing? Destroy 70-80% of people so a couple stop using? You’re cruel, draconian, it makes me sick, and I’m moving out of the country the second I’m able. I thought I saved those that came after me. So that no one else would die after a lifetime of revolving door incarcerations being labeled a criminal. RIP Justin, Jesse. Everyone I knew that died was incarcerated repeatedly first. And then you took that away. And now California is moving to be so regressive and punitive it’s 1994 out here. No on Prop 36, call everyone you know, get everyone registered to vote.