Detoxing in Capricornia.

This week, my region of Capricornia, in Queensland, Australia, has seen a fierce debate rise. Our state government intends to build a drug and alcohol rehabilitation facility in the city of Rockhampton. That would normally, I imagine, be a unanimously popular initiative, but the problem is the intended location. That is a vacant block of land just several hundred metres away from a residential estate, on Rockhampton's outskirts. Naturally those living nearby have begun protesting so staunchly they've made Queensland's state TV news.

Now, after a related Facebook post I made which caused an ongoing debate of its own (62 comments and counting), I've developed cognitive dissonance here. Initially I was angry about what I considered these residents' apparent insistence (or maybe just the media's insistence on portraying them all this way) on tarring all addicts with the same brush as unrestrained deviants, because two of my relatives have been addicts, but now I've been led, however reluctantly or subconsciously, to be able to understand and empathise more with their grievances. Several friends of mine, to their credit, suggested alternative and more remote locations for this facility - which, keep in mind, hasn't even been built yet - which I do think would be suitable.

Nonetheless, the thought from this debate which I've been most stewing over is the separate debate over whether addicts choose to become addicts. I genuinely have to take the middle ground on that; there's surely a subjectivity to it, and I suspect some people first take drugs simply to sample them, even though they may know of the addiction risk. But regardless, while I know very well how addicts can be prone to violence or depravity, in my experience the drugs themselves influence that more than the user's personality (although I acknowledge, of course, that therefore everybody could decrease their capability of those if they never touched drugs). We are all a fusion of good and bad; it just comes down to which side we choose to exhibit more often.

Anyway, I've come around to the idea of the Queensland Government building this rehab facility elsewhere, but I still think these residents would do well to view addicts more open-mindedly and call me naive but I'm convinced many addicts would consult this facility out of a genuine desire to turn their lives around. I do not for a second condone their lifestyle choices, but as someone who's had to contend with stereotypes for most of his life as a member of another marginalised discourse, I can empathise with them in that sense.

Now, in closing, addicts may or may not choose that road for themselves. I'll let you take whichever angle you like there. But either way, we can (and I believe should) do whatever we all can to help addicts kick the habit.