There is no dignity in alcoholism

It's obviously not fine.

Now, imagine how bad life would have to get for you - you personally - to be blasted out of your mind, filthy, stinking of alcohol, exposing yourself in public while you urinate in a tube carriage. Imagine the kind of things that would have to happen for you to end up that low.

That's where that person is. He didn't set out to end up that way.

The question is what can society do that's better than his everyday life?

It would at least keep him from falling on an electrified rail or down a long flight of stairs.

I'm sure anyone who is a paramedic would have all sorts of positive thoughts on the value of drunk tanks as opposed to loading mangled and bloody bodies into ambulances.

What do you think society/the police/the courts can do to him that's worse than his everyday life?

If you spend more money to prevent and on recovery institutions, you need less money to spend to deal with crime and cleaning the mess.
Also with severe mental health issues.

This post actually reminded me of a recent story I read where a (mentally ill) man waiting on a platform suddenly attacked a stranger and pushed him down on the rails. Luckily somebody near had quick reflexes and pulled them right back.

It won’t solve his addiction. It would solve other people being pissed on for a night, and solve the cleaners having to clean all the tube carriages, and solve the tourists stopping coming to London because it’s so disgusting, and stop any more women and children having to witness it

Yeah why not. It's exactly the same as someone who doesn't know where they are having a piss.
Worked with addicts for many years and absolutely none of them ever said - I'm glad I got to this point - lost everything- early death but now I can piss on a train without recourse

You think being locked up in a cell overnight would solve this man’s addiction and no doubt other problems? 🙄 Yes, I’m sure it’s that easy. It just never occurred to anyone.

Silly comment.

If it's oh so understandable and excusable and won't somebody think of the poor men, then what you're saying is we shouldn't be so precious about indecent exposure.

Should we all just feel compassion for men who commit sexual crimes too? After all, many feel compelled to expose themselves, grope children, or commit rape, because after all, they've probably have endured horrible childhoods or they're off their tits on coke or whatever.

I'm the child of an alcoholic and it always surprises me to realise not everyone is absolutely disgusted by it. Reading through the thread, I think it's because those who haven't lived with an alcoholic have a rosy view of what they're like. They're picturing some poor soul quietly destroying themselves in anguish. Maybe stumbling around lost or doing themselves an injury. It's easy to have compassion for that. But those of us who have more up close and personal experience with it know just how nasty, selfish, and often violent alcoholics become, and that's what we think of first, every time we're faced with a drunk.

We also know how self-pitying and in denial they tend to be about their behaviour, and how the world often infantilises them and reinforces a narrative that they have no control over their actions. When the truth is, they're the only ones who can choose to stop, and every day they choose to keep drinking instead. It doesn't matter what the reasons behind the choice are. It's still a choice they're making. And the victims of that choice have the right to feel disgusted by it. We have the right not to be a font of pity for alcoholics anymore.

I understand your gut reaction here, OP. The smell of alcohol in someone's pores, and being around drunk people, triggers the same response in me if I'm honest

You see a man exposing his penis whenever you go outdoors then?

Do we all have to put up with seeing men's penises now whenever we go outdoors or use public transport?

There is no solution- that’s exactly my point.

we just have to live with it. Even with amazing mental health support you’ll still have addicts. Alcohol is addictive.

It's unbelievable to me that someone would spit out the word "compassion" like it's an insult.

My only experience of alcoholism was a family friend who lost her toddler in very sudden, horrific circumstances. It was in the news at the time. She was a social drinker only beforehand but after her little boy died she became an alcoholic. I can only assume that alcohol provided some relief through oblivion. She never recovered and died of alcohol related disease. There was never a point where she could have made a "choice" to get better because she was not capable of that kind of thought process. She was just existing, really. Not actually there in spirit.

I think our friend's story is probably on the really shitty end of a particularly shitty scale. But the fact is that nobody becomes an alcoholic for fun. Why aren't you an alcoholic? Is it because you'd love to but you are exercising self restraint? Or is it because it sounds like a miserable, degrading, lonely existence that you would never choose? People become alcoholics for a myriad of complex reasons. Making superficial judgements might make you feel superior but it does nothing to actually address the reasons for alcoholism.

Alcoholism is awful but it’s caused by trauma, pain and suffering. I never judge and just find it so very sad.

The alcohol industry should be treated the way tobacco companies are. Society shouldn’t have to pay for the pain they’ve caused without them suffering

Honestly I think the real problem is with UK attitudes towards alcohol generally. So many people think drinking to a harmful level is entirely normal and get annoyed if told it's unhealthy, complain about efforts to raise the price of alcohol - which is much, much cheaper now than in previous decades - and laugh at drunken mishaps. In reality there is a huge amount of alcohol related health problems & crime. It's not just alcoholics - it feels like the norm in the UK is to over drink. Politicians need to ramp up alcohol taxes massively. It costs us way more in NHS use alone than it makes in tax revenue.

https://britishlivertrust.org.uk/27-4-billion-cost-of-alcohol-harm-in-england-every-year/

I imagine there would be public outrage if carehomes were funded for people who so many have no sympathy for

How would that work? It’s such a foolish suggestion I don’t know where to start with how ridiculous it is

Agree 100%

You're getting an unwarranted pasting here, OP.

It's ok until practically every time you set foot in a train you find people slumped over in a catatonic state because they've been doing tranq, and you have to step over people out cold on the stairs to the exit. Or you can't find a seat that hasn't been pissed on. Or you're held at knife or gunpoint and robbed because someone has to have money for drugs. I live in a city where people are shot because of addiction. Who to feel more sorry for? Ooh, difficult...

Yes, society needs to spend millions more on addiction services.
Sure, all these people were once kids and who knows what horrors they've been through.
No, I do not feel sorry for them to the point where I'm going to accept the negatives they bring to the environment everyone else has to function in.