BLUEPRINT FOR RECOVERY

It takes a solid foundation, excellent support, and a sturdy roof to help
those who are both mentally ill and addicted. Victoria is getting the
building blocks to do so.

Imagine you're hooked on drugs, or alcohol, or both. You've reached the
point where you know you need help, and you feel ready to admit your
problem, find counselling and work at getting clean and sober. You need to
get downtown to see an addictions support worker, who will help you get
your life back together.

The only thing between you and a pre-scheduled meeting with that support
worker is a short trip on public transit. Nothing could be easier than
hopping on a bus and being taken to your appointment.

But imagine that you're also dealing with mental health issues, and for
reasons others wouldn't understand, you are too afraid to get on that bus.

If you walk, you'll miss the appointment.

But you walk anyway. You have to. Others wouldn't understand.

Sure enough, you miss your appointment, and find it too challenging to
explain why. Even though you need help today, the office workers politely
ask you to reschedule. They don't understand what it's taken to get you
here in the first place. Your combined addiction and mental health issues
have not been taken into account and, once more, you slip through the
cracks in the health care system.

"I think it's surprising how often that is the case," says Lori Ferguson,
coordinator of the Research, Education, Evaluation and Support Network
(REES), a community-based mental health organization that operates through
the Victoria Cool Aid Society. "I see a lot of clients here who do not get
on the bus to go elsewhere."

And when they don't, they're back in the same place they started, needing
help but not getting it. That can prove especially harmful for someone with
an addiction, says Gordon Harper, of the Regional Addictions Advocacy
Society. "Some of the most profoundly ill people out there are those who
are dealing with both issues at the same time," says Harper, who works as
an advocate. "They're not well-served right now. People have these
unreasonable barriers that make their worlds really small." And when they
go looking for help, those barriers aren't always identified. Harper knows
this from personal experience.

"Seventeen years ago, I was 40, and I started to work at getting sober," he
says. "I'm white, male, reasonably well-educated, accustomed to
bureaucracy, and I was well-supported by family and friends. And I almost
died. So then you see the people who are already accustomed to and
expecting to find discrimination. A single, pregnant aboriginal woman with
two kids, if she goes for help and is told to come back [in a week], she's
likely to walk out and say `Fuck it. I needed help today.'"

In many cases, says Harper, "Services that think of themselves as being
client-friendly, when you boil it all away, they're friendly to their
administrative need. I used to say that the anthem of the alcoholic was
`fuck it, I'm out of here' . . . we need a welcoming initiative--with
backup--for those who have been rejected, dejected and ejected."