A new Approach to Addiction Treatment is Necessary

Having been on methadone myself now for 5 months and decreased my dose from 15 mls down to 6 in that time I am now a firm supporter of Opioid substitution as a means of treatment for heroin addiction. In that time I have only used methadone as prescribed by a doctor and have not used any other mind or mood altering substance. I was initially sceptical. I know it can be abused and it doesn't work for everyone, but there is no form of treatment that isn't open to abuse and does work for everyone. I think it is particularly an option for those on the street who have no resources and cannot afford rehab.

This does not mean I no longer believe or practice the 12 step program . I am as committed to it as ever. It is the only thing that worked for me to stay off drugs. I have have tried countless methods to get there ( some worked others better than others)., but always relapsed. The only thing that kept me away in the long term was practicing the 12 step program. They are certainly not mutually exclusive as some people believe. OST is, or should be, a treatment option. The 12 steps is a recovery program for long term sobriety. They each have a role to play. I go to meetings.I work a program. I take my methadone everyday. I don't put up my hand for clean time. I don't do any service beyond bringing coffee or putting out chairs, but i do claim to be (and I am) in recovery.

The government needs to be pressured to make methadone (or suboxone..or both) an essential medicine, available for free in the hospitals. We also need sponsored housing made available to those who are willing to go on OST programs, so they can get off the street.

This is what I envisage and am calling into reality: (I know it is a wild fantasy right now but i also believe it can become a reality. all we need is a property and some money ( people would need to be fed and housed) and a few committed people. this is the reason I am doing my doctorate... to be able to motivate for funding from government and/or private sector.)

Imagine a run down old property, abandoned. unused, in disrepair, stripped and useless for the purpose of living in. Such properties exist in their number in all of our cities and towns. Imagine that people from the street could start moving in to one of these houses.. Not in large numbers , just a few. those that are ready and willing to make a change in their life.... They could be provided free housing (depending on funding) for the first 3 months, and free methadone, if they need it, (again this relies on the government coming through or getting some funding) providing they stay off all drugs during this time that they are there. (testing would be essential). Their first project would be to begin fixing up the property, growing food, making it livable.

What I would call a reintegration program (as opposed to a rehabilitation program) should be put in place which would focus on the relearning of social skills, adjusting to normal life , deprogramming people from the addicted lifestyle of hustling and skarreling, reintroducing them to community and some form of spirituality (in the broadest possible meaning of the word- a sense of connectedness, rather than religiosity) Psychological counselling should also be available to those who need it. They could also receive training in one or more skills (depending on availability of instructors who would either be volunteers or paid through raised funding) these could include driving training, computer skills, arts and crafts, electrical repairs. etc. Other projects could be encouraged to raise money. (a recycling project, a food garden/ nursery, a repair hub where people could donate broken objects to be fixed and re- used, starting a coffee shop etc are possible options and i am sure there are others, depending on the skills of people involved. (Music art and drama should definitely be encouraged.). The centre could also operate as a community hub for recovery, hosting meeting, workshops and social events. . On completion of their three months residents would be expected to pay back and contribute by acting as mentors for new comers. If they wished to stay on they would have that option, but would be expected to pay rent through getting a job or doing work in kind around the centre. (we would need office workers, drivers, councellors, cleaners and would use people in recovery wherever possible).

These are just some of the crazy ideas I have .I know you probably think I'm mad by now, but most good ideas were started by someone who was first thought crazy.

So who want to join me make it happen?

Anyone know an abandoned property we can use?

The Biggest Thieves of all (published in The Underminers, 9 December 2019 https://www.theunderminers.co.za/the-biggest-thieves-of-all/?fbclid=IwAR3TNVCbpcKdnsoiuZ5w4emVHdUJ0nqUn-e6FZoz7fb_KnUFdMQeA4Cct7I

White people like to blame the ANC for the problems of the country. Some of the common phrases we hear when white people gather around the braai.. “Its been nearly thirty years now, can’t they just get over it. We have a black government. The playing fields are now level and we need to forget the past and move forward".
They like to portray the corruption within the ANC as evidence of the corruption and inferiority of all black people. This is just another form of racism. The ANC has never truly represented the people of SA. It has always represented an educated elite. Since 1994 it has not served as true representative or servant of the African people but has been bought and controlled by their corporate slave masters.....and has acted as their house slaves to keep the population in check and prevent any real revolution or re-distribution of wealth. It is a puppet regime serving white interests. And the puppet masters are the Oppenheimers and the Ruperts and the other white owners of the multi-national corporations – they are the true bosses of South Africa. They have deliberately put inept cadres in position in charge of state owned enterprises, to run them into the ground and to use that as an excuse to privatize them. First to steal the resources that these entities profit from from their true owners, the people of the country, and secondly that the corporations can then take over and continue to profit by selling back to the people what was stolen from them in the first place. This is not an accident. It is by design.
Zuma is condemned, not because he was captured, but because he allowed himself to be captured by the wrong people. Instead of the usual masters of the mining and tobacco companies, (the Oppenheimers and the Ruperts) he allowed himself to be controlled by a group of upstart Indians. (The Guptas). Our present government and leaders are back in the right (white) hands.
But white people like to be the victims. They even talk about “reverse racism”. But the whole idea that humanity is made up of different races is a European invention. That is why we hear it said, with some truth I believe, that black people cannot be racist
In truth the source of corruption has always been the white corporations that control our leaders and governments. They like to portray black people as natural criminals. But their thievery is minor compared to what the colonial governments and their corporate sponsors have stolen over the centuries. They have stolen entire continents, their people and their wealth. And now that is not enough anymore they want to dig up the earth and steal everything underneath it as well. The biggest diamond ever found, so big it had to be cut into 9 smaller pieces, was found in South Africa and today adorns the jewellery of the British monarch. Who gave it to her? The white bosses of mining corporation. This is just a start. A recent Aljazeera article estimates that Britain stole 45 trillion pounds from India alone. It is the wealth of the colonies that made the colonial powers wealthy in the first place. And yet they have the audacity to claim they bought progress and civilization to the colonies. What they actually bought was slavery, corruption and poverty.
Today in this country they are using new land legislation not to return land to its rightful owners, as feared by most white people, but to remove communities from the land they are living on so they can mine for precious metals. The politician involved will get the blame, but they are only getting a comparatively small bribe to make it happen. Once again the only ones who will profit are the (white ) mining companies and their owners. While people die of thirst and the dams of the country are drying up, they are selling the rights to our water to Nestle and other international corporations. This is part of a trend by international conglomerates to privatize the world’s water supply. At the same time they are limiting the individual’s right to harvest water. In the United States a number of cases have been brought recently against private citizens for collecting water. Golman Sachs has identified water as one of the top five investments of the 21st Century and predicted that it will soon become more productive (ie profitable) than petroleum.
In South American the corporations are taking over whole countries. In Brazil, Bolivia we see democratically elected leaders overthrown by right wing demagogues in the pay of the corporations. It is not by chance that Bolivia has the world’s biggest lithium deposits and that lithium is crucial for storing energy in the new green technology. They are moving to ensure that once the fossil fuels are finished they will own whatever replaces it. They also spend vast amounts of money undermining socialist regimes in Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba. One day they will own the very air we breathe. Already in India and China there are “oxygen bars” where a client can pay to breath fresh oxygen. It is time now not only to stop them, but to start demanding the return of wealth stolen over centuries of plunder.

We shall never eat at the table of the 1% (publised in The Underminers Sept 25 2019 https://www.theunderminers.co.za/we-shall-never-eat-at-the-table-of-the-1/

White and State Monopoly capital represent the 1%, and are allied to create confusion and division among the rest of society.

There are a number of terms that are thrown around in this country that people have little understanding of. One of these is White Monopoly Capitalism. What does the term refer to and why do white people see it as an implied threat?

WMC does not refer to wealth and money of the average white person, who does earn and own a lot more than the average black person. (For those who need facts and figures the Living Conditions of Households in South Africa survey, published in Bussinesstech, 20 Jan 2017 found white average household income ( +- R300 000) to be five times higher than the average of black households.(+- R69 000)) What WMC does refer to is the massive amount of wealth in the hands of a very small sector of the population ( the infamous 1% of the population who control 80 per cent of the country’s (and the world’s wealth)) and who do happen to be mostly, but not exclusively white. The average salary of the top 1% of earners in SA (according to a March 2019 Bloomberg report courtesy of Bussinesstech, 29 May) is R2.21 million. The bottom 55% of the population (that’s +- 30.4 million mostly black people) earns an average of R992 per month. ( 2015 Statics SA study reported in Quartz SA 25 August 2017). According to the same study less than 1% of white South Africans fall into this group.

Further research by Econ 3×3 reported in Inquistr May 7, 2017, found that 10 % of the population owned 90-95% of the country’s wealth while the next 40% (the middle class) owned the majority of the remaining 5-10%. The poorest 50% of the population own little or no measurable wealth.

In the private sector 70% of senior management positions are held by still held by whites, with only 13% being held by blacks. What has changed with the end of apartheid is there has been a rise of what could be called “State capital”. This comprises a group of elite (largely black) businessmen who own about 30% of the country’s capital though the State. This group, however has close ties with White capital, and forms a part of the 1% elite that controls the economy, and are allied with it with the purpose of maintaining the status quo.

The real owners of South African capital are found in the stock exchange. Of the top 100 companies listed on the JSE, 22% are white owned and 23% are black owned local companies. Foreign companies, largely European- (and white-) owned, make up around 40% of the remaining investors. (courtesy of the same Inquisitr article). In spite of post-apartheid changes the economy of the country is still largely in the hands of white people.

The real problem behind such shocking disparity, in terms of relations of peoples in the country, is not that white people earn, and own, far more than their black counterparts for doing the same job and consider themselves superior as a result. The real problem is that most people, especially the middle class, (white and black) continue to support the ongoing agenda and rule of this 1% thus alienating themselves from the majority of humanity. They do this by continuing to buy in corporate owned supermarkets, to consume corporate- made and largely useless, badly made, dangerously toxic, unnecessary products, to use fossil-fuel based forms of energy which poison the environment, to send their children to elite schools and to absorb state and privately owned mainstream media which are designed to brainwash them into accepting the disparities of wealth and the culture of consumerism with its perpetual growth and spending.

Through the cult of the celebrity, and through accident of birth which ensures they share a common skin tone, people imagine themselves to be connected to this elite class. In reality they are not and will never be part of the monopoly capital class. They are conned into believing that that this group of people (the 1 per cent) is somehow looking out for them and represents their best interest. Yet they are no more than cannon fodder to them; useful idiots who will continue to support them in their quest for world domination. We need stop identifying with and supporting the agenda of people (the true owners of monopoly capitalism, state or white) who don’t give a thought for us, but only for their own survival. Stop identifying with the agenda of supremacists and racists who represents the interests of this class. They survive only because they have succeeded in dividing the rest of humanity. These are the real enemy of humanity. They have corrupted our police forces, and set us against each other. Our governments are now headed by billionaires who have little regard for the ordinary people and care only for their own profits. They have convinced people that the drug user in the streets and the foreigner are the cause of their suffering, when they are but a scapegoat to distract us.

Their agenda is precisely to divide you and convince you that you are one of them, when you can in reality you can never be. Yet you are seen as one of them because you choose to put their interest above the interests of your fellow humans. As long as you do this you will be on the side of monopoly capital, the 1 %, and against the rest of humanity . If you are a working class or middle class white South African your true allies are other working and middle class people, no matter their colour or ethnicity, not the elite who only view you as fodder to achieve their own ends. It’s your choice and it’s time to choose.

The Corrupt Nature of Capitalism

Capitalism is at its core corrupt. It is a system that is designed to profit off the labour and suffering of those deemed as lesser beings. It reduces everything to a monetary value and corrupts everything and everyone it touches. It is designed to ensure that wealth will forever be concentrated in the hands of a small minority who deem themselves superior to the rest of us mortals. With its values of endless growth it will necessarily end with the destruction of all that is natural in the world. It thrives off , indeed cannot survive without corruption and greed. It corrupts the very soul of humanity to value profit over humanity and nature and ensures in the end that people cannot even survive without money to buy what should be their's by right of birth. It survives by stealing what nature has given us as a free gift and selling it back to us . It is an evil system whose time has come, indeed must come, to an end of humanity is to survive.