Rehab Is Not Some Health Spa.. It's A Baptism Of Fire

YOU can’t ride two horses if you only have one backside.

- Darren McGarvey

Someone should explain that to the organisation which last week threatened a man in residential treatment for drug addiction with losing his home.

This choice – put to him by anonymous, unaccountable, penpushing desk-killers – proved not just impossible but also deadly.

Three days after discharging himself, the man (whose family requested not be named) perished in another preventable drug death.

If this does not challenge the stubborn narrative that people with substance abuse disorders are solely to blame for their own tragic ends, I do not know what will.

Due to a fatal loophole in our ludicrous system of funding, many rehab beds are funded by housing benefit. This creates a nightmare scenario for extremely vulnerable, chronically sick people, who must make the most hellish choice imaginable – get sober and be turfed out on the streets or keep your home and be found dead in it.

While officials run for cover and the Scottish Government winds up the “Blame Westminster energiser bunnies”, another family grieves a senseless loss. A grief rendered more tragic and insufferable because of how close their loved one was to confronting and possibly overcoming his problem.