Portland needs ‘no-barrier’ services for addicts

nobody-can-live-forever-tim-maiaLately, I’ve been thinking a lot about Tim Maia, a Brazilian bandleader renowned for both his prodigious creative gifts and his prodigious appetite for self-destruction.

In the early ’70s, Maia achieved success with a string of albums melding American soul and funk with Brazilian music. Then, in 1974, Maia’s already crazy life took a truly bizarre turn when he joined a cult called (in English) Rational Energy. The sect preached that humans originated on a perfect “super world” of “rational energy,” but are now stranded on an “anti-world” of “animals’ energy.” UFOs will eventually show up to take us back to our home planet, but until then, we must dress in white, eschew all intoxicants, have sex only for the purpose of procreation and, most importantly, read the cult’s bible, “Universe in Disenchantment,” which explains all this nonsense.

Maia and his band had already recorded two albums’ worth of incredible instrumental tracks before his conversion. When he laid down the vocals, he dutifully plugged the cult’s message into every song: “Read the book, the only book, the book of God, ‘Universe in Disenchantment,’ and you’re gonna know the truth.”

Not surprisingly, the record company, Brazilian radio stations and Maia’s fans rejected this new material. Maia eventually grew disillusioned with the cult and went back to his old habits (excessive indulgence in sex, drugs and alcohol), which contributed to his death, in 1998, at age 55. But Maia’s life and music are being rediscovered thanks to a compilation, titled “Nobody Can Live Forever,” released by David Byrne’s Luaka Bop label in 2012.

I picked up that album earlier this year, around the same time I bought a book titled “Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs,” by Johann Hari. Now I feel a bit like Maia, compelled to tell everyone, “Read the book, the only book, the book of God, ‘Chasing the Scream,’ and you’re gonna know the truth.”

The voluminous stats and studies proving the century-old, global War on Drugs is a failure will make anyone’s eyes glaze over. Hari’s book is so powerful because he tells the history of this disastrous campaign through compelling stories about people caught in the crossfire — addicts, doctors, gang members, cops and prosecutors who’ve come to understand the cruelty and futility of our militarized assault on certain plants and the people who crave them.

Maia’s cult had one thing right: we live in a world of animals’ energy. Like our fellow animals, when we’re hurt, lonely or bored, we seek solace in substances that take the pain away and make life worth living again. That’s natural. As a society, the rational response to this suffering is to ease and remedy it, not exacerbate the problem by criminalizing it — declaring various plants and chemicals illegal, putting addicts in jail, kicking them out of public housing and denying them benefits intended to help get them back on their feet.

Hari writes about Dr. Gabor Maté, whose research and work with addicts in Vancouver led him to realize that the vast majority of hardcore drug-users had childhoods marked by abuse or neglect or devastating loss and strife. His colleague, the psychologist and professor Bruce Alexander, expanded Maté’s findings by demonstrating the role social isolation plays in fostering addiction.

“We have built a system that thinks we will stop addicts by increasing their pain,” Hari wrote. “If I had to design a system that was intended to keep people addicted,” Maté told him, “I’d design exactly the system that we have right now.’

The solutions Hari documents in his book will seems as crazy to most of you as UFO and super-worlds. But, in fact, they are both rational and, insofar as they are based on compassion and love for our fellow humans, God-like.

The Portland Hotel Society, a nonprofit in Vancouver funded mostly by the provincial government, provides housing, counseling and treatment to that city’s most desperate addicts and alcoholics. It also provides what’s known as safe-injection sites on the premises, where junkies can shoot up, under supervision, without fear of arrest or threat of eviction.

The unconditional support the society provides gives these suffering people a measure of safety, stability and self-worth most have never experienced before. With that crucial grounding in place, the hard work of recovery is much easier.

Portland’s “low-barrier” shelter services are being hotly debated these days, with many insisting the barriers need to be raised. I say the city needs “no-barrier” shelter and drug-treatment services, like the PHS (whose name was inspired by the compassionate approach to addiction treatment found in “the other Portland,” not ours).

Don’t believe me? Well, then, you just need to read the book, the only book …

Chris Busby

About Chris Busby

Chris Busby is editor and publisher of The Bollard, a monthly magazine about Portland. He writes a weekly column for the BDN.