Opinion Drug Courts Fail Women, But There's a Solution. - Women just can't stop smoking crack. Better give them more money.

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When Susan Burton lost her 5-year-old son after he was struck by a police vehicle in Los Angeles, her grief drove her into addiction. Crack cocaine became her way to cope, and California’s response was to lock her up again and again. Over two decades, she was incarcerated six times, released each time without treatment, housing or support. Exceptionally, she transformed her pain into purpose, founding A New Way of Life in South L.A., a re-entry program for formerly incarcerated women. Burton’s story reflects a system that can end up punishing survivors rather than helping them through trauma.

As of 2020, 32% of unhoused people in L.A. County were women. Nearly half reported having experienced domestic violence, and many struggled with substance abuse and binge drinking. These intersecting vulnerabilities — trauma, addiction, poverty — create a dangerous feedback loop. All too often, this loop leads to petty crimes, what one might call crimes of survival — probation violations, petty theft, vagrancy, possession.

Some of these women end up in L.A.’s drug courts, which were created to offer alternatives to incarceration. These courts can reduce recidivism, lower substance abuse and save taxpayer money. Drug courts are on the right track but fail women in particular.

Women are more likely to have co-occurring psychiatric disorders, economic dependence on abusive partners and the added weight of caregiving responsibilities. Yet most drug courts are not tailored to gendered differences, operating on models built around male patterns of addiction and accountability. As a result, women are often set up to fail: Treatment schedules ignore parenting duties, sanctions punish relationships rather than address trauma and programs rarely offer trauma-informed care.

Los Angeles can do better. Other places have amassed experience to inform how.

A randomized trial in San Diego County found that women assigned to gender-responsive drug court programs performed better in treatment, had lower rates of PTSD symptoms and were more likely to complete their programs than women in mixed-gender treatment.

The Big Island in Hawaii has created a women’s court informed by such considerations, known as Na Hulu Wehi. As an intern last summer, I worked alongside judges, probation officers, treatment providers and national partners such as All Rise and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration to design trauma-informed judicial training and program models. What I witnessed was transformative — a court system that recognized women’s unique experiences and provided cognitive behavioral therapy, behavioral health beds, culturally grounded healing, specialized substance use treatment, and therapists trained in trauma and abuse.

A small island state with one-tenth of California’s population and a fraction of California’s resources has piloted an approach that could be a transformative public safety investment for the Golden State as well.

And L.A. is a great place to start. A women’s court could save the county money because it would reduce the number of offenders who cycle through jails for crimes born of trauma and addiction. The approach pioneered in Hawaii avoids punishment and looks upstream, addressing addiction and mental health before they lead to exorbitant incarceration costs. Innovation, compassion and fiscal sense can coexist.

California has long prided itself on being a national leader in justice reform. Legislators representing L.A. County should introduce a bill to create a women’s court modeled after Hawaii’s success. Women’s healing is not a luxury but a necessity.

 

[shatterspinel]

California is a portal to hell. They want your whores, junkies, criminals and general scum who all get filtered into the wonderful world of drug and sex traffickering which will never be policed as the prisons are where these operations are orchestrated. Welcome to the land of corruption, there have been a million movies made on this and it only gets worse the more you look into it.

 

[OrionBalls]

One of my favorite "qualifier" stories of all time was one where a dude uninstalled the toilet out of the basement bathroom in his apartment, detail cleaned it with a toothbrush, and traded it to his dealer for crack.

 

[Absolutego]

This kind of bullshit is going to be drastically improved by Trumps recent EO on Ibogaine and other psychedelics. 99% of all modern treatment is build upon the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. The truth is the 12 steps are not a cure for addiction nor do they work beyond a 1-3% success rate. The thought process when it came to serial relapser's is that the addict "just hasn't lost enough or hasn't been through enough pain" for them to want to fully embrace sobriety -This is complete fucking bullshit.

To go a bit further, the entire basis of the 12 steps is the theory that if an addict works the 12 steps, by the end he or she will have a spiritual experience that will remove the obsession to drink. This is also fucking bullshit and by my estimations less than 1% of all people who "work" the 12 steps will actually have a strong enough spiritual experience to remove the obsession. This is where psycheldics. specifically Ibogain, 5meO/DMT, Psilocybin/psilocin and LSD come into play. I'm convinced at this point that these compounds can induce a spiritual experience that can overcome addiction beyond a 50% success rate. Trump has done a lot of gay shit, but his this recent EO is going to change the game within 10 years time. The 50 billion dollar modern addiction treatment's days are limited and rightly so.

There is no "cure" for addiction. Realistically you can't un-make those neural pathways once they're forged. People who are clean for 20+ years can be back to consumption patterns in line with the peak of their use within weeks/months of relapsing.
What 12 step programs are (and they're, by far, the most successful treatment mechanism in human history at it) is a means to manage the disorder of addiction and grow beyond it. Very rare are the addicts who actually have the kind of lightning flash spiritual experience waking them up that Bill W describes in the Big Book of AA. I 'm skeptical even the few who profess having had that experience realized it as that in the moment, but in hindsight. It's internal narrative building. The focus on that is honestly the biggest flaw in the Big Book and why, even though my program is built around it, I usually break into NA literature for day to day stuff with sponsees. For most, the vital spiritual experience is a growth in spiritual health as they immersed themselves in a community of other addicts. People willing to push back against the impulse to isolate, to offer support for fellow down and outers, to challenge the rationalization walls addicts are so good at building.

You aren't going to induce that by showing an addict a good time on hallucinogens. I say that as someone who fucking loves psychedelics and if I ever relapse, it's probably going to be because I listened to the voice in my head telling me it's totally a great idea to start growing shrooms in my closet.

The truth is recovery is a crapshoot because it takes an addict buying into wanting to change. What I can tell you is addicts are really, really, good at preferring the devil they know, even if that devil is some fucking dire circumstances. You're right that it's not a matter of not having been through enough pain, addicts are used to pain and will dwell in a misery normal people can't even comprehend as a matter of course if they're still scared of change. But it's not a matter of not loving them enough either. If anything, too much of that feeds their desire to manipulate and excuse behavior. Every addict has a different rock bottom and a different thing that finally pushes them towards change. There's a point where either extreme is just enabling the addict's ability to rationalize, and certainly a point where the wider negative impact an addict has on their community outweighs constantly handing them other chances before taking them out of that community.

 

[LOLurtranz]

There is no "cure" for addiction. Realistically you can't un-make those neural pathways once they're forged. People who are clean for 20+ years can be back to consumption patterns in line with the peak of their use within weeks/months of relapsing.
What 12 step programs are (and they're, by far, the most successful treatment mechanism in human history at it) is a means to manage the disorder of addiction and grow beyond it. Very rare are the addicts who actually have the kind of lightning flash spiritual experience waking them up that Bill W describes in the Big Book of AA. I 'm skeptical even the few who profess having had that experience realized it as that in the moment, but in hindsight. It's internal narrative building. The focus on that is honestly the biggest flaw in the Big Book and why, even though my program is built around it, I usually break into NA literature for day to day stuff with sponsees. For most, the vital spiritual experience is a growth in spiritual health as they immersed themselves in a community of other addicts. People willing to push back against the impulse to isolate, to offer support for fellow down and outers, to challenge the rationalization walls addicts are so good at building.

You aren't going to induce that by showing an addict a good time on hallucinogens. I say that as someone who fucking loves psychedelics and if I ever relapse, it's probably going to be because I listened to the voice in my head telling me it's totally a great idea to start growing shrooms in my closet.

I use the word cure, because the fix I've given my own brain as well as a handful of others could be called nothing short of that. What I've done is completely radical and I believe restored my brain to almost pre-use levels. For 20 years I drank 1/2 a gallon a day. I would wait for the liquor store to open. I have been admitted to the hospital 3 times (that I'm aware of) with above a .40 BAC with doctors asking me how I was alive and conscious. I later found heroin and fentanyl. Many people have lost bets on me still being alive. I haven't so much as thought about drinking or opiates in 5+ years.

You have a very recreational view of psychedelics which I expect. At small doses, psilocybin and LSD can be a lot of fun. I'm guessing you've never done 5meO/DMT/Ibogaine or experienced a dose that is far too high of LSD or psilocybin to be enjoyable to the degree that a person would want to experience it again. High doses are where the therapeutic threshold probably begins. You are also incorrect about the science. Recent studies are showing insane amounts of neuroplasticity regeneration through the use of psychedelic's. This has been known since the 1960's. Bill W himself used LSD after getting sober and suggested people use it to obtain a spiritual experience but it was too controversial for the religious retards.

Although I view sobriety by any means as a win and commend you on your efforts to help others, I do think this old school AA/NA way of thinking is not only dangerous, but will ultimately get people you care about killed. When you're new at a 12 step meeting they say the only requirements are a desire to stop drinking and a little open mindedness. Everyone in AA is openminded until you suggest alternate ways of staying sober. Do I think using psycedilcs are the only way or even the best way of obtaining sobriety? Hell no. But we will see within the next few years the success rate of staying sober for a period of time after using them will blow 12 step statistics away.