Money
Money, and what it cannot buy.
Relatives at this distance are usually the ones with the money, which makes them the most heavily marketed-to people in this entire subject.
Three things that get muddled
When money comes into it, separate these before you agree to anything.
- What you can afford. Not what you could raise. What you can lose without it changing your own life, because you may not get it back and you may be asked again.
- What you are buying. A period of care. A bed. A detox under medical supervision. A rent arrear cleared. Those are the goods. Say which one out loud.
- What you are hoping it will do. This is the one that causes the damage. Money given in the hope of gratitude, or of a changed man, reliably produces neither, and the disappointment then attaches itself to the money.
Paying for treatment is not buying an outcome
Nobody can sell you a result, and the expensive places cannot either. What money buys is time, supervision, safety during withdrawal if it is medically run, and a stretch away from the house. What it cannot buy is his willingness, and that is the ingredient everything depends on.
This is worth being clear-eyed about before the first payment, because families who believed they had bought an outcome take the second episode far harder than families who knew what they were paying for.
How the private market actually sells
Much of what looks like advice when you search for treatment is advertising, and some of it is written by brokers who are paid per admission and who have never met a patient. That does not make every service dishonest. It does mean the first page of results is a sales environment, not an information one.
- Ask who is clinically responsible and what they are registered as. A name and a registration, not a first name and a photograph.
- Ask for the costs in writing, including what is extra: medication, assessments, extensions, transport, anything described as optional.
- Ask what happens medically in the first seventy-two hours, and who is on site overnight. If withdrawal is a possibility, this is the question that matters most.
- Ask what happens afterwards, what it costs, and whether it is included.
- Ask whether they receive or pay a referral fee for this admission. You are entitled to the answer.
Treat pressure as information. A service that needs a decision today, that will not put costs in writing, that answers a medical question with a testimonial, or that quotes a success rate it cannot source, has told you what it is. Nobody reputable minds being asked all of the above.
Public and charitable routes exist in most countries, are often the only place that will treat him if he has no money later, and are not the lesser option. This site names no service and recommends none.
Money that is not treatment
Rent, debts, a fine, a phone, a car. These are not treatments and do not become one by being paid at a difficult moment. Sometimes paying is plainly right — a child stays housed, a court is avoided, a job survives. Sometimes it is a way of buying your own quiet for a fortnight.
If you do pay, pay the institution rather than the person where you can: the landlord, the court, the utility. It removes one argument and one temptation, and it is not an insult to say so plainly.
Lending inside families almost never behaves like lending. If you cannot afford to give it, the honest answer is no, and no is a complete sentence.
What this site costs
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Nobody else pays for this site. No clinic, broker, treatment provider, fellowship or medication company has ever paid for content, placement or a link on this network, and no referral fee has ever been taken.