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The following program is produced as a public service feature by the radio division of the Moody Bible Institute of Chicago. With cooperation from the Federal Bureau of Narcotics and the Illinois division of narcotic control. WE PRESENT. News. H is for joy with. In the past few programmes of eight years for joy you've been hearing about different methods of treatment for those addicted to narcotic drugs. You've heard about Riverside Hospital in New York City. You've heard about New York's parole plan and the positive results gained under this experiment. Now we'd like to turn your attention toward another great city Chicago. We've been there before in fact much authoritative assistance has come from Chicago and its parent state
Illinois. If you'll remember we've told you there are many views on the topic of drug addiction. We said that not all authorities agree on a cause or treatment. In the following interview you'll hear expressed a totally new idea concerning the treatment of drug addicts. That is new in the sense that no authority has expressed this idea as a possible solution on H is for joy. Father James G Jones is an Episcopal priest. He's also the director of a halfway house for ex-prisoners located on Chicago's Near West Side. It's named St. Leonard's house. Many of the men who come to Father Jones have an intimate acquaintance with the drugs pain hate and sorrow. What can these men find it seems Leonards. That's what we wanted to know. When we ask Father Jones first of all one area that we want to talk about is the view that you take of the addict who comes to St Leonards.
I think I don't want to present an idea that would make anyone think that the view is singular It's certainly a multiplicity of problems which produce an addict. But perhaps we could look at just one side of it. We recently did a study in the Cook County Jail working primarily with the negro addict. We chose this racial group because they do have a tendency to have a high number of addicts in it. We found some interesting things we found for instance that the IQ of the average addict in a Cook County Jail was somewhere between 20 or 10 degrees higher than his peers. We found that his educational achievement was somewhere between two and three years longer in school than his peers. I think this is very significant because it means to me that one of the basic causes of narcotic addiction is the
frustration of an achievement that here we have a group of people who are intelligent. They many times are rather well educated are better educated than other people in their culture but they either are not given or feel they have not been given the advantages to achieve their potential. And when a man has innate potential in him and he can't come to any depth or realisation in his life of achieving his potential then he becomes frustrated and I think when he becomes frustrated he is then a prey to the pusher and begins to use heroin which does little more than dead in the two upper lobes of the brain and deaden the pain and the hurt of an achievement. I think this would be one of the major ways I view an addict when an addict arrives here.
What is your rehabilitation program for him. We really treat an addict exactly as we would treat any other person. I think again one of the problems is that we have a tendency to look upon narcotic addiction as a real special kind of a person. I think he fits generally into the classification of people who are participating in a social or anti-social behavior because of emotional problems. I'm one of those who looks on most of criminality as being some sort of an emotional problem where other than just the old idea that he is an evil person committing sin in that light we treat an addict to your sin I mean it's ours and I think I should be precise by saying a former addict. We sincerely hope that when a man comes here he is no longer shooting stuff. We treat him exactly as we would treat almost anyone else who has come out of a penal institution we try to give him love and give him understanding. A psychiatrist I think would call that support therapy we try to massage his ego if
you will to make him feel that he is somebody and that that he is a child of God that He is a member of the brotherhood of humanity and that he doesn't have to go out and shoot stuff again. He did that that the pain won't be there any more we will have filled up that void. How long does that take your an ex addict stay here then. Again just as anyone else. As long as he continually responds positively to our program. Now this could mean a matter of couple of days if he goes back on stuff again because we've learned the hard way that if a person goes turns on we call it begins to shoot narcotics. Chances are he'll be stealing rather soon to keep his habit up and we can't afford to have our things stolen so when we know a man is turned on we ask him to leave and when he assures us that he is kicked and stopped it will bring him back. As I say it could be a couple of days but it could be many many months or the man would stay. We
want him to stay as long as he will respond to the program that we offer. What about the results that you've seen here in the years particularly with addicts not stupendous. We have some noted cases of people who have been serious addicts sometimes from what we had one fellow started when he was 13 years of age believe it or not he's doing wonderfully. We have another man who is married and is having his first baby next month. He's really thrilled about it. We have another number of them that are right back on the street shooting stuff and a number of them that on back in jail. I wouldn't hesitate to speak statistically but I I would say this that I think our program certainly produces a better result than any other that I know. Particularly it produces a better result than the average police control or Illinois or narcotic control which generally means harass the addict. He's already an
anonymous being anyway. Drive him further underground frighten him further with more fear in order that he may become more and none of us. And of course it is the acts or the opposite of anonymity we're trying to strive for we're trying not to produce more anonymity but more being more structure more ego. So I would say that yes our program is producing not as good results as I wish it would but certainly better than the old harassing method. Are there just the two views would you say the one here in St Leonards in the Forstmann idea. I've long been a now married with the view of having the federal government legalized the problem. I would say that probably would be the only other third view I know and that is to stop making it illegal to have government clinics where men could look at this thing as a clinic sickness rather than a rather cool cat strung out adventuresome way of life. And I have a feeling that if
this were done about 50 percent of the present thousands of addicts we have would soon learn that there isn't much sense in continuing this monkey business and would seek both religious and psychiatric help to stop it. Perhaps 50 percent would continue to shoot stuff the rest of their lives but the big thing that would happen would be that the underground market would be shrunk down to nothing and new addicts would have an awful hard time beginning. Do you seek out the ex addict. Well someone whose house is the center of our diocese and prison work and we have chaplains stationed in the jail in the Bridewell in the penitentiary and. Men seek them out ask for help upon their release and those that were able to take we can we only have 20 beds and we of course get up to a thousand requests see a year and we can only take care 200 So we're not we're not making much of a dent in the thing to be sure. You think it will eventually come around to the federal idea.
I don't see any other answer other than continuing to play ostrich as to the seriousness of this thing I think that we are in epidemic proportions in the city of Chicago. I hear people throw statistics around anywhere from 8 to 18000. And I don't know where I would choose maybe a number of 12000 addicts in Chicago. Each one having to get up with about a hundred bucks worth of stolen stuff a day to fence it out a third for about 30 dollars a day so he can carry his habit. And this is costing people in petty theft. Price the millions of dollars a day. And to say nothing of the degradation of humanity of the people involved in it. If you had this many cases of polio in the city we would come up with a crash program. I think narcotic addiction is more contagious than polio and I think we're going to be forced into facing this epidemic and coming up with something more than the sort of we somehow will stop smugglers or maybe we
can catch all the pushers. If they arrested every addict in Chicago they had to build nine more county jails you know and then they had to give them a life. Because with our present methods of rehabilitation when they get out they just go right back on it anyway I personally think the only crash program that I know. Would be to knock the bottom out of the underground market through legal clinics and I want to be very specific. I am not advocating someone says set up narcotic bars you know are you going to order a shot of morphine. I'm saying hospital clinics where men go in and take this administered by a doctor as medicine under that situation it costs 13 cents a cubic centimeter and you can believe me that if an addict could get a shot for 13 cents he would not buy milk down sugar down heroin at $5 a flat pack and within a matter of months the underground market would be shrunk down to nothing. If this were the case at least no new addicts would turn up. And you can't
imagine a kid 15 16 17 years old walking in to an ether smelling clinic sterile situation rolling up his sleeve and saying shoot me Dad I want to become an addict I mean this is doesn't happen I can see it happening and I don't pad it with the adventuresome spirit. The way of youngster is initiated into this thing but it would not happen in a clinic situation. If we accomplish nothing else by a crash program of legalization we would at least have no new addicts within the next generation and we could wait two or three generations for the present ones to simply die normal deaths. I admit that sounds pretty pessimistic I don't think this would be the result I think many would come off of it. But I must confess to you I don't see this on the horizon at the moment. All in your work with the ex-addicts do you think you found the reason why they have become an addict originally. I think it is essentially the same problem that a person becomes an alcoholic
as a matter of fact apparently the effects of morphine and its derivatives on the upper lobes of the brain are identical with ethyl alcohol and its derivatives on the upper lobes of the brain. It is a type of medicine which deadens emotional pain. And what I consider an addict to be is a neurotic or near even psychotic type of personality who cannot live in the tension of this world and simply has to deaden this emotional pain by deadening the lobes of his brain where his pain centers are. Father Jones does not agree with many authorities on the best way to halt the flow of drug addiction. Perhaps he has a just cause. Perhaps he's right. Perhaps they nevertheless both are seeking an answer. Next time on it just for joy you'll hear what another believes to be the answer. An addict telling what he hopes is the way out of his trap. You'll also hear an ex-addict tell what he found to be the
best answer to his problem of addiction. As he learned the real meaning of H is for joy. A script by Edwin at home production by Bill Oberg This is Ted Seeley speaking. The preceding tape recorded program was made available to the station by the National Association of educational broadcasters. This is the Radio Network.
Series
H is for joy
Episode
Treatment programs, part 5
Producing Organization
Moody Bible Institute
Contributing Organization
University of Maryland (College Park, Maryland)
AAPB ID
cpb-aacip/500-08638f8k
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Description
Episode Description
This program, the fifth of six parts about treatment programs for addicts, explores the work of St. Leonard's House, a half-way house for ex-prisoners in Chicago. Father James G. Jones speaks in favor of legalization of narcotics.
Series Description
A documentary series about the nature of drug addiction, the current status of addiction, and various programs of prevention and treatment. Participants in the series include Dr. Rafael S. Gamso; Meyer Diskind of New York State Board of Parole; and Joseph Fiedoral, a Chicago policeman.
Broadcast Date
1961-05-16
Media type
Sound
Duration
00:14:36
Embed Code
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Credits
Announcer: Sealy, Ted
Producing Organization: Moody Bible Institute
Speaker: Jones, James G.
Writer: Vanetta, Ed
AAPB Contributor Holdings
University of Maryland
Identifier: 61-1-24 (National Association of Educational Broadcasters)
Format: 1/4 inch audio tape
Duration: 00:14:31
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Citations
Chicago: “H is for joy; Treatment programs, part 5,” 1961-05-16, University of Maryland, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed March 29, 2024, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-500-08638f8k.
MLA: “H is for joy; Treatment programs, part 5.” 1961-05-16. University of Maryland, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Web. March 29, 2024. <http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-500-08638f8k>.
APA: H is for joy; Treatment programs, part 5. Boston, MA: University of Maryland, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-500-08638f8k