Pubdate: Fri, 12 Aug 2005
Source: Victoria Times-Colonist (CN BC)
Copyright: 2005 Times Colonist
Contact:  http://www.canada.com/victoria/timescolonist/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/481
Author: Jody Paterson
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/coke.htm (Cocaine)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/meth.htm (Methamphetamine)

ONE SMALL BLUNDER CAN SET US ON THE WRONG COURSE

I don't like doing puzzles, so my new passion for Sudoku has caught me off 
guard. I hadn't expected to find myself quite so engrossed in the curious 
task of putting numbers in boxes.

But there you go. I like it. I've heard people call Sudoku a "math puzzle," 
but it's actually about getting the right fit rather than doing anything 
mathematical. The puzzle, currently all the rage in Canadian newspapers, 
involves filling interlocking series of boxes with different arrangements 
of the numbers one through nine. Each number in its place, and nowhere 
else. One wrong answer very quickly turns into several more.

Such is life. Literally. Sudoku is the perfect model for how life works. 
One move begets another, and every step counts.

One mistaken premise can lead to any number of wrong moves in Sudoku, 
because every number leads in a different direction. Write a four in the 
wrong square, and the next thing you know you're hurtling toward the wrong 
answer. Sound familiar?

Put a Sudoku framework on any issue and it gets interesting. In Sudoku, if 
you don't want any conflicts, you need to plan for that by making sure you 
really know which number goes in what box.

When the mistakes pile up and there's no hiding the mess, you just might 
have to erase the whole thing.

"There's only one solution," note the inventors of Sudoku, and life is 
admittedly more complicated than that. Still, it surely has to be 
acknowledged by now that one thing does indeed lead to another, and often 
in short order.

Despite my relatively short and affluent time on this earth, I've seen the 
truth of that repeatedly, whether it was the rise of infectious disease 
again when we thought it had been beaten, or the spread of world terrorism 
through clumsy and ugly global policy decisions.

My Sudoku thoughts have lately been centering on the debate around whether 
to have a safe-injection site in Victoria. No quarrel with the concept, 
mind you. I just wouldn't want people to think that solving the puzzle of 
addiction is as easy as that.

And no finger-pointing at Vancouver Island Health Authority, because I know 
that they and other provincial health authorities didn't get much say in 
the matter -- or money transferred over -- when the province saddled them 
with the responsibility for addiction services three years ago. But as the 
years continue to pass, that's going to be less and less of an excuse.

If your heart can't break over lives continuing to be ruined by B.C.'s 
disjointed, dysfunctional and overloaded addiction services, then think of 
all the wrong answers we're going to arrive at if we play the game this way 
much longer.

Not that there's anything wrong with doing something about the nutty fact 
of handing out clean needles to addicts without providing them with a place 
to use. But a safe-injection site is only as good as all the other services 
around it.

What will we do for people who no longer want to use drugs? What's waiting 
for them on the other side? Are we managing the real problems of addiction, 
or getting sidetracked by hot-button issues?

These days, I'm surprised that anyone gets off drugs, especially those 
whose addictions are consuming them. Unless you're a together type with a 
good family, money, or at the very least a stable home where it's OK to be 
really, really sick, angry, sad and possibly suicidal for quite some time, 
good luck to you.

With waits of more than a month for detox and with adults addicted to 
cocaine and crystal methamphetamine now being refused any detox service, 
the first step on the road to recovery is glaringly absent.

What Sudoku teaches you is that in a puzzle with a lot of missing pieces, 
it's damn hard to come up with the right answer. You have to proceed with 
great caution, and be prepared to rethink every move at a moment's notice.

A safe-injection site -- that's potentially a key part of the right answer. 
But at least a dozen other moves will be equally important if we're to 
discover a winning strategy. My fear is that we have no plan at all around 
addiction, let alone anything resembling a comprehensive strategy. Worse 
still, the majority of sober citizens don't know how immensely difficult 
things are for people wanting to get off drugs, and probably don't much care.

But it all matters. One wrong answer anywhere in the puzzle leads very 
quickly to several more, and the unintended consequences multiply. Before 
you know it, the whole thing's a wash and you're starting over.

Agreed, life isn't as simple as a game of Sudoku. Figuring out solutions to 
the world's grand problems is much tougher than stringing together number 
sequences. But if there's one thing that Sudoku teaches, it's to watch out 
for small blunders before they become big ones.
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MAP posted-by: Beth