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In my opinion, I think the “wet house” is extremely controversial. The way I see it is that these wet houses are enabling the bad habits of a person to continue their bad habits. It is not surprising that these individuals don’t think about seeking further treatment and eventually “drink themselves to death”. How certain is it that the individuals who continue to drink or do drugs that they will not disturb or endanger other residents. It is too risky to trust that proven destructive behavior caused by alcohol will be tamed because of these wet houses.

The material I read by Shaw made me feel that this wet house is a really depressing and sad way for alcoholics to live through. It is almost like society has given up on these alcoholics and that they should just continue to just drink until they die. If anyone has any sense of compassion, they would try their best to help these individuals fight off the temptation and help them defeat their battle with alcoholism. For example, what do most people think of when they see a parent’s kid run wild and destroying other peoples property, being blatantly rude to other people in public? Most people will blame the parents and think that the parent’s way of parenting just failed. I see these wet houses as a failure of our fellow citizens to help each other out.

Many people will live their life they want to and for the most part nobody has any say on how we should expect another human being to act or live. That is completely understandable but to a fault. That is in my opinion where society fails to take part in compassion. It would still be difficult to shove their own standards of moral ethics and such to another person. We should all be free to make our own choices and decisions whether they are right or wrong. It is sort of a gray area in which we have no right to intervene. We still care but there’s only so much we can do.

The other article by Shaw is also interesting. We as a society pretty much gave in and just let them drink. This is relevant to how some parents just let their kids run wild because if not the parents will suffer the wrath of the kids behavior and make things worse. There is no helping someone who does not accept or want help. It is quite sad but it is the truth. In the end, I feel like wet houses are perceived as a “necessary evil” but it is very depressing to know that it is a representation of our defeat against treating alcoholics.

References

Shaw, B. (2011, December 03). They drink more, and you pay less [PDF].

Shaw, B. (2011, December 04). At St. Paul ‘wet house,’ liquor can be their life — and death [PDF].