Things have gone from bad to worse for Macomb County resident Frances Dingle. You see, Macomb County is located in Detroit and addicts in Detroit who have no health insurance can expect to wait anywhere from 8 to 12 weeks for treatment they desperately need right away. And, if only indirectly, it seems clear that if help were available, Dingle may have prevented her recent relapse; a relapse that led to the death of four Lake Shore Public School teenagers after an alleged drunk driving accident.

Currently, anyone seeking drug treatment without health insurance in Detroit faces a waiting list of over 250 people at any given time. Surely, a big “what if?” still hovers over the issue of whether more accessible addiction treatment can prevent deaths like those caused by drunk drivers. Family members close to Dingle say that she was sober for nearly 3 years before her last relapse which led to the accident.

Truly, if anyone could have benefited from treatment, it would have been Frances Dingle, who was in recovery long enough to recognize a relapse. But could it be that people seeking treatment are simply lost in a maze of yellow tape? Gerald Roberts, the administrative director of Sobriety House Inc. in Detroit claims that his organization had over 50 beds available the same day as the accident. Although addicts seeking help from certain organizations may need to wait, other organization take patients after evaluating the severity of their situations. Roberts went on to state, “The problem usually is that people in their addictions don’t really want help. They’ll say they want help to satisfy family members or their children or the court, but they don’t actually want to be free of the addiction.”