Sobering up day

“Rus' has joy and drink, we cannot exist without it,” is a well-known phrase about the adherence of the ancestors of the Eastern Slavs to the “earthly serpent,” which is attributed to Prince Vladimir Drunkenness has long been considered a national problem In the 12th century In winter, drunks who could not stand on their feet were picked up on the streets so that they would not freeze Prototypes of modern sobering-up stations appeared under Peter I They were located in the cold basements of drinking establishments In the USSR, the first establishment of this kind opened in 1931 on Marata Street in Leningrad The day of creation of medical sobering-up stations in the Ministry of Internal Affairs is considered to be March 4, 1940 Until the relevant order is issued by the Commissioner of Internal Affairs LP Beria, the institutions where drunks were taken, including minors, were subordinate to the People's Commissariat of Health People were picked up on the streets and taken to a special place, where they were revived and left overnight In tsarist Russia, in sobering stations at the beginning of the twentieth century There were two people working - a coachman and a paramedic The “shelter for the drunk” in Tula opened on November 7, 1902 and was maintained at the expense of the city treasury - drunkards lay there for free, they were soldered with cucumber pickle and a gramophone was turned on to lift their spirits The poor were provided with shoes and clothing upon discharge In Soviet times, those who ended up in a sobering-up center did not have to expect such courtesy Drunkenness and being indecent in public was considered “offensive to human dignity and public morality” behavior The citizen was placed under a cold shower, after which he was examined by a paramedic and issued a cavitation to pay for services for being in the sobering-up station This fact was reported at the place of work The workforce reacted to this in different ways: a drinker was subject to public censure, could lose his bonus or even be demoted After the release of order No 00298 on March 4, 1940, LP Beria on the transfer of sobering-up stations to another department, they began to submit to the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs The police picked up people in the second or third stage of intoxication on the streets and took them to specially created institutions Their employees brought drinkers to their senses, identified chronic alcoholics and conducted educational conversations with them If a person ended up in a sobering-up center several times over the course of a year, he was sent for treatment to a mental health clinic or drug treatment clinic With the collapse of the USSR, medical institutions where drunk citizens were taken began to close Their maintenance was too expensive - on average, municipal authorities annually spent from 5 to 11 million rubles on the maintenance of each establishment By October 2011, there was not a single sobering center left in the Russian Federation, although the need for them had not disappeared Their disbandment created a problem in ordinary hospitals, where drunken citizens began to be taken They behaved aggressively and violently, causing inconvenience to their ward neighbors and medical staff According to the remark of Soviet millionaires, sobering-up stations significantly facilitated the work of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in solving crimes Thieves often entered the establishments, drinking away the loot and boasting about their “exploits” while drunk In 2010, a commemorative medal “70 years of medical sobering-up centers of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia” was issued This fact emphasized the social significance of such institutions and gave a high assessment to the activities of their employees Therefore, the date March 4, 1940 will forever remain in history as the Day of the creation of medical sobering-up stations of the Ministry of Internal Affairs