were accosted by lots of homeless men begging for cash.
I spoke to one of them. I could see he was a drug user. His teeth were
rotting. He was thin and gaunt. I gave him a couple of quid to get some
food and chatted with him a little. He couldn't get into a hostel
because of his drug problem. I was trying to remember the names of
hostels that would but I only knew one and I couldn't remember it at the
time. A history of drug abuse has done a lot of damage to me too.
I remember why I started my decade long drink and drugs bender. It was
to erase the memories of the first girl I truly fell in love (and
infatuation) with. After a passionate and torturous relationship we
split up and I crashed into a bleak patch where nothing else matter but
escaping my misery.
A few years later I was in a youth hostel in Australia when I was
backing around the area for a couple of months. There was a guy there
that everyone knew was drinking himself to death. His fiancee had split
up with him shortly before their wedding. There may have been more to
this story but that's all I knew of his circumstances. He'd sold
everything, taken the cash and moved into the hostel. When I met him
he';d been there for almost a year. He'd moved on to methylated spirits.
He didn't care about life. He just wanted death but he couldn't kill
himself.
If people spoke to the homeless, drug addicted vagrants that get refused
a place to sleep they'd find lots of them in a similar situation. They
may be ex-soldiers trying to escape their guilt or pain. They may be
people who became homeless through debt and gave up on getting back to
their lives, preferring instead to salve their pain with legal and
illegal drugs.
Society continues to reject them. People don't give them money because
they'll spend it on drink and drugs. Hostels don't take them in because
of their challenging behaviour. They're made fun of in the street if
they're not walked past and ignored like they're a piece of litter. Few
charities will campaign for them because they're one of the most
'socially ugly' groups in society. They live with a triple stigma:
homeless, drug user, and mentally ill.
Those that can get benefits are threatened with having them cut if they
don't seek help to get off their self-medication. Doctors are far more
sympathetic to those who can't get off addictions to antidepressant or
anti-anxiety pills and so is the governent. The government wouldn't
consider cutting benefits from the 100,000+ people in the UK who refuse
secondary mental health care services that they've been referred to.
Cutting drug addicts benefits serves to kill this group of people faster
and it's an acceptable means to do it because the public have little
sympathy for homeless drug addicts.
These men shamble the streets begging for money and hoping to get enough
for a can or two of Tenants Super strength beer. They use harder drugs
because their pain relief effects compared to the cost is much better.
Many people blinker out the existence of a fellow human being who has
had their heart and soul shattered by life so finds a way to escape
which isn't approved of by the mental healthcare system, government or
the public.
I can't even imagine what it feels like to live that life. Their
psychache must be so intense that poets would do injustice to the extend
of their suffering. Their lives are shattered, they need help to heal
but the samaritans walk past.
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