I used to be homeless and addicted; in fact I was homeless because of addiction. I'm not anymore, to both the former and the latter.
I used to be apart of a Facebook group about homeless in the community; I'm not anymore. Or to put it accurately, I don't have a choice; I've been banned. I guess it had something to do with the fact that my narrative is different than the administrator's, in the sense that I prefer to expose others to the truth. Which is that 97% of street people (if not more) are there because of choices they chose to make. A cliche, but they tend to be that way for a reason. 🥴
Let's look at the juxtaposition between admin's addiction experience, and mine.
I quit smoking hard drugs cold turkey; I found something worth living for and never looked back. I took accountability and responsibility for my situation, reached out to loved ones, and have been clean for nearly 3 years.
He is a relapsing addict that has been using since early adulthood. He relies on the encouragement of strangers and relapses on their criticisms. He believes in enablement and blaming others (government, landlord, mental illness, etc.). He is always anonymous, but I know that he is, at the least, 40s or 50s.
Obviously the lies were the biggest things I had issue with. Take into account how gullible and stupid the average person is, the ones who will unquestionably eat up everything that they're told. The ones with no "experience," the ones who aren't aware that you can easily spend up to $200 a night, every night on drugs. That's over $5,000 a month! But we wanna talk about tHe GovERnmEnT, as opposed to priorities, or common sense, or self-control?
The average person doesn't seem to realize that a city-dwelling homeless person relies entirely on manipulation of his fellow man. Manipulating him out of his time, money, sympathy, and resources. The last time I tried compensating a homeless guy $20 in exchange for a 10-minute interview, he turned it into, "Yeah so just a couple of things... Get like, 20 pizzas for the encampment (that's already $300), some cases of water (another $100), and I want you to take me on some urban explores." A 10-minute interview. What more can I get outta this person?
(Image created using an AI art generator on Night Cafe)
And why do they choose to manipulate as opposed to building relationships with members of their community? More specifically, why does this man choose to lie?
Because he has no self-worth and no sense of purpose. Because he still has yet to amount to anything in his life -- not anything he can feel proud about anyway. He has no healthy support system and thus relies on the words of strangers. He deals with guilt and shame and self-hatred, and because he cannot cope with it, he makes it everyone else's problem, by creating the illusion that compassion and enablement can solve all.
I couldn't give a damn anymore. I was the poster child of homelessness -- I had never known a home! 😂 I grew up in divorced households, each one subject to its own form of instability. I had two emotionally unavailable parents. My grandfather sexually abused me my entire childhood. My stepfather abused my mother their entire marriage. I've been in relationships with an alcoholic, and a drug addict (so one can imagine the trauma and gaslighting that resulted from both of those relationships). I have Borderline Personality Disorder. I was living in my car for over 3 months and spending $150 a night on crack.