How would you feel if you were dedicating yourself to helping chronically homeless people, and you walked up on them and you saw them smoking weed, doing crack, or shooting up?
How would you feel if you saw them drinking a beer at 7:00AM in the morning? Would you give them a pass on the beer, but judge them differently for abusing other substances?
What we’re talking about here is addiction and people who have uncontrollable urges that lead them to abusing substances or situations. Is misusing any particular substance any more severe than misusing another if they all eventually take you to the same spot in life?
Every time we go out on outreach, we run into substance misuse in one form or another. Should we just walk away from people for this reason? No! Our position is we’re going to try to help these lost souls, be it by giving them food, water, or other essentials or by helping them get into treatment, the later of course is like a mission impossible because there are not enough treatment programs.
Addiction and chronic homelessness aren’t just a personal problem for individuals and families. They are a social problem and when we turn our backs on them it weakens society as a whole. And if it gets bad enough, addiction will bring a society to its knees, or worse. One need only look at what happened to China in centuries past to see how its society and country collapsed due to addiction (opium abuse).
Interestingly, the majority of illegal fentanyl in the USA is originating from China. The Chinese know full well what fentanyl abuse can do to America. Read Sun Tzu’s ‘The Art of War’ It’s not just about warfare; it’s about understanding conflict, deception, timing, and the human psyche. If China is purposely using fentanyl as an instrument of war, it’s working pretty well.