Meet the New Meth - P2P

[spopepro]

Of course. It's more of a payment question, whether it is fair that if you live on 144th avenue you pay for the services for people arriving from around the country but you don't have to pay if you live on 146th avenue? Is it fair that those in the city are burdened by tents, crime, violence, inability to use parks because of needles, and those who live 100 miles away or 1000 miles away do not have these burdens because their homeless moved to the city (sometimes with the assistance of the sending town's officials)?

It's a matter of math. 350,000 households in Seattle cannot afford to support those moving from elsewhere in the state (8 million people) or the country (330 million people). If the residents are forced to pay for the nomadic, then the residents will move and the cities will look like they did in the 1970s, hollowed out and crumbling. Making a few warm cities the dumping ground is not the solution.

I mean... it's not just that folks are *choosing* to head to cities. It's been part of the strategy of less moral locals for years to bus people they do not want to help to other places. Cities should be able to send the bill for this kind of stuff: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...-country-study

Using public record laws, the Guardian obtained data from 16 cities and counties that give homeless people free bus tickets to live elsewhere.

And less documented programs: https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-...y-bus-tickets/

[bigbill]

When I underwent surgery for a broken femur after a bad bike crash (please skip the experiment and trust me when I tell you the car always wins), opiods so scared me that all I took was ibuprofen. That was with a titanium rod in my leg. I assume before the actual surgery there was something magic in my saline drip, but when the choice was mine I chose the nonnarcotic option.

My son is a collegiate cyclist. He was in a roadrace pileup and broke his radius and ulna above the wrist. He had a second wrist. Once it was set and splinted in the ER, he was somewhat comfortable. At Walter Reed, my son is a midshipman at USNA, they did surgery to install a plate and a bunch of pins. He said he had no pain after that and didn't need the rest of his Vicodin. He was on his way to Pensacola for Spring Break about four hours after surgery. For me, I had a bunch of morphine in the ER so they could do all the CAT scans and other tests. Without the morphine, I was in the fetal position on the gurney. I was really sore for a few days but switched to all tylenol the next morning.

[bcm119]

Opiates are one of the best medical discoveries of our time, because they actually work. This trend of doctors not prescribing them anymore because of the public backlash about addiction is troubling to me. They used to hand them out like candy, and now in typical American fashion we've swung too far the other way.

When I had a massive lumbar disc rupture in 2009, I was (thankfully) prescribed vicodin. I remember laying down in the back of the car on the way back from a dr appt in SF, stuck in traffic on the bay bridge, literally chewing up vicodin because I had no water. I'm not sure what I would've done without vicodin during those weeks. After the surgery, they prescribed more vicodin, and I never needed any of them. I never felt close to the level of pain after the surgery as I did before.

I held onto that extra bottle of vicodin for years, because I get migraines a few times a year, and nothing touches them except vicodin. But doctors would rather you eat a fistful of ibuprofen and fry your kidneys than take a single vicodin these days. My partner gets very painful menstrual cramps, and again, drs prefer the fistfuls of ibuprofen approach. We both covet extra vicodin to use when we truly need it, because I value my stomach lining and kidney function. Opiates are great because you need only very small doses to be effective.

Opiate addiction is a problem we need to solve without throwing the baby out with the bathwater. They are safe and effective when used responsibly.

[bcm119]

Haven't read San Fransicko but I was surprised at how persuasively the author presented his ideas on addiction and crime on the Joe Rogan podcast.

National bestselling author of APOCALYPSE NEVER skewers progressives for the mishandling of America’s faltering cities.

Progressives claimed they knew how to solve homelessness, inequality, and crime. But in cities they control, progressives made those problems worse.

Michael Shellenberger has lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for thirty years. During that time, he advocated for the decriminalization of drugs, affordable housing, and alternatives to jail and prison. But as homeless encampments spread, and overdose deaths skyrocketed, Shellenberger decided to take a closer look at the problem.

What he discovered shocked him. The problems had grown worse not despite but because of progressive policies. San Francisco and other West Coast cities — Los Angeles, Seattle, Portland — had gone beyond merely tolerating homelessness, drug dealing, and crime to actively enabling them.

San Fransicko reveals that the underlying problem isn’t a lack of housing or money for social programs. The real problem is an ideology that designates some people, by identity or experience, as victims entitled to destructive behaviors. The result is an undermining of the values that make cities, and civilization itself, possible.



https://www.amazon.com/San-Fransicko...s=books&sr=1-3

https://open.spotify.com/episode/5Nx...Q360-OycjYh5Cg

Full disclosure: my home is within a mile of hundreds of "meth encampments." Residents of those encampments occasionally leave shoes, bikes, undergarments in the car port. A few years ago, minutes after discovering an abandoned bike (an extra large hybrid), I went inside to call bulky item pickup. Then as I was walking to the driveway, a late 20s/early 30s 5'6" woman, wearing a filthy gown and no shoes, rode off. I thought: only a meth addict could comfortably ride a bike shoeless.

I haven’t read San Fransicko either, but I plan to. At first glance, and after listening to him on Rogan (I avoid that dude-bro usually), he seems to make some good points about taking the compassion too far, but I think he’s too narrow in his blame. I think there are two big reasons why west coast cities are failing to solve the problem: first, the programs and policies charged with helping the addicted and mentally ill are a patchwork of inconsistency, and second, the “carrot” of a stable life is not all that appealing anymore.

It's not really progressivism per se that is the problem, it’s the pattern in which polices are implemented. I identify as progressive, but admit that one trait of the modern ultra-progressive is extreme narcissism, and that plays out as the “too many cooks in the kitchen” syndrome when applied to a lot of problems: everyone wants to lead their own little non-profit, to one-up their progressive friends by saying they are “leading” something important. I think caring for the addicted and mentally ill would be far more effective if there was a statewide program, with consistency across geography and policy, but this solution isn’t attractive to the typical highly educated progressive with an outsized ego. It’s not very sexy to be a worker bee for a state program, but it would probably be better for the folks on the street if all of these smart, motivated people worked on the same team.

Schellenberger also mentions the lack of a “carrot” to persuade people to get back to leading productive lives one step at a time. But what does that look like in today’s economy? Around here at least, it means renting a godawful apartment 90 minutes from your workplace and enduring daily traffic nightmares, low pay, and inhumane treatment by faceless corporate employers. I suspect a lot of people on the street already know this, and in many cases it played a role in how they ended up addicted to drugs. There’s no effective carrot until inequality is addressed in the economy. Anyway, my 2 cents.

[spopepro]

It's not really progressivism per se that is the problem, it’s the pattern in which polices are implemented. I identify as progressive, but admit that one trait of the modern ultra-progressive is extreme narcissism, and that plays out as the “too many cooks in the kitchen” syndrome when applied to a lot of problems: everyone wants to lead their own little non-profit, to one-up their progressive friends by saying they are “leading” something important. I think caring for the addicted and mentally ill would be far more effective if there was a statewide program, with consistency across geography and policy, but this solution isn’t attractive to the typical highly educated progressive with an outsized ego. It’s not very sexy to be a worker bee for a state program, but it would probably be better for the folks on the street if all of these smart, motivated people worked on the same team.

I don't think you're wrong, but this isn't "progressivism" it's called "charity"--the power remains where it currently is while "helping" others but not enough to make them equals. Folks get the two confused a lot. I agree that there's a lot of interest in charity, but not a lot of interest in the sort of powershift that's required for structural change.

[suspectdevice]

Demerits to all of you complaining about homeless folks on a premium bicycle enthusiast website.

Beth Macy (dopesick writer) is a member of the cycling community in the Appalachian Highlands of Va. Clinton Forge, VA where much of the series is filmed is a delightful wayside, and home to one heck of a miserable fondo.

The coal region must be understood better- inequality was baked in by design. Workers, Managers and Operators all lived in different towns- all of which boomed between WWI and the 50’s as American coal became the fuel of not just American empire, but the preferred fuel of the British Imperial navy around the world.

The “operator(that’s owner in coalspeak” towns, like Bluefield, WV saw massive local investments in education, housing, etc and were usually at the rail heads so the wealthy could travel to the coastal or interior cities with ease. Operator towns had 15 story hotel buildings with gilded ballrooms.

Management towns, like Tazewell, Virginia were always highly reliant on personal automobiles, woodframe single family homes and never really developed much of a local economy outside of the tax base of well paid managers and their homes.

The Actual coal towns, where the workers lived, in walking distance from the mines? Well, those places have actually ceased to exist.
The ownership and managerial classes have just barely hung on- and they have enough tax base to justify existing as a stand alone municipality. Coal camp towns that aren’t dead are in the process of dying- slowly being removed from maps and the tax rolls.

Nobody who works in the coal fields today tells you what town they are from, they are from a County(around here McDowell or Mingo)- because that is the smallest effective administrative unit left in the areas where the product is still extracted. In the counties where managers used to be the tax base, cattle farming had taken over as the top economic driver- obviously ranching employs, not so many people, and not necessarily well paid people with “professional class” skills.

American mythmaking is a generational pastime, and the cultural currents in Applachia flow distinctly toward Roanoke. A city that literally built the locomotive power that carried the guts of American mountains to Norfolk, and like the rest of the coal region, has struggled massively with identity since the mid 50’s first as diesel supplanted coal for motive power. Urban renewal in the 60’s saw the original neighborhoods in the city leveled to make room for parking lots that still stand mostly empty, next to a highway built through the black working class neighborhood that provided the skilled workers who were no longer “needed” building locomotives and rolling stock. The highway construction came less than 2 years after the last passenger train left the Raymond Lowey designed station, with its marble floors and deco sconces.

50+ years of migration away from the coal fields has seen a sort of invisible diaspora as white folks with a couple nickles to rub together and a hope to live life in the daylight have moved to the more urban areas of Appalachia. I barely know a white person over 40 who has “lived in roanoke their whole life” that didn’t have at least one parent who moved to Roanoke to try to escape the injustice of living in a coal camp.

The baked in disdain in this thread by some commentators- the very idea that drug use and homeless are anything except a symptom of the empty promises of American Exceptionalism is something that I reject forcefully.

Do you talk to the homeless people on “your” street? In “your” park? At “your” bus station?

We(those who can afford a ti-carbon bike with EPS and the destitute alike) live in the only developed nation where rampant homelessness exists and where acess to healthcare is not guaranteed for all.

Generations of decay, with dishonest trickle down hyperbole as an accelerant have created our uniquely america forms of drug addiction. There really is no hope, no future, and no way out for millions of americans left behind by our completely broken country.
Why not do some meth, do some crimes and die young? What else is there?!!

[takashi]

Thank you, @suspectdevice

[Octave]

Substitute "lumber" for "coal" in @suspectdevice 's above post and you have the narrative of how this region of the PNW ended up with its current state of drug users and unhoused individuals. About 4 miles upriver from me is a site where once sat one of the United States' largest lumber mills, along with a large gold mining community. As these industries shifted financing towards corporate/oversight/distribution, the town slowly died. The Army Corps of Engineers employed several hundred of the residents to help build the dam that would eventually sequester the entirety of the village, which now sits largely empty or as individual homesteads. There is a post office, but nothing else. No gas, no food, no Zara. Drug use is high and hugely visible. As said above, welcome to late-stage capitalism. This was always the end-point.

Meanwhile, Weyerhauser stock is doing alright.

[spopepro]

Do you talk to the homeless people on “your” street? In “your” park? At “your” bus station?

Yeah, we did. We lived at 16th and Mission for 13 years. We saw ourselves as neighbors and did out best to get to know folks. We knew names of many of our neighbors, both unsheltered and living in the SROs on the block. We got tight enough that my wife was invited to one fellow's 60th birthday party and she went out to the club at hunters point and helped make plates. It was rough at times, and that part of the mission has a lot of the grit and little of the late 00s hipster glamour, but we generally liked our hood and the folks in it. Note that folks out here are overwhelmingly black and don't fit your narrative at all, but are where they are because of another broken American promise, possibly even more tragic.

No excuses for some here, but what 9tubes and rw and I, who are living in the middle of it, are trying to say is that something changed. Around 7 years ago the tents, encampments, trash, needles, shit, violence, and harassment all started dramatically increasing. I didn't see the folks around that I used to, and I stopped trying to learn folks names because instead of conversation they'd lead with how they were going to rape my wife, whether I was there or not. It got bad enough that my wife would be directly threatened twice a day, every day. The folks who earlier we knew were in trouble got worse. One lady we knew for years took to injecting up her nostrils, which was a new one to me. People would wander in the middle of the road shouting at cars. Trash cans are turned over not for scavenging but just because. It's really awful.

We would talk to community care orgs, city supervisors, get more involved with elections and folks who had real plans for improving the city's broken support systems, but ultimately we wore out. I work in public education, my wife in theater, and while we don't think our dignity is worth more than those around us it isn't worth less. We moved out of the city 2 years ago. We felt like we had to.

[mjbabcock]

No excuses for some here, but what 9tubes and rw and I, who are living in the middle of it, are trying to say is that something changed. Around 7 years ago the tents, encampments, trash, needles, shit, violence, and harassment all started dramatically increasing.

I'm up in Bellingham and have the same thing going on. Something snapped.

[bcm119]

Demerits to all of you complaining about homeless folks on a premium bicycle enthusiast website.
...
...

I’m not saying this is your intention, but part of the hang up on local progress to actually help these people stems from “discourse policing” that looks similar to your comment. I appreciate your background on Appalachia, and each region of the US has their own flavor of that story. But it is possible, and necessary, to talk about homeless people as a problem, while understanding the history of how our winner takes all style of capitalism sealed their fate. It’s possible, and necessary, to acknowledge the suffering of the homeless and the problems they are causing in our communities without victim blaming. This is a blind spot for many people, and it’s preventing a more open dialogue about how to approach these problems, both immediate and structural.

Like the commenters above, I’ve noticed the shift towards threatening and harassing behavior in the last 5 years or so. I used to know most of the street folks in my berkeley neighborhood, but at some point they disappeared and were replaced with people who I avoided for my own safety. Something changed, there is a problem, and it needs to be addressed in new and different ways, because whatever we’re doing isn’t working for anyone.

[beeatnik]

I'm not hearing complaints but empathetic soul searching (with some bewildered shouts into the abyss).

Moments after scanning the last few posts, I remembered that my childhood best friend was homeless and possibly drug addicted the last few months of his life. He died in August. In his car. At his memorial which was held in the parking lot of a greasy fish and chips spot and attended almost entirely by friends and family who had given up on him at various stages of his life. He wasn't a drug addict or a dealer when we were still close in our early 30s. But he liked to overindulge. Kind of like a frat boy. Drink all night then drive home at 120mph on residential streets. He was an extreme person. And of all my neighborhood friends, the only one whose life resembled what I saw on the Brady Bunch. He had two parents who both spoke English and by all outward appearances were respectable "professionals." Of course, they lived in my community so their finances must not have been as middle class as I believed. And the Cadillac was 20 plus years old. Then his father lost their home and life savings to a gambling addiction. On the last weekend they spent in their home, my friend's mom tearfully revealed many of their financial issues and personal issues; she was about to leave her husband. As a 23 year old who had seen male family members lose their lives and freedom to alcoholism, I couldn't wrap my mind around the personal devastation caused by a gambling addiction. My friend's dad was the only adult male in my universe who didn't abuse alcohol; guy didn't drink at all. Well, the foreclosure and divorce were the beginning of the end, job loss (aerospace manufacturing), health issues, multiple amputations followed. But as compromised as his physical and financial health were, before passing, he provided my friend a safety net. Together they were able to afford $1500 studios and qualify for food benefits. Not going to add commentary on late capitalism, but if my pal had been born 20 years earlier his chaotic, undisciplined life would likely have extended 10, 20 years. And he would have been housed. I suspect a large percentage of individuals living in encampments in areas that were formerly affordable (where most encampments are located in LA) have similar stories to my friend's and if the drugs are worse and violence has increased...well, those are horrific states or conditions to consider.

[bigbill]

I'm up in Bellingham and have the same thing going on. Something snapped.

I was first stationed in the PNW in 1987 to 1992 and Seattle was a nice place to visit. There were homeless, I volunteered at the Union Gospel Mission downtown and at the distribution center closer to SEATAC. It was rare that anyone was threatened or felt unsafe. I was stationed there again from 96-00 and the conditions downtown had deteriorated with many more homeless, quite a few with mental illness or drug issues. Again 2007-2012. I was living over in Poulsbo and we'd take the ferry over from Bainbridge or Bremerton. The route from the ferry terminal to the stadiums was a minefield of aggressive homeless folks. I realize it's all perception on my part, but I never had a desire to return.

[ides1056]

I met a guy in the street in NYC maybe five years ago. I saw myself.

He's rebuilding his life again back in Tijuana because I bought him a plane ticket home plus cash to get a leg up maybe eight months ago.

But I totally get your point. Honestly I do. I had dogs in NYC so was out at all hours every day, and was on a first name basis with some of my neighbors who lived in the street. Seemed normal enough at the time.

[sk_tle]

People here tend to complain about homeless shifting towards more violence but I think this is not specifically a drug and homeless related problem. It is a common trend within the society as a whole. I am not only talking about guns and weapons and stuff. Just starting from more verbal violence everywhere. It is like having a respectful conversation with anyone disagree with you nowadays always end up with name callings, be it on social medias or in real life.

And I imagine the homelesses themselves are dealing with much more violence and tend to act and react the way they are treated. We have to look at people the way we are looking at our mirror.

[beeatnik]

In the early 00s my Seattle friends treated Pioneer Square as a type of Homeless Theme Park. "Hey, let me show you the 2 quaint blocks in Seattle with crazy but nice homeless people." Then when the first Ace Hotel opened in another downtown neighborhood, its surrounding grit was incorporated into its international-nomad-creative-class-hipster marketing. It all reminded me of the experience of Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley when you first arrive as a clueless 18 year old. "Keep Homeless People Weird!"

I was first stationed in the PNW in 1987 to 1992 and Seattle was a nice place to visit. There were homeless, I volunteered at the Union Gospel Mission downtown and at the distribution center closer to SEATAC. It was rare that anyone was threatened or felt unsafe. I was stationed there again from 96-00 and the conditions downtown had deteriorated with many more homeless, quite a few with mental illness or drug issues. Again 2007-2012. I was living over in Poulsbo and we'd take the ferry over from Bainbridge or Bremerton. The route from the ferry terminal to the stadiums was a minefield of aggressive homeless folks. I realize it's all perception on my part, but I never had a desire to return.

[bigbill]

People here tend to complain about homeless shifting towards more violence but I think this is not specifically a drug and homeless related problem. It is a common trend within the society as a whole. I am not only talking about guns and weapons and stuff. Just starting from more verbal violence everywhere. It is like having a respectful conversation with anyone disagree with you nowadays always end up with name callings, be it on social medias or in real life.

And I imagine the homelesses themselves are dealing with much more violence and tend to act and react the way they are treated. We have to look at people the way we are looking at our mirror.

It's an escalation. Around the truck stops, cheap hotels, and Walmart parking lot, the homeless with a cart or wagon of some kind usually have a baseball bat or golf club to defend themselves and their property. Because of this, there is more open carry by folks who have to do business or choose to shop in those places. I can't really blame a homeless person for defending themselves, typically against other homeless, but the perception by non-homeless is that they need to carry a weapon to be safe. Then it escalates.

[ides1056]

Six hundred million guns in America.

Then it escalates.

But if Nicholas Kristof has hope, so do I: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/28/o...-farewell.html

[bigbill]

Six hundred million guns in America.

Then it escalates.

But if Nicholas Kristof has hope, so do I: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/28/o...-farewell.html

Do you think the homeless problem has a root cause in the number of guns? How does the total number of guns in the US relate to the increase in homeless?

[beeatnik]

I read it as a reference to the potential for violence in those truck stops, cheap motels and Walmart parking lots in states with open carry.

Do you think the homeless problem has a root cause in the number of guns? How does the total number of guns in the US relate to the increase in homeless?