Beggars

[classicman]

Originally Posted by DanaC

I give if I am able to. I honestly don't care that they may take that money and put it towards drugs or alcohol. If they're addicts their need is as urgent as my need for food, until they are cured of their addiction...and living in a shop doorway is not the best environment in which to find peace and clean living.

Is giving when you know they are addicts actually helping or is it just enabling and prolonging the problem until they are "cured of their addiction" as you put it?

[DanaC]

Originally Posted by classicman

Is giving when you know they are addicts actually helping or is it just enabling and prolonging the problem until they are "cured of their addiction" as you put it?

The reality of the situation, classic, is that they will get their drug come what may. My giving, or not....other passers by giving, or not will have no discernable effect on their addiction. Addicts don't give up drugs because they can't afford them. They simply find other, even less socially desirable ways of funding the habit. A full blown addiction outweighs everything else. And sometimes ... judge me if you will for this ... alcohol keeps you warmer in the night than a bowl of soup and a piece of bread. And if you have spiralled into a life wrapped in heroin and the rituals that go with it, the daily mission to achieve the next £10 or £20 wrap is your life. The earlier in the evening you can get hold of that solace, that absolute necessity if you are to get through the night without awful, rending, gut churning pain and distress, then the earlier you can begin finding somewhere to sleep and building up a bit of body heat in whatever space you find.

And y'never know. They may already have enough for that wrap, and yours might be the quid that buys them a meat pie or a cup of tea; a packet of fags, a toilet roll, tampons, the occasional call home to mum.

[wolf]

I've become fairly practiced at turning beggars down ... usually start by not making eye contact. Of course most of the beggars I'm dealing with are trying to game their way into the hospital AND to get a meal tray and maybe some cigarettes out of it.

I don't give out my own cigs any more, and only start microwaving a tray after the doctor has seen the person.

[classicman]

Dana - Only if and when an addict hits bottom, will there possibly be a change. I know this all too well, thank you. I lived the reality on both sides. "Helping" is preventing them from hitting bottom and thats all I was referring to. Giving food can be argued as doing the same thing in a sense. I'm just torn on this kinda issue. I wanna help, but I think sometimes I'm perpetuation the situation instead.

[sugarpop]

Originally Posted by classicman

Dana - Only if and when an addict hits bottom, will there possibly be a change. I know this all too well, thank you. I lived the reality on both sides. "Helping" is preventing them from hitting bottom and thats all I was referring to. Giving food can be argued as doing the same thing in a sense. I'm just torn on this kinda issue. I wanna help, but I think sometimes I'm perpetuation the situation instead.

There are different bottoms though. I agree enabling is bad, which is why I rarely gave money, I usually gave food. I'm just saying, you never know what effect something will have on another person, and actually get them on the path to change. I know the situation as well, personally. I've been clean from drugs since 1989. I never lived on the street, but you know, it could have happened very easily. My bottom was pretty deep. But I wasn't on the street begging either. I always managed to keep a job, for the most part. When I didn't, I used men (boyfriends) to get what I wanted. I always had a place to stay. I moved half way around the world to get clean, because I couldn't do it here. Turned out I couldn't do it in Hawaii either. I ended up getting clean in LA, believe it or not.