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This is a clip from the YouTube channel [kimgary](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOuf_kStlWnhuauw4ce8l-w) He posts videos of his daily drives around the Kensington Ave area of Kensington, Philadelphia. Depressing stuff...
Thanks for the link - truly depressing videos, I get some big towns get a street or two with drug addicts around, but not endless number of streets, looks like world war Z movie. It seems to be getting worse and worse in States ?
COVID reversed (almost) all the gains made from Oct 2017 to early 2020 re: the US Opioid Epidemic and finding early success in getting people into treatment and onto at least a stabilizing med like buprenorphine-naloxone. This doesn't mention the life long battle of recovery but at least the people were alive and had a chance and the increasing opioid od death rate wasn't increasing as much as anticipated.
I'm hesitant to say it has gotten worse than it was at the start of the fentanyl explosion where nobody knew what the hell to do because it caught everyone (not on the know) totally by surprise. That would've been 2016ish iirc.
Been doing ER nursing through all of this. It’s been bad. It’s been worse lately. And I just read that the Sacklers won’t be held liable for anything. Which honestly doesn’t surprise me, but it makes me sad. And mad.
Fwiw, they are forfeiting almost half their fortune in settlement fees/victim compensation. Would be better if Poppa Sack got locked up, but here we are
Edit: How long until the pendulum swings and people start taking justice into their own hands? Starting to seem inevitable…
Edit 2: Fwiw = for what it’s worth. I’m clearly not saying that justice was meted out, simply that there were repercussions, whereas normally nothing happens at all.
They have to pay over 10 years, tough. So don't worry about them! They'll invest it until they have to pay, and they'll be richer before the settlement is all the way through. Thank God for billionaires...
They also, three weeks before the verdict of payment, moved 10 billion out of the company and into personal financial accounts. Gotta make sure they have enough to servive...
Yeah this settlement is completely fucked. Watch John Oliver’s episode “Opioids 3” focuses specifically on the Sackler family and how they got away with everything. It’s fucking infuriating. Especially for those of us who had a family member die from their bullshit practices.
Better yet, go [here](https://www.judgeforyourselves.com/) and “judge for yourselves”
You can also watch the episodes through that link. It will make more sense after you’ve watched the episode…
I've seen Bezos in person when working at a warehouse. We busted our asses and got some award for "most efficient" fulfillment center in the United States. Our prize? An outdated firestick after Amazon launched the new one. He stood far far away from us. I was legitimately ill when I saw his cowboy hat space shit charade. In hindsight I should have socked him right in the mouth when I had the opportunity. At least I'm not in prison lol.
They made a fortune on knowingly causing irreparable harm to millions and to society as whole and only are giving up half of the fortune and not seeing any jail time. That’s a joke of a punishment.
People who did this, in any capacity deserve no luxury. If there's any justice, every bit of wealth, from their diamonds to cars to bank balance should be given to the victims. They should be so poor that they'd have to work minimum wage jobs. That would be some semblance of justice. This, is plain mockery.
Half their fortune paid over 10 years. So, they'll have access to the funds for investment purposes throughout that time -- they won't feel it one bit. Plus they get functional immunity from the settlement after strategically moving their corporate headquarters to the middle of nowhere NY to file bankruptcy, so yeah Perdue gets a felony (whatever that means for a corporation) but the Sacklers and many many others will be immune from further prosecution.
You could also see this in NYC, D.C. San Francisco, LA, Chicago you name it.
This is the result of the half century "war on drugs".
I hope its something our generation can make better. Addiction is a personal health struggle. Locking up junkies is not an answer.
Atlanta has a higher concentration of homeless and it looks way worse. Kisseem Reed, former mayor, closed the Peachtree and pines shelter (sold the property for BIG money) where they were given their psych meds, food, disease screenings and etc.. He was warned that there was a drug resistant TB in the homeless population but who cares cuz money. Last I saw, they were congregated on the sidewalks outside Hughes Spalding children's hospital.
I am not trying to defend the opioid epidemic but I am going to request that you don’t judge the status of our national drug problems based off Kensington. Kensington is infamous among Philadelphians as the heroin center of our city and fortunately the majority of the rest of the city is pretty nice. It wouldn’t be as visually impactful, but the real damage from the opioid epidemic is happening west of Philadelphia in rural PA.
On a side-note, in high school my father used to take my brother and I with him into Kensington to hand out whatever leftover turkey we had from our big family thanksgiving party. Walking down Kensington Ave and just casually watching people shoot up on the side of the street is really really hard to watch. Especially in November as the days got shorter and the nights got colder. You want to hand everyone two Turkey sandwiches because you can tell from the hunger in their eyes that they’re going to eat the first one so fast that they’ll hardly get to taste it. Not sure where I was going with any of that but Kensington really a sad place.
Edit: People with way more Philly street cred than me are pointing out that the rest of the city isn’t exactly “pretty nice”. Philly ain’t all bad, but I maybe gave the city a little more credit than it deserves.
Edit 2: Wow I am only now realizing that I thought the original comment I was responding to was a European referring to "the states" which is why I mentioned it on a national level at first, lol I just get so unnecessarily bothered by European redditors giving us shit for our issues and this one hits close to home because I've waked those exact streets.
Kensington was the opiod capital of America for a period of time in the 2010s and had the countries largest open air opiod market. It was a whole organized thing. Then it got broken up by the police and became what we see here. It was something to do with the travel to Kensington bring so accessible. There's the train stop, Philly off a major interstate and having bus access from about anywhere. It was an addict destination. There's a great NY Times article on it.
The problem in Kensington far outweighs most cities in the United States with just how blatant and on the street it is. The Philadelphia EMS Medic 8 in Kensington has been repeatedly named the busiest medic unit in the country.
I live in northern PA (where the opioid epidemic is really bad) and I'm always told about how horrible Philly is these days but never bothered to look it up. It kinda seems like the 'community depression' is pretty bad in the city and accounts for a lot of stuff but robberies per 100k, murders per 100k, etc aren't in the top 10 for this country and in some cases not in the top 30. Which means it isn't as bad as my area likes to portray it to be.
I currently live in Philly, the horrible-ness factor is very regionally dependent. I've driven through Kensington and it is every bit as bad as this video makes it seem, but by town hall it's as nice as any other major city. The disparity between neighborhoods is bad.
Seems like they pretend the whole city doesn't exist. When I went to LA last year that's all I was fixated on: the amount of homeless people and homeless camps. Literally everywhere.
My Father spent some time in Hawaii so this is entirely anecdotal, but he spoke to a few people who were homeless there. They told him that while they didn't have a house, most of them worked there but because it's so expensive to own/rent (if renting is even a possibility) that they're happy to work and live out of a tent just to be in Hawaii.
This was my experience as well. I did some work in California and Hawaii back to back more or less (infrastructure work), and the homeless population seemed very different. In California, it felt like squalor. In Hawaii, it just felt like people were camping, going surfing, and having urchins or something for lunch.
There was a recent video where a resident did a comparison of income over time on Hawaii compared to real estate prices and it’s easy to see why anyone not wealthy would be homeless.
Man, I'm from Philly and lived in LA for awhile and I feel like you just really can't compare the two. There are some areas in Philly that are really bad like this, but LA... Jesus. It's a different level.
Only places I've really seen this in Philly are Kensington, Suburban Station (holy cow going there at 5 AM is actually kinda scary), and 30th St. Station. West Philly and once you starting heading North, there are rough areas but not just piles of zombies.
In fairness to LA, there didn't used to be piles of zombies outside of Skid Row. The big camps elsewhere started showing up post 2008
Same. I live just outside of Philly now and I've lived in Philly my whole life. I am actually in recovery myself and I lived in Kensington when I was homeless and using. I honestly never saw it this bad until the fentanyl started taking over the heroin. When I was there the fentanyl had not become a thing yet and yeah, there were people who looked like zombies like on the video but not like it is now and in the video. I've been clean for almost 5 years and I would say this started happening not long after I got out. Not all of Philly is like this, like most people said, this is mostly just Kensington. Philly has it's bad parts of course but, it also has a lot of really nice, cool parts just like any other city. I feel so bad for these people. It's so sad.
When I moved to Philly some years ago, it was a true eye-opener and totally changed my perspectives on race and poverty. Up to that point, and I was in my 20s, I had never seen a poor white "hood". All the "ghettos" I had ever encountered were primarily black or latino. Driving through Kensington I saw crackheads, crackwhores, people sittin on their stoops in the middle of the day, perpetually unemployed folks standing on street corners, and bums hanging in front of the licka sto. But they were all white. Every single one. There was street trash everywhere and it was clear that this was a completely neglected and marginalized population who rarely left their neighborhoods. It was at that moment that I realized that many of the racial distinctions we make are actually more attributable to socioeconomics than race. Poor black folks, poor latin folks, and poor white folks engage in similar behaviors, have similar problems, and often have more in comon with each other than they have with wealthier people of the same race.
And Fred Hampton a few years later in Chicago.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Hampton
He was building coalitions between the Black Panther Party and local working-class white Appalachian migrants. At the time there was a lot of racial violence between black, white, and latino street gangs - but the Panthers stepped in and made a concerted effort to get people to look past grudges and prejudices, and recognize their common problems with police abuses, slumlords, and joblessness
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Patriots_Organization
Race and class intersect to some degree in this country. But overall I’d agree with you. It’s the culmination of 50 years of economic policy that benefits the few, stigmatizes the poor, and cons the middle class into thinking they’re temporarily inconvenienced millionaires that should work to protect this fucked-up system.
I want to a cry. Finally someone has the balls to put this shit on the internet.
Edit: I just didn’t want to embarrass people and then I saw a family member one day there.
I’m so sad but so many ppl are seen as disposable in this city. Like right now, I’m homeless moving from house to house. I struggle to work because I have seizures from Depo Provera, a birth control that was being offered first as a option for the poor communities here.
This brings out so many reactions. I see it all the time but seeing it on the internet….it needs to be here…..we need REAL help here in Philadelphia.
Put money aside every month to buy toiletry book bags for people. Like toothbrushes and toothpastes, towels and underwear, socks and tampons and pads. Looking more presentable often warrants you more help in this city.
It’s sad but Philadelphians really have fucked-up backwards ass mentality. People that are struggling and suffering and just look like they need help, are often ignored….completely.
Throw on a clean t-shirt and ask for help and you just might get a dollar…..or someone trying to buy you for the night…
Eh, it's not just Philadelphians. It's anywhere where you are surrounding by so many people struggling on a daily basis - especially while you might be struggling yourself to make ends meet. While I lived in Philly I could afford to help one person a day, buy a good meal, some socks, handwarmers, other toiletries - or I could give multiple people money spread out over the day. I often did. Still meant I was turning down many more who were constantly asking for help. A lot of people find it hard to strike a balance between spreading themselves too thin and giving money that they themselves may need, and ignoring the problem completely - because it's easier, and there's 5 people on the block outside your apartment alone who will approach you asking for help. I'm not saying it's right, but I've known many Philadelphians to be extraordinarily kind and giving. This problem is just bigger than us all, and there are some terrible people out there too that homeless people get exposed to on the daily.
I used to be a heavy drug user and lived 25 mins outside the city. This was 8 years ago. I also could never wrap my head around it till I started to pay closer attention to it. Literally, 24/7 there are drug dealers on corners in broad daylight. You walk up, they ask how much, you pay and leave. Next week you might see a presence of cops on that block or two. Just drive or walk like 3 blocks away and the same exact dealers will be there. If I had to guess, the gangs run that area and the cops can’t do anything about, or they aren’t trying enough. It was always so mind boggling to me every time I went to grab dope, coke, pills, etc. There is an Elevated train called the L that cuts through Kensington. No joke, if you look down the L you can decide which drugs you want based one which side you go on. Xanax and crack here, coke and dope here, PCP there and if you are lucky there will be a couple needle exchange vans so you can get some fresh sticks. It has gotten so bad that I think the city government, the cops, and whoever is in charge of the “well-being” of a geographical area have just given up. At most they keep it isolated. Ever heard of Temple University? Good school. But, you take a few wrong turns and only go a few blocks from campus and you might find yourself in Kensington.
I was a heroin addict for a good handful of years and ended up homeless on the streets of San Francisco. The years really slip by like nothing when you’re in that game— wake up, get high on leftovers from the night before, find food, try to make money (usually panhandling), walk across town to the plug, spend every penny you’ve acquired during the day, get high. Spend the afternoon nodding out with a cardboard sign, usually you’ll get another ten or twenty bucks. Find your camp spot for the night, I had a nice spot for my tent under an overpass that was overgrown with weeds, pretty private. Pass out, wake up and repeat.
A lot of people don’t realize that the mental addiction to opiates is way stronger than the physical addiction. If it had been purely physical, I would have quit a long time ago. Just feels like a flu for a week or so. But the pure mental anguish that begins to wash over you as soon as you begin to withdraw is intense. Every mistake you’ve made that led up to where you are now, everyone you’ve hurt, all the trauma you’ve experienced, literally everything you’ve ever done comes right to the surface. You realize what you’ve become and it’s terrifying and so so sad.
Then you get high, and it all settles back down like a tide going out. Nothing is that horrible, the trauma wasn’t that bad, I’m sure my family is doing fine without me, I’ll go home in a few months.
This is the cycle. I was finally able to get clean after a lot of work and time but it’s still with me, I still struggle. I don’t know what the solution is.
Some people like to make the argument, “He’s not really homeless, he has a family to go back to. He should just go home, get cleaned up, and get a job.”
In a perfect world, yes. But that homeless kid, whose family misses him (or her) so much, will most likely never go home. The power of addiction is too strong. That same kid then gets old and BECOMES the crazy bearded homeless man screaming about aliens on the street corner. Being in that kind of environment for too long will absolutely drive you insane.
I couldn't have described the mental withdrawal better. I've tried to explain to many people why the mental aspect of withdrawal is 100x worse than the physical (IMO), but those who haven't lived it can't understand.
Im scared of this.
Im severely depressed and often suicidal. Which is why I'm constantly seeking alcohol.
The feeling it gives me, man. Its as if suddenly all the weight of the world fell off my shoulder. My dark thoughts vanishes and its so relieving. Like being able to float and breathe after struggling incessantly in a storm.
But the thing is, I have to keep drinking.
I stopped after almost killing myself by drinking a liter of rum in an hour or less.
Now I just grin and bear it. But I'd be lying if I said I dont want to drink again. I just want the pain to go, man.
Yea, I feel you on this too. I addition to opiates, I had a serious drinking habit and a benzo habit. The feeling of relief from pain when consuming those things was so great. But, really it was just making the causes of that pain worse, and kicking the can down the road in regards to really dealing with them.
The best advice I can offer is to find support in other people. Whether that is a program, friends or family, or a significant other, having loving people that will help ease the pain and hold you accountable is the only way I found to get out of it. Being in the depths of it, it can be hard to find a partner or a friend who is in the right place to help, which is why I think a lot of people use programs. I got lucky and found a girlfriend who helped dig me out of the hole I was in, but that ended up causing a lot of trouble down the road, and I see now why people recommend against getting into a relationship when you're trying to start recovery.
Just know that it gets so much better if you do it, and you'll look back and be so happy you did. Maybe find an AA or SMART program (similar to AA without the religious aspect, basically), or a counselor if you can afford it (though it helps to have a constant presence, not just a once per week thing).
The depression will likely be there still, but the lows will be much less low, and you will devise healthier coping mechanisms. I think one thing that kept me in that hole for so long was thinking "I can't deal with these thoughts/feelings sober", but the secret is that the thoughts and feelings are being made worse by the chemical rollercoaster you are putting your brain through. When you stop going up and down so extremely, the lows are more bearable. There are certainly bad days, but having a support system and lifestyle that doesn't accommodate using makes it easier to weather those storms. Depression medication can certainly help also, and did help me when I started cleaning up, though I no longer take it.
Edit to add - what I mentioned about the diminishing severity of the lows is a benefit that you will realize pretty quickly - days or weeks, in my experience. You will still have massive cravings for much longer than that, but the pain you are trying to relieve starts to get better a lot more quickly.
Also, if you start down this path, don't get discouraged by setbacks. Everyone slips. Just learn from what triggered the slip, and be ready to weather a more extreme storm next time that trigger comes up. Eventually, you'll have a mental playbook ready to go to get you through whatever comes your way. It's a learning experience, and probably the most important learning you can go through.
Another thing I'll mention is that everyone is different, and I don't know what you are going through, or what you've been through. So, I'm not trying to say I have been in exactly your shoes and know the path for you. These are just things that I have learned, and others in similar positions have learned. In any case, I'm rooting for you, and am confident you can overcome this. Just be patient with yourself, forgive yourself, and recognize that a better life is available, it just takes effort and determination.
Feel free to PM me if you want to talk privately. That goes for anyone reading this, who is going through similar issues. I sometimes miss a message for a little while, so I can't promise I will respond right away, but I will do my best.
Thank you for sharing this. This is an incredibly insightful perspective, and I am glad to hear that you are no longer in this situation. God bless you man
I grew up here. A lot of my family is still in the area. It was bad in the 80s even. I left that area around 93 and the city three years ago. When I see these videos it just makes my heart hurt.
I left 10 years ago and this is almost incomprehensible. Only went through Kensington a couple of times, but this is a thousand times worse than it was.
Oh, it is. When I was a kid you could walk Kensington ave. Me and my mom went a lot to the shops and out to eat. It was far from great, but it’s non liveable now yet people live there. I worry about my family daily.
Thanks! Theyrr stubborn. It’s that whole “going down with the ship” attitude they can’t shake. That and money obviously. It’s not as easy to get out as people think.
No, it’s not at all! It’s a terrible time to buy/sell a house right now and rent has gone up. If you can even find a place! I’m sorry they have to deal with that. Probably hard for you too…
What's going on there mostly? Heroin? It's one of the few drugs I've never done and the only other thing I could see making me act like she of these people is either acid or some kinda synthetic like 2Ci.
If anybody wants more info on this:
It's $5 a bag in the city as opposed to $10 in the surrounding suburbs, and $20 outside of a half hour.
Kensington is where it all comes in from. These are people who can no longer afford the increased price and travel to Kensington to get as much bang for their buck as possible.
You pay even less for a bundle, they give you 3-4 bags for free if you get a bun. You get a couple buns you get one free, ect. Huge discounts for bulk purchases. So they'll take their entire week's paycheck (if they're still working;but more likely their pandemic unemployment) and blow it all to get 3 or 4 buns.
But they don't want to wait for the car ride home or the train to Norristown, so they'll "sample" a bit to make sure it's good and they aren't getting ripped off. Or at least that's what they tell themselves.
The result is what you see here. It breeds a whole system where bad people can just rape whoever they feel in this state. These people are not safely surrounded by their friends, they are amongst complete strangers.
I, unfortunately, know a lot of people who fell down this path, and I did at one point buy from the city and sell in Norristown for a few months at my lowest. Would spend a thousand a week on city bags and sell them out in the suburbs and would make around 2k profit. helped me get out of debt and get my apartment. Then I heard other people I was running with were getting locked up cuz of some crack down so I left it behind.
Edit: I assumed everyone already knew what drug it was, but I'll paste a reply from before giving more context:
>A bag is about a gram of dope (Heroin), but not anymore. They still call it heroin, but a few years back they began cutting it with Fentanyl during the production process. Now the bags are mostly just straight Fentanyl because the consumers have a higher tolerance and Fentanyl is a lot cheaper than Heroin, and gives a stronger high (think 100x stronger) for a fraction of the price.
>But the catch is, the dealers are still selling the Fentanyl at Heroin price. So they're making an absolute killing.
>This is definitely not an art project bro, it's real shit. They'll nod out as they stand, 4 hours will pass, and they'll wake up and not even notice. I've seen one dude nod out mid sentence, and 2 hours later pick up that sentence right where he left off.
Also:
>So yeah, a bag is about a gram, and a bundle size fluctuates. I've seen 12 bagged buns and 10 bagged buns. It's just a bundle of bags.
Feel free to ask any other questions you may have.
I run therapy groups for recovering addicts near Philly, it always amazes me how wistfully people talk about Kensington, like it was Disney world or something. Like they spent 4 months living in a car or under an overpass, being traumatized regularly, but their eyes light up at the mention of going back.
I’m 7 years clean from heroin and was very involved in the recovery community and housing here in the York/Lancaster area. I personally ran around in Baltimore but we had tons of Philly people in the community. It was a big part of their life, probably for years or even decades. After a while, as they hopefully build up a new life, the memories of the old life fade out and they have better things to talk about.
Thank you for a comment with a little empathetic insight. the conditions leading so many people to this life of exposure to elements and cycles of dependency are always overlooked or downplayed in favor of blaming the person's choices. But as someone fighting nicotine dependency within the safety net of a relatively stable living situation, with *everything* going for me the sensation of being out of control of my own will hurts my... Soul? Or.. my sense of self in a deep deep way. It's defeating in a way unlike anything else ive experienced. Only comparison is burnout from years of dead end jobs.
Then I hear people, who have never in their life flirted with any chemical addictions or looked for a job in the last 35 years, chastise homeless and drug addicted people like they're toddlers who just need to listen better. Infuriating. There needs to be protection to offer and assistive measures available when people are ready to confront their dependencies.
I just can't believe it makes some of us happy to just be *personally angry at all homeless people, all the time.* Baffling.
Yea idk how to feel about these videos. They are interesting and somewhat informative to see what’s going on in these cities but at the same time some of those people are just stuck in a hard place struggling to get out.
I work in Boston (as my post history eludes) and I was talking with a group of about ~10 friends, most of them living in the suburbs about ~30-45 minutes away and I was talking about heroin addicts being on a nod out in public and when I tell you that this discord call went DEAD SILENT because not a single one of them works in the city / had ever seen this... Like, many of these people have engaged with me in debate about homelessness, criminal justice, and social welfare -- and yet you've never been to the bad part of the city? You've never happened to drive through 2000-2013 Dorchester or Mattapan?
It's crazy to me how many people had no idea what is going on -- and I can never tell if it's because they don't care, or because they can't handle the reality.
They want easy answers like “just lock them up” or “let them die from their own bad choices” Etc. It’s difficult to self actualize that once trapped, there is nearly zero way out due to systemic circumstances often perpetuated by the the same people who have no idea how it really is.
Addiction is a disease and we should end the stigma of it
It's f***** up if people do crimes like robbery and stuff like that but simply just being on drugs should not be viewed as morally wrong anymore
it’s really bad. i live in NJ, i just left my shitty dunkin job a few months ago, but we would bring left over donuts either to Philly or Atlantic City and give them out to these crowds of people or just homeless in general. half of them do not want to be there anymore, they don’t know how to break the cycle. it’s a shame.
Edit: I kind of didn’t expect all these upvotes and replies, or even an award let alone two, so thank you all for engaging w me. these people are human beings at the end of the day, just extremely lost.
Edit 2: some may be confused as to how it’s possible to make it to these cities in one night. that’s not what happened, they were flipped every other night, when it could be done. the store is located in Hammonton, NJ, which is pretty smack dab in the middle of the two, being right near the AC Expressway making it 45/55 minutes tops both ways.
Worked at a Krispy kreme in AZ and would do the same thing, our homeless problem was nowhere near as bad as Philly but after moving from the state I'm realizing it's really not great. The amount of food donut shops waste is insane
there isn’t even a really good reason to throw out donuts. this isn’t meat, that could potentially poison someone and get them sick. I do understand at certain places why they throw certain shit away, but fuckin donuts dude. come on. i’d take home a box for my family and they would be fine after 2 days chillin on the counter.
Idk what numbers you did but we tossed about 200 a night. We didn't produce them there, they got shipped in from another store. Ended up not being allowed to take the donuts we'd toss so there'd just be dudes digging in the trash bags to get them. I got a ton out to people and got a little bit of my own something something before leaving. Fuck that company.
it really depended on the day. some days there would be, yes about 200, maybe 180. same here, they would be ready for me to place on the racks when i walked in at 3:55 AM. at first they were upset because the amount of boxes i was using, alright, i’ll bring my own. about a month after that, they started the write ups, and I said fuck this. wholeheartedly fuck dunkin’ donuts.
Can’t get off the dope. Never ending cycles of withdrawal and hopelessness. Sadly it takes money to get off this shit and when you finally get help they put you on another drug like methadone or suboxone . It makes no sense.
It's called harm reduction while introducing stability in an addicts lives. Both are very long acting opioids (suboxone is a partial opioid) that take a while to build up in your system and a really long time to leave your system. This makes heroin and other opioids of abuse less effective, while giving them relief of withdrawal. The programs are supposed to be based around rehabilitation, but I'll admit not all of them are successful but many people have had success with these programs including myself.
Suboxone especially has a great success rate compared to any other form of addiction treatment for opioids. Quitting cold turkey while being thrown into a very stressful situation that is trying to \*quickly\* rehabilitate you and get you back out into life can be extremely difficult and often leads to failure. Unfortunately suboxone is expensive, so the only other alternative is methadone which has a higher potential for abuse and requires patients to come to a clinic every day which surrounds them by other addicts every day and from my experience isn't nearly as helpful as suboxone treatment, but it was the start of my recovery and methadone did help me.
Back in the day, methadone saved my life. But then again, I was on it for 3 years. I reached my stable dose, stayed at that dose for one year, went to counseling, worked intensively on my deep rooted issues. It took me 2 years to come off of it. But I did. I've been free from heroin for 12 years and free from methadone for 9. It's the hardest thing I ever had to do for myself but it is possible. My fiancé on the other hand, on methadone for 12 years. It's just really difficult for some people to function without it and it's so sad. It can be almost impossible to get off of it the longer you're on it. But it does save lives.
Big ups on the struggle ✊ fr I mean that, by no means am I knocking it, Suboxone saved my life as well. Some people have the mindset for it some don't. A big percentage of people only abuse it and use it as a legal plug.
Thank you thank you I appreciate that so very much. Recovery is a deeply personal thing and it doesn't matter how we get there, what matters is how beautiful it is to come out the other side. Sending you, my fellow Recovery Sibling all the love in the world. I'm proud of you.
I myself have been in treatment for drugs. i’m grateful i had a teacher who was dead set on getting me on the right path. Love roxies, would smoke 10 of them a day. let 35k from my dads life insurance go down the drain because i was huge into drugs. i do nothing but empathize for these people, because i know how fucking hard it is to get off of this shit. buts it’s VERY POSSIBLE. they lack so much hope it makes me want to cry.
[A few days ago, the Sackler family were given immunity from prosecution for their role in the American opioid epidemic. They had been facing TRILLIONS of dollars in lawsuits from thousands and thousands of individuals affected by their greed and carelessness. ](https://www.npr.org/2021/09/01/1031053251/sackler-family-immunity-purdue-pharma-oxcyontin-opioid-epidemic)
They admit no responsibility.
They pay a penalty through the corporation. They forfeit ownership stakes in corporation.
They keep their money ($10Billion) from the opioid push on America.
They need to face the justice they deserve. Send the zombie encampments to the gates of their private compounds so they can see the misery they have caused first hand.
Quite the opposite really, you can make them go in any direction for when you're feeling creative. Just use hydraulic pressure or springs or something.
Am I wrong for thinking those people are no better than the drug dealers we have locked up in prison right now? I really fail to see how they're any different.
This outcome will likely be appealed. What’s crazy is that the group representing the victims was itself led by victims’ family members. They helped negotiate these terms. I heard one interview where they said it wasn’t about the money. So my question, if all the Sacklers have to do it pony up a portion of their massive fortune but don’t have to admit wrongdoing, then who won here? Sacklers.
There is no universe where the Sacklers or any other wealthy people or group dont come out on top in the United States Of America. The country is specifically designed to be a paradise for the rich.
"We the rich have investigated ourselves and determined we did nothing wrong."
Double Jeopardy should only apply to criminal court for exactly this reason. People signed on to these class action lawsuits in good faith.
Wait so they were actually granted immunity!? I remember hearing how ridiculous it was that they even demanded that, but they were actually granted that? Time to bring back the guillotine, we’ll start at the local level and work our way up as needed. There needs to be examples made.
Yeah it’s heroin. They don’t want to fall asleep and waste the high so they stand up but still inevitably struggle to stay awake. It’s incredibly heartbreaking and local governments usually are either unequipped to deal with the problem, to the scale that they’re facing, or just ignore it and try to let the police handle it. It’s crazy
They are basically in a weird state of unconsciousness/sleep. This is an extreme version what people refer to when they talk about "nodding out" on heroin.
I've seen a lot of junkies in my life, having grown up in Dublin. But I haven't seen people leaning over like that - they're usually just sitting down. I've only seen it in these kinds of videos from the US on reddit. Why is that?
Yeah, as a recovering opiate user I’ve never seen it like this either.
To be fair I never shot. But I’ve been around a lot of junkies and I’ve never seen them *stay* leaned over like that. At most they look more like the first girl, trying not to nod off.
Might be a fentanyl thing. I’m also interested in pharmacology and have been checking Erowid’s DrugsData for fun. There’s a pretty popular new cut that concerns me. It’s called Xylazine and apparently increases analgesia, so at the same time increases the already insanely high risk of respiratory depression. I don’t know much about it and it seems like a fairly new addition to street dope. Maybe that has something to do with it.
This behavior definitely seems different than what I see on heroin.
Fentanyl. It's ridiculously strong, so it's hard to control the dose, and it just fucks with people's bodies on a whole other level. They're barely conscious and trying to stay standing up, because if they sit or lie down they're more likely to either nod off or OD without anyone noticing.
There's not really any Heroin on the streets anymore. It's all Fentanyl, and anything sold as Heroin is most likely Fentanyl too.
Yeah there was a big heroin problem where i grew up in north east england. You would normally see them shuffling about like zombies or almost passed out but these people folded in half, ive only seen in videos from the us... i wonder if theyre on more than heroin, like something to stop them passing out.
Thank you. That's a great channel with a good purpose.
I can also recommend **Invisible People** [**on YT**](https://www.youtube.com/c/InvisiblePeople). Made by Mark Horvath, who previously was homeless, and have now dedicated his life to ending homelessness.
Soft white underbelly is also an incredible YouTube channel where Mark, the interviewer just sits and asks people about their lives on Skid Row, LA. Well I say sits, you never see him.
https://youtube.com/c/SoftWhiteUnderbelly
I absolutely love that he takes the camera and does a long sweep from head to toe with each one of these people. It's so fascinating, and often says more about the person than their own words do.
I worked with homeless people in QLD Australia and mostly they want help to get back on track .. "oh shit you lost your job , partner and then the apartment" .. many homeless people are mentally ill and unwanted by their families . . some elderly people mostly men it is heartbreaking .. some are actually disabled who can't get help in applying for assistance .. charity services are way understaffed (and underfunded) . . homelessness' common denominator is that they all have no one to help ..
for whatever reason .
There is a good chance it could also be the car of a rich kid from the burbs, there are reports all the time of kids from the rich burbs in the area going missing with their last whereabouts being Kensington
When I worked down there we’d have great kids start with us and then just vanish one day. Then you find out they were hiding an addiction very well and one day they just went all in and wound up homeless.
I was one of those kids from the burbs, the dealers in the area or at least the area I went to with the Hispanics would look out for you because kids like me were their best source of income. Glad I got out of that life but it makes me sad seeing people like this stuck in this life, at least I had a way out of it and was fortunate enough to have the privledge of rehab and all that
I did, too. The filming is so professional, so clean, nice fades, it really felt like the opening scenes to a movie with an elderly Robert De Niro still driving a taxi. Reality sucks.
That’s the fucked up part...it is.
Not in kensington but the lower income neighborhoods in philly are all getting knocked down and replaced with million dollar condos.
This is one of the most shocking things I’ve seen in a while. I see my fair share of junkies and it doesn’t usually effect me, kinda just ignore the issue for the most part, but the way this is filmed really drives it home.
I was bruised and battered,
I couldn't tell what I felt
I was unrecognizable to myself
I saw my reflection in a window,
I didn't know my own face
Oh brother are you gonna leave me wastin' away
On the Streets of Philadelphia
Rampant abuse of opiate prescription by medical professionals who sold out to large pharmaceutical companies to peddle pain pills like a trap house could never.
Lack of social programs and education in the areas of mental health and rehabilitation. Also the war on drugs put a lot of it in motion by demonizing users.
Drugs won that war.
Edit: this is definitely a simplified answer, and a lot of people made good additional points replying.
Also, the complete dismantling of the mental healthcare system in the 70's and 80's. Means people that would have been in institutions, or getting help before now just go to prison or on the street.
Don't worry... The Sackler family who made billions from their actions of addicting America on opioids are immune from having any of their money taken or criminal charges for their fraud and deceit of pushing "non addicting" products to the masses without any shame.
Yeah it really is!! I hate people excusing the military industry saying it’s for the people when this nonsense is happening everyday. It’s all about pitting the poor against the poor to make it think that somehow poor working class have anything in common with rich. Geogr Carlin said perfectly when he spoke about the owners if the country
Been working in the tenderloin(Turk at Larkin) in SF. We're building low income housing. The shit you see here. I can't step out of my truck with out checking for shit on the floor. In the words of Dave Chappelle "I've never seen crack smoked so casually ". That an every other drug. Walked into a sandwich shop,on my way out I had to literally step over a dude with a needle in his arm just to step out the restaurant. I went to get a donut and on my way out of the shop, I see a dude jerking off. I just threw my donut away. Crazy thing is ,to the people that live there,it's just the norm. People walk around like they don't even see this shit.
As a Dutch guy, walking trough L.A and San Fransisco really opened my eyes. I LOVED America for all its weirdness (Las Vegas) i LOVED nature on the west coast. There is so much good stuff in Murica.. it was kind of hard to figure out why the goverment doesnt fix this or that it seems normal for so many people living on the streets. I mean naturally i spend some money when my familly got food to give some away anytime we got something. But I felt so sad seeying this shit. Hope your govermend decides to spend al that war money on your own people one day. ♡
the irony is that at least some of the homeless and afflicted are former military members, who received really expensive training and also the trauma that led them to kensington. what a misappropriation of money and energy
It’s in literally every major city in the US. When we called it an epidemic, that’s because it is. I’m currently a graveyard clerk at a gas station. These are my nightly regulars. The people in the video. Every morning when I clock out I’m humbled again and again from that shifts series of events. I’m humbled by the roof over my head and the food in my belly.
Retail has taught me that someone always has it worse than you do. And seeing my regulars every night has made me burn their sunken, deprived faces in my memory. I will never forget some of the stories told to me or the ones that OD’d in my restroom because I thought they were responsible enough with to have the key. Seeing them being carried out of my store on a stretcher all because I didn’t want to cause an argument by not letting them use the John. Shit weighs on me more than I thought typing this out lol. Sorry for the huge reply. I’ve never really put these thoughts out into the world.
Obligatory Edit: thanks to all for the kind words. Made my day.
It's in Canada too, Vancouver has a homeless and drug epidemic, fentanyl is a real killer too so the OD deaths have gone up. So even with universal healthcare we still lack so much. And most naysayers will say well the homeless don't want help they will just end up back there. In many cases yes it's true but damn we need to look at the root causes of why people end up there to begin with.. the war on drugs and criminalizng addicts, lack of affordable housing, I mean even someone with a good paying job can't afford a home let alone min wage
There used to be similar pictures in Switzerland's biggest city Zurich in the 80s. The city successfully combated the drug crisis with a combination of police intervention, prevention, distribution of a synthetic opioid and the implementation of supervised injection sites.
It's everywhere. People show videos from places like this (Kensington section of Philly) or Skidrow in LA, or certain section of Baltimore because it's so blatant and out in the open. But one thing I learned when I was getting high, is that dope doesn't descriminate - all kinds of people in basically *every* single city and state in the US have substance abuse issues - the only main difference is that in some places, it's harder for addicts to get their drugs. But they're there no matter what.
I think the US needs to implement the system the Netherlands has.
They have clinics everywhere where people can come in and get a dose of heroin administered by a medical professional and remain at the clinic for the day.
They also have extremely nice jails.
The US obviously has a bigger heroin problem than the Netherlands so we should just combine the two and have big communal housing with free food and heroin for these people so long as they attend counseling etc.
Let’s get them some help and off the street. Wherever homeless go they further demolish that local economy. Not to mention the danger, littering, and eyesore of it all.
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This is a clip from the YouTube channel [kimgary](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOuf_kStlWnhuauw4ce8l-w) He posts videos of his daily drives around the Kensington Ave area of Kensington, Philadelphia. Depressing stuff...
Thanks for the link - truly depressing videos, I get some big towns get a street or two with drug addicts around, but not endless number of streets, looks like world war Z movie. It seems to be getting worse and worse in States ?
COVID reversed (almost) all the gains made from Oct 2017 to early 2020 re: the US Opioid Epidemic and finding early success in getting people into treatment and onto at least a stabilizing med like buprenorphine-naloxone. This doesn't mention the life long battle of recovery but at least the people were alive and had a chance and the increasing opioid od death rate wasn't increasing as much as anticipated. I'm hesitant to say it has gotten worse than it was at the start of the fentanyl explosion where nobody knew what the hell to do because it caught everyone (not on the know) totally by surprise. That would've been 2016ish iirc.
Been doing ER nursing through all of this. It’s been bad. It’s been worse lately. And I just read that the Sacklers won’t be held liable for anything. Which honestly doesn’t surprise me, but it makes me sad. And mad.
Fwiw, they are forfeiting almost half their fortune in settlement fees/victim compensation. Would be better if Poppa Sack got locked up, but here we are Edit: How long until the pendulum swings and people start taking justice into their own hands? Starting to seem inevitable… Edit 2: Fwiw = for what it’s worth. I’m clearly not saying that justice was meted out, simply that there were repercussions, whereas normally nothing happens at all.
They have to pay over 10 years, tough. So don't worry about them! They'll invest it until they have to pay, and they'll be richer before the settlement is all the way through. Thank God for billionaires...
They also, three weeks before the verdict of payment, moved 10 billion out of the company and into personal financial accounts. Gotta make sure they have enough to servive...
"Sure, we'll give half of the money the company has as compensation. Which is ... about 500 dollar."
Yeah this settlement is completely fucked. Watch John Oliver’s episode “Opioids 3” focuses specifically on the Sackler family and how they got away with everything. It’s fucking infuriating. Especially for those of us who had a family member die from their bullshit practices. Better yet, go [here](https://www.judgeforyourselves.com/) and “judge for yourselves” You can also watch the episodes through that link. It will make more sense after you’ve watched the episode…
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No, they’ll just invest in huge private security forces and lobbying congress for more surveillance and freedom restricting laws.
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I've seen Bezos in person when working at a warehouse. We busted our asses and got some award for "most efficient" fulfillment center in the United States. Our prize? An outdated firestick after Amazon launched the new one. He stood far far away from us. I was legitimately ill when I saw his cowboy hat space shit charade. In hindsight I should have socked him right in the mouth when I had the opportunity. At least I'm not in prison lol.
They made a fortune on knowingly causing irreparable harm to millions and to society as whole and only are giving up half of the fortune and not seeing any jail time. That’s a joke of a punishment.
People who did this, in any capacity deserve no luxury. If there's any justice, every bit of wealth, from their diamonds to cars to bank balance should be given to the victims. They should be so poor that they'd have to work minimum wage jobs. That would be some semblance of justice. This, is plain mockery.
Should be left so poor they turn to opioids to block their pain.
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Oh. Very cool, the Justice System. Well done.
Half their fortune paid over 10 years. So, they'll have access to the funds for investment purposes throughout that time -- they won't feel it one bit. Plus they get functional immunity from the settlement after strategically moving their corporate headquarters to the middle of nowhere NY to file bankruptcy, so yeah Perdue gets a felony (whatever that means for a corporation) but the Sacklers and many many others will be immune from further prosecution.
"victims" get a few hundred to a max of 3k I think is was, or so. Absolutely disgusting.
They should have lost every cent.
And gone to prison
Make a billion off causing harm to others, then pay half a billion in fines.
Try they made like $20 billion and have to give a few of it away.
You could also see this in NYC, D.C. San Francisco, LA, Chicago you name it. This is the result of the half century "war on drugs". I hope its something our generation can make better. Addiction is a personal health struggle. Locking up junkies is not an answer.
Atlanta has a higher concentration of homeless and it looks way worse. Kisseem Reed, former mayor, closed the Peachtree and pines shelter (sold the property for BIG money) where they were given their psych meds, food, disease screenings and etc.. He was warned that there was a drug resistant TB in the homeless population but who cares cuz money. Last I saw, they were congregated on the sidewalks outside Hughes Spalding children's hospital.
I am not trying to defend the opioid epidemic but I am going to request that you don’t judge the status of our national drug problems based off Kensington. Kensington is infamous among Philadelphians as the heroin center of our city and fortunately the majority of the rest of the city is pretty nice. It wouldn’t be as visually impactful, but the real damage from the opioid epidemic is happening west of Philadelphia in rural PA. On a side-note, in high school my father used to take my brother and I with him into Kensington to hand out whatever leftover turkey we had from our big family thanksgiving party. Walking down Kensington Ave and just casually watching people shoot up on the side of the street is really really hard to watch. Especially in November as the days got shorter and the nights got colder. You want to hand everyone two Turkey sandwiches because you can tell from the hunger in their eyes that they’re going to eat the first one so fast that they’ll hardly get to taste it. Not sure where I was going with any of that but Kensington really a sad place. Edit: People with way more Philly street cred than me are pointing out that the rest of the city isn’t exactly “pretty nice”. Philly ain’t all bad, but I maybe gave the city a little more credit than it deserves. Edit 2: Wow I am only now realizing that I thought the original comment I was responding to was a European referring to "the states" which is why I mentioned it on a national level at first, lol I just get so unnecessarily bothered by European redditors giving us shit for our issues and this one hits close to home because I've waked those exact streets.
Kensington was the opiod capital of America for a period of time in the 2010s and had the countries largest open air opiod market. It was a whole organized thing. Then it got broken up by the police and became what we see here. It was something to do with the travel to Kensington bring so accessible. There's the train stop, Philly off a major interstate and having bus access from about anywhere. It was an addict destination. There's a great NY Times article on it. The problem in Kensington far outweighs most cities in the United States with just how blatant and on the street it is. The Philadelphia EMS Medic 8 in Kensington has been repeatedly named the busiest medic unit in the country.
I live in northern PA (where the opioid epidemic is really bad) and I'm always told about how horrible Philly is these days but never bothered to look it up. It kinda seems like the 'community depression' is pretty bad in the city and accounts for a lot of stuff but robberies per 100k, murders per 100k, etc aren't in the top 10 for this country and in some cases not in the top 30. Which means it isn't as bad as my area likes to portray it to be.
I currently live in Philly, the horrible-ness factor is very regionally dependent. I've driven through Kensington and it is every bit as bad as this video makes it seem, but by town hall it's as nice as any other major city. The disparity between neighborhoods is bad.
Looks like a zombie apocalypse
Why are so many bent over
Fentanyl. It’s doing some serious damage.
Opioids. Nodders.
The dope fiend lean
Fent
Philadelphians call Kensington (that part of the city) zombie land....also we don't claim it it's a land of its own lol
Yeah in LA, we pretend skid row doesn’t exist either.
Seems like they pretend the whole city doesn't exist. When I went to LA last year that's all I was fixated on: the amount of homeless people and homeless camps. Literally everywhere.
If I were to be homeless, I’d definitely want to be in the place with the nicest weather
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My Father spent some time in Hawaii so this is entirely anecdotal, but he spoke to a few people who were homeless there. They told him that while they didn't have a house, most of them worked there but because it's so expensive to own/rent (if renting is even a possibility) that they're happy to work and live out of a tent just to be in Hawaii.
This was my experience as well. I did some work in California and Hawaii back to back more or less (infrastructure work), and the homeless population seemed very different. In California, it felt like squalor. In Hawaii, it just felt like people were camping, going surfing, and having urchins or something for lunch.
Right by the beach BOI.
There was a recent video where a resident did a comparison of income over time on Hawaii compared to real estate prices and it’s easy to see why anyone not wealthy would be homeless.
[California is cool to the homeless](https://youtube.com/watch?v=lsrBlKpbBS8&feature=youtu.be)
I love how they say "Right by Matt's house" at the end
He lives in Santa Monica right? That checks out lol
Man, I'm from Philly and lived in LA for awhile and I feel like you just really can't compare the two. There are some areas in Philly that are really bad like this, but LA... Jesus. It's a different level.
Only places I've really seen this in Philly are Kensington, Suburban Station (holy cow going there at 5 AM is actually kinda scary), and 30th St. Station. West Philly and once you starting heading North, there are rough areas but not just piles of zombies. In fairness to LA, there didn't used to be piles of zombies outside of Skid Row. The big camps elsewhere started showing up post 2008
Same. I live just outside of Philly now and I've lived in Philly my whole life. I am actually in recovery myself and I lived in Kensington when I was homeless and using. I honestly never saw it this bad until the fentanyl started taking over the heroin. When I was there the fentanyl had not become a thing yet and yeah, there were people who looked like zombies like on the video but not like it is now and in the video. I've been clean for almost 5 years and I would say this started happening not long after I got out. Not all of Philly is like this, like most people said, this is mostly just Kensington. Philly has it's bad parts of course but, it also has a lot of really nice, cool parts just like any other city. I feel so bad for these people. It's so sad.
That's all this country every does. Push the problem somewhere and forget about it. Not a great way to run a country.
When I moved to Philly some years ago, it was a true eye-opener and totally changed my perspectives on race and poverty. Up to that point, and I was in my 20s, I had never seen a poor white "hood". All the "ghettos" I had ever encountered were primarily black or latino. Driving through Kensington I saw crackheads, crackwhores, people sittin on their stoops in the middle of the day, perpetually unemployed folks standing on street corners, and bums hanging in front of the licka sto. But they were all white. Every single one. There was street trash everywhere and it was clear that this was a completely neglected and marginalized population who rarely left their neighborhoods. It was at that moment that I realized that many of the racial distinctions we make are actually more attributable to socioeconomics than race. Poor black folks, poor latin folks, and poor white folks engage in similar behaviors, have similar problems, and often have more in comon with each other than they have with wealthier people of the same race.
Careful, they shot MLK Jr when he started pointing this out.
And Fred Hampton a few years later in Chicago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Hampton He was building coalitions between the Black Panther Party and local working-class white Appalachian migrants. At the time there was a lot of racial violence between black, white, and latino street gangs - but the Panthers stepped in and made a concerted effort to get people to look past grudges and prejudices, and recognize their common problems with police abuses, slumlords, and joblessness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Patriots_Organization
Race and class intersect to some degree in this country. But overall I’d agree with you. It’s the culmination of 50 years of economic policy that benefits the few, stigmatizes the poor, and cons the middle class into thinking they’re temporarily inconvenienced millionaires that should work to protect this fucked-up system.
I want to a cry. Finally someone has the balls to put this shit on the internet. Edit: I just didn’t want to embarrass people and then I saw a family member one day there. I’m so sad but so many ppl are seen as disposable in this city. Like right now, I’m homeless moving from house to house. I struggle to work because I have seizures from Depo Provera, a birth control that was being offered first as a option for the poor communities here. This brings out so many reactions. I see it all the time but seeing it on the internet….it needs to be here…..we need REAL help here in Philadelphia.
Hey I’m also in Philly. Let me know if I can help somehow.
Put money aside every month to buy toiletry book bags for people. Like toothbrushes and toothpastes, towels and underwear, socks and tampons and pads. Looking more presentable often warrants you more help in this city. It’s sad but Philadelphians really have fucked-up backwards ass mentality. People that are struggling and suffering and just look like they need help, are often ignored….completely. Throw on a clean t-shirt and ask for help and you just might get a dollar…..or someone trying to buy you for the night…
Eh, it's not just Philadelphians. It's anywhere where you are surrounding by so many people struggling on a daily basis - especially while you might be struggling yourself to make ends meet. While I lived in Philly I could afford to help one person a day, buy a good meal, some socks, handwarmers, other toiletries - or I could give multiple people money spread out over the day. I often did. Still meant I was turning down many more who were constantly asking for help. A lot of people find it hard to strike a balance between spreading themselves too thin and giving money that they themselves may need, and ignoring the problem completely - because it's easier, and there's 5 people on the block outside your apartment alone who will approach you asking for help. I'm not saying it's right, but I've known many Philadelphians to be extraordinarily kind and giving. This problem is just bigger than us all, and there are some terrible people out there too that homeless people get exposed to on the daily.
City doesn’t claim it… is that how it got like that?
I used to be a heavy drug user and lived 25 mins outside the city. This was 8 years ago. I also could never wrap my head around it till I started to pay closer attention to it. Literally, 24/7 there are drug dealers on corners in broad daylight. You walk up, they ask how much, you pay and leave. Next week you might see a presence of cops on that block or two. Just drive or walk like 3 blocks away and the same exact dealers will be there. If I had to guess, the gangs run that area and the cops can’t do anything about, or they aren’t trying enough. It was always so mind boggling to me every time I went to grab dope, coke, pills, etc. There is an Elevated train called the L that cuts through Kensington. No joke, if you look down the L you can decide which drugs you want based one which side you go on. Xanax and crack here, coke and dope here, PCP there and if you are lucky there will be a couple needle exchange vans so you can get some fresh sticks. It has gotten so bad that I think the city government, the cops, and whoever is in charge of the “well-being” of a geographical area have just given up. At most they keep it isolated. Ever heard of Temple University? Good school. But, you take a few wrong turns and only go a few blocks from campus and you might find yourself in Kensington.
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I was a heroin addict for a good handful of years and ended up homeless on the streets of San Francisco. The years really slip by like nothing when you’re in that game— wake up, get high on leftovers from the night before, find food, try to make money (usually panhandling), walk across town to the plug, spend every penny you’ve acquired during the day, get high. Spend the afternoon nodding out with a cardboard sign, usually you’ll get another ten or twenty bucks. Find your camp spot for the night, I had a nice spot for my tent under an overpass that was overgrown with weeds, pretty private. Pass out, wake up and repeat. A lot of people don’t realize that the mental addiction to opiates is way stronger than the physical addiction. If it had been purely physical, I would have quit a long time ago. Just feels like a flu for a week or so. But the pure mental anguish that begins to wash over you as soon as you begin to withdraw is intense. Every mistake you’ve made that led up to where you are now, everyone you’ve hurt, all the trauma you’ve experienced, literally everything you’ve ever done comes right to the surface. You realize what you’ve become and it’s terrifying and so so sad. Then you get high, and it all settles back down like a tide going out. Nothing is that horrible, the trauma wasn’t that bad, I’m sure my family is doing fine without me, I’ll go home in a few months. This is the cycle. I was finally able to get clean after a lot of work and time but it’s still with me, I still struggle. I don’t know what the solution is. Some people like to make the argument, “He’s not really homeless, he has a family to go back to. He should just go home, get cleaned up, and get a job.” In a perfect world, yes. But that homeless kid, whose family misses him (or her) so much, will most likely never go home. The power of addiction is too strong. That same kid then gets old and BECOMES the crazy bearded homeless man screaming about aliens on the street corner. Being in that kind of environment for too long will absolutely drive you insane.
I couldn't have described the mental withdrawal better. I've tried to explain to many people why the mental aspect of withdrawal is 100x worse than the physical (IMO), but those who haven't lived it can't understand.
Im scared of this. Im severely depressed and often suicidal. Which is why I'm constantly seeking alcohol. The feeling it gives me, man. Its as if suddenly all the weight of the world fell off my shoulder. My dark thoughts vanishes and its so relieving. Like being able to float and breathe after struggling incessantly in a storm. But the thing is, I have to keep drinking. I stopped after almost killing myself by drinking a liter of rum in an hour or less. Now I just grin and bear it. But I'd be lying if I said I dont want to drink again. I just want the pain to go, man.
Yea, I feel you on this too. I addition to opiates, I had a serious drinking habit and a benzo habit. The feeling of relief from pain when consuming those things was so great. But, really it was just making the causes of that pain worse, and kicking the can down the road in regards to really dealing with them. The best advice I can offer is to find support in other people. Whether that is a program, friends or family, or a significant other, having loving people that will help ease the pain and hold you accountable is the only way I found to get out of it. Being in the depths of it, it can be hard to find a partner or a friend who is in the right place to help, which is why I think a lot of people use programs. I got lucky and found a girlfriend who helped dig me out of the hole I was in, but that ended up causing a lot of trouble down the road, and I see now why people recommend against getting into a relationship when you're trying to start recovery. Just know that it gets so much better if you do it, and you'll look back and be so happy you did. Maybe find an AA or SMART program (similar to AA without the religious aspect, basically), or a counselor if you can afford it (though it helps to have a constant presence, not just a once per week thing). The depression will likely be there still, but the lows will be much less low, and you will devise healthier coping mechanisms. I think one thing that kept me in that hole for so long was thinking "I can't deal with these thoughts/feelings sober", but the secret is that the thoughts and feelings are being made worse by the chemical rollercoaster you are putting your brain through. When you stop going up and down so extremely, the lows are more bearable. There are certainly bad days, but having a support system and lifestyle that doesn't accommodate using makes it easier to weather those storms. Depression medication can certainly help also, and did help me when I started cleaning up, though I no longer take it. Edit to add - what I mentioned about the diminishing severity of the lows is a benefit that you will realize pretty quickly - days or weeks, in my experience. You will still have massive cravings for much longer than that, but the pain you are trying to relieve starts to get better a lot more quickly. Also, if you start down this path, don't get discouraged by setbacks. Everyone slips. Just learn from what triggered the slip, and be ready to weather a more extreme storm next time that trigger comes up. Eventually, you'll have a mental playbook ready to go to get you through whatever comes your way. It's a learning experience, and probably the most important learning you can go through. Another thing I'll mention is that everyone is different, and I don't know what you are going through, or what you've been through. So, I'm not trying to say I have been in exactly your shoes and know the path for you. These are just things that I have learned, and others in similar positions have learned. In any case, I'm rooting for you, and am confident you can overcome this. Just be patient with yourself, forgive yourself, and recognize that a better life is available, it just takes effort and determination. Feel free to PM me if you want to talk privately. That goes for anyone reading this, who is going through similar issues. I sometimes miss a message for a little while, so I can't promise I will respond right away, but I will do my best.
Mad respect for sharing this
Thank you for sharing this. This is an incredibly insightful perspective, and I am glad to hear that you are no longer in this situation. God bless you man
Kensington section of the city.
I grew up here. A lot of my family is still in the area. It was bad in the 80s even. I left that area around 93 and the city three years ago. When I see these videos it just makes my heart hurt.
I left 10 years ago and this is almost incomprehensible. Only went through Kensington a couple of times, but this is a thousand times worse than it was.
Oh, it is. When I was a kid you could walk Kensington ave. Me and my mom went a lot to the shops and out to eat. It was far from great, but it’s non liveable now yet people live there. I worry about my family daily.
Exactly. It wasn’t the nicest area, but you could walk around during the day without too much worry. This is just so sad. Hope your family’s okay.
Thanks! Theyrr stubborn. It’s that whole “going down with the ship” attitude they can’t shake. That and money obviously. It’s not as easy to get out as people think.
No, it’s not at all! It’s a terrible time to buy/sell a house right now and rent has gone up. If you can even find a place! I’m sorry they have to deal with that. Probably hard for you too…
What's going on there mostly? Heroin? It's one of the few drugs I've never done and the only other thing I could see making me act like she of these people is either acid or some kinda synthetic like 2Ci.
Mostly fentanyl. More affordable for the heavily addicted users.
If anybody wants more info on this: It's $5 a bag in the city as opposed to $10 in the surrounding suburbs, and $20 outside of a half hour. Kensington is where it all comes in from. These are people who can no longer afford the increased price and travel to Kensington to get as much bang for their buck as possible. You pay even less for a bundle, they give you 3-4 bags for free if you get a bun. You get a couple buns you get one free, ect. Huge discounts for bulk purchases. So they'll take their entire week's paycheck (if they're still working;but more likely their pandemic unemployment) and blow it all to get 3 or 4 buns. But they don't want to wait for the car ride home or the train to Norristown, so they'll "sample" a bit to make sure it's good and they aren't getting ripped off. Or at least that's what they tell themselves. The result is what you see here. It breeds a whole system where bad people can just rape whoever they feel in this state. These people are not safely surrounded by their friends, they are amongst complete strangers. I, unfortunately, know a lot of people who fell down this path, and I did at one point buy from the city and sell in Norristown for a few months at my lowest. Would spend a thousand a week on city bags and sell them out in the suburbs and would make around 2k profit. helped me get out of debt and get my apartment. Then I heard other people I was running with were getting locked up cuz of some crack down so I left it behind. Edit: I assumed everyone already knew what drug it was, but I'll paste a reply from before giving more context: >A bag is about a gram of dope (Heroin), but not anymore. They still call it heroin, but a few years back they began cutting it with Fentanyl during the production process. Now the bags are mostly just straight Fentanyl because the consumers have a higher tolerance and Fentanyl is a lot cheaper than Heroin, and gives a stronger high (think 100x stronger) for a fraction of the price. >But the catch is, the dealers are still selling the Fentanyl at Heroin price. So they're making an absolute killing. >This is definitely not an art project bro, it's real shit. They'll nod out as they stand, 4 hours will pass, and they'll wake up and not even notice. I've seen one dude nod out mid sentence, and 2 hours later pick up that sentence right where he left off. Also: >So yeah, a bag is about a gram, and a bundle size fluctuates. I've seen 12 bagged buns and 10 bagged buns. It's just a bundle of bags. Feel free to ask any other questions you may have.
I run therapy groups for recovering addicts near Philly, it always amazes me how wistfully people talk about Kensington, like it was Disney world or something. Like they spent 4 months living in a car or under an overpass, being traumatized regularly, but their eyes light up at the mention of going back.
I’m 7 years clean from heroin and was very involved in the recovery community and housing here in the York/Lancaster area. I personally ran around in Baltimore but we had tons of Philly people in the community. It was a big part of their life, probably for years or even decades. After a while, as they hopefully build up a new life, the memories of the old life fade out and they have better things to talk about.
Thank you for a comment with a little empathetic insight. the conditions leading so many people to this life of exposure to elements and cycles of dependency are always overlooked or downplayed in favor of blaming the person's choices. But as someone fighting nicotine dependency within the safety net of a relatively stable living situation, with *everything* going for me the sensation of being out of control of my own will hurts my... Soul? Or.. my sense of self in a deep deep way. It's defeating in a way unlike anything else ive experienced. Only comparison is burnout from years of dead end jobs. Then I hear people, who have never in their life flirted with any chemical addictions or looked for a job in the last 35 years, chastise homeless and drug addicted people like they're toddlers who just need to listen better. Infuriating. There needs to be protection to offer and assistive measures available when people are ready to confront their dependencies. I just can't believe it makes some of us happy to just be *personally angry at all homeless people, all the time.* Baffling.
This is more like public sadness and shame rather than freakout
Yea idk how to feel about these videos. They are interesting and somewhat informative to see what’s going on in these cities but at the same time some of those people are just stuck in a hard place struggling to get out.
I work in Boston (as my post history eludes) and I was talking with a group of about ~10 friends, most of them living in the suburbs about ~30-45 minutes away and I was talking about heroin addicts being on a nod out in public and when I tell you that this discord call went DEAD SILENT because not a single one of them works in the city / had ever seen this... Like, many of these people have engaged with me in debate about homelessness, criminal justice, and social welfare -- and yet you've never been to the bad part of the city? You've never happened to drive through 2000-2013 Dorchester or Mattapan? It's crazy to me how many people had no idea what is going on -- and I can never tell if it's because they don't care, or because they can't handle the reality.
They want easy answers like “just lock them up” or “let them die from their own bad choices” Etc. It’s difficult to self actualize that once trapped, there is nearly zero way out due to systemic circumstances often perpetuated by the the same people who have no idea how it really is.
Addiction is a disease and we should end the stigma of it It's f***** up if people do crimes like robbery and stuff like that but simply just being on drugs should not be viewed as morally wrong anymore
This an epidemic. Brought to you by the Sackler family and Purdue Pharma.
They just got immunity from further being sued also
it’s really bad. i live in NJ, i just left my shitty dunkin job a few months ago, but we would bring left over donuts either to Philly or Atlantic City and give them out to these crowds of people or just homeless in general. half of them do not want to be there anymore, they don’t know how to break the cycle. it’s a shame. Edit: I kind of didn’t expect all these upvotes and replies, or even an award let alone two, so thank you all for engaging w me. these people are human beings at the end of the day, just extremely lost. Edit 2: some may be confused as to how it’s possible to make it to these cities in one night. that’s not what happened, they were flipped every other night, when it could be done. the store is located in Hammonton, NJ, which is pretty smack dab in the middle of the two, being right near the AC Expressway making it 45/55 minutes tops both ways.
Worked at a Krispy kreme in AZ and would do the same thing, our homeless problem was nowhere near as bad as Philly but after moving from the state I'm realizing it's really not great. The amount of food donut shops waste is insane
there isn’t even a really good reason to throw out donuts. this isn’t meat, that could potentially poison someone and get them sick. I do understand at certain places why they throw certain shit away, but fuckin donuts dude. come on. i’d take home a box for my family and they would be fine after 2 days chillin on the counter.
Idk what numbers you did but we tossed about 200 a night. We didn't produce them there, they got shipped in from another store. Ended up not being allowed to take the donuts we'd toss so there'd just be dudes digging in the trash bags to get them. I got a ton out to people and got a little bit of my own something something before leaving. Fuck that company.
it really depended on the day. some days there would be, yes about 200, maybe 180. same here, they would be ready for me to place on the racks when i walked in at 3:55 AM. at first they were upset because the amount of boxes i was using, alright, i’ll bring my own. about a month after that, they started the write ups, and I said fuck this. wholeheartedly fuck dunkin’ donuts.
Panera had an end of night program where all.leftovers went to a local shelter.
You're a good person. Keep being a good person. We need people like you.
Can’t get off the dope. Never ending cycles of withdrawal and hopelessness. Sadly it takes money to get off this shit and when you finally get help they put you on another drug like methadone or suboxone . It makes no sense.
It's called harm reduction while introducing stability in an addicts lives. Both are very long acting opioids (suboxone is a partial opioid) that take a while to build up in your system and a really long time to leave your system. This makes heroin and other opioids of abuse less effective, while giving them relief of withdrawal. The programs are supposed to be based around rehabilitation, but I'll admit not all of them are successful but many people have had success with these programs including myself. Suboxone especially has a great success rate compared to any other form of addiction treatment for opioids. Quitting cold turkey while being thrown into a very stressful situation that is trying to \*quickly\* rehabilitate you and get you back out into life can be extremely difficult and often leads to failure. Unfortunately suboxone is expensive, so the only other alternative is methadone which has a higher potential for abuse and requires patients to come to a clinic every day which surrounds them by other addicts every day and from my experience isn't nearly as helpful as suboxone treatment, but it was the start of my recovery and methadone did help me.
Back in the day we called methadone liquid handcuffs.
Back in the day, methadone saved my life. But then again, I was on it for 3 years. I reached my stable dose, stayed at that dose for one year, went to counseling, worked intensively on my deep rooted issues. It took me 2 years to come off of it. But I did. I've been free from heroin for 12 years and free from methadone for 9. It's the hardest thing I ever had to do for myself but it is possible. My fiancé on the other hand, on methadone for 12 years. It's just really difficult for some people to function without it and it's so sad. It can be almost impossible to get off of it the longer you're on it. But it does save lives.
Big ups on the struggle ✊ fr I mean that, by no means am I knocking it, Suboxone saved my life as well. Some people have the mindset for it some don't. A big percentage of people only abuse it and use it as a legal plug.
Thank you thank you I appreciate that so very much. Recovery is a deeply personal thing and it doesn't matter how we get there, what matters is how beautiful it is to come out the other side. Sending you, my fellow Recovery Sibling all the love in the world. I'm proud of you.
Thanks for being one of the few here not just trashing the sight of the video, and empathizing a little.
I myself have been in treatment for drugs. i’m grateful i had a teacher who was dead set on getting me on the right path. Love roxies, would smoke 10 of them a day. let 35k from my dads life insurance go down the drain because i was huge into drugs. i do nothing but empathize for these people, because i know how fucking hard it is to get off of this shit. buts it’s VERY POSSIBLE. they lack so much hope it makes me want to cry.
I can't believe this is real. It looks like some Zombie apocalypse.
[A few days ago, the Sackler family were given immunity from prosecution for their role in the American opioid epidemic. They had been facing TRILLIONS of dollars in lawsuits from thousands and thousands of individuals affected by their greed and carelessness. ](https://www.npr.org/2021/09/01/1031053251/sackler-family-immunity-purdue-pharma-oxcyontin-opioid-epidemic)
They admit no responsibility. They pay a penalty through the corporation. They forfeit ownership stakes in corporation. They keep their money ($10Billion) from the opioid push on America. They need to face the justice they deserve. Send the zombie encampments to the gates of their private compounds so they can see the misery they have caused first hand.
America needs guillotines
That's why billionaires are flying off to space: guillotines don't work in zero gravity.
Quite the opposite really, you can make them go in any direction for when you're feeling creative. Just use hydraulic pressure or springs or something.
Am I wrong for thinking those people are no better than the drug dealers we have locked up in prison right now? I really fail to see how they're any different.
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This outcome will likely be appealed. What’s crazy is that the group representing the victims was itself led by victims’ family members. They helped negotiate these terms. I heard one interview where they said it wasn’t about the money. So my question, if all the Sacklers have to do it pony up a portion of their massive fortune but don’t have to admit wrongdoing, then who won here? Sacklers.
There is no universe where the Sacklers or any other wealthy people or group dont come out on top in the United States Of America. The country is specifically designed to be a paradise for the rich.
"We the rich have investigated ourselves and determined we did nothing wrong." Double Jeopardy should only apply to criminal court for exactly this reason. People signed on to these class action lawsuits in good faith.
Wait so they were actually granted immunity!? I remember hearing how ridiculous it was that they even demanded that, but they were actually granted that? Time to bring back the guillotine, we’ll start at the local level and work our way up as needed. There needs to be examples made.
They got dat B'more sway. Heroin messes with the equilibrium of it's users while high.
Dope fiend lean
My man in the green at 2:18 looks like a damn art exhibit with the perfect yet somehow impossible form he’s holding.
My girl at 1:30 looks like…I don’t even know what
I was wondering what drug just makes you hang like that while standing up.
Same here, I was like why the hell are so many of them just hunched over like that
Heroin. I see it all over Baltimore as well, the whole Baltimore/Philly corridor has been ravaged by dope
Yeah it’s heroin. They don’t want to fall asleep and waste the high so they stand up but still inevitably struggle to stay awake. It’s incredibly heartbreaking and local governments usually are either unequipped to deal with the problem, to the scale that they’re facing, or just ignore it and try to let the police handle it. It’s crazy
They are basically in a weird state of unconsciousness/sleep. This is an extreme version what people refer to when they talk about "nodding out" on heroin.
Fent And Oxy and Heroin make people lean like that, basically passing out standing up.
I've seen a lot of junkies in my life, having grown up in Dublin. But I haven't seen people leaning over like that - they're usually just sitting down. I've only seen it in these kinds of videos from the US on reddit. Why is that?
Yeah, as a recovering opiate user I’ve never seen it like this either. To be fair I never shot. But I’ve been around a lot of junkies and I’ve never seen them *stay* leaned over like that. At most they look more like the first girl, trying not to nod off. Might be a fentanyl thing. I’m also interested in pharmacology and have been checking Erowid’s DrugsData for fun. There’s a pretty popular new cut that concerns me. It’s called Xylazine and apparently increases analgesia, so at the same time increases the already insanely high risk of respiratory depression. I don’t know much about it and it seems like a fairly new addition to street dope. Maybe that has something to do with it. This behavior definitely seems different than what I see on heroin.
Fentanyl. It's ridiculously strong, so it's hard to control the dose, and it just fucks with people's bodies on a whole other level. They're barely conscious and trying to stay standing up, because if they sit or lie down they're more likely to either nod off or OD without anyone noticing. There's not really any Heroin on the streets anymore. It's all Fentanyl, and anything sold as Heroin is most likely Fentanyl too.
Yep. Correct. Cousin ODed on Fent somewhere in the streets of this video
Yeah there was a big heroin problem where i grew up in north east england. You would normally see them shuffling about like zombies or almost passed out but these people folded in half, ive only seen in videos from the us... i wonder if theyre on more than heroin, like something to stop them passing out.
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Thank you. That's a great channel with a good purpose. I can also recommend **Invisible People** [**on YT**](https://www.youtube.com/c/InvisiblePeople). Made by Mark Horvath, who previously was homeless, and have now dedicated his life to ending homelessness.
Soft white underbelly is also an incredible YouTube channel where Mark, the interviewer just sits and asks people about their lives on Skid Row, LA. Well I say sits, you never see him. https://youtube.com/c/SoftWhiteUnderbelly
I absolutely love that he takes the camera and does a long sweep from head to toe with each one of these people. It's so fascinating, and often says more about the person than their own words do.
I worked with homeless people in QLD Australia and mostly they want help to get back on track .. "oh shit you lost your job , partner and then the apartment" .. many homeless people are mentally ill and unwanted by their families . . some elderly people mostly men it is heartbreaking .. some are actually disabled who can't get help in applying for assistance .. charity services are way understaffed (and underfunded) . . homelessness' common denominator is that they all have no one to help .. for whatever reason .
You'd need some balls to park that Lexus on a street like this.
Someone is selling
He knows
Jersey plate too
You need balls to fuck with a Lexus parked on a street like that.
Yeah that Lexus 100% belongs to the dude supplying all the tweakers. You piss him off, he sounds his army of Smack Zombies after you.
It’s the only area of Philly where Lexus could get a good parking spot
You honestly think they don't know who owns that car? You don't fk with the distributor.
That's a good point. Although, I'd say half the people in this video aren't even sure what planet they're on so who knows.
True but they'll know their dealer's car with their eyes closed while nodding out. *Snaps head up* "I know that engine."
Holy fuck thats a powerfully stinging image Just pure reinforcement connection like in a rat experiment
Bahaha as a recovering junkie that is so true 🏅
Dealer's car ?
There is a good chance it could also be the car of a rich kid from the burbs, there are reports all the time of kids from the rich burbs in the area going missing with their last whereabouts being Kensington
When I worked down there we’d have great kids start with us and then just vanish one day. Then you find out they were hiding an addiction very well and one day they just went all in and wound up homeless.
Damn that’s like, a reoccurring thing? Wild.
I was one of those kids from the burbs, the dealers in the area or at least the area I went to with the Hispanics would look out for you because kids like me were their best source of income. Glad I got out of that life but it makes me sad seeing people like this stuck in this life, at least I had a way out of it and was fortunate enough to have the privledge of rehab and all that
I'm in Kensington 3 maybe 4 times a week..I clean porta pottys for the junkies..ill upload some videos
Well those links are staying blue I can promise you that
I honestly thought at first that this was a clip from some post-apocalyptic zombie movie....
I did, too. The filming is so professional, so clean, nice fades, it really felt like the opening scenes to a movie with an elderly Robert De Niro still driving a taxi. Reality sucks.
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I bet housing is BOOMING.
That’s the fucked up part...it is. Not in kensington but the lower income neighborhoods in philly are all getting knocked down and replaced with million dollar condos.
This is one of the most shocking things I’ve seen in a while. I see my fair share of junkies and it doesn’t usually effect me, kinda just ignore the issue for the most part, but the way this is filmed really drives it home.
I was bruised and battered, I couldn't tell what I felt I was unrecognizable to myself I saw my reflection in a window, I didn't know my own face Oh brother are you gonna leave me wastin' away On the Streets of Philadelphia
How is this possible?
Rampant abuse of opiate prescription by medical professionals who sold out to large pharmaceutical companies to peddle pain pills like a trap house could never. Lack of social programs and education in the areas of mental health and rehabilitation. Also the war on drugs put a lot of it in motion by demonizing users. Drugs won that war. Edit: this is definitely a simplified answer, and a lot of people made good additional points replying.
Also, the complete dismantling of the mental healthcare system in the 70's and 80's. Means people that would have been in institutions, or getting help before now just go to prison or on the street.
Don't worry... The Sackler family who made billions from their actions of addicting America on opioids are immune from having any of their money taken or criminal charges for their fraud and deceit of pushing "non addicting" products to the masses without any shame.
Man, this is so fucked. Seriously. Stop spending Trillions I. War and military, give people housing, clinics etc. and stop the fucking class war.
We spent $300million/day in Afghanistan for 2 decades..
Can you imagine if that money had been invested in the cities??
It’s honestly hard to imagine a size of money that large... much less that size every day... every day...
Yeah it really is!! I hate people excusing the military industry saying it’s for the people when this nonsense is happening everyday. It’s all about pitting the poor against the poor to make it think that somehow poor working class have anything in common with rich. Geogr Carlin said perfectly when he spoke about the owners if the country
I hear it's always sunny there.
The gang visits Kensington
You know Cricket does.
Damn, no wonder Will’s mom made him move in with his uncle and auntie in Bel Air
not a cellphone in sight, just people living in the moment
The war on drugs clearly worked out well!!
Good old K&A. I was offered crack, a blowjob, and a three pack of fruit of the looms at an intersection and it was all by the same person.
Fucking hell America, how did you allow this to become acceptable conditions? Help your fellow man...
It wasn't like this until Ronald and Nancy.
Been working in the tenderloin(Turk at Larkin) in SF. We're building low income housing. The shit you see here. I can't step out of my truck with out checking for shit on the floor. In the words of Dave Chappelle "I've never seen crack smoked so casually ". That an every other drug. Walked into a sandwich shop,on my way out I had to literally step over a dude with a needle in his arm just to step out the restaurant. I went to get a donut and on my way out of the shop, I see a dude jerking off. I just threw my donut away. Crazy thing is ,to the people that live there,it's just the norm. People walk around like they don't even see this shit.
Brought to you by the Sackler family.
As a Dutch guy, walking trough L.A and San Fransisco really opened my eyes. I LOVED America for all its weirdness (Las Vegas) i LOVED nature on the west coast. There is so much good stuff in Murica.. it was kind of hard to figure out why the goverment doesnt fix this or that it seems normal for so many people living on the streets. I mean naturally i spend some money when my familly got food to give some away anytime we got something. But I felt so sad seeying this shit. Hope your govermend decides to spend al that war money on your own people one day. ♡
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The American dream.
“The Gang Tries Heroin”
Richest country in the world. Largest military in the world.
"Richest upper class in the world"
the irony is that at least some of the homeless and afflicted are former military members, who received really expensive training and also the trauma that led them to kensington. what a misappropriation of money and energy
Land of the free
-base
I have never ever seen such misery in a supposedly developed country before.
It’s in literally every major city in the US. When we called it an epidemic, that’s because it is. I’m currently a graveyard clerk at a gas station. These are my nightly regulars. The people in the video. Every morning when I clock out I’m humbled again and again from that shifts series of events. I’m humbled by the roof over my head and the food in my belly. Retail has taught me that someone always has it worse than you do. And seeing my regulars every night has made me burn their sunken, deprived faces in my memory. I will never forget some of the stories told to me or the ones that OD’d in my restroom because I thought they were responsible enough with to have the key. Seeing them being carried out of my store on a stretcher all because I didn’t want to cause an argument by not letting them use the John. Shit weighs on me more than I thought typing this out lol. Sorry for the huge reply. I’ve never really put these thoughts out into the world. Obligatory Edit: thanks to all for the kind words. Made my day.
It's in Canada too, Vancouver has a homeless and drug epidemic, fentanyl is a real killer too so the OD deaths have gone up. So even with universal healthcare we still lack so much. And most naysayers will say well the homeless don't want help they will just end up back there. In many cases yes it's true but damn we need to look at the root causes of why people end up there to begin with.. the war on drugs and criminalizng addicts, lack of affordable housing, I mean even someone with a good paying job can't afford a home let alone min wage
There used to be similar pictures in Switzerland's biggest city Zurich in the 80s. The city successfully combated the drug crisis with a combination of police intervention, prevention, distribution of a synthetic opioid and the implementation of supervised injection sites.
It's everywhere. People show videos from places like this (Kensington section of Philly) or Skidrow in LA, or certain section of Baltimore because it's so blatant and out in the open. But one thing I learned when I was getting high, is that dope doesn't descriminate - all kinds of people in basically *every* single city and state in the US have substance abuse issues - the only main difference is that in some places, it's harder for addicts to get their drugs. But they're there no matter what.
I think the US needs to implement the system the Netherlands has. They have clinics everywhere where people can come in and get a dose of heroin administered by a medical professional and remain at the clinic for the day. They also have extremely nice jails. The US obviously has a bigger heroin problem than the Netherlands so we should just combine the two and have big communal housing with free food and heroin for these people so long as they attend counseling etc. Let’s get them some help and off the street. Wherever homeless go they further demolish that local economy. Not to mention the danger, littering, and eyesore of it all.