Grim Helpfulness

It somehow goes against the grain. To become an accessory to another human being's addiction - assisting that person incapable of tearing him/herself away from the ruin of their lives through addiction - to obtain the very sinister essence that had brought them to their current state of utter social incapacity. I suppose there's a double standard at play here; when I see a heap of misery on the street entreating passersby for 'change' I cannot simply walk by without proffering the money they beseech.

I've been chided for it, for helping fund their addiction, that the money they collect will only be used to buy the cheapest available alcohol in whatever form available for them to scramble their brains further into a fog of stunned inebriation. I don't think of it that way. I see another human being, degraded as they may appear, in duress and pleading for something that I can so readily offer.

It embarrasses me when the person to whom I offer this pittance in the face of their utterly ruined life thanks me. I don't want to be thanked. I'm only assuaging my guilt over my good fortune and their ruinous fate. It's clear they've made choices that I never did. But who am I to sit in judgement on these poor aggravated wrecks? I want to put as much distance between my life and theirs as speedily possible.

And that, in a nutshell, is how most of us feel about the destitute and the squalid lives of dependency they live. Dependence on alcohol or 'recreational' drugs of one kind or another. It's simply incredible, to people who haven't got these critically abusive cravings, to imagine why anyone would let themselves fall into that state of cerebral and physical disrepair, but it's a reality for far too many.

The homeless in our streets are represented in large part by the mentally unsound whom society at large surely owes something to, having decided decades earlier to unleash them from the security and care they received in public institutions, and to grant them the 'freedom' to live as they wish. And then there are the addicted, who comprise another failed element of society, whatever their backgrounds.

Runaways, young people who flee abusive home situations, or who simply won't submit to the demands of their families that they conform to societal expectations, comprise another element of the homeless, those who 'prefer' to live on the streets, to beg for funding from passersby, to go to downtown soup kitchens and support agencies for the abandoned and forgotten in society.

And then there are programs run by various charitable enterprises and by municipalities who in their enlightened humanism have constructed a social apparatus whereby alcoholics can sign up for special life-ameliorating programs. Where, if they forswear certain requirements, inclusive of giving up panhandling, they're given a place to sleep and decent food, and an alcohol-infusion every hour on the hour.

Commensurate perhaps with the drug-related harm-reduction programs operated also by social agencies associated with the municipality, despite the general censure by the tax-paying public at large. These clients are maintained in a low-level state of inebriation or drug-fuelled fog, but they're decently housed and fed, and the state of their health monitored.

All else has failed them, starting with their most immediate environment in their families, to their succumbing to the incredibly stupid choices they make, to their final incapacity leading them to be shunned by opportunity, good fortune and society.