(March 23, 2022 at 2:22 pm)Nay_Sayer Wrote: I don't have any resources but a few questions;
I live in an area where the homeless population is growing, There are havens that have opened where they can sleep and other resources, However as you mentioned drug abuse and mental health are often hand in hand with homelessness.
The question is some of these individuals are likely to have already 'graduated' for the lack of a better term to harder drugs, I'm not sure a single joint would have much effect at that point, how would you address that?
The other one would be dealing with individuals who are also struggling with mental health issues and often have a distrust of others.
Those are really good questions. My focus on the drug problem is that drugs are not going away and the people who use them would best benefit from proper education as to most effectively administer the drug and exactly what that drug is doing to your body. Most homeless people suffer from a combo of mental illness and substance abuse but it is a spectrum as to how extreme of a case they may be. I'm looking for the ones who are more functional than less. So I'm not hoping a joint will solve their issues, I'm hoping that if they attend my class they may learn how to gain better control over their addiction.
As far as those who distrust... I have been around the community for some time and I'm verified not a cop, which is really important to those people. Part of my programming is centered around unwinding all the conditioning that goes in to how society views homelessness, drug addiction, and mental illness. They haven't had an opportunity to receive really support from a human without their being Jesus or Nancy Reagan involved. My motto is that drugs are the solution not the problem.
Homeless services are steeped in conservative christian orthodoxy as far as what a human believes the bare minimum you provide to another human should be. Pair that with those same christians also believing that magic Jesus is going to swoop down from the sky and rapture all the good ones to heaven and leave us heathens on a scorched earth. And its summed up to food and maybe a cot in a gym. However, its not a human problem. Its a wild animal problem. Again, those same christians also are less likely to believe in evolution. Calling it a wild animal issue is not condescending at all. Humans are animals that have become domesticated. How cool would it be if we could evolve to the point of being able to help the average human being become an enlightened being?