Answer Addiction

Tag: heroin use

  • An Addicts Mind

    I lay on this bed encased by these walls. sober now.

    I can feel the pain of all my flaws.

    Peaceful and lost in the illusion I slept thru all my loved ones’ cries.

    Even her kind eyes couldn’t keep me from wanting to end my life.

    Caged outside my mind also brings confinement inside.

    My willpower shatters faced with all the brain cells I’ve fried.

    I was captivated by her pinprick of charm.

    Why didn’t God save me from sticking her into my arm?

    How could a bag bring such pleasure and pain?

    I still sit N stare, insanely at my veins.

    The bruises of this Lust affair dance up n down my body.

    Track marks tell the world far too much about me.

    Only time I felt Joy was with the pull of the plunger.

    Within the next few seconds, a nodded out slumber.

    Blue in the Lips N White in the Face.

    But with a shot or 2 of Narcan, it becomes just another day.

    Awakening startled I just overdosed, Yet still cursing at the E.M.T…

    “Next time just let me Go!”

    This tragedy to U has become my Life, U see?

    Inside I feel I’m No One.

    Just a junkie In long sleeves.

    I’ve become the monster U all made me out to be.

    And with a needle and a spoon, I’d nod my way to peace.

    Sleep away the day and steady search thru the nite.

    The daily fucking routine of a stupid dope heads Life.

    I snatch the mirror that I see myself in off the wall.

    As I looked inside I loathed the person that I saw.

    Sometimes in my Heart creeps a tiny bit of hope.

    I wish upon a star for the power to just stop shooting dope.

    But then Bam reality hits.

    So I’ve stopped throwing pennies and seeking shooting stars.

    Because I’ve learned prayers don’t get answered for those who are the likes of ours…

    “THIS IS A HEROIN ADDICT’S MIND”
    “Or at least this addicts mind”

    HOWEVER, IF YOU FIRST LISTEN TO YOUR HEART AND EMBRACE CHANGE, YOU CAN CHANGE YOUR THINKING AND USE IT AS YOUR COCOON. AND I PROMISE IF YOU DO THIS CONFIDENTLY AND PATIENTLY THEN U2 WILL EMERGE AND FLY LIKE A BUTTERFLY.LEAViNG OLD REGRETS BEHIND AND NEW MEMORIES AHEAD.

    mwah

    Luv y’all

    Michael Henry Roberts

  • Philadelphia Clears Out Another "Heroin Camp" As Winter Hits City

    Philadelphia Clears Out Another "Heroin Camp" As Winter Hits City

    It’s the third homeless camping spot cleared out in the Kensington neighborhood in recent months.

    Last week, police in Philadelphia shut down another of the city’s so-called heroin encampments, forcing the area’s homeless from under a railroad bridge and urging them into a local shelter. 

    It’s the third homeless camping spot cleared out in the Kensington neighborhood in recent months, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer, and the forced relocation comes just as the city’s settling in for the cold with the first snowfall of the season. 

    Residents at the encampment were warned last month that they’d need to move, but a few dozen were still on scene Thursday when police, outreach workers and homeless advocates showed up to supervise the relocation. 

    Close to 40 people agreed to enter the low-barrier shelter, a place where residents don’t have a strict curfew keeping them inside at night and they aren’t required to stop using drugs, the newspaper reported. 

    In some parts of the city, the opioid-addicted homeless population has surged in recent months, the Inquirer wrote in September. In Kensington, the number of people living on the street more than doubled in the course of a year, bumping up from 271 in 2017 to 703 a year later, authorities said. 

    “We certainly recognize that things have gotten worse, that the neighborhood is under siege,” Brian Abernathy, the city’s first deputy managing director, told the Inquirer. “People are suffering. We have to do better, and we’re exploring new approaches. We expect to have something soon.”

    The uptick in Kensington homelessness comes even as homelessness in the rest of the city appears to be declining. City officials accounted for 1,355 people living on the street in August of this year, an increase from the 983 counted at the same time last year. 

    The increase in Kensington alone could account for all of that, and officials said the uptick isn’t simply the result of displacement from other areas of the city. 

    “It’s not just a reshuffling,” said Liz Hersh, the city’s Office of Homeless Services director. “It’s an influx.”

    Now, with the clearing of the Frankford camp under the tracks, there’s only one big homeless hotspot left in the neighborhood—the Emerald Street encampment.   

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Parents Sue The Man They Say Provided Their Daughter With Heroin

    Parents Sue The Man They Say Provided Their Daughter With Heroin

    “It’s time we hold these people accountable. If law enforcement has a hard time doing it, and I understand it’s a big task, we need to help them.”

    Municipalities across the country have launched lawsuits related to the opioid crisis, and now in a first-of-its-kind move, the parents of a Colorado woman have filed a multimillion dollar lawsuit against the man who they say provided their daughter with heroin that nearly killed her.

    “It’s time we hold these people accountable,” mother Gail Sistrunk told The Gazette. “If law enforcement has a hard time doing it, and I understand it’s a big task, we need to help them.”

    Sistrunk is suing Kyle Monson, 25, the former live-in boyfriend of her daughter Carla Pena, 29. Sistrunk and Pena’s father, Carlos Pena Jr., say that Monson endangered their daughter by providing her heroin, even when she was in the hospital with a deadly infection caused by the drug.

    Monson and Pena are both currently in jail pending hearing on theft charges. Pena’s parents hope that by launching the lawsuit they will be able to keep Monson away from their daughter and help their child stay sober if she is released from custody.

    “This isn’t only the money, we are trying to fashion a tool to help people take back control of their communities and control this plague,” Sistrunk said. “(Carla) is obviously very important to me, but who she is, is less important. (She’s) a human being. (She) could be your sister or your friend or niece. This has to stop.”

    The lawsuit says that if Pena should die of her addiction her parents would be seeking a wrongful death lawsuit. The parents tried to have criminal charges brought against Monson, but were told that they did not have enough evidence. After that, they decided to pursue the matter in civil court. 

    “My client is a loving parent trying to use appropriate legal processes to save her daughter from the kinds of influences, including the influence of the defendant, that have resulted in her daughter’s addiction,” said Peter Krumholz, Sistrunk’s attorney.

    Pena was hospitalized this spring for an infection and eventually needed open heart surgery. The health problems were believed to be caused by her heroin use. Even during the time she was in the hospital, Pena was using heroin. Sistrunk says that Monson brought the drugs in, but Pena insisted that she brought them in herself. Eventually, the hospital banned Monson from visiting, and Pena left against medical advice.

    “The staff tried to make (Monson) understand that it was likely the heroin itself that was contaminated with staph bacteria and that injecting it into (Carla’s) bloodstream was directly pumping a fresh bacteria load into her body, making it nearly impossible for her to recover,” the complaint said.

    For her part, Pena seems to still be in denial about her addiction.

    “I don’t think I need (rehab),” she told The Gazette from jail. “I’m a functioning addict.”

    “I can’t get mad at her because it isn’t her,” Sistrunk said. “I know my daughter is in there still. She’s buried deep, but she’s in there and I just have to let her come back out.”

    View the original article at thefix.com