https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/17/us/los-angeles-yale-graduate-homeless/index.html
There is no way for any of us to know the answer to this. I have assisted at a homeless shelter, and I learned that the answers to, “How did this happen” are many (and often complex) … and the answers to, “What would help you to get off the streets?” are just as numerous (and complex).
What is clear to me is that it would be wrong for me to read an article and make a judgment about this man.
The article and his story are a good reminder that anyone can fall victim to drugs. It is also clear from the article he is not going to change much in his life, at this point.
There are a lot of reasons for someone to become homeless. A drug addiction can hit anyone without any regard to their fancy degree or socioeconomic level and mental illness is something you can’t control. There was a student at my kid’s school who was schizophrenic…he is homeless. He comes from an affluent, educated family and he lives on the street and in shelters and group homes. His family has done everything they can to help him…but he refuses to take his medication.
Anyone can become mentally ill or addicted. It doesn’t just happen to poor or uneducated people.
Also, people can suffer job loss, a tragedy, natural disasters, etc…your life can change in an instant…
He has an option to move back home, but there may be good reasons why that would not work.
I have a friend who has a very uncooperative adult son with some mental problems. If they don’t allow him to stay at their house for free, the kid would have become a homeless person or went to jail. Basically, the parents aged 5 years because of this kid.
Possibly another victim of prescription opioids that were sold as “not being an addiction risk”?
This person left a career on Wall Street to start a business making porn films in Los Angeles. He made a fortune from porn DVDs, but then got into arguments with his business partners. He admits to using meth on a regular basis. Refuses to go into a shelter because it would affect his freedom to use meth.
This is the socially acceptable way to become a drug addict. It is an overused excuse.
It’s also a legitimate excuse. The only person I personally know to have OD’d on heroin was a state championship athlete who went to Harvard. He became addicted to pain pills from a sports injury. Was found dead before his 26th birthday.
It’s not just African-Americans with scholarships.
One of my close friends at Yale, and a roommate for one summer, became a homeless person for several years. He was both a third generation Yalie and a second generation severe alcoholic. As far as I know he never graduated because he never completed the senior thesis he needed for his major. He had met all other graduation requirements, barely.
He spent the two years after he should have graduated with the Peace Corps in rural Ghana, and functioned quite well, but returned with malaria and of course still alcoholic. Things blew up out of control once he had access to things with higher alcohol content than bush beer and palm wine. He spent 3-4 years as a street person in Washington DC. Ultimately, he got his life turned around, returned to his home city, started a small business, got married, had kids. Eventually, his life fell apart again, and again after that, too.
He came from a family with enormous privilege and wealth. It didn’t help.
Meanwhile, he and people like him who have made incredibly bad choices with their lives endanger others and themselves. Rats thrive in their refuse. The rivers and sewers they use as toilets breed disease. Typhus and typhoid cases are occurring. Disabled people in wheelchairs and mothers pushing strollers have to walk in traffic because the sidewalks are unusable due to tents and garbage. Children cannot use the parks due to needles. And homeowners, like me, live in dread of the upcoming fire season when one meth pipe or cooking fire could set off another conflagration.
This is the number one issue in California and people are fed up.
My friend’s brother died this summer after becoming a ‘street person’ (he usually lived in a hotel). He had a college degree, worked in London for 2 years as a broker or something like that, disappeared in Europe for a year, reappeared and took care of his mother for 2 years while she was dying, and then went back to his street person ways.
He was really a delightful guy, just couldn’t live in an acceptable way to his sisters, like in a home or having a job.
You don’t have to be a drug addict to be homeless or near homeless. My deceased friend was a Yale graduate and Harvard MBA, he had a personality problem and could not hold a job, he was fired by a Fortune 10 company in the '70s and was never able to gain employment. Fortunately, he had good technical writing skill in his hobby and had some trusted clients who used him to act as a buying agent in New York Auctions. He did not make much money. He was lucky to get a rent-controlled apartment in Manhattan for next to nothing. In today’s market, that apartment could worth several $ million to buy and upwards $10K/mo to rent. He paid less than $100/mo until his death.
My friend did not drink, no drugs, no nothing, but he had a fiery personality who cannot work in a team. He constantly clashes with many friends and families and people close to him. Had he not having the apartment, he would be on the street for sure.
If if weren’t for my husband and me, our son would be on the streets. He has schizoaffective disorder (schizophrenia and bipolar disorder). It takes a tremendous amount of effort to keep him “independent.” He has a case manager, psychiatrist, peer support person, two in-home support people, and oversight at his apartment. And then I still have to be involved on a weekly basis.
Before falling ill, he was studying biomedical engineering.
Similar to how selling the addictive drugs by prescription is the socially acceptable way to be a drug pusher?
Not wanting to go too far off on a tangent, but Purdue Pharma, owned by the ultra rich Sackler family, filed BK two days ago, per Time.com, “as part of a tentative, yet controversial settlement with state and local governments.”
Is this all a coincidence that the alleged major contributor to the opioid crisis makes this business decision?
“This is not going to require the Sacklers to pay back any of the profits they took out of Purdue from sales of OxyContin over the last many years. Not a dime,” Healey says. “How is this settlement being funded? From the continued and future sales of OxyContin here and abroad.” Healey says it’s “offensive” to her to “allow a settlement that allows Purdue and the Sacklers to continue to sell OxyContin when everyday people in this country are dying as a result of opioids.”
My brother was homeless for a while, but he had an apartment (rent up to date) - he lived in his car a couple hours away from his home. I guess you could say he “chose” to be homeless. The truth is, his depression was so severe that he didn’t realize he had any choices. He did not use drugs, by the way. And he was a genius, with a college degree. None of that means anything … life is so difficult for some of us. We were always there for him, but he was not always willing or able to ask for/accept our help.
“The article and his story are a good reminder that anyone can fall victim to drugs.”
Agree that being educated, hard-working and trying to do what’s right may not protect against addiction if you are physiologically geared to do so.
But no. Not “ anyone” is susceptible to addiction. I am not because of my own physiology. I get no pleasure from alcohol nor opioids nor several other things that are supposed to have this effect on a person and do for many many people. No “ relaxed” feeling, no pleasant buzz. Nothing, nada other than getting overwhelmingly and unpleasantly tired and getting a headache. I don’t like the “ it could happen to anyone” because I think it fails to really focus on the innate difference in some people. Indeed I wish there would be more studies of people like me to see if it could help others. I know I’m very very lucky even though many people think I’m being judgmental or “ no fun” because I don’t drink and they don’t understand that it doesn’t do for me what it does for them.
A few weeks ago, a local park was set on fire. The park had a large homeless encampment. After the fire, volunteers with various groups went through the camp offering indoor shelter to those whose tents had burned. Almost all refused. Whatever the reason for being on the streets, certain things cannot be permitted. Just as vaccinations are mandated to protect the public, so too should it be mandated that when offered shelter, refusal is not an option.
The diseases from the unsanitary conditions are a real threat to the public. And in California, the risk of a wildfire is a real nightmare scenario. Recall that homes were burned near the Getty Center not long ago, due to an unlawful campfire. It’s fortunate no one was killed, this time.