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Help me deal with my local neighbourhood crackheads

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13:45 / 21.11.08

Some people are quite vulnerable and are easily taken in by addicts who are manipulative and befriend them,or won't have their guard up and get robbed so I'd want to clear up that situation really fast.

Yeah, one of my friends has had a lot of mental health issues and last time I went to visit him he was telling me about this homeless addict that he had befriended and even allowed to stay in his flat (until the other residents in the block kicked up a fuss) when he was sectioned. He kept going on about how nice this guy was, and then, when we got to his flat he said "oh yeah, we can't watch telly by the way" - you guessed it, the bloke had repaid him by nicking it.

13:48 / 21.11.08

"In My Limited Experience"

14:03 / 21.11.08

mashecat there is a word of difference as you say between a harmless nonaddictive drug like marijauna that should be legal and something as damaging and evil as crack cocaine... crack dealers are not nice people, they will sell to anyone, even children, and even hire those children to help them push their product in the neihborhood. also i think the idol rich's story tells us what we need to know about what addicts are like... they will sell anything or do anything to feed their "habit"...

ps i would still like to get yr views on nadar and whether he was right to call obama "uncle tom"...

01:04 / 22.11.08

i have worked all my life caring for addicts, or rather people with substance misuse issues, and i feel confident that i have not wasted my life's work

I appreciate that you're not calling yourself 'needlecat', 'rockcat', 'special brew cat', or anything, but still, isn't your on-line ID in slightly poor taste?

06:28 / 22.11.08

Don't be stupid, call the cops. It's the best way to keep yourself and the crackhead safe.

07:13 / 22.11.08

I'll second all the "call the cops". Unless you professionally deal with addicts, you're not equipped to deal with a crack-head. Compassion will not work, as tempting as it is to try. This is your home, and if someone is making it horrible you owe them nothing.

13:17 / 22.11.08

Nothing but plain old human decency. I'm a little surprised by the coldness here. While it's often foolish of people to think that they can change someone they don't know, or even people they are close to, it doesn't mean that any modicum of kindness is meaningless. Granted, it probably is meaningless more often than not; but if you assign any value to desperate people, it could be worth the effort for those rare times it makes any difference. I never try to "change" or interfere in the lives of addicts or any other stranger I encounter, but unless they are being threatening I'll treat them with respect, even as I deflect them.
But, it's a little silly for any of us to broadly categorize a group of people. Crack addicts are about as diverse a demographic as any other niche group.

Anna de Logardiere

14:42 / 22.11.08

But oddly they are all addicted to crack.

14:50 / 22.11.08

Which brings us back to Hunter Thompson, and the idea that when a person is deep in, their drug of choice is more in charge than their personality.
It's certainly been my experience that crackheads have a crackhead way, just as junkies have a junkie way, despite being a fairly varied and diverse demographic.

17:29 / 22.11.08

Yes, no doubt that any addicts with any particular addiction are going to share some traits, like the face-picking among meth addicts, with a tendency towards grandiose thoughts and sometimes violence that they may not otherwise have. The physiological responses are generally shared, and how people respond to those can be similar. Maybe the underlying reasons why some people are self-destructive enough in the first place to cross the line into sticking needles can have similar foundations. I'm saying that everyone is still an individual, even crackheads or tweakers or potheads like stallion. I'm sure everyone realizes that, it's just gets so dehumanizing when people are talked about so categorically and negatively.

Like republicans. Fuckin bastards.

trouble at bill

15:40 / 23.11.08

Yes, IMLE = in my limited experience!

Thanks to all for yr responses.

No sign of any crackheads in the building or area since, I'm glad to say.

17:40 / 23.11.08

Whether you think I should have called the law, threatened her, left her alone, given her money, whatever. Thanks in advance for your thoughts my weird, weird start to today.

I think all of the above options are almost next to useless and likely to be ineffective in the long and probably short terms. I think you handled yourself with a fair bit of dignity and at least you've emerged from the situation with a laugh and some degree of feeling for her humanity. Fuck knows what else to do. Form a residents group? Move? Pray and do magic for your area and a better humanity?

Be interested to hear from someone who works with addicts about the best way to handle them if anyone like that is about. Not that there's a magic formula.

10:24 / 04.12.08

Not that there's a magic formula.

There's no magic formula for dealing with addicts, but there are several magic formulae for dealing with troublesome people hanging around your flat...

11:16 / 04.12.08

There's magic formulae for dealing with addiction, and Police to deal with addicts...

14:43 / 24.12.08

mashedcat,,is in poor taste, how?
what do you mean? are you assuming that by `mashed` i meant `stoned`? maybe i did maybe i didn`t, i know the reason but you dont and you shouldnt jump to conclusions.
any way what has that got to do with the thread?
does your name suggest you have inappropriate feelings towards children , i wouldnt make such a claim but you might?
most people like my name., but your not most people
we need to know what addicts are like,,, i my experience , addicts are like everyone else , there is no single trait common to all other than their addictions.
some of the worst people i`ve ever met were, sober and abstainent. some of the best were addicts, some of these lithers are ill informed and have stereo-typed addicts.
i`m not saying crack isnt dangerous ,it is, but please stop this `nancy reagan ` shit, think before you write
to the point that some claimed that marijuana is harmless , i am interested is this your opinion or a fact, either way give us some evidence.is this anecdotal or proved? please do not assume that i agree or disagree.
any smoked substance is carcinogenic, by the fact that it is smoked not because it gets you high.

14:48 / 24.12.08

by the way , in london if a user is caught by the police they will be offered treatment, good treatment, by professionals who know what they are doing. some countries may organise a lynching mobs, which do you all prefer ?, bear in mind that one of your loved ones may one day be an addict.
so calling the police is a double edged sword , you get peace, the addict gets the chance to save themselves.

14:52 / 24.12.08

compassion dose work. but there is a time and a place.

15:34 / 24.12.08

The problem with showing compassion in most situations with drug addicts, especially those you don't know that well, is that it can often be indistinguishable from being an easy mark and a potential source of drugs.

From my experience you can't be very effective if you are seen first and foremost as a source of drugs.

I have no real idea how long term crack addiction is treated, but I do know heroin requires a certain amount of distance. The priority is not to help, but to help someone to help themselves, which you certainly can't do by giving people access to your stuff, home or money.

ONLY NICE THINGS

17:24 / 24.12.08

I am very offended by the idea of mashing cats. I love cats. I don't know why Barbelith is so keen to mash and glass them.

18:10 / 24.12.08

mashed = high

cat = one cool guy (see Roman Polanski's cameo in China Town)

/end off topic

18:22 / 24.12.08

So cutting someone´s nose and being a criminal equals being a cool guy?

18:49 / 24.12.08

No silly, Jack Nicholson is the cool guy. It's what Polanski calls *him*.

Hey kittycat...

ONLY NICE THINGS

20:07 / 24.12.08

Jack Nicholson. He becomes a wolf and trampolines. But he doesn't mash cats. He's not a monster.

18:29 / 27.12.08

Are you assuming that by 'mashed' I meant 'stoned'?

I'm not sure what else anyone's supposed to think about your user ID, MC. But enlighten me, of course, to the contrary, if you like.

Is it something to do with a childhood accident, perhaps? You didn't mean that to happen to Tiddles, strapping that firecracker to his tail, but it all got out of control - you had to put the fire out, but there was only a hammer to hand ...

If so, it must be average-to-bad to carry that (frankly, from where I'm sitting, quite unlikely) burden around.

But if I've brought up any bad memories, I'm sorry.

I'll lay my cards on the table here; I would find it a bit disturbing if some guy who was so apparently belted (in terms of sentence construction, etc) when he showed up on an internet message board to lay down the law, about substance abuse, was actually employed, at all, as a drugs counsellor.

If it's not all a complicated, post-modernisist prank, then what is it. It's not a good thing, is it? It's actually quite bad.

04:43 / 28.12.08

belted[...]employed[...]as a drugs counsellor.

It's certainly a lot more common than you seem to think. I've never met a heroin using counselor, but I've met a lot who chuck a few pills back on occasion, and loads who smoke cannabis.
Lots of people combine rampant self-abuse with exceedingly able care for others, in my experience. I don't presume to know exactly why, but I'd say it is common enough.

I think one point to make is that taking an acid every 6-12 months, popping a pill once a month or two, or smoking weed a few times around the weekend are all nothing like as damaging as taking two or three hits of heroin a day.

I imagine crack is similarly out of THC's league in terms of damage done and ability to lead a productive life, despite the latter's obvious ability to reduce motivation.

So, you know, he could be a counselor. This isn't his workplace, and his conduct here is not a map of how he acts there.

Anna de Logardiere

10:05 / 28.12.08

Yes but capital letters make reading an experience that's easier on the eye for quite a lot of us and is it so difficult to press the comma button once?

Anna de Logardiere

10:08 / 28.12.08

... by the way I just want you all to know that I didn't bother reading his post because it looked like utter bullshit.

trouble at bill

18:26 / 26.02.09

Well, if you're all done arguing, here's some updates for anyone still following my sorry saga...

The other morning I ws in my flat and there came a tremendous knocking on the front door. A sort of wrong knocking, if that makes sense. A bit desperate, like. Shortly followed by someone shouting, "Hello?" through the letter box. I wasn't wearing any shoes but I was so infuriated by this vocal intrusion that, somewhat foolishly, I opened the front door.

Imagine my surprise when I opened my door and saw... a crackhead! And add to that my sheer jawdropping amazement when he announced that, get this, his wife had just gone into labour!

Anyway fortunately he wasn't a very big fellow and my door's hefty and it was slammed in his face fairly instantaneously. And that I thought was the end of it.

But the other night I was awakened in the small hours of the night by a tremendous banging on my front door! This time I was more scared than angry and stayed in bed, knowing the door's pretty strong. Later I was vaguely aware of flashy blue lights outside but didn't think much of it and surprisingly got back off to sleep fairly quickly.

Anyway when I woke up I found myself living in the middle of a crime scene. Which actually wasn;t so different to normal except that the block had been sealed off with police tape, there were spacesuity people scrabbling about the place and I had to sign in and out with police guards whenever I wanted to go anywhere. Turns out it had been cops banging on the door as there'd been a fairly massive assault and I think they thought the victim was going to die. I can't give more detail because it was an unusual enough attack to give my exact location away which I'd rather not. Though as it's turned out he's still hanging in there, AFAIK.

Aaaanyway, I got in late that night and by then they'd hosed all the blood away and things were back to as normal as they ever get in my cursed little neighbourhood. I know I shouldn't jump to conclusions but I can't help suspecting the local crackheads may have had something to do with this whole grizly debacle...

18:33 / 26.02.09

Jesus Christ Bill! Move if you can!

19:39 / 26.02.09

Unn, yeah. Crikey, do try to get away!

20:40 / 26.02.09

Yea, Bill. Must be somewhere else in London to live. (By the way, is this the same place you were in 6 or 7 years ago when i lived not too far away? Still in Brixton i assume.)

rabideyemovement

02:46 / 27.02.09

A crackhead attempted to snatch me off my motorcycle today a few blocks from my home. I gunned it and ran a stop sign and he barely missed me.
I was angry for a moment, but I'm glad my city has so many roving crackheads. If my neighborhood was any safer, they'd be jacking the rent up.

trouble at bill

15:48 / 27.02.09

Yes, it is still Brixton, Ghadis. Though not the road where I used to live - that's the road on which someone got shot during a burglary for heaven's sake. I've moved up in the world and my road is an altogether different class of road, one where crackheads bang on the door by day and stab each other up during the night.

In all seriousness, to those who advise me to move, an Englishman's home is his castle. If I move, the crackheads will have won. Instead, I shall just stand my ground and keep Barbelith informed of all developments...

16:13 / 27.02.09

Do you rent or own?

trouble at bill

16:33 / 27.02.09

I rent so I could move but I just don't see why I should... give in, if you know what I mean. Besides, the material fro my 'gritty urban realism' novel has to come from somewhere. ;>

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