Posted on 11/06/2013 10:56:18 PM PST by lee martell
I read a story tonight about a homeless man who wandered into a Five Star Hotel, found a comfortable bed and did the logical thing; he went to sleep. The guests who reported him and security cops that got him out also did the logical thing from their points of view. I laughed a little at the picture; a disheveled man, with butter coloured teeth, a swirl of medusa hair all a-tangled. Then I saw the dead look in his eye, and I was reminded of someone I used to know.
A good friend of mine was a math teacher at a local high school. The friend, let's call him Oscar, was in his first year of teaching. Oscar was and is very intelligent, but also insecure, wanting to be accepted. Oscar was missing from his job for about three days. No one knew where he was. Turned out, he was arrested for some sort of drug offense. Oscar had begun using cocaine. This, from somebody who barely drank before he moved out west, away from his family. The Patriarch of the family, now deceased, was of the Fundamentalist faith. I knew few people of that faith then, so at the time I found it odd that they don't celebrate Christmas. One of his brothers runs a Caterpillar Truck repair outlet. Steer are raised on a few acres.
Long story short, Oscar was drinking and using illegal drugs to deal with his undiagnosed schizophrenia. Eventually he was properly diagnosed. Then the denial phase began. I'll never forget in 1997, when Oscar went missing again. I found out he had taken a plane going back to the Indiana farm town where his family still was. The intention was to get the heck out of California with it's easy access to drugs, and move back with his immediate family. Only before Oscar's plane could fly to Chicago, he had another mental melt-down and had to be subdued by other passengers. The plane made an emergency landing in Colorado.
Eventually, Oscar did make it back home where he is today, bored, but employed by one of his brothers and not locked away somewhere. If that mid-flight melt down should happen in today's post 9/11 America, I doubt if he would have gotten away like before, just getting hog-tied with duct tape of the mouth. Nowadays, all is far more serious and lethal. For every homeless person out there who is craftily milking the system, and there are a whole bunch, there are truly sick people who need and will accept some sort of treatment.
JFK signed the bill in 1963, to empty the state mental hospitals, it took a while to work it’s way through the system, but we got there, now they live like neglected animals on the streets.
I had a dog that barked to much. Maybe that’s the same thing. fouet!
California liberals still blame Reagan for closing the Mental Hospitals during his his Governorship, but it was actually the ACLU that sued on behalf of the mentally ill being held against their will and those that had been committed by relatives.
When you point this fact out to libs, their heads explode and they go into full denial mode, even when you email them factual links from non-partisan web sites.
They, of course, responds with links to every lunatic fringe website on the internet.
When you ask them to source a non-agenda driven web site, they claim that Media Matters and others are honest and balanced.
You can’t have any type of debate with these people.
Banging your head against a brick will is less futile than trying to talk some sense into a hardcore lefty.
“brick will” should be “brick wall”
Been a long day today.
I’m fifty-five this week, and have likely come across a hundred “Oscars” in my life....all with some degree of schizophrenia”. Some used weed or alcohol....some just survived from one day to the next. Even in my Air Force years (22 of them)...I probably met several dozen of them.
A couple of years ago....my dad (in his 80’s)...pointed out that in the late 1930s...all it took was some relative writing up a petition and a couple of local folks to sign it, and you’d put someone in front of a county judge for assessment. If the judge agreed, the guy was sent to a state mental health hospital. Folks generally felt it was the safe thing to do...to ensure society remained relatively safe.
Here’s the thing. If you looked at assault, murders, etc...then looked deeply into those captured or arrested...they might have drug or alcohol situations...but the majority of them likely have some form of schizophrenia. They just aren’t capable of living in the real world unless they are medicated and live very stable lives without alcohol or recreational drugs.
Bluntly, we are in the midst of a unfenced zoo, and just accept the fact that it might be feeding time for the lions at any moment.
I was “chosen” in 1989 to work with homeless veterans when the man hired to do so was fired at the state unemployment office where I was already a DVOP (stands for disabled veteran outreach program representative) and had a crash course in homelessness. We had set up rooms at the YMCA and a contractor delivered two meals a day to veteran participants. There was a mission a few blocks away where the vets could get a third meal. We also outfitted certain veterans with the tools or equipment needed to get back into their trade or start a small business. We had some success, but the hard-core homeless are as you described, mentally ill and/or drug & alcohol abusers. I spent many a day under a bridge or in the woods looking for the homeless.
I believe, in Oscars case, what he needed was the love and patience of his family. That is vastly different than "some sort of treatment".
I doubt very much of it any more is true mental illness. At least here, I would suspect 75%+ is brain damage due to drug use, primarily meth.
“There but for the grace of God, go I ...”
I often think this, as I am acutely aware of my several imperfections and failings, and I can recognize myself in the person of many ne’er do wells. Not to sell myself short, I guess I’ve known where to draw the line, but it is manifestly my “better half” who has sustained me.
I’m not very familiar with the effects of meth and crack, since I don’t mix with those who partake.
There are folks with brick wills, too.
Thanks. A reminder to appreciate what we have while we have it. Everyday should be a Thanksgiving day when you think about it.
The ethics of heaven are generosity (and conversely, willingness to accept generous gifts from God for the sake of His exaltation).
If you are saved you will not be lost by sinning and being less generous than you could be, but you may incur chastisement as God shows you in turn what it is like to be in need and not furnished for, until you get the heavenly picture.
Highminded in this context isn’t a compliment, as if we needed to be told... it means haughty, stuck up.
This world is an arena in which we believers can rehearse heavenly ethics and gain heavenly supernatural rewards through them.
It seems to me its all of it
Mental illness and alcoholism and dope
And they overlap
Very few folks on street are homeless by eviction or unemployed
Either deranged or buzz life or just quirky
Anyone truly homeless doesn’t stay that way long if they seek help
Don’t make eye contact.
Apart from the fact that the main motivation was nothing so grand, but just simply a desire to save money (naturally), the whole theory (like so many liberal ideas) is flawed. It sounds good, and the motivation might be very laudable, but in typical fashion they never think through the consequences of the action. A lot of people who have been released from the mental hospitals are very seriously ill indeed, and they need much more care than the general public is either qualified or logistically able to give. Schizophrenics are particularly vulnerable here, as the condition tends to be episodic and it can be hard to know if someone has naturally healed (as commonly happens) or if they are just going through a long normal period.
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