The Problem Of Homeless Heroin Injectors For A 10 Year Period

Lee D. Hoffer’s “Junkie Business: The Evolution and Operation of a Heroin Dealing Network” is an ethnography that details the buying and dealing of the highly addictive drug, heroin, in the particularly homeless area of Denver, Colorado called “Larimer” from 1995 to the year 2000. The majority of the book focuses on the partnership of two heroin dealers, Kurt and Danny, and examines their daily lifestyles and the transitional periods they faced during their operations. On a much broader level, Hoffer wanted to characterize the heroin dealing occurring on the consumer-oriented side of the heroin dealing business, as well as understand the evolution of Kurt and Danny’s operations. Hoffer’s virtually unlimited

Righteous Dopefiend examines the everyday lives of approximately one dozen homeless addicts living on the streets of San Francisco. Based on 12 years of research; Philippe Bourgois and Jeff Schonberg highlight the highs and lows of homelessness, addiction, poverty, and relationships in Urban America. “We can understand the Edgewater homeless as forming a community of addicted bodies that is held together by a moral economy of sharing (Bourgois 1998b, 6)”. Through a combination of photography and ethnography, Philippe Bourgois and Jeff Schonberg are able to respectfully portray the rollercoaster lives of these individuals instead of making it into a spectacle.

​Homelessness and substance abuse are often two problems that continue to be linked together. However, homelessness can be an effect of substance abuse and vice versa. Addiction problems disrupt family organization and job performance resulting in loss of housing. While homeless, recovering from an addiction can be hard with lack of resources and the ability to access the appropriate care. In the following sections of this paper we will look at interventions and its effectiveness in the helping process, a multi-cultural analysis on the effects of homelessness, social and

They even provide a constitutive power of it (p. 7). Garcia considers how addiction is a disease emerging from the need to numb invisible communal suffering produced by historical and ongoing trauma. “The word people often use for heroin in northern New Mexico is ‘medicinal,” Garcia explained in a recent interview. “They view heroin as just another medication that takes the pain away.” Garcia developed an intimate knowledge of heroin addiction in the valley by developing relationships with addicts while working at the only clinic in the region. As a consequence, The Pastoral Clinic shows the relationship between self-medicating and the regional geographic and cultural dispossessions that have led to displacement, marginalization, addiction, and communal pain.

Volunteering and participating in service projects are two of the most rewarding activities in my opinion. Some people may find it was a hassle or only do it because they have to meet the minimum requirement for school or work. Helping others, for me, has always been somewhat second nature to me. Over many years of volunteering I believe I have developed qualities that will stick with me for life and benefit me in my career. As early as freshman year, in high school, I found myself looking for ways to give back. I started by looking for opportunities within school, where I came across the A+ tutoring program, and so my journey of giving back began. While tutoring, my patience for others really evolved, partly by choice and partly because

Many drug addicts do not have jobs or any legal means of generating income; they resolve to criminal activities such as theft, robbery, or aggressive panhandling. Due to the addictive nature of drugs, the user will be compelled to want more and more in order to continue feeling “normal”. It is what fuels their addiction and as a result, a lack of motivation to do anything other than obtaining more drugs. The drug addict’s family suffers from the effects of the drug addiction as well through emotional stress and psychological decay. Drug addicts also encourage illegal drug trafficking by helping fund criminal organizations. In fact, drug addicts are the reason why the billion dollar drug industry is as lucrative as it is. Without drug addicts, drug traffickers would have no customers or buyers to help generate income. Huge amounts of tax revenue is going towards the war on drugs which includes money going into police departments, border agencies, harm reduction programs, and anti-drug campaigns. The tax money being used to fight drugs could be used to better our education or health systems; instead it is being used to fund harm reduction programs such as Insite.

Residents who come from low income levels are more likely to agree that “Drug dealing can be a good way for people to raise themselves out of poverty” (Wallisch and Spence, 2006, p. 296). Although most residents are aware that drug trafficking is connected with corruption and violence, their economic deprivation has created community norms that tolerate the economic advantages brought by drug trafficking. Individuals who chose to be drug users are more aware of the availability of drugs and chose to live in neighborhoods of higher drug

Treatment programs also need to take advantage of the moments of life crisis that drive long-term injectors to seek treatment. Most of the spur of the moment, crisis-driven windows of opportunity for changing the lives of street addicts are missed because underfunding, exacerbated by neoliberal audit culture, forces treatment programs to exclude risky patients.” ― Philippe Bourgois, Righteous Dopefiend “Without substantial institutional resources, it is difficult for long-term chronic users to figure out how to pass the time of day. They have to construct a new personal sense of meaning and dignity. Instead, they often fall back on their more familiar and persuasive righteous dopefiend ways of being in the world, and they seek out old drug-using friends and acquaintances.”

Homelessness is a social crisis that has stayed with us throughout our history. There was an increase in the number of homeless people in the 1980s due to housing and social service cuts increasing. In Philippe Bourgois and Jeff Schonberg’s, “Righteous Dopefiend,” being homeless is just one of the many problems that encompass their day to day reality. The two anthropologists assimilate themselves in the homeless community and observe the hardships that come from living on the streets and drug addiction. A better understanding is attained through their ethnographic research and details of the homeless’ lives can be used to further our knowledge and help in solving society’s problems. This ethnography shows

The homeless and addicts have been stratified to the bottom of the social ladder. They are thought to be deviants therefore as a society we are taught to ignore and despise them and disregard their needs. Bourgeois and Schonberg’s 10-year study, Righteous Dopefiend, follows the lives of heroin addicted homeless folk living on Edgewater Boulevard. The Edgewater homeless recognize that those with economic capital have a responsibility in caring for their needs thus they embrace their worthiness in society. As a result of this they label themselves as “righteous dopefiends” (2009, p. 5). Bourgeois and Schonberg show how structural violence has affected the Edgewater homeless, such as self-blame, lack of access to quality medical care and what

The Moral Economy of the Edgewater homeless is one of sharing, we are first introduced to this concept in the introduction (Bourgois & Schonberg 2009, pp. 5-6). Bourgois and Schonberg (2009, pp.5-6) discuss hustling as central to the Moral Economy, where they are constantly thinking about how to obtain their next shot of heroin and the next place to sleep all the while keeping an eye out for law enforcement. The moral economy of sharing of the Edgewater homeless allows them to co-exist in a space that is outside of ‘society’, as Scott (1976, p.1) would put it, keeping their heads just above water; sharing allows them to redistribute resources amongst themselves to even out the bad times. In the Edgewater Boulevard, the main driver of the moral economy of sharing is their drug addictions, or rather their ability to stave off withdrawals otherwise referred to as dopesickness. This

“There is nothing righteous about dopefiends. They’re assholes’ they’ll screw you. There is nothing enjoyable about this life” (Bourgosis & Schonberg, 2009, p. 1). The book Righteous Dopefiend is a powerful anthropological and photographic study of the growing epidemic of homelessness and substance abuse. This study immersed the reader into the life of the homeless and substance abusers with real encounters of more than a dozen people living on the streets. The lens of this book is focused on the concept of addiction. Author’s Bourgosis & Schonberg take their readers through the journey of understanding addiction by looking at the contributors or evolution of the participants substance use. They also provide a look into the daily chore of

“K2, a Potent Drug, Casts a Shadow Over an East Harlem Block” by Nicholas Casey with the New York Times was the chosen article for this critique because of its urgency in society, and personal interest. The homeless community is its own culture, one that many will never experience; therefore, won’t understand. Where there is this uncertainty, curiosity

With No Direction Home: Homeless Youth on the Road and in the Streets is an ethnography which describes the lives of youths living on the streets of New York City. The author attempts to conduct her own research in order to dispute the false impressions that many previous researches have formed about the youths living on the street. The ethnographic method she uses aids her study of the “street kids” in acknowledging the facts behind their choice of lifestyle and their experiences while on the street. Marni Finklestein received her PhD in Anthropology from the New School of Social Research in New York City. She has also managed to organize many other studies based on drugs and substance abuse as well as sexual assaults in the streets of

One major aspect of the homeless drug addicts’ situation is their experiences of power differences, both within and outside their camps. Power can be seen in their treatment at the hospitals, their interactions with law enforcement, and the gendered power differences in the camps themselves.