happy halloween.

Note: My work has a Halloween party every year, and encourages staff to dress up, so keep in mind that for the duration of this story (well, the parts that happened on Friday) I was dressed as a panda. It will factor in later.

So, as I said here a few weeks ago, I got my first client at work. He was pretty nice, a recovering crack and heroin addict, currently on methadone treatment. He is also an alcoholic, though not in recovery. He is 51 years old, African American, and a veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps, where he served for 4 years. He is HIV negative, and has been diagnosed with Depressive Disorder NOS and PTSD.

He seemed nice enough, though a lot of stuff seemed to be going wrong (in addition to, you know, the whole homeless drug addict thing). He had no family or friends he could stay with, and was living in an abandoned garage before coming to Project PLASE. He had pending charges of possession and loitering (which he neglected to TELL me until he had been with us a week). Actually, there was a lot he neglected to tell us. He didn't tell us he got take home does of methadone on the weekend, so he wasn't turning them in. (Methadone, by the way, is an artificial chemical thing that people who are attempting to get off of heroin or other opiates take. Heroin can sometimes actually change your brain and prevent it from making serotonin, which is partially why withdrawl is so awful and quitting so hard. Methadone, when taken every day, greatly lessens withdrawl symptoms, and helps the brain replace the chemicals it needs, which means the person has fewer cravings, since cravings are the brain saying "HEY I NEED THIS CHEMICAL TO FUNCTION". It is red, looks like cough syrup, and smells awful. A lot of the people at our facility who were dependent on heroin are now dependent on methadone. You have to go to a special clinic every day to get it, and it can be sold on the street, because if you take enough, you get high. The dose that people at our facility take just makes them real sleepy. There are lots of legal, moral, and medical issues and discussions about its use, which I'd be happy to give my opinion on, if anyone cares). ANYWAY, methadone is a controlled substance, so it is REALLY important the clients give it to us, because the controlled substances are signed in, counted every day, put in a lock box, etc. All prescriptions are turned in to us, in fact, and monitored closely (meds are a big part of my job). So, when we found out he had methadone in his room he hadn't been turning in, that was a big deal. Also, he had come back to our facility drunk multiple times (clients are not allowed to use ANY kind of drug or alcohol while they're with us). He was put on contract, and given a 4:00 curfew, which he almost never made. He missed every single one of his appointments with me (his counselor) except one. He lied about his pending legal charges, never brought in documentation of his DD 214, cash assistance, or substance abuse treatment history. On Thursday, he came in to the facility drunk, again (BAC of 0.2). That's a LOT of stuff to go wrong in a 2-week stay at a shelter. We called the VA, because they fund the beds of all the veterans, and told them what was going on (as we are legally obligated to do). They said they have way too many people waiting for a bed to continuing housing a person who is clearly not ready for help. They kicked him out.

It wasn't my decision to kick him out- I would have liked to try to work with him more. Even Project PLASE didn't really want to kick him out. PLASE's ideal plan would be for him to go to a 30-day in-patient substance abuse treatment program, but even if he did that, the VA wouldn't let us hold his bed for him, since so many veterans are homeless and need treatment that PLASE provides. So basically, he would just be homeless again after he got out of in-patient treatment. As it stands now, he's just homeless with no in-patient treatment.

So, it's Halloween. I was hoping to go home early (maybe around 2:30 or 3) to get ready to go to DC for the weekend. But I had to stay to have a conference and decide what to do with this guy. And around 3:30 he comes in, drunk again. We sit down and talk with him, asks what he needs, what he wants us to help him with. As usual, he says basically nothing. We tell him what the VA has decided, and he hardly reacts. When he leave the office, I'm sent behind him to go with him to his room to check for methadone and any other substances he shouldn't have; he had two bottles. I took them.

As I left his room and took the bottles to the office, I felt so, so awful. Here is this 51 year old man, a marine, being told that he can't take his own medication, that he can't handle his own life, and being kicked out of his likely last chance facility to find permanent housing. And the person who is telling him he has to leave, the person taking his medication from him, the person informing him that he is, once again, homeless, is me. A 22-year-old white girl just out of college with little to idea what she is doing, basic (at best) understanding of substance abuse and treatment, and no background in social work. Don't forget, I was also DRESSED AS A PANDA; add "irrational fear of pandas" to DD NOS and PTSD. Dammit.

This was the worst day I've had at work, one of the hardest days and things I've ever done. As I left work that day, walking (DRESSED AS A PANDA) back to my house, where I live with such great people, a house full of food and compassion and friends and love, I had the same feeling I would get every time I'd walk out of an orphanage in Kenya. That feeling of, sure, maybe I understand suffering a little better, but now I'm just leaving that situation, and all those people, behind. I'm going to my home, a better place, a place where things like homelessness and AIDS and orphans and drug addiction not only aren't seen, but don't even make SENSE. I leave changed, but with an awful, aching knowledge that I changed little, if anything, myself.

I cried the whole way home, as much for him as for the orphans in Kenya, for the refugees I now live with. What is home to an orphan? To a homeless addict? To a refugee? What is home to anyone?