Homeless people/addiction.

[metalblue]

...and many people can't make the right choices when they're under so much stress or an emotional wreck.
I hate that attitude :" I'm ok...I didn't make the wrong choices...so other people should be ok".

Cause and effect

 

[metalblue]

That last part is very true mate, and exactly the same for depression too, it’s insidious, and often it’s others who will point something out to you, which is often met by that persons defence mechanism because they don’t believe them, or don’t want to believe them.

So very true mate. By the time they realise they need help the situation is perilous to say the least.

Shamefully I used to be a “pull ya socks up lad” type until I got hit with depression. I was lucky enough to not make irreparable life destroying choices but I was close to. Got the help needed to put my shit back in perspective.

 

[Dirty Harry]

I have fostered children and young people for over 20 years. A lot of the young people i have cared for are often very damaged due to their childhood circumstances. Sadly, it's not uncommon for care leavers to end up homeless. Many children in care have had to grow up very quickly but are emotionally not equipped for the big wide world. I myself have been homeless many years ago when I was 16. There are hundreds of complex issues that can lead to homelessness and I definitely can understand why anybody in that situation would drink or take drugs. Personally I look back and wonder how the hell I didn't.

Brilliant stuff mate and full credit to you, if I can ask a question and feel free to tell me to piss off, but did any of the people you fostered etc go on to have families of their own ?

 

[Dirty Harry]

So very true mate. By the time they realise they need help the situation is perilous to say the least.

Shamefully I used to be a “pull ya socks up lad” type until I got hit with depression. I was lucky enough to not make irreparable life destroying choices but I was close to. Got the help needed to put my shit back in perspective.

I was the same with domestic abuse mate, my attitude was always “well fuckin leave then you stupid cow”, it wasn’t until it happened to me that I eventually learnt about ‘gaslighting’ ‘love bombing’, ‘blame shifting’, ‘intermittent reinforcement’, ‘trauma bonding’ and suchlike, all incredibly powerful manipulation techniques.

I won’t lie, there’s still a part of me that still wants to say “well fuckin leave then”, but then I give myself a mental slap and remind myself of what I went through.

 

[Grassland Blue]

Went to Nottingham last weekend.
They had quite a few young people (seemed to be a younger demographic than Mcr) who were sleeping rough, often not asking for money, just sitting in unused shop doorways (there are lots, nowadays, in most Town and Cities.
I'm sure they don't "want" to be homeless and in a precarious place.
There doesn't seem to be an easy solution, but compassion and buying food can only help ?
Nobody knows what is around the corner, especially with the current economic situation. With less council/social housing, it is a bleak outlook...

Some of those empty shops could perhaps be used as temporary accomodation for the legitimate homeless.

 

[metalblue]

I was the same with domestic abuse mate, my attitude was always “well fuckin leave then you stupid cow”, it wasn’t until it happened to me that I eventually learnt about ‘gaslighting’ ‘love bombing’, ‘blame shifting’, ‘intermittent reinforcement’, ‘trauma bonding’ and suchlike, all incredibly powerful manipulation techniques.

I won’t lie, there’s still a part of me that still wants to say “well fuckin leave then”, but then I give myself a mental slap and remind myself of what I went through.

Incredibly difficult to be in a relationship with a narcissist - makes you question yourself

 

[Grassland Blue]

From a practical point of view, it is probably impossible to relinquish the notions of free-will and personal responsibility. After all, our criminal justice system is predicated on them, as are our personal relationships and what passes for order in our societies.

From both a scientific and philosophical perspective free will doesn’t make much sense, though. All our behaviour can probably be explained away as a product of our brains, our bodies, our genes or our environment.

The philosopher Mary Warnock once argued that if we lived under laboratory conditions where all the chance elements of our lives from birth could be forensically clocked and recorded, the decisions we made as our story unfolded would appear to be foregone conclusions. She claims that we only feel free because we are ignorant of our own genetic system and all the circumstances that programmed the computer that is our brain. Or as Spinoza apparently said, what we call ‘freedom’ is ignorance of necessity.

Just in case anyone is starting to recoil from this line of thinking let me reassure readers of this post that I do believe in free will. After all, I have no other choice.*

But when it comes to the OP, I also have compassion for the person it describes.

Maybe holding both ideas in your head simultaneously is the only way to go with this.

*Actually, that’s something Isaac Bashevis Singer once said.

There are more than 2 choices though. Many more.
You could say that doing nothing would also be a choice, as would minor (and not so minor) deviations from the 'path to righteousness'.
I have lived and made many mistakes in my life, however, they have been my mistakes and I acted the way I did in the pursuit of the abstract idea of freedom.
(Even the birds are chained to the sky....Bob Dylan).

 

[shackattack]

Incredibly difficult to be in a relationship with a narcissist - makes you question yourself

Especially when the narcissist accuses you of being one ! My ex could never see this in herself and even to this day is repeating the same behaviours and eliciting sympathy on social media. I questioned whether it was me countless times. Truth is you can never convince them of otherwise and all you can do is walk away

 

[Dirty Harry]

Especially when the narcissist accuses you of being one ! My ex could never see this in herself and even to this day is repeating the same behaviours and eliciting sympathy on social media. I questioned whether it was me countless times. Truth is you can never convince them of otherwise and all you can do is walk away

Classic projection mate, and yep, for your own mental well being, safety and sanity, walking away is the only option .

 

[mancity2012_eamo]

‘Alcohol doesn’t cure sadness, it just puts it out of focus.’ -
Cathal Coughlan.

That temporary soft focus is a quick fix unfortunately that we’ve all experienced. ( most anyway).
I wouldn’t condemn anyone on the bare bones of a story such as the OP.

It does throw open a wider debate however about homelessness and/or addiction.

The point I made is that one doesn’t necessarily mean the other and even when it’s both, the individual journeys and which came first etc. are unique stories, no matter how generic we label them.
I’ve encountered some nasty pieces of work out there obviously off their heads on something or other and I’ve also encountered ordinary fearful down on their luck blokes sitting on cardboard asking for help, anything we can give, to help them get a cup of something warm, and us coming home from a night out fully fed and inebriated ourselves.

I regularly passed this one guy on the way to work, who would be walking quickly and intimidatingly shouting, arguing with and cursing to himself at 8:20 in the morning.

Never had any trouble from him, but he was intimidating to anyone walking by.
I recently saw him after an absence of a while and he looked like he had really gone downhill. Gaunt. Not vocalising. Still wrapped up in his own world but dead behind the eyes.
Not sure what my point is, but I can’t help but feel sorry for the bloke regardless of not knowing his journey.
However you got there, living on the streets take’s it’s toll and I pray to a god I don’t believe in, that I never have to find out how I’d react.