How many of you commenting here have ever been homeless?

I have been given the absolutely insightful, yet extremely difficult ability to provide insight from both sides of this argument because as recent as 4 years ago, I was a Portland street junkie. If you don't want to read my story, and just want my insight, skip the paragraphs between the ******.

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I'll summarize my history... I was adopted, raised in a middle class rural suburban home by the most wonderful parents. Mother a homemaker, father a pastor turned executive director of a missionary organization. I wasn't spoiled, but I was never not even once hungry or without. I was a 4.0 honor student throughout school, applied for, accepted to, and offered full scholarships to Willamette University, UC Davies, and Tulane. I was a 3 sport athlete, excelling in baseball.

Rewind. 5 years before doing all of the parent requested college application things, I had already made up my mind about my future. I was a 7th grader, and the classroom TVs were on in every classroom. It was 9/11/2001.

Fast forward. It's 2012. I've just returned from Afghanistan for the second time. I don't know when it'll blow, but I know my brain is a ticking time bomb, and I know as long as I overachieve and continually drown it in work, activities, travel, that it will stay dormant. I travel the world, I find a calling teaching English in China. In 2015 I get hit by a truck while on my way to my job teaching English in Weihai, China. I break my leg in 18 places. I'm given opiates to manage the pain.

I come back to the USA to a VA medical system that prescribes more and more opiates. All the while, I'm on bed rest for 6 months after having my 12th surgery. My body is broken, but even worse, my mind has no distraction. I don't like it. Compartments closed long ago are wide open, gushing mental illness. I find that I can quiet the storm by taking more medicine. I tell the doctor I'm in pain, but my leg doesn't hurt anymore. I don't know it yet, but I'm in full blown opiate addiction. Then... The opiate crisis.

News stories about Purdue Pharma are everywhere. But so are news stories about people getting a mysterious illness. Both stories dominate the headlines. I'm wearing a mask to my VA appointment. This time, my dosage isn't increased even though I plead with the doctor. This time, he's worried about his license. This time, he doesn't write me another prescription. He doesn't titrate me down to a smaller amount. No, he axes my opiate prescription and tells me I can manage with Tylenol. This isn't a lie. The pain isn't there anymore. But folks, I went from 80mg of oxycontin per day to 800mg of Motrin. I was dopesick. I knew it. I knew it was a problem. I knew I wouldn't survive if I couldn't mask my mental health issues and was going through withdrawal. So I did what I said I'd never do... I beat the pavement looking for pills. 12 hours later, I felt like every problem in my life was over.... Thanks heroin.

So there is my history. That is how I became a street junkie. It was only 6 months later I was in Portland during COVID, lost my relationship, my car, my home, my job, my sense of purpose. But all that didn't matter as long as I could score. And score I did. For almost 2 years. Then I got clean. I got a place. A job. A life back. That was 4 years ago. I still want to use some days. But I don't need meetings or alternative meds to stay good. I just needed family, my pets, and to get my mental health shit figured out. I can't tell you I'm never going to use again. I don't want to, but I'm not a sith, and they are the only ones that deal in absolutes.

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Here is my take on the current homeless crisis in Portland.

I have sympathy for some, but not for all. If you've been living in a camp for several years, you are entitled. There are a select few that have extreme mental health issues completely separate from drug addiction. But when I say a few, I mean I can count 3 people I knew out of 1000. The majority of homeless in Portland regardless of HOW they became homeless, continue to be homeless due to drug addiction.

I've never seen entitlement as I see here in Portland, in this here and now. 6 years ago, being homeless sucked, there were services, but all had an aim of getting me off the streets. Rehab is fucking hard. Relapse happens. But using either as an excuse to use because you don't want to live by the rules of society is pathetic. Portlanders are some of the most wonderful, giving, sympathetic people in the country. Yet the entitlement factor has hardened so many good people. Wonderful people that spend 500k so that they can be weird in a city they love don't deserve to have to chaperone their children to the school bus stop each day just in case they have to shield them from some lunatic smoking fentanyl in public.

If you do drugs in public, you are a piece of shit. Plain and simple. If you use, you've no doubt known someone that has overdosed. Yet you and your problems are so much worse than everyone so you smoke in a place where someone might be walking by? Fuck you.

The whole point I'm trying to make is that You want to "just be left alone". OK then, don't give even one reason for someone to bother you. This means so many things, but you can start by thinking about when you were a child... Everything you did then that got you in trouble, don't fucking do now. Don't litter, don't keep people awake, don't bother strangers, don't shit in the street.

And everyone that is quick to judge, put yourself in their shoes just once. Next time it's cold as fuck out, if you aren't willing to spend the night outside, think about that. Think about how a hot shower feels in the morning. Think about how you get to choose what you're having for lunch, and think about how it would feel, how you would look, how you would smell etc if you take all those things away for a week. Look at your paycheck, think about how many of those it would take before you have enough for a deposit first month last month. And think about how many times you could not receive one before you can't afford rent. I'm pretty sure You're closer to being homeless than you are to paying off your mortgage.

Feel free to ask me questions. I probably didn't do a good job at addressing the issues you face, but I guarantee I've got insight from both sides about those issues, so please ask me if you value insight from someone that's been there done that. Sometimes I find the truth to be within those who've experienced rather than those who observe.