Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness: With the Consent of Those Governed
A decade ago, in 2012, VSN started working the frontlines of Lowell’s Opioid Use Disorders. The time was five years prior to a declaration of the nationally recognized as public health emergency. We became awake with the death of four beloved group members, three opioid overdoses and one alcohol related, in 2015, just prior to the declaration. During that initial three-year learning curve, we would sometimes search for one of our guys or gals, missing in action, in our city’s remote areas. First on the list was checking the then renowned Tent-City area, located down the tracks at the end of Kyan St. off Western Ave. At that time, we too thought how horrible to be homeless and living outdoors in a tent during blistering cold wintery months.
How naïve we were though, completely uninformed, until this first of many to come, non-textbook lessons. Academia taught values in family cohesion and support and taught little about damaged children from dysfunctional family systems. Self-help groups taught of “tough love” as a prevention measure against enabling bad addiction behaviors and taught nothing of how to discern support from enabling. More naïve views, as genuine unconditional love (not emotional deprivation) is in their best interest and about all that can compete against the power of addiction.
Neither of these entities understood what it was like to wear the moccasins of our tent-city dwellers, our unhoused community members, many of them damaged at home during childhood. One memorable young lady, with her Gucci handbag and fur coats preferred dining with these genuine unhoused souls, at our infamous Eliot Church Soup Kitchen. Maybe her disdain for garnished family meals at home was due to a powerful Native American DNA strain? Strangely, Dr. LaBranche recalls she would complain of how her friends, these disenfranchised homeless folks, would taunt her for wanting to dine with them, when she had plenty of mashed potatoes and gravy at home. I guess they didn’t get it either!
Home is sometimes where emotional deprivation originates, not that this was the case above. It’s not always due to dysfunction, neglect, or abuse, sometimes it’s simply because of a person’s inherent trait and/or personality initiated at inception, their soul. Often times though, dysfunctional homelife does incite challenging choices. One time we helped bring a young lady back into her family dynamic only to later realize we had placed her back into a young-adult sexually abused scenario. It may have started while just a young child too; so, of course confusion was all she knew in spite of being a brilliant young lady. Another recollection was of a young man living on the streets, who after being reunited returned battered and bruised.
After many years of sobriety in the halls of 12-step philosophy, and many years of academic addiction psychology, Dr. LaBranche learned from the trenches, why research literature indicates that therapists accompany their patients, initially, before assigning self-help group meetings. The rational is to evaluate their goodness-of-fit. Subjecting someone to engage in new group dynamics may, at times, be counter-productive, as experienced with some family reunifications. It also speaks to why providing rooms in shelters and hotels may not always be in the best interest of some of our unhoused community members.
Let’s listen to Ms. Mirabal, our high school senior who has it going on! She already comprehends the essence of a client-centered treatment approaches for addiction and advocates involving those most affected by our decisions. Our tent-dwelling community members need both care and shelter and apparently not much is available that is client-centered. Hello, are we awake yet? Please toss that cookie cutter in the waste basket! And what happen to our inalienable right to the pursuit of happiness? According to Lowell Sun article, it makes sense to turn to our unhoused members to better understand concerns we may know little about (Gilbert, 2022).
You see, Virtu Services began assimilating into their nomadic lifestyle (unhoused tent-dwellers) in 2015. We needed to, in order to prevent overdose fatalities within our network. Besides, active addiction disorders are way too compromised to make scheduled office visits anyway. VSN meetings took to the road in what became known as the druggie buggy! A whole new philosophy of what Harm-reduction and Affirmation Therapy means surfaced. We learned that some unhoused people are aware of their anti-social behaviors and know how best to contain their acting out tendencies. Acculturating into social norms and trends, is just not their cup of tea. Others may understand their own vulnerability of being exploited, while interacting among the so-called norms; so, they hide out to protect themselves from prosecution.
More common than not, is an understanding of their human limitations and their inability to live up to norm expectations. These folks find affirmation (love) out there on our social margins. You may think this latter trait is due to compromised intellect? Wrong! Please note here, that many of our unhoused community members are challenged by superior intellect, not inferior. Some choose to live on the outskirts, so they don’t have to tolerate or dumb themselves down, in order to fit in with the norms.
References
Gilbert, M. (2022) Unhoused residents speak at City Council meeting. Lowell Sun