@Satori446 man it´s been a while. Yes, I remember you because I happen to smoke weed on occasion made by a company called Satori
I hope you´re doing good pal. There is nothing that warms this old junkie´s heart more than hearing I´ve genuinely helped people feel less lost. I´m kind of the lost one right now; a lost boy if you will. However, I´m not running around with sexy teenage vampires, I´m just slowly turning into a hobo on the post-apocalyptic streets of one of the ¨most caring cities¨. A lot of you guys might not know this about me, but when those Twilight movies were big, I got laid multiple times on the strength of my passing resemblance to the main Vampire in the movie. Oh, those were the fucking halcion days of my semi-youth.
I´m now much older, less-sexy and starting to sport some serious gray in my beard. My pops went completely gray by the time he was my age, 35. I´ve still got luscious, thick brown hair on top, a dirty Fraco-Canadian beard that only covers 50% of my face and hey, my nose still looks like a flaccid penis dangling freely, stuck to my face. In this way, I now take advantage of my resemblance to Owen Wilson, though that´s not as good for getting laid.
Burlington is such a shit hole man. This whole state is what happens when liberal politics, people with big ideas for how to ¨fix addiction; fix homelessness" just spin a wheel and use their massive brains and doctoral-level educations to solve a problem that they are in fact, completely clueless of. First, starting during COVID, they put EVERY MAN WOMAN AND CHILD up in a motel room, for free, for years... years. There were no incentives, no requirements. You didn´t have to work, engage in therapy or fucking do anything to better yourself. They just put active addicts up in Motel rooms for indeterminate periods of time, as ¨Housing First¨ was supposed to restore their dignity and magically reintegrate them into the human race.
Look, I´m an addict myself. When I was in active addiction, you could give me the world on a silver platter and I´d be back later that day to ask for more shit cause I had already spent the whole world on Heroin. We put these people up in these motels and all they did was languish, stagnate and be blessed with a door they can use to lock the world out. Do you think any of these people ¨got better?¨... not fucking really. Anyone with experience in addiction knows that it is a bottomless pit. There is never enough money, never enough drugs. A motel room just became another ¨given¨ for these people. Do I blame the addicts? Fuck no. Of course they´re going to take the free room. If you ask me, these retards in government sentenced them to a worsening addiction by putting them in semi-permanent housing.
Shortly after moving in, these folks began absolutely destroying these motels. I´ve been inside them. Blood on the ceiling, on the walls, refuse everywhere, I know it was not at all uncommon for blood, shit and piss to be all over these places. You might say, why? Again, if you´re familiar with active addiction, you get to a point where NOTHING matters except getting high. Flushing the toilet, picking up trash, cleaning your clothes, cleaning yourself; no need to be careful with your bloody rigs, if you squirt blood on the ceiling, it´s not your place anyway. Most homeless addicts are already very much about ¨fuck the man¨ mentalities.
So, these hotels, after they had the state fully committed to this course of action, decided to double or triple the amount they charged the state per room. After all, the rooms were basically being destroyed. There was, for instance, an upscale-ish Holiday Inn in South Burlington. They housed people for ~2 years at that particular spot. They had to tear the entire building down afterward... yes, they tore town the entire building as it was condemned due to its dilapidation. So now, every motel in Chittenden County is full of people who are staying at a rate of 300-400 dollars per night... for years.
I´m all about free housing, but man, it´s a fucking missed opportunity to give an addict free housing without forcing them to do something... anything at all. This could be: Volunteer for 4 hours a week. This could be, attend therapy once a week. Go to 3 meetings a week. Work with a case worker to find more permanent solutions to their life´s problems. The people in the motels didn´t have to do any of that. What happened, was our state spent all of this money in a totally stupid way, with clearly no input from people who actually know what addiction is.
The way Vermont has been the past few years is like a liberal, censored police state. I don´t mean the literal police. I mean, if you say one fucking thing out of line, like ¨I believe gender reassignment should not be performed on persons under 18¨ it was not only unacceptable, you would be branded a bigot just for having that belief. Yes, this is actually my belief by the way, and like any belief, we as Americans should be able to hold any opinion. If you say ¨I think housing first is ridiculous, you´re making these people worse¨ you would be branded as anti-humanitarian. How dare you imply that these people are incapable of getting better on their own?! Have you no faith in the goodness of the human heart?
Now, here we are. They don´t even open up an Ëmergency Winter Shelter. This has been an absolute given every year, for the four coldest months of the year. It would be a low-barrier, come as you are spot where you could sleep, get warm and not be judged. You know how much it costs to heat up a church basement and throw out some cots? I can tell you it costs a hell of a lot less than putting every homeless person is a triple-rate motel for years.
The funny thing about all of this? I´m about as liberal as a person can be. I fully believe in the goodness of Socialism and Marxism. The problem is, you cannot exist in this world without contributing something. There is an equation that cannot be left out of balance. Everyone should be taken care of, but everyone also has to try their hardest. I know addiction robs us of our usefulness to society in many ways. I understand this. That is why people need to actually be trying to get better. You have to produce something to be entitled to the benefits of our society.
We can take care of the sick, the mentally ill and etc, but that is only if there is literally no recourse for these people. We cannot exist with an entire underclass of addicts who are not only not contributing, but taking from the system in huge amounts. People who overdose on the regular? They require an ambulance, a stay in the emergency department and possibly critical care. This is going to be, what, 2,000 at least? Probably more? Everyone in Vermont who is indigent can easily receive state health care through Medicaid. All prescriptions are free provided they are not exotic, even those can be figured out with the right prior authorization.
All these people are receiving EBT, completely free healthcare that they sure as hell use and I know it only requires a doctor´s note to also receive ~100 cash per month for essential items not covered by EBT. You better believe a fair majority of those payments are immediately withdrawn and spent on drugs. If you think I´m getting down on the addicts, I absolutely am not. I´m an addict myself after all. If I am judging anybody, I´m judging the state and their retarded, ill-advised schemes. These people are vulnerable. They will take anything you fucking give them. If you make an offer to someone in active addiction that is A. Do you want 100 dollars or B. Do you not want 100 dollars, it´s not as if they need to ponder that,
Now the state is completely out of money. The wider population throws most of the shade at the addicts themselves. ¨Look at everything they were given and they´re still fucked up and panhandling¨. People do not care or even want to learn about the plight of these people out on the street. I talk to people from all walks of life and the majority are now firmly planted in a morality-based perspective to addiction and homelessness.
I am seeing some of the worst qualities of human existence on display every day. People who, two years ago would have told you all about how they care for the homeless and the addicts (even though they were hypocrites). Now, people are feeling the strain of finance on their lives. The worst of us choose not to accept and persist, but to blame the problem on everyone else. The homeless and addicted are easy targets for their hate. ¨Look at this guy panhandling. He doesn´t even have to work for his money while I go to work every day¨. Well, first, I would argue that panhandling is hardly ¨free¨. You stand up in the elements for hours, everyone you´ve ever known driving by and seeing you, dirty, disheveled and begging for scraps. You are dehumanized. So, when you say it´s free money, I have to disagree.
People who are one paycheck away from eviction still take the time to look down upon the person who was evicted last month. People see and feel themselves getting poorer every day as inflation increases. I believe the fear pushes them to find solace in comparison to those worse off than them. ¨They are so pathetic. I am able to manage my money and I´m not homeless because I am not stupid like those people¨. Then these people are sleeping in their cars the following month, feeling terrible that they every threw shade on any person. All of this as they wake up every hour or so to turn the car on for heat.
I know people here on the forums are here for various reasons. I know a lot of us are here because we are curious, need advice or anything in between. I know also, that many of us are here because we have goodness in our hearts. We have experienced the pain and suffering of addiction. This pain lives inside of me, as it does others. I remember withdrawing cold turkey in a county jail while a skinhead harassed me for being Jewish; he´d terrorize me and say stuff like ¨If you shit in here one more fucking time, I´ll bash your skull in¨ as I was going through terrible withdrawal. I think about those moments and the pain, and I cannot help but want to help others avoid it. I think that is why a lot of us put our hearts into our content on here.
In a word where everyone´s decency is disappearing, just remember, you are the only thing in this world that you can control. The only thing you have is your word. Love and kindness are worth more than any amount of money. My company might not ever pay me. However, the people responsible will have the knowledge that they contributed to a person´s complete economic collapse so they could make a few extra bucks. I know a lot of us here are still actively using. I know that this often requires a bit of dishonesty and graft from time to time. You can be an addict without losing your humanity. People often believe addicts are toast, no good and essentially evil/psychopathic. You do not have to lose your humanity to be an addict, so let´s all try our best to be kind, loving and supportive of those folks out on the street right now. In fact, love and kindness for everyone except Donald Trump.
If you think there is a single square foot of room for addicts without money in the world envisioned by him and his cronies, you´re just completely out of touch. Trump already has a full-fledged paramilitary wing of his political machine. He is actively trying to invade American cities by illegal means. There will be no room for any of us if this government gets its way. Roll-back of all government assistance is a given. They are instituting old-school ¨Hobo Laws¨ in different parts of the country i.e. it is illegal to loiter and you can be fined and/or jailed for the offense.
I could very easily see this underclass funneled into prisons or work-camps. Back in the day ¨workhouses¨ were places where Homeless people were sent, where they would do menial work for long hours, simply to pay for their room and board at the workhouse. I can easily see this administration incarcerating us in one way or another, using us for labor or whatever else and counting the seconds until they´re all dead. If you think this type of shit can´t happen... It has happened plenty of times before, hasn´t it? We have had a pretty cushy existence here in the West post-WW2. We have been able to extract resources from every corner of the globe. Now, we are clearly running out of resources and like every empire/ponzi scheme before us, once the new resources stop coming in, you realize the entire system was built on nothing in the first place.
American Ideology has been, stepping into 2 world wars at the 11th hour, only after all sides had practically obliterated one another,. claiming victory and then using the war gold to build an empire. The Soviets lost at least 20 million men. We lost approximately 500,000. I´m rambling, but my point is, we have never been anything other than an imperial power, doing things the same way every other empire has. We have become fat (literally) and decadent. People make themselves obese through laziness and poor diet, then pay for a doctor to shoot them up with a drug that will make them less fat.
We have been living in a golden age. The world typically consists of comparatively greater suffering than most Americans have ever had to experience. I don´t remember the last time a Cholera epidemic wiped out half of my village, or that time our country was split into Muslim and Hindu states and my entire family was murdered along with MILLIONS of others. We considered the Iraq War (part 2) as being an incredibly heavy burden on us as a country. We only lost ~3,000 or so of our men in a war that lasted years. The war in Ukraine has already claimed millions of lives. Again, my point is, we´ve had it pretty fucking good for a pretty long time. History shows us that this type of thing inevitably falls apart.
yes guys. Let us not fight on this most special of days. 
Higher taxes and more government 
