• 🇬🇧󠁿 🇸🇪 🇿🇦 🇮🇪 🇬🇭 🇩🇪 🇪🇺
    European & African
    Drug Discussion

    Welcome Guest!
    Posting Rules Bluelight Rules
  • EADD Moderators: Pissed_and_messed | Shinji Ikari

Street Junkies/ Drinkers tell yeer story

Ian Brown's always been good on that front. The Roses gave an exclusive interview to the Big Issue just before Second Coming came out.

Pity that was about the only good thing to come out of that record, eh?
 
parttime crackhead said:
Brimz, could you just clear it up as I've often wondered the same. Would it be offending the big issue dude to just give him a quid or so instead of actually buying the magazine?

A lot of them are sound as fuck, quite happily giving you chat etc, I'd happily give them my spare change but I don't want to come across as a cunt by saying here's £1.30 pal, keep yer magazine.
Click to expand...

No not at all , most genuine folk appreciate a natter but don't when someone is chatting n not buying therefore wasting their time when they are working.
I used to vend on Bath St. when i was in Glasgow btw.

edit

By far the most annoying are tourist that think you are their to give em directions n because you have to be civil you usually end up helpin em n then they give you fuk all.
 
Last edited:
Cool, I always end up buying the magazine but I don't actually want it, I just want to give the cunt money coz he's being sound. If they're in your face with it or standing about looking raging then it's different but if they're jooking about holding doors open for people, saying "How you doin'?" etc then they deserve a few quid if I've got it to spare.
 
Arnold said:
Whoops Arnold needs to read CCF post again...
Sorry Charly ya knobber :p
Click to expand...

Four witless posts and not a word of explanation from the Viz fan. Snort some more plant food, you incorrigible mutt, and think yourself lucky I don't let my tongue loose on you.

The Big Issue offers a lifeline and a kind of security to the very people who most need it. All credit to one time dopefiend and all round good guy, Anita Roddick, dead at 68 after a long battle with her liver, for coming up with the idea. She also allowed her Hep C status to be publicised to draw attention to the problem and the stigma then felt by sufferers

I didn't realise you're so soon off the streets, brimz. Ain't so easy to leave the people behind, is it? In an initiative here some years back, the council handed out distant council flats to the alkies who congregated in the city centre and annoyed shopkeepers with their wild partying. When summer came, most preferred a return to sleeping out among their chums to the isolation of a box on a satellite estate. Some 'quality of life' factors are beyond bureaucratic provision.
 
^Indeed. From my provisionally bureaucratic viewpoint I've seen cleaned up heroin addicts moved to gleaming flats in the far flung reaches of the A-Z. They would sleep on the floor for a few weeks, attract the local ne'er do wells before bailing out to the comforting routine of zone1s streets.

I worked in a particularly grim hostel in an anonymous 'crap town' many years ago. You can spot the really grim hostels because the staff and residents are impossible to tell apart. One new resident once knocked on the office window to ask the emaciated, straggle haired youth within how come he was allowed to sit in the office? He was amazed to hear I was his keyworker.

Our somewhat transient group of residents included some people that I'll never forget...

Mickey G, a heroin user and big issue seller; he slept in a burnt out camper van in the hostel car park for months before we finally gave him a room. Ferret faced and kindhearted, the most peculiarly unselfish addict I ever met. Within a few weeks of sleeping in his room he returned to the camper van. I was working nights at the time, I used to take him out a cup of tea about 5am, until finally I found him dead from an overdose...

Sally, a 16 year old care leaver who ended up on the streets. Arms cut to ribbons and incredibly vulnerable. She really started to get herself together in the hostel. We got her a social worker, some mental health support... Her social worker started fucking her, and then dumped her shortly afterwards. He denied the relationship, we found her hanging from a belt tied to her doorknob barely 3 ft off the ground...

And most amusing of all - the drug and alcohol worker we employed who was fired after she was discovered enjoying a spliff and some purple tin in a residents room...
 
Most amusing, Arnie. We've yet to learn if you're homeless or just gormless.

Many years ago, the local drug and alcohol clinic was in the charge of a wonderful psychiatrist who took a rare hands on approach. If any of her customers was sleeping out, she'd allow them to stay at her extensive home on the city outskirts. If they washed, they were given one of the guest rooms; otherwise, there were mattresses and blankets in the garage. Funnily enough and in ironic comment at the law, the houseguests were on the dope and the garage squad were all alcoholics. Whatever the status, they were invited into the kitchen for dinner and a little friendly psychotherapy before bedtime. One of the country's top addiction specialists sat down nightly to dine and entertain a dozen of the city's vagabonds. As far as is known, nobody robbed her and the police were never called to deal with any dispute.

Did an awful lot of good, that lady. Also subscribed to the quaint, old fashioned notion of providing heroin addicts with heroin prescriptions. Inevitably, she draw the wrath of the opiophobes and was obliged to surrender her licence and effectively pushed out once she turned retirement age. Unlike her persecutors, she worried she might have been wrong and, of course, her motley crew of vagrants were hardly able to make representations to the GMC on her behalf. As late as 1983, an idiot social worker assured me she, not the Iranian exiles, was at the root of the recent upsurge in local addict numbers. She continued to make a difference any way she could, though, and at 94 led an anti-war march on behalf of physicians against the bomb.

Couldn't imagine the same thing happening these days, could you? Clinic doctors respond to patients losing their accommodation with supervised daily pick ups, not offers of room and board. ''We're all in it together'' but there are hostels for your type.
 
Last edited:
red jackets are mandatory. makes it easy for the cops to spot those not meant to be using them to sell.

but TBH, il have 2 big issues, i just walk about... if i stayed in one spot id be fucked.
 
I'm grateful to have never been homeless. We bought some E off a guy who was homeless once. It feels better to buy drugs from somebody who needs the money the most.

Me and some friends were walking around Salt Lake City, and one of my friends recognized a homeless guy she knew, so we stopped to hang out with their group for a bit. Somehow we got asked if we smoked weed, and I said "yeah" but another kid said "no" and they asked him why. He replies "cause I'm Straightedge" as I simultaneously think "oh shit". Immediately I tried to intervene to say "NO OH MY GOD THIS KID IS *NOT* STRAIGHTEDGE, HE JUST DOESN'T DO DRUGS!!!" but the fool kept insisting "I'm straightedge", not realizing that in that area, "straightedge" is thought to mean, at it's worst, a person who will not do any drugs (coffee or cigarettes even), but furthermore will stab, mug or kill anybody who DOES do drugs. I had to jump in quick to prevent anybody from getting stabbed or hit with brass knuckles (and both a knife and brass knuckles were present)

Damn, some people just open their mouths without thinking.
 
wcote said:
red jackets are mandatory. makes it easy for the cops to spot those not meant to be using them to sell.

but TBH, il have 2 big issues, i just walk about... if i stayed in one spot id be fucked.
Click to expand...

don't you feel like a cunt when your taking the piss out of a charity for the Homeless .

If you are homeless why not get badged up n do it properly ?
 
I always try and make sure i'm buying from a legitimate big issue vendor.

There is a guy that sells it near my parents in London that sells by the trolleys at a supermarket, he always pipes up that hes got change for the trolleys when he sees people struggling to get one. You could have to be a bit of a cunt to not give a homeless guy a couple of quid after he has sorted you out with change for a note. Guy must make a fortune!
 
The B/I seller we know does the supermarket trolleys/doors and is sound , he helps women to there cars and does the same change trick as your fella ponch. he makes loads of cash.

One of my workmates mrs dropped her purse , in the carpark , the B/I seller took to the supermarket manager who contacted her to say they had it , she didn't think for a minute the money would still be in it , but it was + the fact she didn't have to cancel all her cards and shit.
She only had £25 init and she gave it to him , then my mate went and thanked him gave him another £20 and when ever we see him now we allways give him a bit of lose smash.
 
SamhainGrim said:
Ian Brown's always been good on that front. The Roses gave an exclusive interview to the Big Issue just before Second Coming came out.

Pity that was about the only good thing to come out of that record, eh?
Click to expand...

Ten Storey Love Song and Your Star Will Shine are 2 of my favourite Roses tracks, but yeah song for song it wasn't a great album.
 
brimz said:
don't you feel like a cunt when your taking the piss out of a charity for the Homeless .

If you are homeless why not get badged up n do it properly ?
Click to expand...

Im not talking the piss. I share my money with the dudes who lend me the issues, I do it in an area which nobody else uses.

So im not taking the piss no. Do I feel like a cunt no.

Im not fucking robbing people, or stealing houses, selling drugs.... that shits being called a cunt.
 
Yeah but the people that lend u their issues are at risk of getting debadged as they are breaking the code of conduct n like i said earlier it will have their badge no.on the magazine.

So i guess you wouldn't mind if they got de badged then ? Thus leaving them with no way to make money or you , just get your own badge man if you are in a vulnerable housing situation , which from yer posts it seems you are but then again i can't always get the bottom of what your saying so for all i know you may be living at yer folks .

selling drugs.
Click to expand...
so all drug dealers are cunts yeah right.
 
i know i am on the otherside of the world but i have a few mates who sell big issue, they are not supporting a drug habit but are just trying to get by and adjust to society after being long term homeless and or unemployed.

I buy each issue when it comes out, have a quick read (the aussie publication is quite good) then i give it to another vender so they can then resell it. i see that as a way of giving a donation but not a direct handout as i always see big issue people as the people who have decided not to beg and offer something for the small amount of money they seek from you (not that i have a problem with people begging)

Anyway, sorry to butt my nose into your thread but i found it interesting hearing about the perception of big issues salesman in the u.k as opposed to here in australia and the homeless in general. All i know it would be slightly easier wiith our warmer climate being homeless over here, i guess thats a tiny consolation to an otherwise shitty situation
 
Last edited:
I wasn't aware you had the Big Issue in Oz .

I know they have something similar in Canada cos these girls wanted a picture of me because they worked as volunteers for the magazine either that or they just thought i was super sexy .
 
It's a big thing in Australia. You don't have to be homeless to sell it. it is for the homeless and long term unemployed.

A popular show in Australia did a special on it and my mate was one of the main people interviewed, he said he was making a fortune for about the next month

The Australian publication is a quality publication so i think the vendors do quite well as people buy it to read as opposed to it being a purely charitable gesture
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top