[Hondaracer]

So to that point I had a fairly disturbing conversation with a family member who her and her BF have been working in the DTES and SRO’s for the last couple years doing social work.

They said basically prior to Covid, your stereotypical addict was a white male, 30-50, had an accident, had some trauma, got hooked on painkillers and was forced in their addiction to move into harder drugs and ultimately ended up homeless etc.

They said these people actually had “ok” prospects of recovery as they may have had a family before, they knew “good” times when they weren’t in addiction, they knew that if they were to become clean there might be some sort of light at the end of the tunnel.

However, they said now, a very alarming trend among addicts are basically kids, 15-25 years old, who literally do not give a fuck about -anything- they don’t care about dieing, they don’t care about OD’ing, they will tear apart their SRO, they will assault other residents, they will steal from one another etc. and when they try to council these people, they are essentially hopeless. They’ve never had anything but stress and trauma in their lives, they have no reference to “good” times in their lives, they are hopeless.

It was really awful to hear, terrible.