From College Student to Unhoused and Addicted

Bad decisions are compounded by bad situations, even if they are rooted in good intentions. I’ve met my share of wonderful humans navigating unthinkable situations because they had hoped to spare those they care about from knowing embarrassing or hurtful truths. I’d like to tell you about one such human who is very special to me.

I met ‘Abe’ when I was involved with an outreach group that distributed personal care items and free lunches to the housing and food insecure in a local park. Our group was in the park every other Saturday. Though different faces appeared each time at the resource tables, some visitors seeking out goods were regulars. This was particularly true for the unhoused, as shelters and sleeping spots often needed to be vacated during day hours.

Abe was in the category of a regular. The first time I met him, it was instant like. Though he had the visible signs of street life, his eyes communicated kindness, intelligence and humor. Taking much needed resources wasn’t easy for him. Needing help appeared to be a new reality. His reluctance was assuaged by helping out in some fashion in exchange for what he took. That meant assisting with the set-up and take-down of the distribution tables, calming tempers of visitors struggling with mental illness, grabbing extra lunches to distribute to those unable to get to the park, etc.

Abe was one of the younger regulars. By my estimation, he was in his early-to-mid twenties. Why was Abe, this easy-going kind soul, snagging a sandwich and personal hygiene products in a park on Saturdays instead of playing video games with friends or hanging out in a local coffee shop over a laptop like other people his age? It nagged at me to know how he had ended up in such a mess in terms of food and shelter security. Additionally, I suspected an addiction was in the mix. It wasn’t my business to ask, however. I’d have to wait for him to decide to tell me on his own, which eventually happened. I learned early on with outreach that the stories of what led people to the streets were deeply personal. The narrative involving laziness and selfishness was often wrong. Trauma, injustice, acute or chronic mental health episodes and, frankly, bad luck were typically the culprits. Usually, there was a specific moment that sent the person into an uncontrolled spiral.

As a regular, Abe was one of the visitors I looked forward to seeing every other weekend in the park. I’d often stash some special items for him in my purse to give him a boost for the week to come. The first Saturday he didn’t come, I didn’t think much of it. By the 2nd and 3rd Saturday, I was starting to get concerned. Keep in mind, outreach Saturdays were every other week. It had been nearly two months since I’d seen him and that could have meant a number of things ranging from a positive breakthrough in his life to something awful like injury or death — with self harm being a very real fear. Given the rarity of positive breakthroughs, dread set in. I wondered if I was to blame.

The last time I saw Abe before he stopped coming, we had a deep conversation. He pulled me aside and told me his story. I’m not sure what inspired the transparency that day. Perhaps he just needed to get it out. My heart raced as he spoke. As I listened to every tragic word, my brain begged my mouth to stay quiet and resist the urge to make a verbal contribution to the moment. This was Abe’s moment, not mine. That he trusted me this much meant the world to me.

Abe had a very different life a matter of a few years before our paths crossed in the park. He grew up in relatively comfortable circumstances. The son of two legal immigrant professors living in another part of the country, he was a college student with a job and a modest apartment. His parents weren’t abusive. He hadn’t been tossed out. He had big dreams and goals. He had a girlfriend — someone he still liked enough to smile about when telling the story.

The night that changed everything for Abe was pretty ordinary until it wasn’t. Abe was leaving his girlfriend’s apartment when security professionals from her complex approached him with questions. As a young Black male, he was instinctively on alert. They peppered him with questions about why he was on the premises, who he was there to see, etc. He kept the conversation as easy going as he could. Then came the question, “got anything illegal on you?” Anticipating he might be searched, he decided to go for honesty and confessed he had two joints in his pocket. This was not an uncommon truth for a college student in a state that had made pot consumption more normal than not.

That simple confession was the beginning of his nightmare. Police were called and Abe was arrested. Abe didn’t have much in the way of extra money and there was no way he was calling his parents, so he ended up sitting in jail for a bit. In that time, he missed enough work to be fired from his job. When he got of out jail he was fresh out of money with more bad news ahead. He’d fallen behind on his rent and his landlord evicted him. His personal items were removed from the apartment and left on the curb to be taken by whomever. One very important possession was lost in this ordeal, his immigration papers — the very thing he needed to get a job and to obtain access to resources. They’d been in his apartment.

What began with a confession about joints in his pocket was now spiraling out of control. Calling his parents was even less of an option. He wasn’t going to let his father down in this fashion. Reaching out for help to get new copies of his papers was intimidating. Donald Trump had just been elected president and there was a lot of scary things happening to legal and illegal immigrants in the country. Walking into an office to get new papers with a marijuana conviction didn’t feel like a good idea. That’s when living among the unhoused and building a community with them became the solution. One of his lowest moments, he shared, was when his former girlfriend ran into him at a home MSU football game while he was picking up returnable cans he could cash in for survival money. Not long before that, he’d of been at a game or two. What could he say? Her reaction was devastating and the moment forever imprinted on his heart.

Whatever you are imagining about the unhoused, you may be missing something important. Those who need each other to survive have a strong sense of family and community— for better or worse. Addiction is a huge problem on the streets. It’s difficult to know the numbers of those who are unhoused because of untreated addiction and those who become addicted while unhoused and in the company of those in active disease. Abe was now part of that community and he began using drugs — drugs that weren’t going to be easy to walk away from intact. Additionally, though he wasn’t violent, he was also finding himself in the company of others who were making bad choices, attracting police attention and inevitably getting themselves and those around them — including Abe — arrested. Abe’s rap sheet was growing as his prospects for repairing his life dimmed.

When Abe finished telling me his story, we were silent for a bit. As I looked at him and processed the reality I was old enough to be his mother, every maternal instinct kicked in. I told him it was time to involve his parents. In sparing them disappointment, he was depriving them of the chance to save their son. As a parent I would want the chance to save my child. I asked him if he thought they’d want to help. Yes, he thought they would, but he didn’t want to disappoint them. He was honest that he wasn’t sure he could stay clean and committed to recovery. He wasn’t sure he could be trusted to show up. I asked if his parents might be wondering why they hadn’t heard from him. He thought they might. He mentioned he tried to tell them before, but chickened out and likely left them wondering what was going on. I informed him that the leading predictor of homelessness wasn’t things like addiction or criminal records. It was the loss of relationships — especially healthy relationships that give us different options to consider as solutions when life gets tough. I told him waiting to reclaim important relationships when he was healthy was destined to fail. He needed those relationships to get healthy. They hadn’t contributed to his spiral. They weren’t the reason he was out-of-control. They were his best allies in recovery.

Abe promised me he’d think about calling his parents and we left it at that. Then he stopped coming to the park. Had I pushed him too far? Had he reached out to them only to be rejected? Was he embarrassed by sharing so much with me and avoiding seeking out resources he needed from the outreach because I was there?

After not encountering him for a few months, I still remember the day I looked up to see him marching toward me across the park. He opened his arms and gave me a fierce hug. He’d rushed to the park from the bus stop hoping he hadn’t missed the outreach and missed seeing me. He’d been in jail. He was released earlier that day and came straight to the park. My heart sank. Not long after our last conversation, he found himself as part of a group that was picked up for mischief and he ended up in trouble again.

While in jail, he thought a lot about our conversation and he decided it was time to call his parents. He knew he was running out of time to make a change before it was too late. Suddenly, I felt nervous. “No time like the present,” I offered. He started to hesitate, wanting to push it off a bit. I pulled out my phone and extended it to him. He grabbed it and we walked together to a more private area across the street. I stood out of ear shot and watched him make the call, his body rigid, with me praying to anyone who would listen that the call would go well. When his shoulders relaxed and relief crossed his face, I exhaled. Tears streamed down my cheek when I saw him laugh. The conversation went on for a bit. I didn’t care. I would have stood there for hours at that point if that’s what it took. When he handed my phone back to me, it was warm from the exchange. He hadn’t told his parents everything, but he’d told them enough. They wanted to help. They hadn’t rejected him. The next day, my phone rang. It was Abe’s father calling to say he knew Abe was using my phone and, when I see him, to tell him his parents love him and to call again soon.

Abe wasn’t at the park again after that for a while. I wasn’t worried. I felt confident he was working on an exit plan from the streets. Eventually, I heard from him. He was going away again. This time for good reasons. He was checking himself into rehab. That was a huge development as he’d resisted rehab in previous conversations with me. Previously, he thought he could beat drugs living someplace like a halfway house. As he attempted to move forward, it became clear he needed treatment and he needed to get away from this replacement family that had enabled his worst impulses. His parents were going to help pay for treatment. Months later, he wrote me to share he had completed rehab and had a job. I was elated.

These days I’m not sure what’s happening in Abe’s life. Addiction like what Abe experienced requires a lifelong commitment to recovery and health. Given all we’ve experienced as a world and nation navigating COVID-19, I’m scared at times to wonder what it all may mean for Abe. I hope he is thriving. If not — if his recovery has been interrupted — I hope he remembers the conversation we had about relationships and the role they play in health and good outcomes.

I think about Abe pretty much every Saturday. However much he felt I helped him at the time, he helped me, too. He showed me courage in facing a huge challenge. He also revealed resilience’s capacity for failure, the damage we enable when we aren’t realistic about our circumstances, the soul searching involved in addressing our worst habits and choices and the importance of always remaining hopeful for a better tomorrow. He proved just how quickly things can change in life and why we should all make a point to seek out the humanity in one another, regardless of the situation we perceive them to be in or the reasons we assume contributed.