Thanks Jeff. Keep up the good work.

Echoing Ellie – I’d love to read your book.

props.

I guess the only thing I’d like to continue to stress is that there’s no indictment of methadone, methadone clinics or methadone clinic patients here. It’s a description of a discreet incident of public behavior that was I think honestly represented. The larger message across all the shorts I’m writing is that poverty is not pretty, it’s not romantic, it’s not sexy. The Wire is oftentimes ugly, but also a lot more romantic and sexy than the lives of the vast majority of people living in poverty.

Drugs are a part of the poverty problem. Lack of education is, too. Likewise, violence. There’s a lot of negative behaviors and outcomes associated with urban poverty in America. If you want to make this about methadone specifically, please do, I understand that’s your issue and you feel strongly about it one way or the other. Taken apart from the rest of the series that makes perfect sense. However, I see this incident as simply another facet in the glorious gemstone called American urban poverty, the rest of the shorts are facets, as well, and there’s a bigger picture to be seen and shown.

But beyond this, please don’t expect me to start putting a spit polish on anything I see, to stop using the language I hear, to stop perceiving the way I perceive. If I see ugly and I hear ugly then I write ugly.

They don’t see, nor do they care to, the non-using, rule-abiding, college-attending, all-around great person that I am. (There was a bit sarcastic) Seriously though, I’m attending college to get my Human Services degree, I want nothing more than to help people in this world, and even when I was an active junky I never portrayed a picture like these people do.

I didn’t write this to rag on you for sharing your opinion or for telling the truth as you see it. Quite the opposite. I enjoy your articles and look forward to reading more. I happen to know the “mother of the deceased boy” because she’s been terrorizing my Addiction Treatment Watchdog website for some time now; cutting and pasting the comments of our posts to make what we say look villainous and evil. While I feel for her grief, she’s on the entirely wrong page. When I read posts like these, inside I get sad for all the people that just don’t know better.

It’s no secret that I’m a former drug addict; I used to cop drugs in a lot of these neighborhoods and I was terrified to be in those neighborhoods then. As a white drug addict in these neighborhoods trying to cop dope you are a target to pretty much everyone and will eventually get hurt. You might get hurt by a dealer, you might get hurt by the cops, you might get hurt by another addict but it’s only a matter of time until you get fucked up by somebody.

I don’t have anything to do with any of that any more and the cops, dealers and addicts can all see that. I’m well fed, clear eyed, decently dressed, moving with a purpose. I don’t really know what people think of me when they see me but I know they’re not thinking, “fucking junky,” which is all that really matters from a safety standpoint.