Step out of your comfort zone this evening and see Cambridge through the eyes of Stuart Shorter, a homeless drug addict.
Stuart:A Life Backwards is compelling viewing, it traces his life backwards (his own suggestion), and author Alexander Masters had no idea what horrors would be revealed.
This gives you a rough idea:
According to his mother, Stuart was a happy-go-lucky little boy, chatty, curious and determined. Life seemed quite good, if poor, in a Cambridgeshire village with his brother Gavvy, a married mother, a good stepfather and two tiny step-siblings. But biology gave him a violent alcoholic for a father, long gone, and a form of muscular dystrophy that made him walk in a funny way. It would give him life-long pain and a serious heart disease.
Horribly bullied about his “spaggy” walk, Stuart was suddenly and for no apparent good reason sent on a daily “spaggy bus”to a school for children with severe disabilities. Bullied wherever he went, he was repeatedly sodomised for years by his older brother Gavvy and another boy, as was his little sister.
At one time Stuart begged his mother, with violence, to be taken into care and he was. Gavvy later killed himself out of remorse, not long before Stuart met his biographer. At the special school he was buggered and abused by the charismatic head teacher, who was later jailed. Quite enough — although there was a great deal more — to explain Stuart’s mystery.
Playing some preview clips, I was reminded of the jailing of Ruth Wyner, a bespectacled director of Wintercomfort, Cambridge for allowing drug peddling at a homeless drug centre she ran, along with John Brock. In the film, Stuart becomes involved in a campaign to offer them support.
I previously wrote about the filming of this in Cambridge, how the homeless were used as extras and paid less than the going rate. The city is never short of these down and outs, I saw them yesterday, but I’m never sure how to react. Would giving them money just further fuel their addictions, would they prefer food instead? A sandwich? Maybe not. I remember one homeless man being found murdered in public toilets in Ca,bridge several years ago, it was never solved. The unpleasant details were confided to me by police; not too different to what had happened to Stuart.
How do the Stuarts of this world pick themselves up from the gutter and start afresh? As adults, are they too damaged by then, beyond repair?
I don’t give them money as you can’t know who is genuinely in need and who is not. But I would give to homeless charities. There is always hope for the “Stuarts of this world” but it is very, very hard for them.
More tissues will be needed tonight then….. It breaks my heart to see the homeless on the streets and i wish i had money to give to them all
Catch 22 Elle,
people fall into whatever pattern of life is presented to them, whether it be a whole peoples oppressed – black slaves in the US – to black youth in sixties ghetto america, to modern gang crime in the US (and Britain too).
As for the homeless or the not so homeless but living on the streets, they tend to associate with those who befriend them – usually those with an alcohol or drug problem – and like any hole you dig yourself into (or others have dug you into) you keep digging yourself deeper until it gets harder & harder to climb out.
Hard to keep your wits about you if all you are interested in is the next fix or next drink, to help you forget whatever it is you are trying to get away from. If you can’t get a job or can’t hold a job down, it’s hard to clean up your act … and the downward spiral goes on … if you can’t clean up your act or end up with a criminal record, it gets harder & harder still to get a job to drag yourself back up.
I guess it’s nothing like living in an african country undergoing civil war, or living in a place under continuous oppression and violence for the last fifty years … with no future and no forseeable end. But I often wonder what would happen in Britain if we didn’t have a social security system, ie: no work no pay.
The crime rate would certainly go up, and so would the body count. After all gang deaths are usually territory & drug related, and even sellers of the big issue have their patch.
To be honest I don’t know how some people make it thru the day when they can see no future (whether because of mental, health, social or marital and personal problems)… I guess they have three choices:
1) Make the most of what you’ve got, whatever it is – whether institutionalised crime or mental illness – in & out of prison …
2) Drink yourself into oblivion, and hope tomorrow will be a better day – with the risk of damaging your health and losing your self- respect and your teeth in the process …
3) Get caught in the trap, and though you may want to get off … you find there’s no way out of the nightmare and roller coaster ride
An opium den somewhere like wintercomfort providing free opium would keep addicts off the streets and help reduce some drug related crime, though of course it wouldn’t reduce all the other alcohol & drug related violence.
Personally I don’t see what happiness people hope to find in the bottom of a bottle or at the end of the needle – but that is why they are called addictions … it’s not about fun and enjoying yourself or feeling better, it’s about ‘needing’ to do it, even if and when you know the high won’t last, because you have nothing else or nothing better to do and there’s nothing else to live (and die) for.
I wonder what they’d do if they were diabetic too
Q9, I don’t think people search for “happiness” when they abuse drink or drugs, it’s more a form of escapism. As you say, Catch 22.
I’ve lost count of the number of homeless drug addicts on London I’ve offered to buy a sausage roll – not one took up the offer.
Once they get to a certain stage they should be sectioned and forced to do turkey – the solution is as crude and as simple as that.
“Personally I don’t see what happiness people hope to find in the bottom of a bottle or at the end of the needle” (Quasar9)
“I don’t think people search for “happinessâ€? when they abuse drink or drugs, it’s more a form of escapism.” (Ellee)
Of course people take drugs to make them happy. That’s what drugs do, they make you feel good.
If you two can’t get passed the basic and fundamental truth that many people find taking drugs just as much fun as other people do driving a fast German sports car, then you won’t get to the bottom of the problem.
Staying on the straight and narrow is the hardest thing to do in life. If you take a wrong turn and stray too far from the beaten track you enter uncharted territory. You might stumble across a pot of gold, or you might fall down a disused mineshaft. Either way one day you will more than likely be forgotten about.
There are many people right throughout society that have bad family backgrounds, mental health problems, drug addictions, disabilities and other such demons to do battle with. Very few of us are fortunate enough not to have any problems and manage to stay completely on the straight and narrow.
The Priory is basically a glorified loony-bin for washed up drug-addicts with money – only it’s called ‘re-hab’ when you can afford the £20k bill.
Unfortunates like Stuart would be best served if we sectioned them and got them off the drugs, that’s a start, lives can be re-built from there.
Hi Elle, escapism or search for happiness
either way it’s they haven’t got anything else good going in their life or everything else is going wrong, so they are seeking whatever little comfort drink & drugs offer.
It’s a different ball game if you have a loving or loving parents or loving children or loving friends and work colleagues – then you have a chance and maybe you can hang on by the skin of your teeth, but if you have none of the above, no home, no career, no job and no opportunities … then all you have is the drink and drugs and whatever environment, violence and abuse surrounds it
Quasar9…yes it is a different ball game altogether with a loving caring background..my youngest son had huge problems starting at the age of 14/15 we had to battle for help.. also we had to make him recognize we were trying to help him, and that was hard. But we were there for him.
I tried three times to watch last night…just couldn;t do it.
Yes having a supporting family does help, the problem is that many people that fall in to the drug trap don’t have this support. After all, why would someone feel the need to take drugs if they already have a happy and supportive family.
The exception to this, of course, is teenagers who often start taking drugs to fit in and appear cool, it is often difficult for parents to deal with this problem and so need help and support.