Another Drug Casualty in America

Here's another video that gives you a good idea of what it's like to work as a paramedic in America. 

Ronald Reagan, with his COBRA act that gave us extremely expensive healthcare you can take with you when you leave a job, ended America's federal funding for inpatient mental healthcare for the indigent mentally ill.  So now we have this situation.

Unfortunately, this is also what it's like to live in Long Beach, California.  Every day I would walk past people in this condition: rolling around the sidewalks, punching at the sky, semi-nude, beyond any reason.  This is almost certainly crystal meth.

I once saw a young woman sitting on the ground outside the auto parts store behind my apartment in Long Beach.  She was squishing her hands around in the mud and putting her fingers in her mouth.  Her hands were very close to some dog shit. 

This young African-American lady, maybe 21, was pretty enough to be a model.  Unlike the woman in the above video, who seems like she's been around a while, the woman I met that day was likely a recent graduate of something, possibly still a student.  She was someone with prospects, not one of the deranged regular homeless people I saw constantly in that alleyway, tweaking like an alien orchestra.  She made a terrible mistake that day to end up where she was.  This was somebody's daughter.  She was in grave danger.

I tried to talk her into coming away from there, at least not putting any shit in her mouth.  She said something about the nutrients from the Earth.  I offered to bring her some food.  She said she was a vegan.  I came back with some vegetables and dip.  I asked her if she had any family that I could call.  She said no.  I sat with her for a while. 

There wasn't anything else I could think of to do.  Her condition was a non-incident in Cambodiatown other than my concern for her safety.  Without a contact person to call, which she wouldn't give me, I had nothing. 

When I came back from my doctor appointment she was in the alley behind the auto parts store, giving a man oral sex next to his white BMW.  I doubt if she was with it enough to get any money from him. I only hope he didn't scoop her up and murder her.

I'm posting this here because I don't know what else to do but let people understand this is real.  We can't even pass common sense laws about guns in this country after however many schools get shot up.  All I can do is bear witness.