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EDGES MAGAZINE Issue 23 |
October 2000 |
ON THE STREETS OF GLASGOW The city where we will be holding our Year 2000
Conference |
IS THERE A WAY
OUT OF THIS?
James Marshall - Aged 28
I have been homeless in Glasgow for the last six years. I first
became homeless when I fell out with my mother and father, I was twenty-two
years old at the time. We fell out due to family matters and because of my drug
taking. It has been really bad over the last five years because Im
wandering the streets and feeding a drug habit. Its worst when you have
to sleep out on the streets in the winter with the rain coming down and the
cold nights.
I grew up in the Possel Park area of Glasgow which is
pretty rough. Its full of drugs and the people are not very nice. I would
say that it is one of the worst areas in Glasgow.
Im a heroin
user and I use as much as I can possibly get, it could be thirty pounds or it
could be forty pounds a day.
My day starts when I wake up in the
morning and I go out begging on the streets in Glasgow city centre to try and
get money for my drug habit, my food and my tobacco. I can earn twenty to
twenty-five pounds a day, or even thirty pounds a day, through begging. It is
best to beg at the weekends because through the week is not that good. I sleep
under the motorway. I have a couple of blankets and I use the bushes for
shelter when its raining.
I have been in prison a number of
times. It started when I turned sixteen and I got into trouble with the law for
vandalising, shoplifting and eventually drug dealing. I was selling drugs and I
ended up getting caught. They gave me a eighteen month prison sentence for
twenty pounds worth of heroin. I have been in and out of prison for the odd
theft and that. Prison has not really helped me much because there are more
drugs in prison than there are out on the streets.
I do need a
rehabilitation programme to help me get off drugs. I would love to give it a
try anyway. There is not much here in Glasgow for people trying to come off
drugs. There is the Mission and they try to take you in and help you out.
Im an only child, its just me, my mother and my father, but I
dont see them now so Im on my own. I do have a lot of friends on
the streets, people who are in the same position as myself. Glasgow is one of
the worst places for people out on the streets.
There is a soup run on
every Monday to Wednesday night. Then there is a place called the Wayside,
thats a place you can go to where voluntary workers give you soup and
tea. We also have a soup bar that moves around, there you can get rolls, cakes,
orange juice, coffee and tea. Theyre really helpful.
I first
started taking drugs because the crowd I was involved in was taking them and it
has just carried on from there. I was fifteen when I first started dabbling in
cannabis and then I went on to LSD, Speed and then heroin. With heroin when you
wake up in the morning you feel in a right bad way because you havent had
a fix. I need a fix in the morning because I feel totally ill with vomiting and
diarrhoea. I usually have my first fix at about nine in the morning. I try to
make enough money the night before begging so that Ill have a fix for the
morning. Normally three fixes a day will do me, with one at night before I go
to sleep. It puts your mind at ease and you stop worrying about things like the
past. |
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