Drugs and homelessness | “It can happen to anyone”

The idea came to me during a recent dinner at a restaurant, where I shared a table with half a dozen strangers. The kind of semi-exotic meal, with flambé dishes and culinary acrobatics, that should have lifted my spirits.

It rather discouraged me. Very much.

At our side: a wealthy couple from Lanaudière. Two uninhibited sixty-year-olds, who spent part of the evening pouring out their gall on the “damned itinerants”.

They have reached as far as Vieux-Terrebonne!

They bring their friends to our house!

All druggies!

Subhumans, in their eyes, who should remain roped into an enclosure at Berri-UQAM or be deported to a distant island.

I wanted to put at least a face on these thousands of anonymous people who wander the streets of Quebec, and who we often don’t even notice anymore.

If we went back four years, Vicky Harvey could have been one of the homeless people smoking their crack in Vieux-Terrebonne. That, or cocaine, or heroin, or any of the other substances she used day after day to numb her pain.

The 42-year-old woman welcomed me into her bright four and a half in the Saint-Henri district of Montreal to tell me her story without filter, with generosity. You will understand that she got out of the street, thanks to a crucial element that I will reveal to you later.

Vicky Harvey told me several times: “this”, drugs, prostitution, homelessness, chaos, it can happen “to anyone”.

For the very eloquent and politicized native of Lac-Saint-Jean, the slow slide began at age 17, after an unexpected pregnancy and the transfer of the baby to her mother. A “friend” introduced him to coke, which quickly became his drug of choice.

His journey over the following years will not be linear. There will be a back and forth between drug addiction and sobriety. Moves to Abitibi and Nord-du-Québec, to get away from temptations. A return to studies. Several jobs in bars and restaurants, others in accounting.

A leap into politics, even. In 2006, after settling down in the Hochelaga-Maisonneuve district of Montreal, Vicky Harvey will be a candidate in the federal elections for the Liberal Party of Canada. She will come in second place, behind Bloc member Réal Ménard.

Despite the drugs and alcohol which become more and more invasive, she continues her life “in society” and has another child. Most of the people around her have no idea of ​​the demons that consume her – including her political entourage.

The big break occurred at the age of 31. After losing her job in taxation, she became a bartender in a strip club. Then she starts dancing. Then she begins to prostitute herself, to pay for her growing consumption and her pimp, who is also her “brain manipulator” spouse.

It was at this time, pregnant with a third child, that she lost her home and officially became homeless.

“In six months, it will go down really quickly,” she explains. It’s a crash, literally. After years of trying to keep your head above water, the body can’t take it anymore, the brain can’t take it anymore, and everything gives way. »

Vicky Harvey and I talked for almost two hours. She told me a host of details about the years that followed this great break: the discovery of crack, the sale of drugs, the constant violence, the suicide attempts, the prison, the fourth pregnancy…

She visited women’s shelters, slept in building entrances, on tables at Tim Hortons, on friends’ sofas. A largely “invisible” homelessness, which does not appear in the statistics.

The episode lasted three years, in his case.

The big thing happened when she felt like she had really reached the bottom of the barrel. Three and a half years ago. This time, she was “ready” to take control of her life.

“I did my dry withdrawal, but I can tell you that for a girl who was capable of drinking a 40 ounce of Jack Daniel’s, it’s steep,” she says with confidence. I could have died. I was lying in a tank, but I was wise enough to call the ambulance. I said, “I’m on this street corner, I’m waiting for you there.” »

The whole chain of support was then set in motion. A street responder directed her to a church basement. The Le Chaînon organization took over. She was housed for a few months at Abri d’Espoir, a women’s center, before obtaining “transitional” accommodation at the Mission Bon Accueil.

A real home, where she could have stayed for three years.

Having a roof over her head allowed her to work tirelessly, “like a girl from the Lake”, on her remission. On improving his lot and that of his children. She had her sights set on a recent building in Saint-Henri – “that’s where I wanted to live” – where she managed to land a modern apartment a year and a half ago.

She pays $307 per month, or 25% of her salary, thanks to government subsidies for low-income people.

Life is pieced together and rebuilt little by little, despite all the pills she has to take to manage her anxiety and post-traumatic stress. The fight to maintain sobriety is daily. Coffee is his new stimulant of choice.

Vicky Harvey proudly showed me the first new pieces of furniture she bought in her life: sofas and a “bedroom set”. She told me about her job as a pastry chef in a college in Montreal, the garden she wants to create with her neighbors, her finances…

“I want to make a budget and put money aside in an RRSP. It’s not much, it’s 50 piastres every two weeks, but it’s still that. »

So this is the story of a person – “a drug addict”, as my table neighbors would have said – who has nicely taken control of her life. Not all homeless people have this option: many suffer from serious mental illness and a host of related problems. Reintegration is not possible for everyone, but it’s healthy to remember once in a while that these multipocuses are humans, it seems to me.

Because the speech, with covered words or not, is often dehumanizing.

In all cases, there is an essential element to hope to get people off the street: access to housing, whether independent or supervised by workers.

We are far from the mark.