11 votes

Footage of Philadelphia opioid crisis

6 comments

  1. [3]
    Thrabalen
    Link
    I don't even need to watch this, I live in the epicenter of it. I can walk to "K&A" (Kensington and Allegheny avenues), and my neighborhood is becoming engulfed in the wave of addicts, like...

    I don't even need to watch this, I live in the epicenter of it. I can walk to "K&A" (Kensington and Allegheny avenues), and my neighborhood is becoming engulfed in the wave of addicts, like Bostonians swallowed by molasses in February. In my view, one of the big factors is that gentrification is pushing this further and further in this direction, as people get squeezed out of what are suddenly the "nice" neighborhoods, where police response times are more beneficial to the homeowner.

    7 votes
    1. [2]
      ras
      Link Parent
      I lived in Philadelphia in the early 00’s and I thought it was bad then. Jesus Christ. It’s unbelievable.

      I lived in Philadelphia in the early 00’s and I thought it was bad then. Jesus Christ. It’s unbelievable.

      4 votes
      1. Thrabalen
        Link Parent
        I love this city, but I tell you... it's a damned shame. Seeing people stumbling down the street I live on, discarded needles... I've lived here nearly half a century, and what I want more than...

        I love this city, but I tell you... it's a damned shame. Seeing people stumbling down the street I live on, discarded needles... I've lived here nearly half a century, and what I want more than anything now is to move.

        2 votes
  2. [2]
    EgoEimi
    Link
    I'm genuinely nearly in tears over this, seeing men and women who should be glowing with the joy and promise of life instead are slumped over or struggling to stand unsupported, emaciated,...

    I'm genuinely nearly in tears over this, seeing men and women who should be glowing with the joy and promise of life instead are slumped over or struggling to stand unsupported, emaciated, hollowed, and filthy.

    5 votes
    1. antisocialite
      Link Parent
      Suffering! Sorrow! Shame! It's horrible, isn't it? And mere blocks away you have rows of upper-middle class families clocking into their high-paying remote jobs every day as though nothing is the...

      Suffering! Sorrow! Shame!

      It's horrible, isn't it? And mere blocks away you have rows of upper-middle class families clocking into their high-paying remote jobs every day as though nothing is the matter with their fair city. I have no enmity for the moderately wealthy, but they live in a completely different world. A person operating within such a paradigm breathes abstraction day and night; they are perpetually insulated from the abject despair of poverty and the spiraling abysm of drug addiction. Their quotidian strife is perfecting their lawn manicure, not the endless shock of overdraft fees, substance withdrawal, familial dysfunction, and never-ending streams of death.

      I would know; I was born into and continue to live une vie abstrait. The Main Line always welcomes back the fortunate, you see. Eight miles from the Center City may as well be ten thousand. I do not live on Planet Earth and never have. The dichotomy between the HAVE and the HAVE-NOT is beyond words.

      I'm deeply troubled by the physicality of drug addiction. Your description speaks volumes in only a few words. I pity those who have been abandoned by their government, their countrymen, their loved ones, and themselves to such a fate. It looks unreal; surreal; hyperreal. The negligent denizens of the pharmaceutical industry will have hell to pay at the ianua coeli, but damned be ye who reside yet on God's sacred soil. Such is the domain of Beelzeboul. Pestilence awaits upon a white horse.

      7 votes
  3. tunneljumper
    Link
    This country is broken in so many different ways.

    This country is broken in so many different ways.

    1 vote