Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Contents
- List of photos, figures and tables
- About the authors
- Acknowledgements
- Preface
- Foreword
- Glossary of terms
- 1 Introduction: Welcome to Valdemingómez
- 2 Politics, ‘democracy’ and the ideology of the postmodern city
- 3 Madrid: History, social processes and the growth in inequality
- 4 Drugs, cultural change and drug markets
- 5 Journeys to dependence
- 6 Life in the city shadows: Work, identity and social status
- 7 The council, police and health services: An impasse to solutions
- 8 Post dependency: What next?
- 9 Not really the conclusion
- 10 Epilogue
- References
- Index
5 - Journeys to dependence
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 April 2022
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Contents
- List of photos, figures and tables
- About the authors
- Acknowledgements
- Preface
- Foreword
- Glossary of terms
- 1 Introduction: Welcome to Valdemingómez
- 2 Politics, ‘democracy’ and the ideology of the postmodern city
- 3 Madrid: History, social processes and the growth in inequality
- 4 Drugs, cultural change and drug markets
- 5 Journeys to dependence
- 6 Life in the city shadows: Work, identity and social status
- 7 The council, police and health services: An impasse to solutions
- 8 Post dependency: What next?
- 9 Not really the conclusion
- 10 Epilogue
- References
- Index
Summary
We amble over to talk to the harm reduction team, and outside the bus there remain a handful of dishevelled figures, standing around, looking nervous and impatient. We wait under a tarpaulin as sit on the table in front of us various needles, syringes and other paraphernalia, as well as a massive black bin full of used syringes and needles, the blood very visible on all of them. As breakfast is served, they queue for biscuits and milk and ham sandwiches. To our right is a ragged man sitting strangely still, and he is almost unrecognisable in a chair with his head in his hands on the dining table; it is as if someone had cast a spell on him to sleep during the day (we later find out he is sleeping because he had spent the whole night selling lighters for drugs and is now resting). Beneath him settles another man in similar rags, and as he lies down, he tries to make himself comfortable to inject himself in the groin, then falls asleep…. Then a man, bent by the crippled nature of his back, wanders over. His back is so bent that the bones seem to emerge out of his flesh and through his t-shirt. His dirty trousers hang over his skeletal bum as he extends his hand to reach for the food wrapped in foil; it looks like some feat for him to be able to move. His name is Antonio and he has a withered beard and about four teeth. He calls the place a “jungle”, and as he clutches the food and syringes he has just received, he says he is fortunate that his addiction is not as bad.
Introduction
Antonio emphasises the other people being ‘worse off’ than him as a means of denying the gravity of his current situation, which is that he injects heroin and cocaine, is HIV positive and has hepatitis C. The truth is, however, that someone could not be more unfortunate than him. Antonio's journey to drug dependence to the point where he has lost contact with his friends and family, been made homeless, and accumulated numerous physical, psychological and financial problems is not simple. Have people like Antonio ‘fallen victim’ to drugs, and subsequently ended up in Valdemingómez, or is their attachment to drug intoxication somewhat more complex?
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Dead-End LivesDrugs and Violence in the City Shadows, pp. 95 - 128Publisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2017