alcoholism

This year I’ve written about what I learned in Colorado Springs at the Springs Rescue Mission. But when I stayed there last year, I also thought of the pioneer who, starting in 1983, built a predecessor of SRM just up the highway in Denver. His name: Bob Coté, a six-foot-three-inch ex-amateur boxer who in his forties changed his life by not drinking his usual half gallon of vodka for lunch. Instead, he poured out the bottle’s contents and became in 1983 one of the original residents of a new program, Step 13. Bob became Director of Operation and then Executive Director, pouring what he had learned as a homeless alcoholic into a program that challenged rather than coddled men seen Read More ›

The advent of Thanksgiving brings more stories about homelessness and more debate about its causes. Some advocates emphasize housing costs, as New York’s Charles Brace did during the Civil War era (see my May 3, 2024 column.) Others emphasize substance abuse and mental illness. That also is nothing new: New York City suffered not only through draft and racist riots in 1863 but homelessness in the 1870s, often among Civil War veterans suffering from what today we call PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder. The debate, even then, was not new. Starting early in the century, the street-level analysis was that some poor people became paupers — not just poor, but distraught and defeated — by getting drunk and staying drunk. What Read More ›

Barry Meyer slept for a month and a half in a port-a-potty near the Lynchburg public library: “It was a big one, I could do a twisting stretch-out with the toilet seat and my stuff.” He said it didn’t smell bad because “they cleaned it twice a week.” Of course, his sense of smell, maybe his sense of everything, was off because each day he typically consumed eight “tall boys” (25-ounce beers) and a pint of whiskey. He favored Earthquake High Gravity Lager with its aroma of corn syrup and wet hay. Its fans say Earthquake “will get you buzzin’ like a chainsaw… It’s like putting your finger between the sprocket and chain on a motorcycle and then having your Read More ›