To have felt a bit sorry for this shoplifter / drug addict?

[Estelvia]

I was in savers this afternoon and a man was caught trying to steal. The staff got the items back before escorting him out of the shop, as he was being lead out of the door he was pleading with them saying that he's ill / withdrawing and needs 'dark' (which is slang for heroin)

The employee told him to sling his hook and get a job, cue some swearing from him and calling them knob heads among other things.

We saw him walk up the highstreet and into Holland and Barretts where he presumably tried the same thing.

My initial thought was "scumbag" but then it hit me just how desperate somebody must be to resort to that and what an miserable existence it is having to steal to ward off painful withdrawals. I'm not condoning theft or any other crimes they commit to fund the habit.

Do you have any sympathy for these types of people?

SchrodingersImmigrant

I wouldn't risk my own safety if I was working in a shop...I know it has knock on effects but I would put myself first I think. Probably won't be getting a job as a security guard any time soon !

@formerbabe

SchrodingersImmigrant

I wouldn't risk my own safety if I was working in a shop...I know it has knock on effects but I would put myself first I think. Probably won't be getting a job as a security guard any time soon !

You don't usually have to put yourself in a danger. You alert security. Shop assistants are not paid to be heroes

I'm a bit surprised by those who literally have zero sympathy (not even a little bit?!) for a heroin addict. No sympathy for the extensive childhood trauma the majority of addicts have experienced? Some of the trauma histories I've heard in patients with opiate addiction have chilled me to the core. Paedophile rings, the works. Horrendous shit.

It must be a miserable life, but then you see people acting like you're a pathetic no-life snowflake if you have a problem with even "light" drug use and alcohol abuse. You're a judgmental bore if you don't think it's perfectly normal to dabble in drugs as a youth, but how dare you not have sympathy for the (sometimes) inevitable result of drug use. (Not inevitable for all, but by the time you find out who's who, it's too late to stop.)

People who end up as addicts didn't just wake up that way one morning. It's the result of a lifetime of poor choices. Sometimes it's helped along by trauma or genetic predisposition, no doubt, but at some point we all have to bear a degree of responsibility for our personal choices.

I feel sorrier for people who are hurt by (or even just terrified by) drug addicts than I do for the addicts themselves.

I always wonder where things went wrong. Was it untreated mental health? Does the person have support? Are there programs the person could take advantage of and isn't? I have been very lucky in my life because I have had love and support through my hardest times and always knew that the worst that would happen I would move in with my mom and get myself back on my feet. I have a friend who had similar support who is a raging alcoholic and I do not understand it so I guess I feel sorry because it is such a waste of life and so so sad.

Zzz1234

Not sympathetic. My brother does drugs. He took my grandmas last penny before she died. There is no sob story, bad childhood or anything like that, he's just a lazy piece of shit who does drugs

Likewise. I have a family member who stole from a late family member, there was no sob story/ bad childhood either. I have no sympathy, we all have choices and they never seem to be responsible for their own actions its always someone else’s fault.

I have a fair degree of sympathy for addicts, but I caveat that with the fact that some of them really don't do themselves any favours and they can be every bit the scummy, deceitful, criminal nuisances most people take them for.

The Methadone program really doesn't help, so folk need to stop concluding that users are intransigent wastrels who needlessly refuse the obvious solution. Of the addicts I work with one on one, roughly half are in the Methadone program, the other have are active IV users or smoke it. The problem with the program is that I know people who have been parked on the stuff for upwards of ten years. They get shot down the instant they profess any desire to come off the stuff, and a lot of them end up on a cocktail of benzodiazepenes (both prescribed and street bought), methadone, anti-psychotics, anti-depressants, cannabis, alcohol, pain-killers, etc etc.

When you see a former user who can't keep their eyes open, slurs and drools constantly, has ballooned in weight, sleeps 18+hours a day, has no quality of life, poor personal hygiene, no prospects, and no interest from services in terms of progressing their 'treatment', it really makes you wonder if they aren't actually just healthier and better off on the heroin to begin with.

Every single one of them I know comes from a dysfunctional, abuse, impoverished background, and while that's not an excuse for indulging in criminality and partaking in drugs, I don't think you can just ignore it and assert that the individuals are entirely responsible for their own predicament either. They are badly let down by the state in every regard.

@formerbabe

Personally if I was working in a large chain store and saw a person shoplifting I'd probably turn a blind eye.

Me too. My selective blindness would become very acute.

Yes and no. Some of them can be absolute monsters but I can't be too judgemental because my mum is a recovering alcoholic. I'm not going into detail except to say that it's made me understand addicts more. Luckily she wasn't violent, just a weepy drunk.

Incidentally, when she was in rehab, practically everyone there had experienced some kind of sexual trauma. Rape, child abuse, etc. There were some horrifying stories.

Heroin is an evil, evil drug. So many people have gone from living normal lives to having nothing and having to beg or go into prostitution because they've blown everything on drugs. I've never tried it and I never will, not that I'd have a chance to. I'm a Catatonia fan and I was horrified when I found out Cerys Matthews was a smackhead (though it did explain why she looked so thin and ill). I have a bit less sympathy for rich rock stars, I admit.

0 sympathy.

And it’s an insult to genuine abuse victims who have never turned to drugs and crime and hidden behind the justification that they had an abusive childhood.

Also, we only have this man’s say-so that he’s a drug addict, he might simply have used that line thinking he might be let off shoplifting.

But if we turn a blind eye to one thing then where does it end? Robbing little old grannies for their pension? Burgling the elderly? We can’t simply say that these people aren’t responsible for their actions because they’re drug addicts, because if you say that then you have to concede that they know no right from wrong and can’t be held accountable.

And it’s an insult to genuine abuse victims who have never turned to drugs and crime and hidden behind the justification that they had an abusive childhood

This is an awful thing to say imo. We all have different experiences and circumstances in our lives. We all respond differently to things.

@AlternativePerspective Are you saying they are not genuine abuse victims as in they have not been abused?

And it’s an insult to genuine abuse victims who have never turned to drugs and crime and hidden behind the justification that they had an abusive childhood

I'm a bit confused as to how being a heroin user somehow renders you not a 'genuine' abuse victim. They experience the exact same forms of abuse, in the exact same way, at the exact same stages of their lives as anyone else.

We can’t simply say that these people aren’t responsible for their actions because they’re drug addicts

It's not a question of the individual either being 100% responsible or none. That's hugely oversimplistic. Many users were fairly regular people who took up heroin because of the company they kept, but there are also those who were abandoned and abused by guardians, ignored, discarded, or even abused by people who were entrusted with their care, and slipped into a spiral of substance abuse, prostitution, forced injection, dependency, criminality, illness, death....

Nobody 'chooses' the later.

No, I save my sympathy for people who are desperately poor through no fault of their own and would love to be able to earn a decent living.

I have sympathy..what a tragic existance and some really heartbreaking stories are behind some addicts...absolutely no sympathy for the dealers that take advantage of the vulnerable..they should get life

No, I save my sympathy for people who are desperately poor through no fault of their own and would love to be able to earn a decent living

Yes, because right enough, sympathy is strictly rationed, and you can only have it for a select few individuals.

No, I save my sympathy for people who are desperately poor through no fault of their own and would love to be able to earn a decent living

Random. Who are these desperately poor people who want to work but can't? Why can't they? Why do you only sympathise with these mystical poor people?

@Oldbagface you’re right, they don’t grow up wanting this, many people have childhood trauma or adverse childhood experiences and don’t go on to be drug addicts though. I wonder whether it’s something deeper than that or maybe even something about a persons make up. My experience of drug addicts is that they would sell their grannies to get their next fix. They are inherently dishonest and their need to drugs is bigger than anything else in their lives. After many years of experience of coming across drug addicts I have zero sympathy.

@killerofmen

Very much so. I spent a day in magistrates court and 90% of people were being charged for shoplifting offences due to circumstances like this. All of them had previous offences and were in a cycle of getting clean in prison then, finding themselves jobless and/or homeless, started using again and eventually back in court. Huge amounts of money is spent on processing people through the criminal justice system with addiction services practically non-existent. It needs to be treated as a public health issue.

We had loads of clients like that at the firm I used to work for. We had multiple files on some people - they just kept coming back time and time again.

No. We have several of them in the family and they disgust me. They would sell their kids for a bag of smack.

'Who are these desperately poor people who want to work but can't?'

In fairness, that's not what Staffy1 said. There is such a thing as in-work poverty, tha knows.

Just seemed a really random thing to say @Hepcat75. I know in work poverty exists

I have some sympathy for how their lives have turned out and I wonder how they got to that point. Having said that I've lost count of shoplifters I've dealt with in my retail work that have been absolutely terrifying. One lady, a repeat offender, told my burly security guard that it was lucky that he had stopped her and not me (female) as she would have stabbed me.

She drove her car head on into a bus and died a few months later.

Yes, I imagine, sympathetic as anyone might be, the reality of dealing with an aggressive addict who is hell bent on getting their fix, come what may, must be terrifying.

I had a friend who lived in the same road as a heroin addict. He made the whole road a total nightmare. It went from a perfectly nice, council estate road to somewhere you wouldn't want to walk about even in the daytime. He had a lot of people coming and going, high as kites or desperate to become so. Until one day he fell asleep with a lit cigarette, set his sofa on fire and had severe burns after that. My usually nice friend, although obviously not happy this had happened, said that she just felt relieved he was no longer going to be around and certainly not hosting parties every day and night.

My point being that, as humane as we all seek to be, if someone is threatening your peace or your life, (and that's no exaggeration in some cases), because they are on heroin or want money for heroin, you probably would lose some of that humanity, rightly or wrongly.

So, I see both sides as it were.

I lived with someone with an addiction for years and it is awful, even though this was a person I loved, just absolutely destroyed with addiction.

It is really worrying that people are predicting a similar opioid problem to what they have had in the USA. Really awful thing over there.

Being an addict is such a miserable existence and people often start using drugs to mask mental illness so yes I do have a lot of sympathy for some addicts.