RFD:Winos

This question is perhaps a little insensitive?

Sometimes it was a wonderful feeling to go out drunk in the morning - paradoxically everything felt so alive....but you drink enough because things have dies in the past (loves, attention, lives etc) and you too begin to die - you give up giving a shit whether people smell your piss stained clothes...you give up giving a shit that you have to eat sugar sandwhiches for two days cos you spent your last buck on rotgut, and you give up giving. it's fucking oough.

My response may seem a little insensitive. But when I lived in Glasgow I noticed that the local drunks and winos had a kind of friendly-if-pathetic air to them - classic big red honkers, tattered overcoat, winks to the ladies. I am sure, especially in London, that there are many more dire examples. In NYC however the street bums look like concentration camp victims. MANY scenes like the one Tarden describes, truly broken people. You see a LOT of crazy shit in the street here and unfortunately you have to tune it out (to a degree) to keep your sanity. Just like they do.

Part of the deal with winos is that many of them are mentally ill and have no one to go to bat for them. Unsurprising given this country's steady decrease in monetary and political commitment to psychiatric hospitals.