'Methadone treatment "too expensive" for most addicts'

A new report has found the cost of methadone programs is too high for most heroin addicts.
The Federal Government funds methadone treatment, but most pharmacies charge a $60 dispensing fee.
The RMIT University study found the fee was a barrier for many heroin users wanting to kick the habit.
Report author Dr James Rowe says the Government subsidises dispensing fees for most other medications.

The full article is at ABC News, here.
(Props to Tim.)

Blessed are the cheesemakers

Yesterday I bought some Gorgonzola for a recipe I was going to try. After tasting this cheese I don't know why anyone would want to buy ecstasy. Gorgonzola is much cheaper and it's legal. It might be safer, but I'm not sure.
Gorgonzola is proof that God exists. (And she makes cheese.)

'Trav and Christop talk drugs'

There was recently a rave at Kryal Castle (just out of Ballarat) where fifteen people ended up in hospital because they used to much methamphetamine. Trav wrote about this on his blog because one of his friends used illicit drugs at the rave, and he was pretty upset about it:

Everyone who took drugs decided to go beyond what our society thinks is acceptable behaviour. When they overdose, it's society who has to deal with it. I'm glad my friend isn't dead, in hospital or in jail but i'm not please to see these events running.
('Raving Mad')

He also sent me an email asking me what I thought about it, and he's published some of my response on his blog, which is here.

Club lockout for Melbourne CBD?

Have just been reading in The Age about plans for a lockout for clubs in Melbourne's CBD ('Hoon "lockout" plan for clubs'). It would mean that after a certain time, people wouldn't be able to go into a club. That would hopefully mean that there'll be less drunk people out on the street, because they wouldn't able to go from one club to another. They tried this in Ballarat when I lived there, and it seemed to work pretty well. I'm not sure if it would work real well in Melbourne though, because like Chris Duthie (from Melbourne East Police) says in the article, if the lockout just in the CBD, the problems are likely to just move to various inner suburban areas.
It also brings to mind the five o'clock swill. There used to be a law that alcohol couldn't be served after six o'clock. (My great-grandfather John McCue, known as 'Victoria's most famous wowser', apparently supported these laws.) It was supposed to stop people from drinking too much, but it actually meant that just before six o'clock everyone would order heaps of alcohol and drink it really quickly, just before the pub closed. So you ended up with heaps of really drunk people out on the street at the same time. Could the lockout mean that everyone decides to travel between clubs just before lockout time? That would mean there'd be heaps of drunk people all out in the street at once.
What do you think?

Zero tolerance

A re-elected Coalition government would take control of the welfare payments of people convicted of offences involving hard drugs, Prime Minister John Howard announced today.
Mr Howard said welfare recipients convicted of offences involving heroin, cocaine or amphetamines would have their payments quarantined for an initial one-year period which could be extended in some circumstances.
(Read the whole article here.)

Sounds like a good idea.
Except it's not going to stop people from using drugs. It probably means that people will have to make more money illegally (eg. theft, drug dealing, prostitution) in order to support their addictions.
Zero tolerance doesn't stop people from using drugs. And it actually increases the harm caused by drugs. For example, if heroin was decriminalised, it wouldn't cost much, therefore not many people would have break the law in order to maintain their habit. It would also be much safer to use heroin, because people could actually know the purity of what they were using, and not have to worry about whether they're also injecting talcum powder or Special K. People would be able to inject in safe, clean places, rather than having to do it secretly in dirty laneways and squats.
I expect most voters wouldn't agree with me though. What do you think?
There is more about harm minimisation here.

Heroin in The Age

Yesterday The Age ran a number of articles about Afghanistan's heroin industry and the recent increase of heroin on Melbourne's streets:

Hammer horror - the curse of the streets returns
MELBOURNE is set to be caught up in an international tidal wave of high-purity Afghan heroin flooding world markets — with local addicts confirming the more lethal drug is already available on the city's streets.
The potential influx of Afghan heroin — produced from record opium crops flourishing in regions under Taliban rule — has sparked fears that Melbourne could once again become a destination for cheap, high-purity heroin as it was in the late 1990s.

A scourge woven into the fabric of Afghanistan
THE opium poppy symbolises the complexities and dilemmas confronting Afghanistan and its allies.
There are no easy answers in dealing with the crop that has made Afghanistan the world's largest opium producer, supplying 93 per cent of the illegal opium trade.
Opium cultivation accounts for 60 per cent of the Afghan economy and 90 per cent of its exports. More than three million people, 14 per cent of the population of 23 million, depend on it for their income.

Nothing but hits and memories
We cannot allow a repeat of the late '90s heroin scourge
Tragically, smack is coming back and drug experts such as Nick Crofts, from the Turning Point centre in Fitzroy, say we need to do some serious thinking about our treatment service. It is, he says, inadequate and struggling to cope with existing demand, let alone with what is yet to come. Says Dr Crofts: "We are working in a policy environment where the previous premier (Steve Bracks) said very clearly heroin is gone and the only problem we have now is amphetamines. Which is utterly wrong. State Government support for both medical treatment for people with addictions and the pharmaco-therapy program is pathetic."

A few days back it also mentioned Family First senator Steve Fielding's rebuke of the Labor Party for considering giving the Greens preferences, because of the Greens' harm minimisation policies:

'Outrage' at Greens preference deal
"It is absolutely outrageous to think that Kevin Rudd would want to preference the Greens, knowing their stance on drugs, free injecting rooms in streets, free heroin," Senator Fielding told ABC television...
...Senator Brown responded that the Greens' policies on drugs were for harm minimisation.
"Free heroin on the streets - that's absolutely wrong," he said.
"I'm a doctor. I hate drug addiction.
"But we've got to have sensible policies to meet it and we will make sensible policies."

(You can read the Greens' drug policy here.)

Buoyancy and 'Nothing wrong'

Last week during Mission Exposure, Ray took us to Buoyancy, a drug counselling place in Richmond. I was pretty amazed that in a lot of ways it seemed to have a similar feel to Credo and Urban Seed - except that I suppose they're professional, whereas we're nonprofessional.
Anyway, a few people from our group were a bit taken aback by the title of this little booklet that Buoyancy have put out:

(If you click on it, there's a PDF version.)
Deborah Homburg (the CEO of Buoyancy) was saying that when they start working with a new client they tell the client that there's nothing wrong with them. Some people from our group reckoned that was a bad thing to say, and that they should be telling people that things are wrong, because they're using drugs.
I think that the Buoyancy people are trying to get across that using drugs is not an unusual way of trying to cope with trauma. I think as well they're trying to get people to look at different kinds of behaviour as helpful or nonhelpful, rather than good or bad.

'Afghanistan opium crop hits new record'

There's an article in today's Age about Afghanistan's heroin industry. This article from last year is also worth reading.

Tobacco, heroin, fish oil

At about midnight a few days ago, I was heading through the laneway on my way to the Den to drop some stuff off there, and this guy asked me for a smoke. I said I didn't have any. He said he'd seen me smoking the other day, and I said he couldn't have because I hadn't smoked for ages, and he admitted that he'd just reckoned I looked like someone who'd smoked. Anyway, it turned out it was this guy me and Gin looked after for a few hours about a year ago, because he'd had too much heroin. (He liked Hillsong, so we'd been getting him to sing Hillsong stuff so that he'd stay awake.)
Once I'd convinced him I didn't have any tobacco, he said he reckoned someone was watching him. I said I couldn't see anyone. He said he heard someone move, and I said I hadn't noticed it. He asked me to keep a look out while he injected though. Once he'd finished injecting he asked me if I liked vitamins. I said I sometimes use vitamin C if I was sick or people around me are sick, and he got out this jar of fish oil pills, and asked if I wanted any. He said they were meant to be good for your brain. So we had some fish oil pills.
He said he's into Planetshakers now.

I took these pictures this morning, after cleaning the laneway:

(Our back laneway is the main place in Melbourne CBD for injecting heroin, so we try and keep it clean so that it's a bit safer. It's called harm minimisation.)

Getting punched

I often make jokes about getting punched by people, or people punching each other, but today I actually did get punched by someone. It didn't hurt much physically (last year I got punched a lot harder by someone who thought they were just being friendly, when they were drunk) but it was still quite upsetting, particularly because the person who did it refused to admit that they had punched me. I said that if he was going to punch me he'd have to leave, and he left rather than admit that he'd punched me.

People in the park

This aftenoon I was sitting under a tree in one of the parks, and this group of about seven people, about half of them goths, turned up, and sat in the middle of the grass, across the footpath from me. I recognised one of them, because he's often busking in a spot near where I live. Anyway, one of them came over and said, 'Would you like to come and join our circle? We've got cognac and European cigarettes.' I declined on the cognac and tobacco (and later marijuana), but I went and hung out with them for maybe an hour or so. (It turned out that they're part of the group of goths that I heard a lot of people complaining about at various community meetings, because there were heaps of them hanging out in one of the parks, and some people didn't like it.) Anyway, hung out with them for a bit, talking about nuclear weapons and drugs and John the Baptist and stuff.
When I was on my way back here I was thinking that it was a lot different to hanging out with people who come to lunch at Credo, in that someone from Credo wouldn't be very likely at all to offer me drugs - but I guess marijuana is practically mainstream, and heroin definitely isn't. And of course, I was just some guy hanging out in the park today, whereas in Credo I'm someone who's involved in running the place.

Rock the Casbah

I had The Clash playing pretty loudly yesterday afternoon, and there were some people injecting in the laneway, and one of them started singing, 'Rock the Casbah! Rock the Casbah!'

'DON'T DROP!'

I was just coming back from the grocers before, with stuff for tea, and as I came into the laneway there were two guys coming out, one who I recognised from hanging out with at Flinders Street steps a few nights ago, and another guy who I didn't recognise.
As I passed them, the guy who I didn't recognise yelled out, 'OI!' I stopped and turned around to look at them, and he yelled, 'DON'T DROP!'
I said, 'What?'
He said, 'DON'T O.D.!'
So he must've thought I was there to inject heroin, and that I was going to do it on my own - which is a really bad idea, because then there's no-one to get help if you overdose.

What's been going on

Haven't blogged for a while (but have been updating on how Dad is) because I've been very busy and pretty exhausted.
Dad's been recovering really quickly, so he's going to be discharged tomorrow morning, only four days after his operation.
We've been doing orientation stuff with the new residents (Dave and Stella), which is mostly training and workshops and stuff to help prepare them for the year. On Thursday we did training for responding to heroin overdoses, and the next day (Australia Day) we responded to the first overdose of the year, and people started turning up for a barbeque I'd organised, while the paramedics were trying to get this guy to take narcan!
We had my 'travelling Nana' (last year she went to Borneo, this year she's going to Vietnam and Cambodia) over for dinner.
Last night I went with Bevan to see this band Maverick play at The Stork, in Elizabeth Street. Then this afternoon I was walking through Chinatown to The Den, with Nomes and Stella, and someone yelled out something like, 'Hey, man in the orange t-shirt!' and I expected that I probably had imagined it, but then someone grabbed my arm and said, 'Hey you came and saw us last night!' I had no idea who she was for a sec (I think she had sunglasses on) and had to try and remember what I'd been doing the night before, then realised she was from the band.
Just been skating on the roof of the carpark down the street, and someone was leaning out the window of one of the buildings across the street, yelling out, 'Hi! Hi!' and waving, so I waved back.

A Scanner Darkly

Went to see A Scanner Darkly this afternoon. It's an adaptation of Phillip K. Dick's novel of the same name, filmed and then digitally converted into animation. (The director, Richard Linklater (Slacker, Dazed and Confused, School of Rock) used the same technique in Waking Life, which I wrote a fair bit about last year.)
The film set 16 years into the future, where America's War on Drugs and War on Terror have become pretty much the same thing. The protagonsit is Bob Arctor (played by Keanu Reeves), an undercover police officer who is supposed to be spying on his drug addict household, and ends up becoming an addict himself. The drug he is using, Substance D, causes the part of him that is the spy and that part of him that is the user to split, and he ends up spying on himself.
There's trailers here (Windows Media Player) and here (Quicktime), and you can watch the first twenty-three minutes for free here.

Mario

Someone did this in our laneway yesterday. Hope the neighbours don't mind. Hope Mario doesn't mind hanging out with injecting drug users.

Russell Street

Russell Street has been well known in Melbourne as a place where people deal drugs, particularly heroin. Leading up to the Commonwealth Games there was a big police crackdown on drugs in the CBD, and so the market moved out to places like Collingwood, Richmond and Footscray. Some people think that as Russell Street apparently isn't a drug market anymore at this has provided inertia for a 'clean up' of Russell Street, particularly the west side, between Bourke and Lonsdale Streets. I was at a meeting on Wednesday afternoon where there was a lot of talk about this. They were talking about stuff like getting new paving stones in (to lift morale of traders and encourage them to improve) and encouraging students to move into the upper floors above shops, because many of them are vacant. On Thursday morning I went for a bit of a walk down Russell Street to have a look around.

The Hungry Jacks in Russell Street is always open. They have a big flourescent sticker on their window saying so.


Kings Kebab is a new shop, and they have been staying open late at night, and doing the whole kerbside trading thing, meaning there's more people out in Russell Street at night. Some people reckon this has been discouraging drug dealing.


This is Bullens Lane, which is off Russell Street.

There have been a lot of problems in Bullens Lane with bad waste management and with air pollution, which is why there are so many air conditioners. Apparently it's a lot tidier and cleaner now. People have been putting up advertising posters, so people must be using the laneway, probably to get into Bar Altitude, which has recently been renovated.

It's thought that more people passing through this lane is discouraging drug dealing and using here. However, in Bullens Lane there's also evidence that the drug market hasn't been pushed out of the CBD as some people would like to think:

(There's a syringe sticking out of the paper bag in the corner.)

This is the game arcade that is seen by some as an encouragement to drug dealers.

There used to be two game arcades in Russel Street, but the other one was recently relocated.

There are a lot of Asian restaurants and Asian grocery stores in Russell Street.


This is the Exford Hotel, which is being seen as a model of what Russell Street could be. Apparently a lot of students hang out there, and they have free wireless Internet.


This is an old ViewMaster that has been embedded into a door in Russell Street.

I had a look inside, but someone had stuck pencils in the eye-holes or something. Apparently it's been there for years.

There are a lot of vacant shops in this area of Russell Street, and some people are apparently hoping they'll be leased as cafes.


I'm a bit bothered by these ideas of 'cleaning up' Russell Street. So far it doesn't seem to me as though many of the Russell Street traders are even that enthusiastic about it. It seems more like it's people in other parts of the CBD who are pushing for it, to make the rest of the city seem nice and pretty. I'm also a bit bothered by the ideas about pushing the drug market out of the CBD, because it just hides the problem away where it's less likely to be noticed.

Candy

Saturday night we went and saw Candy, an Australian film which is largely about heroin use. Was fairly upsetting. I was really glad we went and saw it though. It looks at a lot of stuff that we don't see much of here. Mostly we're just around people when they're injecting in our laneway, or they're nodding off, or when they're off the drugs. We don't see much of what goes on at home, or how they support their habits, or what it's like going through withdrawal. Often we just hear people talk about what it was like for them back when they were using.
Kahn Awkward's seen it too, and mentions his thoughts on it here.

The last two weeks

Wrote this Monday:

Had a really good break down at Phillip Island last week. Did lots of riding around the island on Karen's bike, while she was at work.
On Tuesday I rode to Cowes. On Wednesday I rode to Churchill Island (where I took the photos of the Moonah trees), and had a talk to a really old cockatoo and held a guinea pig and walked around the island. The first farm in Victoria was on Churchill Island, and my dad says he did a heap of work there when he was studying at Burnley.
On Thursday I rode across to San Remo and walked along the beach a bit. One the way back to Karen's place I tried to find Auntie Elsie's old house in Newhaven, where we used to go for holidays, but I couldn't find it.
Thursday night, after tea, we went to the Isle of Wight (the pub in Cowes). One of the locals, who was really drunk, came up to me and asked, 'You rockin'?'
I said, 'Um, dunno. What do you mean?'
'You know. You rockin'?'
'You mean, do I play rock music?'
He started nodding and said, 'Yeah!'
I said i wasn't and asked if he was. He kept nodding his head and said that if there was more rock and roll there would be no war in Iraq.
Friday morning I went to the Koala Conservation Centre and saw about eight koalas. Saw some wallabies, blue wrens and kookaburras too.

When I got back to Melbourne Friday evening my phone was almost flat, so I plugged it in to charge it. Some reason it wouldn't charge, and ended up going down to 0% power and shutting down. Then James turned up because we were supposed to be going to see The Living End, because he'd gotten free tickets from work. He decided he didn't want to go anymore though because his stomach was playing up, so I had an extra ticket. Called my brothers (my parents' number is the only Melbourne number I can remember off the top of my head and all my other numbers were in my dead phone), but they were both out. So I started stressing about what to do with the tickets. I ended up going down to the steps at Flinders Street Station and giving them to some punks so that I wouldn't have to worry about them. Then I went home and relaxed with Ned and Ray.
Got up early Saturday morning because I figured the battery of my phone must have gone so flat that it was beyond recharging, and I had to get a new one because the security codes for work were in it. The guy at the Telstra shop reckoned that it was charging, but that the whole phone was stuffed from water damage. They didn't have any spare batteries though, so I tried another shop that did, and the phone still didn't work. So I ended up getting pretty stressed out again, thinking about how I was going to have to buy another phone the next day, as well as some new shoes (I've had the ones I have now for almost two years, and my toes can stick through) and some warm clothes.
On the train to work I thought a bit about how I'd only just gotten back from my break and was already wearing myself out needlessly. Thought a bit about the origins of shabbat (sabbath) in Judaism:

And they took their journey from Elim, and all the congregation of the children of Israel came unto the wilderness of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month after their departing out of the land of Egypt.
And the whole congregation of the children of Israel murmured against Moses and against Aaron in the wilderness; and the children of Israel said unto them: 'Would that we had died by the hand of the LORD in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the flesh-pots, when we did eat bread to the full; for ye have brought us forth into this wilderness, to kill this whole assembly with hunger.'
Then said the LORD unto Moses: 'Behold, I will cause to rain bread from heaven for you; and the people shall go out and gather a day's portion every day, that I may prove them, whether they will walk in My law, or not. And it shall come to pass on the sixth day that they shall prepare that which they bring in, and it shall be twice as much as they gather daily.'
And Moses and Aaron said unto all the children of Israel: 'At even, then ye shall know that the LORD hath brought you out from the land of Egypt; and in the morning, then ye shall see the glory of the LORD; for that He hath heard your murmurings against the LORD; and what are we, that ye murmur against us?'
And Moses said: 'This shall be, when the LORD shall give you in the evening flesh to eat, and in the morning bread to the full; for that the LORD heareth your murmurings which ye murmur against Him; and what are we? your murmurings are not against us, but against the LORD.'
And Moses said unto Aaron: 'Say unto all the congregation of the children of Israel: Come near before the LORD; for He hath heard your murmurings.'
And it came to pass, as Aaron spoke unto the whole congregation of the children of Israel, that they looked toward the wilderness, and, behold, the glory of the LORD appeared in the cloud.
And the LORD spoke unto Moses, saying: 'I have heard the murmurings of the children of Israel. Speak unto them, saying: At dusk ye shall eat flesh, and in the morning ye shall be filled with bread; and ye shall know that I am the LORD your God.'
And it came to pass at even, that the quails came up, and covered the camp; and in the morning there was a layer of dew round about the camp. And when the layer of dew was gone up, behold upon the face of the wilderness a fine, scale-like thing, fine as the hoar-frost on the ground.
And when the children of Israel saw it, they said one to another: 'What is it?' - for they knew not what it was.
And Moses said unto them: 'It is the bread which the LORD hath given you to eat. This is the thing which the LORD hath commanded: Gather ye of it every man according to his eating; an omer a head, according to the number of your persons, shall ye take it, every man for them that are in his tent.'
And the children of Israel did so, and gathered some more, some less. And when they did mete it with an omer, he that gathered much had nothing over, and he that gathered little had no lack; they gathered every man according to his eating.
And Moses said unto them: 'Let no man leave of it till the morning.'
Notwithstanding they hearkened not unto Moses; but some of them left of it until the morning, and it bred worms, and rotted; and Moses was wroth with them. And they gathered it morning by morning, every man according to his eating; and as the sun waxed hot, it melted. And it came to pass that on the sixth day they gathered twice as much bread, two omers for each one; and all the rulers of the congregation came and told Moses.
And he said unto them: 'This is that which the LORD hath spoken: To-morrow is a solemn rest, a holy sabbath unto the LORD. Bake that which ye will bake, and seethe that which ye will seethe; and all that remaineth over lay up for you to be kept until the morning.'
And they laid it up till the morning, as Moses bade; and it did not rot, neither was there any worm therein.
And Moses said: 'Eat that to-day; for to-day is a sabbath unto the LORD; to-day ye shall not find it in the field. Six days ye shall gather it; but on the seventh day is the sabbath, in it there shall be none.'
And it came to pass on the seventh day, that there went out some of the people to gather, and they found none.
And the LORD said unto Moses: 'How long refuse ye to keep My commandments and My laws? See that the LORD hath given you the sabbath; therefore He giveth you on the sixth day the bread of two days; abide ye every man in his place, let no man go out of his place on the seventh day.'
So the people rested on the seventh day. And the house of Israel called the name thereof Manna; and it was like coriander seed, white; and the taste of it was like wafers made with honey.
And Moses said: 'This is the thing which the LORD hath commanded: Let an omerful of it be kept throughout your generations; that they may see the bread wherewith I fed you in the wilderness, when I brought you forth from the land of Egypt.' And Moses said unto Aaron: 'Take a jar, and put an omerful of manna therein, and lay it up before the LORD, to be kept throughout your generations.'
As the LORD commanded Moses, so Aaron laid it up before the Testimony, to be kept. And the children of Israel did eat the manna forty years, until they came to a land inhabited; they did eat the manna, until they came unto the borders of the land of Canaan. Now an omer is the tenth part of an ephah.

So was thinking about how we need to take a day off from worrying about stuff (often it's Saturday or Sunday) and decided not to worry about getting any of that stuff the next day. Also thought a bit about how the telephone companies try to make us think that we're disconnected spiritually if we aren't connected to a mobile phone network.

So I ended up spending yesterday tidying up my room, and putting up photos, and hanging leaves from the ceiling, and making prayer flags with Ray and Ali to decorate their apartment. In the evening Emma and Koos brought Jackson over because Emma was going to have her baby. So we looked after Jack, and Oscar was born at 10pm.

Wrote this very early Wednesday morning:

Today after prayers there was this guy nodding off in the laneway, and Gin asked if I could go out and keep him awake while she made him some coffee. So I went and sat with him. He was saying his ex-wife owed him money and he was really angry at her. Gin came out with the coffee and he said he'd taken a whole heap of anti-anxiety medication just before he'd injected. He kept nodding off, so we put his bike inside and got him to get up and come for a walk around the block. We had to keep steadying him, and keep him moving so that he didn't start nodding off. When we were almost back to our laneway he leant against the wall and didn't want to go any further. I think at that stage he was wanting to go and get another hit. He started nodding off again pretty bad, so we got him back up, and brought him into Credo to have a sandwich. I sat next to him on the stage and he tried to play 'Stairway to Heaven' on the Credo guitar, while I tried to make sure he kept going and didn't fall asleep. Gin made him a peanut butter sandwich and got him some cordial. After a while of sitting there with the guitar he started to nod off pretty bad again, so that we couldn't keep him awake, so we got him up again, and he decided he wanted to go to his mum's place on his bike. The chain had come loose on his bike so I helped him get it back on. He didn't seem to be in a very good state for riding though. We asked if he wanted us to try and help him find Foot Patrol (the mobile needle exchange in the CBD) to look after him. He said he did, so we headed up toward Russel Street, with him singing Hillsongs to us. When we got there it turned out he wanted to get a hit there, so he was calling his dealer on one of the public phones. The dealer wasn't going to turn up for about twenty minutes, so he went and got an ice cream and then we asked if he wanted to come back to the office and call some crisis accomodation places. We were about halfway back when he changed his mind and wanted to call his dealer again. He said goodbye and headed off around the corner, using his bike to support himself. He didn't look like he was going to get very far, so I kept an eye on him and Gin went to get Foot Patrol's phone number. The guy ended up collapsing against a wall, so I sat down and made sure he stayed awake by telling him over and over again that he was about to drop his ice cream, and had better eat it up. Gin got back and called Foot Patrol, but they were about to change shifts, so we decided to call them back later. The guy got up and started crossing the street, not looking out for cars, trying to get to a public phone. We followed him over and noticed there were some cops headed straight for him. They didn't pull him up or anything, but they were obviously keeping an eye on him. After he'd called his dealer again we told him that they were watching him, so it probably wasn't the best idea to do a deal, but he seemed to reckon they're always watching him, so it didn't make any difference. He said he was going to go down to the corner to meet the dealer and we said we didn't want to meet him, and he thanked us for hanging out with him, and said that he reckoned he was a pretty big hearted person. His speech wasn't very clear, so I thought he was pretty down and saying that he was a pretty retarded person. He headed down to the corner, and we decided to do a block and keep an eye on him until Foot Patrol could come and look out for him. When we went past him he was asking people for change for the phone. At about seven thirty we called Foot patrol and they said they'd keep an eye out for him. Then we went and met Tomsy and Naomi at the Exford. They'd been waiting since about 5:30 or something. There were B52s and Boomtown Rats and Clash videos playing. Then we went to a cheap Chinese restaurant and had some food.

It turned out that Ali ended up having to get an ambulance for the same guy later in the night. Nathan's blogged about it.