Interviewing homeless men is rich with anecdotes and stories of life experiences. One can become jaded after a few years, but every so often you get an intake that's memorable.
Joe showed up at the Mission last week after spending 2 months living on the Appalachian Trail (he's been homeless in one way or another for two years). The downturn in weather brought him in as the cold temps were becoming more than he could manage in the open-front trail shelters.
Joe is a white male in his late 30s with an engaging smile, excellent communication skills and schizophrenia. He opened the intake interview with a statement about my apparent loss of weight. I looked at him and remembered that he had be at the Mission before but I had no idea when. Joe reminded me that he was with us in 2007 for about two weeks. He said: "You must have lost 25 lbs...but you look good!". I agreed that I had lost that exact amount after taking up bicycling. He also wanted to know if I still rode motorcycles and I told him the long saga of giving up the passion for the open road at 80 MPH after my aging eyes weren't providing the depth perception and peripheral vision needed for sport bike riding.
I asked the standard intake questions about income, jobs, family members and medical issues and he was quite normal with all responses. When I ventured into the immediate cause of his current homelessness his normal responses took a different turn. Seems Joe has been followed these last few years by six witches and a warlock. They follow him everywhere and sabotage his efforts for a normal life. Asked if these witches were in the area or had followed him here, he answered that he left the Appalachian Trail in the middle of a cloudless night and he was sure it would take them some time to find him.
Probing deeper, I asked if Joe was taking any medication and he shared that he hadn't taken any meds for two years to avoid the feeling of being out of control with his functions. This is a common complaint with many men taking prescribed psych meds. The medication helps eliminate the voices but the client feels out of touch with the world around him. Better to have the voices and actually feel what's going on around them than to be voice-free and numb.
I asked Joe about the "witches" and why they would be following him. He related that he was a "fallen man" and the witches were a testament to his fallen nature. Whoa, have some serious work to do here.
Interviewing homeless guys is probably one of the most fascinating parts of my job. Not to say that I have answers for the myriad of social service problems that surround these men but the rich texture of life experiences gives me pause. Consider Joe; he remembers things about me that he observed four years ago and is able to discern my appearance and lifestyle while battling inner voices, and to him, physical beings bent on doing him harm.
We're going to try to have Joe see one of the psychiatrists that align themselves to the Mission to see if there are different meds available to allow him to function without the side effects. I'm not confident in the outcome.
