How my stance on panhandlers changed, if just for one day.

[Temp Hutter]

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There's a reason why family memebers of addicts have to be counseled almost as much as the actual addict does, it's because they think they are actually helping when they give the person a place to stay or money to buy drugs.

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Pretty big difference between giving a person a place to stay and giving him spare change. The former may prevent a person from having an important realization or taking responsibility for his own life. Even addicts still have to spend some money on food. And even if it's true that any given panhandler is statistically likely to be an addict, it still isn't your place to write them all off as hopeless.

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You're not helping addicts by giving them money, stop pretending you are. You would be helping them more by punching them in the face instead of giving them a dollar.

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You're not helping them by turning a cold shoulder. No one is forcing you to give money, and if you don't want to, then fine. But stop pretending like you are doing them a favor by ignoring their requests for help.

So many of the standard objections people have to giving money to panhandlers- "they're going to spend it on alcohol", "they don't really need it", "none of them want food", "it would just enable them"- strike me as all-too-easy rationalizations, even if some of them are not without basis in reality. It's the kind of thing people would like to believe so that they can justify ignoring the problem or evading their own responsibility.

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You are better off giving them nothing than $1 if you are pretty certain they are a drug addict/alcoholic. Better than either of these is to give them a meal if you have the time or even new shoes or a coat depending on their need. With cash an addict will forego all else and feed his addiction.

In years past I have gone as far as giving up my couch for a few nights but it was always with someone who had a desire to give up the drugs and was willing to go to AA/NA meetings etc. At the first sign of relapse they were out.