General practice at the margins: a student's experience of homelessness

Abstract

There is an awkward silence as I close the door to a small, windowless room and ask Steven to take a seat. Sitting forward with elbows propped on his knees and hands clasped, he rocks slightly in anticipation, looking me over, perhaps waiting for me to judge. I smile and ask how he's doing today. He sits back in the chair, crosses his legs and tells me his story. Steven is 29 years old and a recovering intravenous drug user. He is currently on probation and struggling to find stable accommodation. He is just one of the many thousands of people in the UK who will find themselves homeless this winter. I ask him to describe how he came to be here today. When he was 9 years old, Steven was sexually abused and with little support from family or friends his school life began to deteriorate. He turned to cannabis in order to ‘numb the anxiety and torment of it all’. Following expulsion from school, he associated himself with a local gang, slipping into harder drugs and petty crime. For Steven, it was the dealers who perpetuated this familiar cycle: ‘They manipulate their clients by claiming they have no cannabis but offer cocaine at a cheaper price instead. They'd then offer heroin to calm you from your high and once hooked, they'd crank up the prices.’ Soon Steven began stealing to fund his habit and at 16 years of age, he was given a custodial sentence. With little support on his release, he was forced to ‘skipper’ (sleep rough or flit from place to place in order to fnd a bed for the night) the homeless scene, an environment that fuelled his addictions. Thus a depressingly mundane …