SO!

Nothing new and exciting to report. However, I did go to the
Calgary drop-in centre today. What a scary, sketchy place.
I absolutely advise everyone to NEVER be homeless. We were there
as part of our psychiatric nursing practicum. You can certainly
see the mental issues these folks have in vivid technicolour.

It is a five story building, the roughest floor being one, and the
nicest being the fifth floor. The first floor is literally a
drunk tank. At 9:00 pm they open the doors to drunk and high
peoples. They herd them into a large room, close the doors…and
watch the sparks fly. Violence and craziness abound!
Apparently it’s the most stressful and dangerous place in the centre.

On the second floor is a common area with a giant kitchen that feeds
1000 people per meal. There were people yelling to something
invisible, people fighting, people throwing up, and people shouting
profanities.

On the third floor, row upon row upon row of mattresses. This is
where people go if they aren’t to violent or high or drunk. Going
up from there, the floors get nicer, and become more
transitional….with the purpose of getting people back into the
“contributing member of society” mode.

Anyway, I expected it to be a lot nicer than what I imagined. I
expected the people to be calmer than I imagined. I expected that
my imagination all these years had run away with me and that it wasn’t
as bad as I thought….

It was much worse….

A definite horror…