Regarding the closure of the Warm Zone:
When I began volunteering as a hairstylist as well as an artist in residence at the Warm Zone, it was with compassion, but I also wanted to satisfy a curiosity.
It is now three years later, and I’ve discovered a deeper level of understanding and compassion.
Many times I’ve heard people ask, “Why don’t they just choose to get off of drugs?”
That question misses the core reason for why the problem exists in the first place. If I had been faced with the traumas that many of my friends at the Warm Zone have faced, I doubt that I would be as resilient as they are.
Many have survived horrific abuses as children. The Warm Zone has taught me how wrong it is to be judgmental.
If getting off drugs were a simple matter of free will, or flipping a switch on or off, we’d see a very different success rate. Don’t think that these people haven’t tried, many times over, to get clean.
Addressing the issue of harm reduction: This needs to be clarified, since there are people who believe that the Warm Zone is a place where people go to inject themselves. This is not allowed at the Warm Zone. But it is a place of refuge, and women can come in when they’re high and in a very vulnerable state.
When addicts don’t have clean needles, they share. When they share, they spread infection and disease among themselves. The Warm Zone provides clean needles and collects used needles. This helps protect users as well as the public from infections and disease.
One never gives up hope that a person will find success in staying clean, but first and foremost, they need to be free of infections. The cost-saving aspect of this is another letter.
When I walk in, I see a surreal combination of life-preserving activities, like someone making an overdue phone call to her children, getting a clean pair of socks, having a shower or doing laundry. Things I take for granted, but for many street entrenched women, these are moments of a “normal” they don’t have. Moments that show that the possibility of a better life is still available to them.
Please, as a community, let’s work together to keep the Warm Zone open,
Linda Klippenstein