The Paradox of Being Young without a Future

The presence of drug addicted among the homeless is a recent phenomena in many countries and it is always increasing. It is the most relevant sociological transformation in the world of the street which has happened in the last few years, with more incidents than the statistics let know, due to the difficulty to "investigate" this word.

With respect to the old clochards, these are young people with different life habits and behaviours. They either do not sleep in cardboard and do not dress old clothes; they do not frequent usual assistance services for the homeless, also because not welcome there. Finally, they do not recognize themselves in the homeless people, from whom they continually differentiate. On the contrary, sometimes, because of drug abuse, their conditions deteriorate to such a point, that they are not different from the others on the street. We often encounter young drug dependant HIV-positive or AIDS affected, who have not found assistance in public structures not even during the time of the hospital discharge. This fact makes their difficult plight harder.

The mortality rate is very high, due to overdoses or due to the use of badly cut drugs. Sometimes we imagine that these are a kind of suicides due to loneliness and desperation.