For homeless on heroin, treatment can be elusive with no ID
PHILADELPHIA — Nearly two decades of using heroin and a year of living on the streets of Philadelphia had led Steven Kemp to a simple conclusion: It was time to get sober. But when he staggered into a detox facility on a recent Friday night, his head brimming with the thought that suicide would end the pain, he was told he couldn’t be admitted because he didn’t have a photo ID.
Kemp said he was turned away from the hospital and spent the night stealing enough small items to trade for a handful of Xanax. He swallowed the pills, cooked up some heroin and injected the drug into his arm with the intention of killing himself.
“If somebody goes in and says ‘I need help,’ they should get it,” said Kemp, 35. “I understand people have to get paid but you’re supposed to be a health professional, you took an oath.”
As the nation’s heroin and painkiller epidemic rages, small but vulnerable populations of homeless people are sometimes turned away from the nation’s already-threadbare system of drug treatment centres because they do not have valid photo identification.