A Man Named Tommy

By: Kyle Culver

At around 5:30 PM on this day, April 13th 2008, I had the good fortune of meeting someone new.
The man I met told me his name was Tommy.
His real name is Thomas Jou.

Thomas is homeless. His former hometown is Houston, Texas. His father is one of those heartwarming came-to-America-and-succeeded stories. Tommy’s father is an Iranian engineer of some lucrative (highly technical) sort. Tommy told me he hasn't talked to his dad in at least 4 years. Nor has he talked to his mother, who still apparently resides around Houston.

Thomas lives here in Albuquerque with us. Anytime you feel the desire to see how he’s doing -- you can, simply by heading down toward the UNM main campus. Once you’re there, go west on Central and look for him. He’ll be somewhere with all the other homeless people who occupy the area underneath the bridge near the Central Avenue Railroad crossing. (Or whatever the real name is for that little bridge area everyone honks under near First St. & Central.)

Tommy came here from Houston with the hopes of finding a new home, getting a fresh start. These are the exact same hopes and thoughts many of our citizens thought when they relocated to our beautiful city. Unfortunately, in Tommy's case, he also never experimented with heroin before moving here.

I feel like I can't overstate this enough.
He could really use -your- help. Tommy needs -your- time. If you continue to read, you’ll see that he's waited his time, he's paid his dues. It’s his turn for a little good fortunate to fall his way for once. It's time for his life to improve.

It's time to stop the cycle of addiction, and it's time to help this man heal.

Yes: he is homeless. Yes, there is a reason for why he is currently homeless. Tommy suffers from a drug addiction. Tommy’s addiction is to heroin.
In case you’re already wondering: yes, he has tried to quit the drug in the past.

Knowing that, I asked him: “Do you feel like you gave it all your effort when you tried to quit last time?” His response was that he didn't try to quit with all the force he could possibly muster. He also told me that he now knows that he was mistaken to have ever thought that trying heroin would lead to anything but utter devastation. He told me that he can look back to just a few years ago, before he moved to Albuquerque, and he can remember what it was like to not be addicted.

He knows now how horribly addictive of a drug it is, now that he's addicted to it. To say that heroin is the most addictive substance known to man may seem like common knowledge, but where I grew up it was very common for young adults to experiment with every drug, including heroin.

I have to let you know though, despite all his flaws, I admire Tommy a great deal. I respect him so much for what he shared with me. I feel like he has an indomitable spirit because through all of his hardship, he remains faithful to God. He remains hopeful that things will get better for him. Even though he couldn't beat his addiction to heroin with all of his might last time; he thinks this time might be different.
I think it could be too, if he gets the right kind of help.

Thomas just got out of jail two weeks ago. He had to serve approximately 30 days for a total of 4 panhandling tickets that he acquired in rapid succession.

Yes: he asked you for money and food. He then went on to use the money for drugs because he is addicted. In the world of addiction, Tommy needs heroin everyday just to feel "okay". He tells me that he uses the drug for completely different reasons than any other drug he has ever done. In the past it was recreational for him; he did drugs for fun. Now everyday that he wakes up he is immediately sick and in pain until he can scrape together 20$ for a fix.
In his mind, he needs that drug more than anything else in the world.

When I gave Tommy 4$ for some Wendy's, he opened up to me, and he educated me about how it is to be addicted to heroin.
He told me how bad the physical pain is when you go any amount of time without heroin in your system. He told me about how hard it is to be a "functional" heroin user.
I told him I understood, and that it is hard to be a functional human being when you are that addicted to any substance.


Try to imagine, for a second, anyone you know as a heroin addict.
Try to imagine the next person you meet as being someone who shoots heroin into their arm every night when they go home. You'll probably see your local supermarket, your local McDonalds, your local everything - in a whole new way.


The saddest part of listening to Thomas’s story isn’t any of that.

The worst part of his story, the part that gets me up in arms is this:
He's been in jail for one sole reason --
panhandling.

According to him, he has never been arrested for possessing drugs. He was never incarcerated for being aggressive. He never robbed someone when he needed a fix. Even though he never did, I'm sure someone who was addicted to heroin has.
He didn't hurt anyone. He didn't kill anyone.

He never did any of those things, but he had to suffer in the loneliness, isolation, and boredom that is a prison cell regardless.

I would argue that the only difference between myself and Thomas is that I'm not addicted to heroin.

The only reason I'm not addicted to heroin is because I've never tried it. Hopefully I never will.

I try not to pass judgment upon Thomas, but I can’t help it. I feel like he is such a good person at his core. I feel like he is: as smart as I am, as good-looking, as reasonable, as tolerant, and as loving as I am.
I feel like he has a lot of potential, in much the same way I feel like I do in the future. I see myself in him, and I think he saw himself in me as we talked about the state of affairs we find ourselves living in.

I can only hope to convey how great of man he seemed to me to be, when I finally saw past his addiction. The good news is that with a little help and a lot of effort on his behalf; he still could become highly successful one day.


Thomas is 30 years old now. He's not a kid anymore. He's in what I would describe as the "prime" of his adult life. He's at the age where people start to settle down in their lives and occupy their niche. “Normal” people, those of us who don’t have such terrible addictions, start to get married usually by this age. Some of us are lucky enough to have kids, purchase a home, and become productive members of society by the time we’re 30.


But instead of doing those things, Thomas wakes up everyday -- needing a fix.
Thomas feels pain, every moment of everyday that he's not high on heroin.
Thomas used to use other drugs too. But guess what? None of those even compare to heroin for him anymore. It's in a league of its own. If you’re like me and you didn’t understand how addictive and lethal it can be --
please go see the film: Requiem For A Dream.

Rent it, borrow it, try to find clips of it on the internet if you have to. Short glimpses of the movie can be seen on websites like YouTube.



Requiem For A Dream will probably change your life. It will probably alter your viewpoints. Hopefully, it will teach you a little bit about addiction & drugs along the way.
Be prepared; do not take the film's message lightly.

Drugs are a debilitating and destructive force in our world. While our perceptions of drugs are accurate in a lot of ways, unfortunately, our government’s policies regarding them don’t always reflect that knowledge.

Ultimately, rather than acknowledge that we have a nation with a problem -- we've convinced ourselves that by making drug busts and throwing drug users in jail that we're cutting off the problem at its source.

Newsflash: We aren't doing anything close to stopping the problem. We certainly aren’t cutting off the source. Drugs are still a rampant problem. They aren’t going away anytime soon. It’s one of those terrible afflictions with an outlook so bleak that when I look at the future I can only hope that it doesn’t get any worse.

Here’s the secret we may have missed:
Drugs aren't the source of the drug problem.
Society, healthcare, people, addiction -- these are the true sources of the drug problem in America.

Millions of Americans struggle with their addictions, and I'm sure thousands if not millions struggle with heroin specifically.
These people need our help. We're clearly either not giving them enough help, or we’re going about the entire problem all wrong.



Thomas told me that he once spent 65 days in our prison system(again, right here in Albuquerque) after an appearance before a particularly vindictive judge regarding his panhandling. So now he’s wasted nearly 3 months of his life in jail -- because he couldn't pay the 50$ bond he was given for… not having any money and having to resort to asking strangers for money in the first place?

This does not make sense. This is atrocious. This is wrong. This needs to change. People in our government and people in our community need to help this man, and they should have been able to help him a long time ago.

If you feel like this isn't something that's unsolvable, if you recognize that this is a problem that we can fix as a society, as a nation -- then please keep reading.

I feel like it is our duty to help our fellow Americans. Do everything you can; expect nothing in return.
Try your hardest to do anything you can to help your fellow United States citizens.
Help your neighbors. Listen to them. Tolerate them. Accept them. Become a part of your community, and become a part of the solution to the problems that I refuse to let us ignore any longer.

If you are able to: try to take the less fortunate into your home. If you aren’t comfortable with that, please buy them food. If you have no money to give, try to listen to them and give them someone to talk to. Please try to do anything you can to help them; they so desperately need it.

I have realized that I can't do this all on my own anymore.
Everything you can give helps people like Thomas. Everything you can give helps people like me.

In an attempt to sum up my experience in meeting him:
a meal at Wendy’s on Central by UNM: 4$
a drink at the 7-11 right next to it: 1$
Sharing a human experience and helping a man who is down on his luck: priceless.

I have written these words to incite change, to spread awareness. Please help if you can!