Philadelphia — “Angie” didn’t think she’d ever get into drugs. Then tragedy struck and she lost control. Over the span of seven minutes inside a homeless shelter in late January, this twentysomething woman tells me the story of how her life turned upside down here in this godforsaken neighborhood of Kensington, the heart of Philadelphia’s open-air drug market.
“Once I lost my mama and my grandmama I came down to Kensington because I was hearing so much stuff about it. Kensington this, Kensington that,” she says. Crack cocaine was the tipping point. “Once I started that, it was just over.” Then came dope and dippers, street slang for marijuana joints and cigarettes doused in PCP or embalming fluid. “I was doing every f***ing drug.”
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