The Viennese Karlsplatz is a place of dead for Irene Köhler. Even today. In early nineties, she experienced misery of drug scene. She saw young people vegetate, y reanimated junkies in bushes and in sprawling subway passages. Many died under ir hands. The pictures still accompany 50-year-old today when she comes here.
Meanwhile, drug deaths in Vienna's inner city are no longer part of everyday life. And this is not least Irene Köhler's merit. Hardly anyone has looked more often into abysses of ors than native of Lower Austria. At Charles Square, n mid-twenties built first point of contact for drug-sufferers. For several decades she has accompanied addicts, has come as close to m as hardly anyone, has seen countless of m die. Köhler knows many faces of addiction, she knows what makes dependence on people.
The elegant, tall woman seems to be selfish in stories of people. Köhler wants to look into every opposite, where it hurts. Why do you volunteer?
Köhler sits in her office of Austrian Committee for Social Work in Fifth District of Vienna. "This is an incredible portion of life experience," says managing director of social policy organization in a calm voice. Drug addiction, lean or shopping are same symptom for you. There is a biography behind every destiny. Behind every low point Köhler sees a logical justification. Like a programmer, she decrypts code for code. They often imagined what it would be like to sit on or side. And that was also enriching for her own life, she says.
To find solutions, she travelled to New York, Boston, Amsterdam, Berlin or Toronto. As one of first, Köhler believed that it was necessary to help drug addicts instead of punishing m. A paradigm shift that no one would ever question in EU drug policy. At that time it was a taboo.
This article dates back to time No. 04/2018. Here you can read entire output.In New York she cared for heroin and crack addicted children and teenagers. It was her first job in social welfare. Sixteen dollars a week, dinner and food. The young student had come to famous Covenant House as a volunteer, an assistant for young homeless people, after hearing a Franciscan far's lecture in Vienna.
The streets were full of war veterans and dealers. At Port Authority, Manhattan's largest bus station, thousands of people from all over state fled to city every day. Murderers, petty criminals, rapists, cult followers, many landed at young student from Austria. On so-called special needs floor she accompanied AIDS sufferers on death day after day.
Date Of Update: 23 January 2018, 12:02
