Stories from the Streets: ‘I’ve been using drugs since I was 10’: Faron’s Story

Over the past six months, 650 CKOM senior reporter Lara Fominoff spent time with several people who are homeless, or recently considered themselves homeless. Each of their stories and experiences is unique.
 
In Part 3 of our four-part series “Stories from the Streets,” we meet Faron Cheyenne Longman, who has been without a home for three years.

Faron Cheyenne Longman leaned against the front desk in the front lobby of the former Emergency Wellness Centre in downtown Saskatoon and talked to the front lobby receptionist.

She mentioned how she’d just come back from an Elizabeth Fry Society meeting where she was taking part in a sharing circle for women facing incarceration.

Longman’s life has been plagued by years spent in jail, and a meth addiction. She said she’d spent more than a decade behind bars. During an interview in September, she was facing even more jail time.

As the interview began, she explained that everyone who talked to her had to speak up because she was nearly deaf.

“I’ve been homeless for three years now,” she said, as she spelled out her first, middle and last name.

She’d been staying at the EWC for two months after she was kicked out of the home where she was staying.

“I’ve been using drugs since I was 10. I used to steal them from my parents,” she revealed. “I just have that addictive personality … stealing money so I could go buy weed every single day.”

READ MORE:

• Part 1: Kaylene’s Story
• Part 2: A day in the life of Michael Bourgouin

At the age of 15, Longman gave birth to a girl, which she described as a frightening experience.

“She’s 20 now and she’s going through a really, really hard time. Me being homeless doesn’t make that any better. She has her dad, but she needs me,” said Longman.

Longman didn’t say how many children she had, but admitted they had all been taken away from her in part because of her addiction to meth, and her criminal record. I asked her how old she was.

“Can I tell you the truth? I don’t know how old I am. I’m  born in 1986. How old would that make me?” she asked.

Longman spent a significant amount of time in jail. As of September, she had around a dozen convictions to her name, some of them for violent offences. Two of those convictions included guilty pleas in 2020 for two counts of assaulting a peace officer — she spat in their faces three months after the COVID-19 pandemic began, and told them she was infected with the virus.

“So I’ve spent most of the last 10 years incarcerated,” she said. “This is the longest I’ve ever been out since my son was born nine months ago.”

She was facing additional charges at the time as well.

“I picked up a charge a couple of months ago. I’m going to fight it. I was just with someone when they got caught boosting,” she laughed.

Longman didn’t shy away from her struggles. She said what kept her going every day, what motivated her, was her need for drugs.

“I’ve never been to rehab. I’ve never been to treatment,” she said. “But I’m getting better because I’m on my anti-depressants and my anti-psychotics. I’m in an environment like this where I can just talk to somebody.

“I really appreciate that they don’t hound you here,” she added. “They’re just friendly people, just doing their job.”

Longman’s independence was important to her at the EWC. She noted that to remain there, she had to stay sober. But years of crystal meth use had taken a toll on her body.

“I have dentures … or I had them and I lost them,” she said. “Oh my God, I lost them. I was really messed up on crystal meth and I had them in my bag and … there was this girl and I was like, ‘Watch my bag for me, OK?’

“That bitch was toothless too! And she stole my teeth! I seen (sic) my teeth in her mouth! What am I supposed to say? ‘Hey, give me my effin’ teeth?’ It’s my fault for leaving my bag.”

Wanting to get high was never far from her mind.

“The biggest, biggest, biggest thing in our society — in this homeless society — that is bringing them down is crystal meth. It’s destroying people. It’s making them something else,” she said.

“It just makes you feel awake. It’s a false feeling of making you feel like you are Superman for a bit. You crave it, you crave it, you crave it, you want more.”

At the time, Longman’s hope was, at some point, to finally have a place she could call home.

“Sometimes it’s just scary — especially when you have no place to go,” she said.

Since our interview, Longman has left the EWC. It’s not clear where she is now.