My shit wasn't trash. My shit was not trash.

What's going on? Nothing. Okay. I mean, are you moving those guys, or you just got to clean the sidewalk or what? We're moving. Okay. I'm just curious. I used to be right here, too.

Brian was on the streets of San Francisco for three years between 2020 and 2023.

Mama, you want a cigarette? Sorry, Mama. You'll be all right. I guess they were probably visibly smoking Fetty on the street. But they send you mixed messages because one day they'll cruise right by, and the next day they will take you to lockup.

There's someone actually doing fentanyl right there.

Oh, yeah. You're going to see that. You saw the 10 policemen were right over there. People smoke Fenty Fentanyl on crowded trains.

You know what I'm saying?

People don't give a shit.

Over the last few years, fentanyl addiction in San Francisco has been likened to a death sentence.

Right here. Right here.

Fentanyl. We have had more overdose deaths in one year at one point than we did of COVID deaths in our city. All right, brother.

All right, all right. Brian was in a small pocket of the city called the Tenderloy. So many people overdosed here that a state of emergency was declared in 2021. Have you seen a picture of yourself from that time?

Wow, that's so crazy. I look like I'm 100 years old.

He very nearly died. Cities like San Francisco are where young Americans who are horribly addicted to opioids often end up. This is one account of what life is like on streets.

I grew up in Tampa. That was where I was formed as a person, which was definitely via skateboarding. I was a user of various opiates since I was a teenager. When I was in high school, OxyContin was wildly... I could probably get OxyContin easier than I could get beer. It was wildly available. I could buy it at school.

He says his addiction slowly got worse. Pills, then heroine, then fentanyl. After spending time in prison for a drug charge, he moved to San Francisco. He slept on friends' sofas.

I didn't even know, coming out here, how rampant it was and how affordable it was. It was very cheap here. I'd go on a run where I'd smoke fentanyl and crystal meth for three days straight and just running around the streets not sleeping, just skating around. Then I'd pop back up and crash on a friend's couch and shower and get my shit together a little bit and then go back out and do it again. I would imagine I was not welcome anymore, but I just stopped coming around because I didn't have any good news.

For a year, I didn't go to sleep on purpose. Where I fell is where I slept after being awake for four days. So I would wake up just laying on the bricks at CivicCenter in the morning, like that, just flat on the ground. It wasn't uncommon. I always wondered, why don't you go and get undercover or something? And it's because you're just exhausted. You're just sheer exhaustion, and you lay where you fall. I've been there. Been there plenty of times. Here, let's see if we can go in the church. Yeah, there's definitely people here. In mornings, you can sleep in here, in the pews, which I would do often. Many mornings. There's definitely people in there now.

But yeah, somewhere dry and warm.

Excedingly warm.

But yeah, they're open 6:00 AM to 2:30. It's an all-encompassing desire. It's a 24-hour a day job. All you're doing is acquiring money to make sure you still have dope.

Because even when you run out, obviously, withdrawals are looming.

They're They're going to come in a matter of hours. And it feels very bad. It's like the worst flu you've ever had, the worst hangover you've ever had. You just feel poisoned. You have zero energy. Getting out of bed is a daunting prospect. I was a booster. So what I would do is I would go to a store and I would steal shit. There was a time period when the stealing was so rampant in the city and surrounding Bay Area that they That's how to just let you do your thing.

Another brazen theft caught on camera out of San Francisco Walgreens. Target is cutting its hours at its stores in San Francisco after a spike in thefts. It's a crime that's becoming all too common here in the Bay Area. Over and over and over again. Robberies not being done under cloak and dagger, but in broad daylight.

Yeah, I don't know. I tried to not make anybody's life harder, even at my worst. But obviously, I know there's stealing from a company still affects somebody's life down the line in the grand scheme of things. I could just understand how you could be driven to stuff like that.

This was a period when authorities were widely criticized for not doing enough to tackle crime in and around the Tenderloin. Speaking to the BBC, it was something the city's attorney general denied at the time.

We don't have any policy whatsoever that suggests non-prosecution of shoplifting. The overwhelming majority of cases police bring us, nearly 90% are prosecuted.

Yet Brian talks of streets that felt lawless.

This is the Tenderloin police station. It's pretty much at the heart of the TL. I used to sit right there on that ledge and smoke fentanyl all night.

I would say-Right by the police station?

In front on the police station's property.

Brian was just about surviving, but death was never far away.

There was one time we were sitting on a ledge smoking dope like me and a few guys near the drug dealer spot. And there was a guy laying down on the ground, watching him, but he wasn't moving. But people were laying on the ground, sleeping all over the place in that area. And then Somebody went over to him and he was dead. He was laying there on the side of the road, a pretty busy one block from market by the federal building, on the sidewalk of the federal building. There was a dead body sitting for hours. And that's just regular Tuesday It was a Sunday morning or whatever.

Brian had no phone, no ID, nothing. His mom filed a missing person's report.

For a time, she definitely thought I was dead. All my friends did, too. They had at least accepted that It was a real possibility.

After finding out he was alive and in San Francisco, his mom and her partner searched the city for him.

They just came out and they went to this place called Glide that gives out meals. I'm never there at that time, but I happened to be there with my buddy on a fluke, and I ran into my folks. They found me. She was definitely trying to not cry the whole time. She was trying to put on a brave face to keep it together.

Chained to his addiction, though, Brian wouldn't leave.

You're embarrassed about it. You got to face the music. And plus, just as time grew, it was that much harder to contact her and be like, Sorry. That's definitely the thing that I feel the most regret about was making my mom and my family and friends worry. I feel terrible about it.

In 2022, Brian's feet were starting to get more and more swollen, a common problem for fentanyl users. He walked with a limp.

I had cellulitis, which is a cellular infection in my legs due to poor circulation, and I would stand. I wouldn't lay down for many days at a time. So your circulation gets messed up and your legs, the toxins never drain. When you lay down, they drain and your kidney processes them. That wouldn't happen. So then you get sores on your legs.

By the middle of 2022, Brian could barely walk. There's very few pictures of him from this time, but he was caught briefly in this news piece. He eventually had to start using a wheelchair. By pure coincidence, we bumped into an old friend.

Good to see you, brother. How you been? How you doing, doggy?

I've known you for years, but you've definitely seen me at my worst, for sure. You pushed me around in a wheelchair.

I didn't know that, really. Oh, yeah. You used to push Brian around in a wheelchair.

In a wheelchair, yeah. And Gladly, too, because he was like, Oh, we need to get around. And it's like, on here, you want to be with somebody. It's like a- Sorry.

Yeah, they call it a road dog, somebody to run with, to watch your back, and also just companionship.

It's Is your leg okay? It's like wax?

Oh, yeah, I don't know what that's called. Yeah, I see.

That's what happens. It's weeping wounds. So you got to change the dressing all the time. You already know. It sucks. That's how mine were, but I was probably worse.

Six months ago, Brian's legs became skeptic.

It feels bad. You were racked with pain and you just feel poisoned. The sepsis, I felt so bad. I could barely eat. I probably weighed I was 120 pounds, probably less, which is very... I was like, skeletal. I was laying in the Bart station unresponsive, apparently, in the chair. And somebody checked on me. Probably hundreds of people walked by and were like, whatever. And somebody had the wearwithal to check on me and was like, This dude's unresponsive. So they called 911. I had pulmonary embolisms. I had blood clots in both legs. I still have a blood filter in my hip that they had to put in. It was like real hit or miss. They thought I was going to die a few times. Need some rails, boy.

Brian did survive, though, and says the experience changed him. He's been clean for near a year now. He's hoping he'll be able to skate when he gets off his crutches.

You definitely regain or even grow a greater appreciation for little small pleasures, like the sound of skateboard wheels on the concrete or the sound of rain. You can stop and smell the roses again rather than just... I couldn't enjoy anything if it wasn't... Fentanyl was the first concern. Nobody's happy out there. I mean, it's always been rough, but it's worse than it's ever been. I see guys I know and they look bad. They're not having a good time. They're just slogging through.

Brian could consider himself lucky. During the period that he was on the streets, from November 2020 to April 2023, 1,683 people died in San Francisco due to a drugs overdose, most of them from synthetic opioids like Fentanyl..