An Inclusive Litany

10/21/96

If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere, and one New Yorker has found a particularly unusual way to make a living. "Joseph," a methadone addict who might be found in the Madison Square area on 23rd Street around the Flatiron Building, has for four years sold his urine to heroin addicts who need methadone-laced, but otherwise drug-free, urine samples to pass weekly drug tests at methadone clinics. His buyers include recovering addicts who lapse into drug use sometimes, taking Valium, Xanax, Klonopin or even crack cocaine, but who don't want to wind up in rehab.

The New York Observer quotes Joseph: "Once people found out that I didn't take pills, the people here in the park says, Hey, we know that you're clean, so could you sell me some of your urine? ... I do smoke weed, O.K., and weed is against the rules, but the programs are too cheap to test for it. Anyway, I said, sure, no problem. But I was kind of shocked by the aspect of selling someone's bodily fluids."