[DoreenMichele]

No. Addiction is rooted in the same intractable personal problems that lead to homelessness.

People on the street are often using street drugs in place of prescription medication, sometimes by preference because, for example, they have a psych diagnosis and street drugs have preferable side effects to the medication they are supposed to be on.

I knew a bipolar man somewhat well who was homeless. He smoked marijuana in preference to the prescription drugs he refused to take. He was unemployable due to his undamaged mental health issue, not because he toked. Toking was just how he got by. He wouldn't have been more functional without pot. He likely would have been less functional.

We still don't have a slam dunk cure for most mental health issues. As long as this remains true, it is problematic to act like addiction is not merely a side effect of the problem and, instead, to pretend it somehow causes the problems an individual has.

Saying addiction is the problem is a little like blaming chemotherapy for ruining someone's life and not acknowledging the underlying cancer as a problem.

[gaahrdner]

I didn't say addiction is the problem, I said it was a major cause of homelessness, so I don't really understand the downvotes.

The National Coalition on Homelessness seems to agree, citing "A 2008 survey by the United States Conference of Mayors asked 25 cities for their top three causes of homelessness. Substance abuse was the single largest cause of homelessness for single adults (reported by 68% of cities). Substance abuse was also mentioned by 12% of cities as one of the top three causes of homelessness for families. According to Didenko and Pankratz (2007), two-thirds of homeless people report that drugs and/or alcohol were a major reason for their becoming homeless."

The American Public Health Association as well states, "On an individual level, persons who have a problem with alcohol and/or other drugs, and who are in marginal economic circumstances, are at especially high risk for homelessness."[1]

The road to addiction is complex, and yes mental health treatment should absolutely be better in the United States, but to claim that addiction is not a risk factor to homelessness is disingenuous.

[0] http://www.nationalhomeless.org/factsheets/addiction.pdf [1] https://www.apha.org/policies-and-advocacy/public-health-pol...

[DoreenMichele]

I was homeless for nearly six years. I did no drugs, but I had the myriad underlying personal problems that so frequently lead to drug use.

What I'm trying to tell you is people blame drug use when it is really more like a symptom than a cause. It's like saying "The pain killers did it."

The conclusion winds up being that if people wouldn't do drugs, their lives would work. The reality is more like if their lives worked, they wouldn't do drugs.

Again, it's like saying "Chemotherapy causes homelessness!" because some folks on the street are having a medical crisis. If you just stopped chemo cold, it wouldn't get them off the street and now their cancer is going unchecked.

There are things you can do that help, like improve the crappy American health care system. But "Just don't do chemo" isn't an answer but that's exactly how substance abuse gets addressed.

Think of it this way: Most people on the street are male. No one goes around saying in all seriousness "Just don't be male. Problem solved!"