[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!"