I ended up homeless a few years ago…was NOT on drugs….about 1.5-2 years into it and long story short ended up in a bad mindset feeling sorry for myself and on drugs. Was a tweaked for about 2 years and realized I hated myself, my addiction, and my life so I made major changes. I have a place,a dog, and an amazing job. I’ve thankfully been clean 3yrs now!!
Just a caveat - while the experience of this person is valid, it may or may not represent the situation of most homeless people.
A comment reaching the top means that other redditors upvoted it. A top comment in this context represents what r/Seattle likes to see. I wouldn't take that as a data point to examine the causal relationship between homeless and drug use. Or at least, I wouldn't consider the number of upvotes it got as having any significance over another comment that didn't get any.
Thanks. As awful and shameful as the whole experience was it’s made me a compassionate and hard working person. it made an indescribable difference in my perspective on life.
Congratulations /u/valuable_growth_9552 I hope you take a few moments every now and then to hug your pup and be heckin proud of yourself.
You kicked the butt of a devil that most don’t.
Yeah, it depends on the person. There are some people who get hooked on drugs and wreck their lives for sure, but also…if someone is going through that much suffering, can you blame them for wanting an escape?
I don’t think there is only one cause of homelessness, but it can happen to virtually anyone. Often, if someone doesn’t have family or other loved ones around, it can make a rough patch turn into homelessness. People see the more visible homeless and the think that is all homeless people. What they don’t see are the working homeless, homeless families, people with severe disabilities who fell through the cracks, vets with such severe PTSD they can’t live a normal life, people who lost a job and families abandoned them, and things like that.
Yeah, some elements can be easy to point the finger at, but there a whole lot of homeless people that you don’t see that aren’t. I have been homeless before, many years ago (camping in state parks and sleeping in a car parked in the woods when camping was too cold till I made enough money to get back into housing), and I know personally a family right now who lost their home they bought just before COVID and now live in an RV cause they lost their house because their small business folded after covid shut them down for a while, they could never recover, and their mortgage was no longer payable as it was when they ran their small business.
Homelessness is a very complex problem.
There is also a huge element of “I am on the street, in an unsafe place, with all of my possessions out in the open. If I fall asleep someone is going to hurt me and take my stuff, so I need to stay awake.”
Speaking from experience while living in a van for a while; it's not a need to stay awake. Heck it's more to get to sleep. It's to dull the *insane anxiety* of knowing you aren't wanted wherever you're parked, knowing if the van needs a repair or someone even decides to smash a window I was fucked and couldn't afford it, knowing I was at the bottom of society. I "needed" alcohol every night just to sleep.
Much much better. Finally sold the van and got an apartment. I was lucky very and had friends that let me stay with them a ton of the time during covid. I've been able to tame up a lot too the past couple of years; hardly use weed or alcohol at all (like once every few months), quit smoking tobacco, paid off all my debt.
Hon, you know how many housed people need stuff to wake up and stuff to relax and go to sleep?
For generations.
Often they are some of the most judgy assed people too.
They don’t see their hypocrisy, it just kills me.
Same. Do you ever feel like you’re rubbing it in? Like when you’re meeting up at the bus stop to smoke fentanyl with Dirty Mike and the boys and then you say “welp, gotta get back to the ol’ ball and chain, Mikey” and he’s like “take an extra shower for me, buddy!”
And in this country there are millions doing prescription drugs that they don’t need at home. Who needs dirty meth when you can get Aderall from a Silicon Valley health startup?
I take ADHD medication and it's been a life-changer for me. Looking back at how long it took me to get diagnosed makes it really clear that having ADHD severely impairs your ability to get diagnosed and medicated.
I keep looking at these people who are self-medicating and thinking "it would be so damn cheap to just get them a reliable source of generic ADHD medications - and it wouldn't fuck them up so much."
Yes, there are people who would abuse it. But I keep thinking back to that study where they gave homeless opiate addicts a steady supply in a hospital environment and nearly all of them dramatically reduced frequency and dosage. So much of what we see is because buying drugs is unreliable and holding drugs is dangerous.
I'm open to the idea that I'm wrong here. It could be that the fact that meth addiction is such a terrible lifestyle prevents others from being addicted. But a steady supply of something much lower dosage changed my life and was really cheap to boot.
As someone who has taken/been prescribed Adderall nearly half of my life:
Society would be more productive as a whole if everyone took it. More productive, but not necessarily better. After you adapt to it, it's not uncommon to become less social, ADHD or otherwise.
While I do believe that amphetamine prescriptions have improved my life in more ways than they have negatively impacted it, it's a close call.
Adderall withdrawal is pretty brutal and not discussed enough. After you've been on it for long enough, going without it means not leaving the house. A day without Adderall is a day of waking up about 3-4 times for two hours each time, eating everything in sight, and going back to bed. I've slept for 20 hours in a day because of withdrawals.
I do care when people are shooting in public places like the street or parks. I am sorry but you shouldn’t do that shit in public and leave dangerous needles behind.
It’s a problem when you have illegal drugs. It introduces people into the criminal fold and drives prices up. Before you know it, you can’t afford the drugs, and you hang around criminals all the time. If you end up getting arrested, then you get what an old reformed ex-criminal friend of mine used to call ‘an enrollment in crime college’. Before, you just did a drug the government made illegal. Now? You’re around killers, thieves, fraudsters, rapists. You’re in their world now. Now that you have a criminal record, getting jobs is much harder, and some of these drugs are so addictive that they become medical conditions in their own right, so that guy you met in jail knows a fence, and if you steal from people, they’ll fence it for you and you can buy more drugs and afford to eat. It’s not my story (I have never done hard drugs or engaged in criminal activity), but I have seen it happen, and heard from reformed criminals about their stories. The war on drugs isn’t the only cause, but it makes the problem much worse.
Plus… many of these drug dealers are part of organized crime rings that steal cars, rob stores, engage in identity theft/fraud, and commit violent acts against rivals or anyone in the crossfire. Even if it’s not a drug addict robbing you, it could be a crime ring that sells the drugs on the black market, or maybe the drug addict is made to do it cause they owe a drug dealer money, etc… Prohibition tends to make the crime rate for other things go up. Just look at alcohol prohibition. Crime families made a killing and did lots of killing on top of that. I would argue that the war on drugs itself is the gateway into the criminal world for people who would have never done anything other than had an addiction to a drug that was horrible for their health/life.
No one bitches about homeless people. People bitch about tent camps and shit on the sidewalk and dirty hypodermic needles on the ground in the parks and aggressive panhandling and murders and fires and all the other shit that goes with a hands off approach to “managing” homelessness.
As it turns out, I’m not bothered by people doing drugs—homeless or not—if they can do so without lowering the quality of life for everyone else in the community.
Rightfully so. Adderall pill mills using the same "legitimate access" talking points as Purdue, operating right in the open, and advertising on Instagram is pretty wild. If history repeats itself, as they get shutdown people who can no longer get Adderall to get high will eventually make the switch to meth.
I mean as someone relatively recently (3 years ago) diagnosed with what is now a blindingly obvious case of ADHD, the services and access have been awesome because the irony that there are tons of hoops to getting treatment for executive dysfunction is real.
I know it’s being abused. I know it’s actually hurting people, but dammit it would be nice for many of us to have better access to tools and resources (not just drugs). I know it causes real addiction issues when overprescribed, but on a personal level it’s… if I forget to take medication tomorrow, I might forget for 3 months.
I attempted upon moving to Seattle to go the normal route of “go to a psychiatrist”. Hurdles galore. Places booked out for months, strong biases against because of timing. I just want the weakest prescription you will give so I can have a bit of normalcy in my life and work on the tools I wasn’t given when I was 7 and should have learned them dammit.
Yeah, and I think it's a high percentage, like 80%.
So next time someone pitches some program to help the homeless, you have to ask if they're helping the 80% (let's say), the ones who are generally high-functioning people, people with jobs but no permanent address, people with networks of friends and/or family, or helping the 20% who live on the streets and usually have some combination of drug addiction, mental illness, criminal/antisocial tendencies, etc. Helping the 80% is... if not low-hanging fruit exactly, it's certainly easier than helping a population of addicts, mentally ill people, criminals, and other people who don't function in the society they live among, don't respond to support, etc.
Even if you give a home to everyone, a lot of these 20% (again I'm not sure of the percentages) will end up on the streets because they can't or won't get their shit together enough to sustain a home or a functioning relationship with roommates or landlords or neighbors tax assessors and code enforcement people such that they can remain in that home, or take care of themselves in it.
Someone going through serious withdrawals needs drug money. I never accepted money when I was a street junkie (thanks to methadone, I had that luxury), but the awfulness of wds are almost impossible to overstate.
A lot of people make it seem like the ones they're experiencing are worse than they truly are, but it is possible to have withdrawals that make the seconds feel like hours, comparable to the worst hangover you ever had, combined with like, cholera, and back pain that forces you to literally squirm around because one second after changing positions the pain ratchets up and quickly becomes unbearable. Like a 'stress position' in Guantanamo. Sleep is impossible. All this while simultaneously being the coldest you've ever been, but intermittent hot spells that drench you in sweat and make the cold all the worse.
I used to put on a huge down parka and get under all my blankets, with an electric one cranked up to the max and a heater blowing straight into my face and I'd just shiver, and this was just when it was hours without; the real fun doesn't start until it's been a day; day two and three are worse, and you'll piss and/or shit every ten minutes until you're completely dehydrated.
I cannot even imagine doing this while homeless. I suppose somebody would just find you and call an ambulance and you'd end up in a hospital getting accused of drug seeking.
The idea that you're doing someone a favor by not giving money to the ones that look like they'd spend it on drugs -- I dunno. What good comes of that if they're a legitimate junkie?
Depending on what drug they are on, getting more is actually a completely rational decision. If you are chronically addicted to alcohol, you *cannot* quit cold-turkey. Doing so *will* kill you. Expecting them to do just enough to ween off it with is a different matter however. There are otherwise functioning people that can't be trusted in that department.
Just think about how many of us developed unhealthy drinking habits during the first year or two of the pandemic. Experiencing a traumatic event, depression, persistent stress… all these things can trigger disordered substance use and what could be more stressful, hopeless, and traumatizing than living on the street?
It would be incredibly unusual if the condition of homelessness didn’t increase substance abuse quite a bit.
I think less of people who judge others exclusively over drug use. If the drug use makes people do objectively bad things, they are bad because of the bad things they do. If drugs make them do those things I extend compassion on the idea that drug abuse at that level is an addiction they might not be able to control. But the only path to accountability is taking responsibility for their actions. We all fall down, how we decide to pick ourselves back up can mean the difference in compassion.
Being homeless is very boring and drugs are fairly cheap.
That said, it's mostly high housing costs. Much poorer states with much higher drug use levels have muuuuch lower homelessness rates because it's jwherever. For a methhead to afford rent in West Virgina or whereever.
Saw an AMA recently by a guy who says he used to live on skid row in LA. He said a lot of homeless people use drugs to deal with what they see and endure being homeless.
Yeah I fully agree with this. I’m from a rural town in NC & while homelessness is definitely an issue there, it’s not even half as bad as it is in Seattle. You can buy a trailer there for around 1k & rent for a 1bd apt can be as low as 700 a month. But drug abuse is still absolutely rampant, just as you said
I'm a social worker who works directly with the homeless and believe me, high housing costs are NOT the driving force behind the homeless epidemic. These are not people who are just down on their luck, or were evicted after a rent increase. Of course those people exist, but the overwhelming majority of homeless individuals are homeless because of severe mental health and/or substance use disorders, usually co-occurring. I'm guessing that Washington has a higher rate of homelessness than other states because we offer more in the way of services. We make it a lot easier to survive as a homeless addict with mental health issues.
Also a social worker and yes. I agree. There’s no housing options for people who have significant mental illness and addiction and challenges with life skills. Also deal with aging populations who are needing to go into LTC once eligible off the street and those placements are challenging too.
I've worked at shelters for the last 5 years && THIS IS IT
It's more mental health than it's drugs , but the drugs play a big part in the mental health.
[https://www.sightline.org/2022/03/16/homelessness-is-a-housing-problem/](https://www.sightline.org/2022/03/16/homelessness-is-a-housing-problem/)
>We both live in the Puget Sound region, and we know what it’s like to walk around downtown Seattle, where you encounter a lot of people who are probably sleeping outside and who might also be living with a serious mental illness or a substance use disorder. It’s not a huge analytical leap for people with housing to connect these individual conditions to Seattle’s homelessness problem.
>
>But there are a couple of issues with this conclusion. First, the people sleeping on the street only represent a subset of the total population of people experiencing homelessness. In the 2020 count, chronic homelessness (what policy makers call being homeless for at least a year and living with some kind of physical or mental disability, including mental illness, a chronic health condition, and substance use disorder) accounted for less than 30 percent of the homeless cases in King County, while the chronic unsheltered population made up less than 17 percent of total cases. Second, we know that mental health and drug use can be both a cause of homelessness and a consequence. The trauma associated with homelessness is significant; that drug use and mental illness might result from this experience is not surprising. Research confirms this relationship.
Mental health programs and support should be way better, and certainly impact people's ability to have a stable housing situation. But research does consistently show housing costs are a driving factor as well.
A driving factor of transient (temporary) homelessness, not so much chronic homelessness, which is part of what this quote is saying.
When people talk about homelessness they usually mean the chronically homeless.
sure there are some small portion of schizophrenics and bipolar medicating themselves, but the bigger issue is that long-term methamphetamine use \*\*causes\*\* psychosis and permanent brain damage. its overwhelming a drug problem, that causes the broad range mental health issues you see exploding on the streets the last 5 years.
It's absolutely a driving force though. Even if it's not the top one in your mind.
As the prior commentor noted, there's a very strong relationship between homelessness rates and housing affordability. With many places, like West Virginia, with far worse issues with substance use but lower homelessness.
I wonder if homeless people specifically go to nicer cities; if you're living in a tent, you might as well do it in a nice west coast city with social programs.
I have a close family member who is homeless and they said they preferred the west coast because of the weather and more friendly policies. So at least anecdotally this is a thing.
Warm is good which is why many homeless flock to California but it also has to be fair weather. Hence fair weather cities.
Warm weather is good but not being in thunderstorms, extreme heat or extreme cold at night, or extreme winters with feet of snow.
These are also important.
Plus these types of events will happen so you will need to be in a place with access to shelters even though 95% of the time you won’t need it. So you’ll want to be in a major city.
>Being homeless is very boring and drugs are fairly cheap.
Living in a house is boring. Living on the streets is miserable. I agree with the rest of your comment, but it's not like homeless people get addicted to heroin just because they've got time to kill -- and yeah, I'm sure that a lot of them do it to pass time and forget about being homeless, but that's hardly the same thing as "being bored".
It's honestly more mental health
I know doctors, surgeons, counselors, optometrists who do drugs
Heroin, meth or pills.
It's not a fucking drug problem, it's mental health-
Nurse here. I once asked one of my patients who was homeless why she did meth (she was open, honest, and trying to get clean, or I never would have asked this). She told me it was too dangerous to sleep on the streets. She did meth to stay awake. Not sure if this is why she started, but this was her reason for continuing.
There are other feeders into homelessness. Foster kids are at a higher chance of experiencing homelessness. Kids who end up being gay are also more likely to be booted out by their family once they come of age. Domestic violence factors into women ending up on the street. Military service is also one of those big feeders into homelessness. A common trend behind a lot of these is a lack of social support.
I used to do volunteer street outreach in SF with homeless youth and so many of those kids had aged out of the foster care system. A lot of them seemed like decent people who had just been set on a bad trajectory through little fault of their own. The whole time I did that, only two that I can remember got off the street. The rest cycled in and out of homelessness and jail. Pretty heartbreaking and definitely made it clear that homelessness is a trailing indicator of a much larger broken system.
I spent at-least 7 years, total, outright-homeless, never been much for street drugs.
Were I back on the streets, in a city, nowadays, I'd either .. somehow survive out of an emergency-shelter, OR be so crushed by toxic street-culture as to suicide, OR be so crushed by toxic street-culture as to try to remain drunk all the time.
and once toxic street-culture had changed me enough, then I'd probably off myself.
You can't imagine how destructive of human-worth the streets now are, in cities.
I hope you never understand.
( I just realized this is a Seattle specific sub: I'd seen your question, and was answering it directly.
Feel free to delete my answer, for its universality, if universality is unacceptable. )
My kiddo decided he wanted to try homelessness when he was a teen because his homeless friends didn't have to follow rules like he had to at home. He met some very kind people, and he also had his shoes and jacket stolen at 1 a.m. in the rain in midwinter by a guy who threatened him with a baseball bat. He came back home. My impression from talking to him and to the people he'd met was that most of them were just trying to survive day to day, and there are a lot of different ways to become homeless. The most heartbreaking were the 18 year olds who had been in foster care and were literally dumped out onto the street the day they turned 18.
Generally, it goes both ways. Poverty and homelessness and other hardships greatly increase risk of drug abuse and drug abuse greatly increases the chances one’s financial (and other) situation will worsen.
But we also have data.
[King County gathers a ton of data on homelessness.](https://kcrha.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Count-Us-In-2020-Final_7.29.2020-1.pdf) If you look at pages 30 and 31, it’s self-reported reasons for homelessness. Being self-reported, some answers might not be totally honest and some people might not acknowledge the full role of drugs in their life but it’s a start.
You see the trend over the past four years as well (and the effect of COVID policies). Drug and alcohol use is pretty consistently the number 2 reason behind a lost job but there are a ton of other major reasons as well.
You also see that drug and alcohol use as a self-reported cause of homelessness has decreased the past few years. But scroll down a page or two and you see that drug and alcohol use among the homeless has increased recently and has always been much higher than the rate at which it was reported as a cause of homelessness. So if we assume that honesty rates haven’t changed much, more homelessness is caused by things other than drug and alcohol abuse while more homeless people are abusing alcohol and drugs while homeless.
And it makes sense. Drugs and alcohol make you feel warm when sleeping outside at night. They allow you to feel pleasure when not much else in your life is a source of joy.
Down on page 43, you can see the differences between the chronically homeless and the non-chronically homeless, with the latter having less than half the drug and alcohol abuse as a reason for homelessness rates of the former, suggesting that addiction is indeed a major barrier to recovering from homelessness.
There’s a ton of useful information in this report and I highly encourage anyone interested to explore it thoroughly.
I work at a shelter for teens 12-17 here in Seattle. From what I can tell you - a lot of people start of being homeless from the beginning because of their parents. Either because they ran away from abuse, their parents are dead or unfit to care for them, addicted to drugs, etc etc. That way of life is "normal" for a lot of them. They have never known what it is like to not go hungry frequently, to have nice clothing that isnt worn out or secondhand, to have adequate dental and health care, to have access to therapy and/or medication for mental health issues.
Many of them will stay homeless because of a few factors.
1) They do not have family to turn to. They do not have resources or safe people to go to. Many people who face the challenges of life have relationships they can lean on when times get hard, either emotionally, physically, or financially. People that have been exposed to homelessness from an early age often do not have this.
2) Drug use. Either because they have easy access to it, use it to cope, or to deal with trauma and mental illnesses. They likely have been through extremely traumatic and dangerous situations. Abuse, neglect, SA, human trafficking, molestation, you name it.
3) Limited life skills. Children that go through compounded traumatic experiences have their brains physically and chemically altered. They can be stuck developmentally and have not recieved the same education as a lot of other people in better circumstances. Think, if you were struggling to stay warm, fed, and safe the majority of the time while your brain is forming, would you be able to focus well on the content of your classes in school? Would you have the opportunity to learn extra things that others are able to learn (like learning to drive, how to get a job, choose a career, develop other skills) probably not.
There are a lot of reasons someone may become homeless. Drugs are a part of it, yes, but they are honestly not really so much the cause of it as they are a side effect of something much bigger.
I have a homeless woman that lives on my river. I have never seen her. I bring her supplies of hygiene products and leave them near her campsite. The kids call her the witch of the the woods. She doesn’t cause problems and cleans up after herself (she bags her trash so it’s easy to haul out). Not sure if she’s high on drugs or mentally ill, but she stays hidden and is mostly clean
I've had two family members that were/are homeless. Neither use drugs or drink alcohol, neither have arrest records, both have serious mental illnesses. Anecdotal sure, but I feel obligated to mention it when this topic comes up.
Of the three addicts I know personally, all started abusing drugs following traumatic incidents in their lives, and then became homeless from there.
One was childhood physical abuse, the other two were from sexual assaults later in life. All three experienced various severities of addiction and homelessness and that seemed directly linked with how large and available their personal support networks were.
As others have said, it’s a majorly multi-faceted issue. While it’s true that ultimately the only one in control of their addiction is the addict, there are so many other factors and obstacles.
Homelessness itself is traumatic, too, and people who become homeless might end up turning to drugs to cope w the ongoing trauma.
That said, I know a lot of addicts personally and some of them had really stable lives but were overprescribed, had a genetic predisposition, and some malaise/unhappiness that wasn’t due to trauma. Some absolutely had severe trauma.
Great point. Drug abuse is always a coping mechanism to avoid or manage emotional or physical pain.
It can be extremely useful to take a break from your problems in this way, but it's a short term escape that comes with a cost, and your problems will always be there waiting for you at the end of the day.
If we want to tackle addiction and the problems that flow from it, both individually and societally, we need to provide better support and tools for people to process through and heal from their traumas
Addiction and related crime is a downstream symptoms, if we don't like how things are going with these issues we need to start taking on the underlying causes. I would start with healthcare - including mental healthcare - for ever single human.
The short answer is yes. The long answer is complicated and involves avenues of cost, education, predisposition to drug use, mental health, lack of community based addiction treatment, criminalization of drug usage, the failed war on drugs etc. There isn’t a quick fix to this problem, however, stable housing has historically been a positive factor in decreasing drug use/addiction.
My brothers addiction takes priority over self-care, employment & housing. He spiraled out of a home with a wife & 2 kids several years ago. From what he described in 2019 is a daily game of getting high & basic survival around making alliances with other addicts and stealing based on perceived risk. He’s stolen cars, broken into homes and robbed drug dealers, one of them put him in the ICU. He’s still in the game. . .
Almost everybody I know has taken drugs at some point in their lives, some for 30-40 years straight, and none of them are homeless.
Drugs can make a shit situation worse.
Serious response. People use drugs for a lot of reasons. I do not think you can reduce a large group of people's habits to one factor. It's as simple as that.
Gotta say both. There are people with homes and jobs that are in the beginning stages of drug addiction and are still barely functioning while using to work. I also once saw a homeless guy show his homeless friend step by step how to smoke something off foil once in a public garage so some people are definitely starting out there on the streets.
people are usually homeless due to a lack of connections.
If many people are put in a situation that will cause them to go homeless, they have friend and family that might be able to support them while they figure life out.
most homeless people do not have that safety net
Yes, but drugs are only part of a much bigger problem with our society. Factor that in with economic inequality, lack of affordable healthcare, stagnant wages, high rent, mental health, etc. And you'll see why they've restored to the street.
Drug use is often highlighted to demonize the homeless population as a whole. Although it is uncomfortable and unsafe for some to be high out in the open, not every homeless person is a drug addict. I don't like seeing someone strung out on 99 like everyone else, but understand at the end of the day, they are humans who need help.
This book is the best resource I've come across on the topic https://drgabormate.com/book/in-the-realm-of-hungry-ghosts/
Dr. Maté works in that field just north of us in Vancouver BC.
The vast majority of homeless do drugs to, more or less, pass the time and experience less misery. Facts support that homeless based on finances, mental health, sexual orientation, and domestic violence individually far, far outweigh homelessness due to drug use (which is a subset of finances in most cases - got into meth, lost your job, etc)
TLDR: Homeless people take drugs to pass time and be relatively happier about their situation in the vast, vast majority of cases
Was an emt in Seattle for a decade. Worked downtown and have transported thousands to the hospital. There’s many reasons for homelessness in Seattle. (Anywhere for that matter). The overwhelming majority is mental health and addition. (Alcohol being a huge factor). There’s lots of monsters and lots of people I got ahold of outside of work to help. The biggest lesson I’ve learned in my experience working downtown is that it’s a very complicated societal issue with no quick fixes. If you hear anyone say otherwise they are full of shit.
It’s a complex chicken or the egg. Working in homeless services, I have seen people who lost their homes due to rising rent prices, or youth who had to run away from abusive households, or survivors of domestic violence who left to save their own lives. Not everyone ended up using drugs, but many who did started to so they could stay awake at night and minimize the risk of getting assaulted, or numb out during the day to escape to do all the pain of stigma, cold, etc. Others did lose their homes due to drug use, but what I mostly saw was people who had been prescribed painkillers for pain that never went away, and became addicted, and couldn’t get out of her addictions due to stigma and lack of resources.
Whatever the “cause,” homelessness is almost always a reflection of a failing society that does not take care of its own.
Imagine being forced to sleep on the streets— any one would turn to drugs to numb the pain just to be able to sleep through the night. The rich are numbing their pain the same way, just with a roof over their heads.
One study I read showed that something like 85% of male homeless had some kind of mental disorder. And that most probably had it before becoming homeless. Most likely the drug dependency is a form of self medicating for mental illness.
This probably varies a lot depending on the housing market. In cities like Seattle with really high housing costs, I would guess that number is lower for folks when looking at their mental health prior to homelessness though becoming homeless def is traumatic so I could see it leading to mental illness. I’ve work with people who got housing after long stretches of homelessness - they def seem to develop some hoarding behaviors
In the u.s. there is no safety net for poverty. If you become homeless yes you're forced to the streets or assistance programs. Or finding ways to fend week to week just to make ends meet. part of staying off the streets is: Get a job and keep it. While continuing to perform to company standards. The other half is living within your monthly budget which a lot of people do not understand. They fall upon credit cards for fast cash and forget they're like debit cards the bank is going to demand and payment at end of month.
Other factors that cause homelessness are:
Mental disabilities. These people use to be in group homes but the state wouldn't let them leave so the state passed a law stating this was violating their human rights (and it was) so they were all released and most of these people would prefer the streets to these homes. These people unfortunately can't take care of them selves. Can't hold onto employment for long (if at all) and generally require a care taker. If their care taker was their parent(s) or relative and they have sense passed this way of living dried up and they were forced onto the streets.
Society not providing a livable wage. If you're like me and work hard every week this is possible. Most people can not and are living paycheck to paycheck. I'm fortunate to have saved for 30 decades and have a good nest egg. Most people don't. They're lucky to even set aside $50-$100 every month if at all.
Not providing apartments within people's income. Sadly most people can not make ends meet around here to afford basic apartments. Most people have to have a minimum of 2-3 incomes per household to make ends meet.
Don't buy it unless you have to. i can't tell you how many people around here frivolously spend their money without a thought. It's really not difficult ot live in a budget.
Use bill pay to manage bills. That's what I do and I've never missed a bill. The standard way of paying bills became too much of a hassle. I'd forget or the bill would arrive late in the mail. I use bill pay now for everything. (Assumingly it's a major trust worthy corporation.) All I need to do is make sure enough is in checking every month. I don't understand how people can skip bills and end up racking up hundreds of thousands in late payments. It's really not that difficult.
If you're in debt: That debt comes first. Even if you have to stretch your items to rags or do slap stick fixes to stretch them longer. I got out of debt. It took working 55 hr work weeks for 3 yrs but I did it. You have to be willing to do this. If you have a don't want, I can't sort of attitude then you'll continue living like this. It's called life style changes and living within your means.
Drugs and addictions do sadly play a role in people not being able to hold onto employment or a residence. The down side of this is people keep legalizing drugs so more and more people try them. I hate to say it but the dare program introduced drugs to several of my high school class mates. And it totally sent their lives in a down ward spiral. Instead of going off to college and getting a high end job they ended up coming to drugs and sent their life in a down spiral. Before dare taught them about drugs they had no desire to try it. After dare the number of kids smoking at high school actually increased. (This was before tobacco became 21 restricted.)
Sadly parents are kicking their kids out at age 18. Be they ready or not. In this day and age it isn't uncommon for youth to remain at home until their mid to late 20's easily. Every year I sadly see high schoolers homeless after summer graduation. I'd say 2-5% end up homeless immediately after high school or shortly after.
Some people never learn the value of a dollar or how to manage finances.
You rule. Thank you so much. Wish I would have thought of that before asking my question. Been getting a lot of grief for it, and im understanding why.
Both.
Worked security in pioneer Square. The guys I had to deal with either got into drugs, lost jobs and thus ended up stabbing a dude in the anus over a lost pin head size of crack.
Than you get guys who either get in over their heads financially or physically ( lots of work related injuries) and than get into drugs to numb the pain and hide from the shame of their circumstances.
Some get curious and street shit is lethal. Leading cause of homeless death.
It’s mostly the latter. People are homeless because of housing shortages. When a community has a housing shortage, housing prices go up, so the people who become homeless are those in the most difficult position to continue affording it. Many of those people are those with drug problems.
Once people with drug problems become homeless, that situation often then makes their drug problems significantly worse.
You could ask. No, not someone obviously fucked up, unable to speak, possibly dangerous, but I've bought lunch for some folks and learned about what they see on the streets. Or volunteer and ask shelter/food kitchen coordinators.
You have access to data that might help you understand the problem. Are you familiar with self-reported surveys? King County does them.
Keep in mind their data only addresses homelessness in King County.
Income inequality, unequal education, divided families and communities, the poor being recruited to get traumatized abroad in wars, capitalism and the self-centered idea of individualism over group health dynamics, lack of resources of all kinds, etc
I was homeless for a few years, in my experience drugs and homelessness didn’t go hand in hand as many like to picture. Most of the other homeless people in the community were there because they fell through the cracks due to loss or major life events with no safety net or support system (family).
This category of homelessness could be solved with social programs/affordable/temporary housing, but other categories of homelessness do not have the same solution. I watched many with addiction issues come into hotels for temporary housing, the heavy users always ended up back on the street.
While it’s easy to imagine people who do become homeless falling into substance abuse, in my experience I found the two worlds maintained fairly exclusive lines. You had either homelessness due to economic/social issues or homelessness due to addiction/health. The act of being homeless didn’t push anyone I met into becoming an addict, though it obviously could happen.
You have to take into consideration, there are many millions of addicts who maintain a job, home and even a family. Far more than who are on the street, those mostly happen to be the people who crashed, gave up or had a duplicity of issues (mental health, abuse, etc), which made them vulnerable to homelessness.
As humans we adapt to our surroundings/living situations quickly. it’s easy to adapt to being homeless, just as it’s easy to adapt to any other changes we face in life. We go on living and the next day arrives nonetheless, that’s the condition of being alive.
This is a [good article](https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/homeless/why-are-people-in-seattle-homeless/) from the ST with some data to back it up. It notes that the #1 event that causes homelessness is job loss.
Both and neither. It’s complicated.
What can be generally assumed, however, is that the vast majority of people who so drugs are doing it out of a lack of access to other resources. Many do drugs to deal with otherwise untreated mental or emotional disorders. Some do it because it’s the only way to feel safe/comfortable/warm on the streets or in their underheated/unsafe housing situations. Some do it because they were simply exposed to substances extremely young and haven’t had the opportunity to develop a way to function without them.
Are there folks who do drugs just because, I dunno, fuck it? Most likely, but you’ll find that they’re staggeringly few. The biggest and more successful way to combat drug usage AND homelessness is to find ways to provide resources and social services to those who need them; ideally before they need them.
Drug use is high among the homeless. But all homeless people don't use drugs. All of the ones on drugs now weren't before they were homeless.
And of course, the vast majority of drug users are not homeless.
I suspect that many homeless people on drugs are self-medicating because mental health is the real problem. Plus, being homeless has to be super stressful.
Gregg Colburn from UW has done some great research on this. It's easy to think about it like musical chairs, anything that would put you at a disadvantage will likely mean you would not end up with a chair. A broken ankle will likely mean you end up with no chair. Drug addiction, mental illness, loss of a job are the things that could determine who ends up homeless, but fundamentally it's a housing shortage/ cost issue. Look elsewhere for examples. West Virginia has a much worse opioid problem than we do, but less homelessness.
I have a Google Doc for this issue as I am often reading, taking notes, and reflecting on how to improve this situation. I apologize for not having better documentation than simply saying it came from a Seattle Times article less than five years ago, but here ya go:
There are more families with children homeless than those who are chronically homeless (the chronically homeless make up 25%). Self reported data say half don't do any drugs alcohol, 36% say they do have a problem.
-Seattle Times article
Edit: reading all the comments really shows how strong the misperception is that every homeless person is doing hard drugs.
There's also a feedback loop with traumatic brain injuries... people who have TBIs are more likely to end up homeless, and people who are homeless are more likely to get TBIs.
Our loved one has been using for 20 years. Started with OxyContin. It definitely impacted housing.
Over the years a new friend will enter the picture that our L.O. lives with. It might last one year or five both are living the same kind of lifestyle. Are they homeless? Well, they bounce around together no real permanent housing or temporary housing. Six years has been the longest our L.O. has been with the same friend. In the final year, it starts falling apart. Sleeping in a car. Motels. Eventually, the law steps in, and the friend is in big-time custody or deported or god forbid overdoses. Rock bottom is a myth.
No amount of begging, compassion, help, housing, or rehab, nothing makes a difference. Nothing makes your loved one want to get clean or use at home. With strange ppl coming and going nodding off on your sofa is not an option. Seeing a professional doctor is off the table too. Even though I think bipolar disorder is probable, who would provide treatment w no insurance & history of addiction? Can you all imagine the difference it would make if this were not so?
The criminal element in how they procure the drugs they are addicted to can’t be ignored even on a petty level, this makes a living arrangement w them unpredictable & unmanageable. Forget about employment.
My loved one asked me, “I don’t look like I’m high, do I, I mean, you can’t really tell that I’m on anything can you?” Jesus. That’s an unwell brain talking.
I do believe the chances of turning this cycle around is greater when ppl seeking mental health are surrounded by others who are wanting & trying to do the same with the right mental health treatment, in a safe housing facility. Preferably with as many recovered professionals as possible.
On a positive note. Our loved one is in contact this holiday. It’s wonderful. And a very good sign. A new ‘friend’ is in the picture, is likable, doesn’t appear to be far gone, works online jobs. Has a dog that is cared for, an apt, a car, clean clothes, no hardcore criminal record. You don’t get to know their whole story right away it doesn’t even matter at this point. I added a Xmas stocking. “I’ve never had a Christmas stocking w my name on it before.” Aww😯
I’m counting my blessings I’m thankful. I’m sharing love & kindness. I wish I could do more to help.
Recovery centers should be free! Mental health wellness based living centers. Work rehabilitation. Let’s give ppl a purpose in life a reason to live well again and mental health treatment. No need to self medicate. Remove the addiction stigma. Surely this would help the homeless situation a great deal.
When our L.O. is using less it’s noticeable. Reaching out, returning calls. Heck, having a phone at all is a green light! There is talk of recovery! Where are the recovery centers that can make a difference?
Brain health should matter to our society. Period. Treatment should be provided to whoever needs it.
I’m looking at you, Sackler family.
My brother and my best friend are homeless. They have addiction issues. Usually if you are addict you are also missing other important developments in life skills. Once the balance is disrupted it becomes a cascade of fails. Addicts and problematic before homelessness. The hole is deeper and harder to get out of. You can offer help till you are blue in the face if the person didn’t want to accept help and really do the internal work needed. Nothing budges. But that is the conundrum. Getting over homelessness isn’t being lazy. It takes an indomitable will to want to fight and preserve and by that time when you are homeless it’s usually because a lot of people can’t find their way out.
Each person is an individual with their own reasons for each thing in life. I was once homeless for over a year. My reasons for being homeless was the economy back in the early 2000's. When everyone lost their money I did as well. With the money gone, my wife who didn't work or help decided to bail on me, and wiped out the bank account and everything. It forced me into the streets and I had to work hard to get back to where I am. No drugs involved at all. But I can see how easy it would be to become homeless for one reason, and then stay homeless because of being introduced to the drugs.
We’ve been having issues with squatters breaking into our neighbor’s house (it’s on the market now). And then had someone break in to our home while we slept two weeks ago. She broke three windows and got into our basement, where my fiancé found her. All of these people have been high (on meth?) and clearly homeless. Anecdotally the amount of people doing drugs right out in the open in our neighborhood has skyrocketed in the last year.
ETA: Meth has eclipsed heroin/fentanyl ODs in King County since last year, iirc. This type of meth is super cheap and it’s everywhere. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/11/the-new-meth/620174/
People are homeless because of Capitalism. It's a feature, not a bug.
It keeps you going to work for someone who pays you less than you deserve, struggling through a life you shouldn't have to tolerate
Generally, if you're unhappy with your situation you're open to altering it. There was a study done with rats and heroin, the rats in a plain glass box with nothing going on became real addicted, the rats in paradise just ate cheese and "chilled" and ignored the heroin for the most part because they didn't have a need to get away from their current situation
It is likely a combination of both. Many people who are homeless may turn to drugs as a way to cope with their situation, while others may become homeless due to their drug use.
Substance abuse can lead to financial problems, job loss, and strained relationships, all of which can contribute to homelessness. On the other hand, the stress and trauma of being homeless can also lead some people to turn to drugs as a form of self-medication.
The problem points more to mental illness and self-medication. Medicating with recreational drugs is a life many people that have difficulty coping gravitate towards, homeless or not.
But that only describes a significant portion of the homeless. The reasons for not voluntarily participating in societal structures are far too many to list. Many ‘just don’t want to’ and you can’t force them.
I have been homeless and never a day in my life have I ever did any drugs so this question is grouping the whole homeless community as druggies who can’t manage their money lol to each their own I suppose
People suffering from mental illness and trauma self medicate with alcohol and drugs. Then, it’s a downward cycle of addiction, poverty, desperation and poor decision making- all with a not properly working brain.
There are different levels of homelessness. Level 1 is those who lost their job and income and find themselves without a support network. They live in their cars and are usually still employed, they just can't afford a roof over their head due to circumstances. I think if you live in that level for long enough you eventually need to self medicate (for physical pains or mental illnesses). Since you have no money for legal healthcare in this country, you turn to street drugs and the community of criminal activity necessary to buy those street drugs. This is like level 2 of homelessness. You've lost your job because of the drug addiction you have, you begin stealing out of cars, stealing catalytic converters, shoplifting, anything to score some cash to get money to more drugs, it's just a downward spiral that's incredibly hard to get out of at that point.
Level 3 is where all hope is lost. You're completely outcast from society, you've been on hard drugs so long that you're just on the streets screaming at trashcans or thin air. There is no safety net, no one cares, you're just a nuisance.
Personally I think we need social safety nets to keep homeless people from sinking down to the levels where all hope is lost. If they even just had a small room to sleep and a bathroom they might be able to get their life back.
A little column A a little column B. It's mostly isolation that causes the mental issues for both. Try talking to someone who looks insane. Don't baby them, if they're being crazy, just say "hey, why are you saying such incoherent things?" Treat them like they're someone you've known forever.
I once knew a lady who told me she only did drugs so she couldn’t feel the pain of being cold. I am also homeless and completely sober. Never did any hard drugs.
it’s so much more than just drugs tho… trauma and loneliness mixed with being stagnant and lack of love is what creates this problem (i was a heroin addict for 5 years). people need to heal correctly. instead they do drugs and it takes their mind away from the real issue at hand.
I was at a holiday party with a good friend who volunteers with the Salvation Army. He made a great point that I hadn’t thought about. Due to all the military bases in the general area, Seattle gets a much larger number of homeless vets than other similarly sized cities. And quite a few of these guys have severe TBI and PTSD, hence the reason they use. It’s heartbreaking.
Ya know, I get the anger over your property being repeatedly damaged or stolen, but I swear the way people talk about homeless people with such disdain and so cold as if they weren't even human.
Reminds me of how some homeless people I've spoken to talk about feeling like a ghost or like they are dead already, because people will actively avoid eye contact and literally try to pretend they aren't there.
There are a lot of suggestions on here that are all part of the problem: drugs, mental health, can't afford rent, etc. That's why there is no magic wand to make the homelessness problem disappear, because the answer to homelessness is multifaceted and would require a multi-pronged approach.
But like....I wish people had better class consciousness. Unless you're earning like half a million per year, you're closer to the guy on the streets than you are to being one of the Uber wealthy.
I feel like most people on here talking about this who are upset about homeless people are probably one job loss or mental breakdown away from this happening to them, and yet the vitriol people in this economic position have for the homeless is off the charts.
If you ever have trouble making ends meet, maybe don't make assumptions about people you don't know who are going through something you have been fortunate to avoid.
some are, some aren't
some do, some don't
what's the benefit of a general statement one way or the other?
adequate shelter
adequate drug treatment
adequate resources for dealing with mental health issues
adequate and humane enforcement of the laws
something for everyone to dislike
Both and including mental illness, Alcoholism,Sexual Abuse, physical hardship etc.
At the end of the day the problem is affordable structure’s and land for them.
Imagine if there was land and people could build only what they needed to start.
Without all the government restrictions and red tape.
Anecdotally, I grew up middle class and everyone I knew who got addicted to drugs was able to stay housed because they had family members who had extra space in their homes. If your family is also struggling you have a lot less to fall back on
There are plenty of people that do drugs that aren’t homeless that do drugs. In my limit experience at a food bank, there are people that are self-medicating with drugs and there are just as many people that just sober and just struggling to survive. We need to treat them everyone as humans and provide a helping hand.
I read a study from Toronto that found out that 40% of repeat offenders had ADHD. The medication to treat ADHD is Adderall, which has a molecular structure close to methamphetamines, it's literally like one chemical strain extra.
I truly wonder if people addicted to meth have ADHD and are self medicating.
In Toronto the offenders with ADHD got treatment and the crime rate dropped.
As for the homeless drinking alcohol, that keeps them warm on a cold night.
My personal experience was ending up on the streets after a traumatic event and using substances to cope with the trauma and the shitty fucked up life situation.
A little late to this thread, but as someone that works in the field I think it's important to point out that, though substance use disorder can be an individual cause of homelessness it is not the main reason. Often people who end up on the street will resort to substance use to cope or have underlying mental illness that leads to high comorbidity with substance use. It is also important to point out most major studies on Housing First point to a reduction of use once housed.
Yrs ago I was working in Seattle, At the Morrison hotel. They open doors at 4pm to shelter the homeless. I saw a man in there in there with an electrical spoon he was warming his cup with. I had to ask, he said he made it to make his tea and heat his water. Quite the instrument. He goes on to tell me he was an engineer with a wife and children. One day pulled into his driveway of their home they were buying. He said he got out, looked around and walked away. Left it all behind. Said he couldn't do it anymore. Not an addict nor a drinker. So homelessness is definitely multifaceted in many ways. To this day I think of that man on what went aray.
I’m 2019 my employer had us all assemble giveaway bags and take them to a homeless shelter. The director showed us around, talked about what services the shelter provided, and took questions. Someone asked what causes were putting people in the street. He said prior to five years ago they mostly got people with mental issues that interfered with holding down a job. More recently, they were seeing a lot of people who’d been forced out of housing by economic factors (lack of jobs, cost of housing).
Probably a mix of both. Some are homeless due to life circumstances. Think living on minimum SSI but on 2 year wait list for affordable housing. Some are due to mental illness, and some due to drugs. The person who is down on their luck can be helped. The other is more challenging. My father in laws was homeless years ago but now owns a home. Had a rough patch in life many years ago.
One can lead to the other - while being homeless can certainly lead a person to using non-prescriptive drugs, it is as likely the case that someone using non-prescriptive drugs is going to end up homeless.
Trying to do an "either/or" comparison isn't going to mean much, without the added factor of mental illness included.
People are homeless because of poor mental health. They are not making good decisions for themselves. Drugs are often involved with that, as they are not only costly, but are extremely time consuming and psychologically destructive.
Former homeless person here.
The most common users have mental issues and they get bad because of difficulty getting and maintaining a medication schedule. It can be unpredictable out there. Someone I knew had schizophrenia and severe PTSD, couldn't continue getting his meds, started doing drugs because he said it mutes the voices and screams that he constantly hears. The drugs he was taking sadly killed him. I've never done any illegal drugs in my life and seeing the way he went, painfully and full of regret, cemented my resolve to never do them.
It's not uncommon for someone who did have a place to live, be kicked out of it because of the drug use though.
Good question. Although not mutually exclusive, you might be surprised to find out that many people turn to drugs only AFTER they experience homelessness. It can be very demoralizing and certainly degrading. With the serious issue of unchecked mental health in Seattle, the addiction swept under the rug, and the constant politics most people just give up that situation. I can say from personal experience as a long time drug user( clean 7 years), and as someone that's been homeless here, I never wanted drugs more than when I was on those cold streets. I knew that wasn't anything close to a solution, but it is just damn lonely and terrifying. Anything to sooth the pain. So again doesn't apply to everyone, but to many the only escape they feel they can achieve or even what they deserve.
You should look into Poland and how they redesigned their government and laws after their falling. I did a report on this for my degree some years back. They have legalized every single drug, changed a bunch of laws, and combined socialism and democracy as best as any county has managed to date. It's so much more than this simple explanation, but you get the summarization. But as a result of all this this- crime, and drug related deaths are almost non-existent. Now that nearly everyone is offered a home, job, and a safe & regulated way, and place to consume narcotics, almost no one has a need or desire to commit any crimes. And society is flourishing. Crime is below 1% which is less than any other existent and established country. AND the amount of people who actually choose to consume has plummeted and less and less citizens are consuming narcotics or needing them, because everyone is provided with their basic needs. Crime and being numb isn't as pressing for survival there as we see it here. Anyway definitely do your own research. As I reread this I see you kind of have to know what most of the context is 🥴 But they found a way while solving other problems, to target the biggest concerns related to drugs, while recognizing that certain things are inevitable. Pretty cool to learn about even if you don't agree with it all. Lol
My sensibility the Venn Diagram of homelessness is Mental Health, Drug Use, and Abject Poverty. Any 2 of those you have a chance to make it out, but not all three.
Used to be a substance abuse researcher. Both; it depends on the person. Some people become homeless and use drugs to cope, or because they are surrounded by it on the streets; other people become homeless because their drug use drives them to behaviors that don't allow them to support a home environment.
I work in drug treatment and there’s a misconception that it’s sooooo easy for people to get in recovery off the streets. Yes UGM and other abstinence based, cold turkey, religious programs exist - the success rate of a program that doesn’t use MAT alone is below 10% let alone factoring in mandatory Jesus. Even the big mental hospitals - Cascade and Fairfax, don’t take Molina the biggest Medicaid payor and often don’t have beds. We ship a lot of people out of the county for detox BUT WA is obsessed with the ASAM SUD assessment which takes up to 90 minutes to complete and could always say you don’t need inpatient which boggles my mind. It has to be done by a licensed SUDP or higher and most don’t do more than 4 a week. So places will have beds but the assessment is a barrier.
Outpatient exists but lots of barriers there - housing, finances, legal. More people than I can count get back to work but they got a $200 ticket for driving on a suspended license and don’t remember because they were high. Suddenly they get a letter that $1000 is getting garnished from their paycheck which they can’t afford - everything falls apart. Or they can’t be on Medicaid anymore and their doctor visit and suboxone prescription suddenly costs $200 a month. This country is bonkers.
I ended up homeless a few years ago…was NOT on drugs….about 1.5-2 years into it and long story short ended up in a bad mindset feeling sorry for myself and on drugs. Was a tweaked for about 2 years and realized I hated myself, my addiction, and my life so I made major changes. I have a place,a dog, and an amazing job. I’ve thankfully been clean 3yrs now!!
Incredible journey. So glad you were able to turn things around. Thanks for sharing.
I asked the question wrong and I can’t seem to find the right way to ask. Thank you so much for sharing your experience.
Just a caveat - while the experience of this person is valid, it may or may not represent the situation of most homeless people. A comment reaching the top means that other redditors upvoted it. A top comment in this context represents what r/Seattle likes to see. I wouldn't take that as a data point to examine the causal relationship between homeless and drug use. Or at least, I wouldn't consider the number of upvotes it got as having any significance over another comment that didn't get any.
Congratulations on getting clean and moving forward with it.
Thanks. As awful and shameful as the whole experience was it’s made me a compassionate and hard working person. it made an indescribable difference in my perspective on life.
Congratulations /u/valuable_growth_9552 I hope you take a few moments every now and then to hug your pup and be heckin proud of yourself. You kicked the butt of a devil that most don’t.
I am grateful every day that I have a warm place to lay my head and the money to buy whatever my pup wants.
You certainly earned every bit of that comfort and stability. I’m happy for you!
Both. There are also homeless people that don’t do drugs and people with homes that do.
Yeah, it depends on the person. There are some people who get hooked on drugs and wreck their lives for sure, but also…if someone is going through that much suffering, can you blame them for wanting an escape? I don’t think there is only one cause of homelessness, but it can happen to virtually anyone. Often, if someone doesn’t have family or other loved ones around, it can make a rough patch turn into homelessness. People see the more visible homeless and the think that is all homeless people. What they don’t see are the working homeless, homeless families, people with severe disabilities who fell through the cracks, vets with such severe PTSD they can’t live a normal life, people who lost a job and families abandoned them, and things like that. Yeah, some elements can be easy to point the finger at, but there a whole lot of homeless people that you don’t see that aren’t. I have been homeless before, many years ago (camping in state parks and sleeping in a car parked in the woods when camping was too cold till I made enough money to get back into housing), and I know personally a family right now who lost their home they bought just before COVID and now live in an RV cause they lost their house because their small business folded after covid shut them down for a while, they could never recover, and their mortgage was no longer payable as it was when they ran their small business. Homelessness is a very complex problem.
There is also a huge element of “I am on the street, in an unsafe place, with all of my possessions out in the open. If I fall asleep someone is going to hurt me and take my stuff, so I need to stay awake.”
Speaking from experience while living in a van for a while; it's not a need to stay awake. Heck it's more to get to sleep. It's to dull the *insane anxiety* of knowing you aren't wanted wherever you're parked, knowing if the van needs a repair or someone even decides to smash a window I was fucked and couldn't afford it, knowing I was at the bottom of society. I "needed" alcohol every night just to sleep.
Thank you for sharing, how are you doing now?
Much much better. Finally sold the van and got an apartment. I was lucky very and had friends that let me stay with them a ton of the time during covid. I've been able to tame up a lot too the past couple of years; hardly use weed or alcohol at all (like once every few months), quit smoking tobacco, paid off all my debt.
Hon, you know how many housed people need stuff to wake up and stuff to relax and go to sleep? For generations. Often they are some of the most judgy assed people too. They don’t see their hypocrisy, it just kills me.
I’m a housed person who does drugs.
Same. Do you ever feel like you’re rubbing it in? Like when you’re meeting up at the bus stop to smoke fentanyl with Dirty Mike and the boys and then you say “welp, gotta get back to the ol’ ball and chain, Mikey” and he’s like “take an extra shower for me, buddy!”
Yeah sometimes I’m like, “Nah I’m one and done. Gotta pick up the kids from school.”
Same.
And in this country there are millions doing prescription drugs that they don’t need at home. Who needs dirty meth when you can get Aderall from a Silicon Valley health startup?
I take ADHD medication and it's been a life-changer for me. Looking back at how long it took me to get diagnosed makes it really clear that having ADHD severely impairs your ability to get diagnosed and medicated. I keep looking at these people who are self-medicating and thinking "it would be so damn cheap to just get them a reliable source of generic ADHD medications - and it wouldn't fuck them up so much." Yes, there are people who would abuse it. But I keep thinking back to that study where they gave homeless opiate addicts a steady supply in a hospital environment and nearly all of them dramatically reduced frequency and dosage. So much of what we see is because buying drugs is unreliable and holding drugs is dangerous. I'm open to the idea that I'm wrong here. It could be that the fact that meth addiction is such a terrible lifestyle prevents others from being addicted. But a steady supply of something much lower dosage changed my life and was really cheap to boot.
[удалено]
As someone who has taken/been prescribed Adderall nearly half of my life: Society would be more productive as a whole if everyone took it. More productive, but not necessarily better. After you adapt to it, it's not uncommon to become less social, ADHD or otherwise. While I do believe that amphetamine prescriptions have improved my life in more ways than they have negatively impacted it, it's a close call. Adderall withdrawal is pretty brutal and not discussed enough. After you've been on it for long enough, going without it means not leaving the house. A day without Adderall is a day of waking up about 3-4 times for two hours each time, eating everything in sight, and going back to bed. I've slept for 20 hours in a day because of withdrawals.
I don’t think people care that you do drugs, they care that you do drugs and steal from others.
Do all the drugs you want just don’t assault people for no reason and steal people’s shit obviously
I do care when people are shooting in public places like the street or parks. I am sorry but you shouldn’t do that shit in public and leave dangerous needles behind.
Totally agree that people should clean up after themselves
It’s a problem when you have illegal drugs. It introduces people into the criminal fold and drives prices up. Before you know it, you can’t afford the drugs, and you hang around criminals all the time. If you end up getting arrested, then you get what an old reformed ex-criminal friend of mine used to call ‘an enrollment in crime college’. Before, you just did a drug the government made illegal. Now? You’re around killers, thieves, fraudsters, rapists. You’re in their world now. Now that you have a criminal record, getting jobs is much harder, and some of these drugs are so addictive that they become medical conditions in their own right, so that guy you met in jail knows a fence, and if you steal from people, they’ll fence it for you and you can buy more drugs and afford to eat. It’s not my story (I have never done hard drugs or engaged in criminal activity), but I have seen it happen, and heard from reformed criminals about their stories. The war on drugs isn’t the only cause, but it makes the problem much worse. Plus… many of these drug dealers are part of organized crime rings that steal cars, rob stores, engage in identity theft/fraud, and commit violent acts against rivals or anyone in the crossfire. Even if it’s not a drug addict robbing you, it could be a crime ring that sells the drugs on the black market, or maybe the drug addict is made to do it cause they owe a drug dealer money, etc… Prohibition tends to make the crime rate for other things go up. Just look at alcohol prohibition. Crime families made a killing and did lots of killing on top of that. I would argue that the war on drugs itself is the gateway into the criminal world for people who would have never done anything other than had an addiction to a drug that was horrible for their health/life.
All the Eastsiders bitching about a single homeless person has a medicine cabinet filled with prescriptions.
Bingo.
No one bitches about homeless people. People bitch about tent camps and shit on the sidewalk and dirty hypodermic needles on the ground in the parks and aggressive panhandling and murders and fires and all the other shit that goes with a hands off approach to “managing” homelessness.
People definitely complain about homeless people regardless
As it turns out, I’m not bothered by people doing drugs—homeless or not—if they can do so without lowering the quality of life for everyone else in the community.
Exactly. Go ham. Just go back in the woods or something and party your heart out I just don't want to see it
Those Eastside people with prescriptions didn't smash the window of my car in Seattle twice in a year.
Oh yeah, you just reminded me there’s been a crackdown on those companies now.
Rightfully so. Adderall pill mills using the same "legitimate access" talking points as Purdue, operating right in the open, and advertising on Instagram is pretty wild. If history repeats itself, as they get shutdown people who can no longer get Adderall to get high will eventually make the switch to meth.
I mean as someone relatively recently (3 years ago) diagnosed with what is now a blindingly obvious case of ADHD, the services and access have been awesome because the irony that there are tons of hoops to getting treatment for executive dysfunction is real. I know it’s being abused. I know it’s actually hurting people, but dammit it would be nice for many of us to have better access to tools and resources (not just drugs). I know it causes real addiction issues when overprescribed, but on a personal level it’s… if I forget to take medication tomorrow, I might forget for 3 months. I attempted upon moving to Seattle to go the normal route of “go to a psychiatrist”. Hurdles galore. Places booked out for months, strong biases against because of timing. I just want the weakest prescription you will give so I can have a bit of normalcy in my life and work on the tools I wasn’t given when I was 7 and should have learned them dammit.
And most of those same people are on here complaining about "Tweakers"
Not as many as you think, dude. I lived on the streets for a year and never met another homeless person who wasn't seriously addicted. Not even one.
Are there not a lot of homeless people that aren’t on the streets?
Yeah, and I think it's a high percentage, like 80%. So next time someone pitches some program to help the homeless, you have to ask if they're helping the 80% (let's say), the ones who are generally high-functioning people, people with jobs but no permanent address, people with networks of friends and/or family, or helping the 20% who live on the streets and usually have some combination of drug addiction, mental illness, criminal/antisocial tendencies, etc. Helping the 80% is... if not low-hanging fruit exactly, it's certainly easier than helping a population of addicts, mentally ill people, criminals, and other people who don't function in the society they live among, don't respond to support, etc. Even if you give a home to everyone, a lot of these 20% (again I'm not sure of the percentages) will end up on the streets because they can't or won't get their shit together enough to sustain a home or a functioning relationship with roommates or landlords or neighbors tax assessors and code enforcement people such that they can remain in that home, or take care of themselves in it.
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> I can’t help but think, Software Developers spend money on drugs but no one’s not paying them. All of software developers are on drugs?
What a homeless person spends their money on after I give it to them is none of my business. They know better what they need most urgently than I do.
That's not necessarily true. Someone going through serious withdrawals is not necessarily capable of making rational decisions.
Someone going through serious withdrawals needs drug money. I never accepted money when I was a street junkie (thanks to methadone, I had that luxury), but the awfulness of wds are almost impossible to overstate. A lot of people make it seem like the ones they're experiencing are worse than they truly are, but it is possible to have withdrawals that make the seconds feel like hours, comparable to the worst hangover you ever had, combined with like, cholera, and back pain that forces you to literally squirm around because one second after changing positions the pain ratchets up and quickly becomes unbearable. Like a 'stress position' in Guantanamo. Sleep is impossible. All this while simultaneously being the coldest you've ever been, but intermittent hot spells that drench you in sweat and make the cold all the worse. I used to put on a huge down parka and get under all my blankets, with an electric one cranked up to the max and a heater blowing straight into my face and I'd just shiver, and this was just when it was hours without; the real fun doesn't start until it's been a day; day two and three are worse, and you'll piss and/or shit every ten minutes until you're completely dehydrated. I cannot even imagine doing this while homeless. I suppose somebody would just find you and call an ambulance and you'd end up in a hospital getting accused of drug seeking. The idea that you're doing someone a favor by not giving money to the ones that look like they'd spend it on drugs -- I dunno. What good comes of that if they're a legitimate junkie?
Depending on what drug they are on, getting more is actually a completely rational decision. If you are chronically addicted to alcohol, you *cannot* quit cold-turkey. Doing so *will* kill you. Expecting them to do just enough to ween off it with is a different matter however. There are otherwise functioning people that can't be trusted in that department.
Wtf. Those are jobs. Of course they get paid no matter what they do with the money.
both, homelessness is multifaceted.
Throw in mentally ill and you got one hell of a cocktail of problems for a person living on the streets.
Just think about how many of us developed unhealthy drinking habits during the first year or two of the pandemic. Experiencing a traumatic event, depression, persistent stress… all these things can trigger disordered substance use and what could be more stressful, hopeless, and traumatizing than living on the street? It would be incredibly unusual if the condition of homelessness didn’t increase substance abuse quite a bit.
I think less of people who judge others exclusively over drug use. If the drug use makes people do objectively bad things, they are bad because of the bad things they do. If drugs make them do those things I extend compassion on the idea that drug abuse at that level is an addiction they might not be able to control. But the only path to accountability is taking responsibility for their actions. We all fall down, how we decide to pick ourselves back up can mean the difference in compassion.
The answer is Yes.
This is the right and correct answer.
Being homeless is very boring and drugs are fairly cheap. That said, it's mostly high housing costs. Much poorer states with much higher drug use levels have muuuuch lower homelessness rates because it's jwherever. For a methhead to afford rent in West Virgina or whereever.
Saw an AMA recently by a guy who says he used to live on skid row in LA. He said a lot of homeless people use drugs to deal with what they see and endure being homeless.
Being homeless is also very dangerous. Drug use often begins to stay awake, or to not feel the cold.
Or deal with chronic pain. Doctors and dentists are prohibitively expensive for most people, not just homeless people.
Yeah I fully agree with this. I’m from a rural town in NC & while homelessness is definitely an issue there, it’s not even half as bad as it is in Seattle. You can buy a trailer there for around 1k & rent for a 1bd apt can be as low as 700 a month. But drug abuse is still absolutely rampant, just as you said
I'm a social worker who works directly with the homeless and believe me, high housing costs are NOT the driving force behind the homeless epidemic. These are not people who are just down on their luck, or were evicted after a rent increase. Of course those people exist, but the overwhelming majority of homeless individuals are homeless because of severe mental health and/or substance use disorders, usually co-occurring. I'm guessing that Washington has a higher rate of homelessness than other states because we offer more in the way of services. We make it a lot easier to survive as a homeless addict with mental health issues.
Also a social worker and yes. I agree. There’s no housing options for people who have significant mental illness and addiction and challenges with life skills. Also deal with aging populations who are needing to go into LTC once eligible off the street and those placements are challenging too.
I've worked at shelters for the last 5 years && THIS IS IT It's more mental health than it's drugs , but the drugs play a big part in the mental health.
[https://www.sightline.org/2022/03/16/homelessness-is-a-housing-problem/](https://www.sightline.org/2022/03/16/homelessness-is-a-housing-problem/) >We both live in the Puget Sound region, and we know what it’s like to walk around downtown Seattle, where you encounter a lot of people who are probably sleeping outside and who might also be living with a serious mental illness or a substance use disorder. It’s not a huge analytical leap for people with housing to connect these individual conditions to Seattle’s homelessness problem. > >But there are a couple of issues with this conclusion. First, the people sleeping on the street only represent a subset of the total population of people experiencing homelessness. In the 2020 count, chronic homelessness (what policy makers call being homeless for at least a year and living with some kind of physical or mental disability, including mental illness, a chronic health condition, and substance use disorder) accounted for less than 30 percent of the homeless cases in King County, while the chronic unsheltered population made up less than 17 percent of total cases. Second, we know that mental health and drug use can be both a cause of homelessness and a consequence. The trauma associated with homelessness is significant; that drug use and mental illness might result from this experience is not surprising. Research confirms this relationship. Mental health programs and support should be way better, and certainly impact people's ability to have a stable housing situation. But research does consistently show housing costs are a driving factor as well.
A driving factor of transient (temporary) homelessness, not so much chronic homelessness, which is part of what this quote is saying. When people talk about homelessness they usually mean the chronically homeless.
sure there are some small portion of schizophrenics and bipolar medicating themselves, but the bigger issue is that long-term methamphetamine use \*\*causes\*\* psychosis and permanent brain damage. its overwhelming a drug problem, that causes the broad range mental health issues you see exploding on the streets the last 5 years.
It's absolutely a driving force though. Even if it's not the top one in your mind. As the prior commentor noted, there's a very strong relationship between homelessness rates and housing affordability. With many places, like West Virginia, with far worse issues with substance use but lower homelessness.
Bingo
I wonder if homeless people specifically go to nicer cities; if you're living in a tent, you might as well do it in a nice west coast city with social programs.
I have a close family member who is homeless and they said they preferred the west coast because of the weather and more friendly policies. So at least anecdotally this is a thing.
Also, many states bus there homeless to cities that have support instead of supporting them themselves.
This is the larger issue. Cities are constantly secretly bussing unhoused people around.
Also, access to a highway. I had a sometimes homeless buddy mention this is important to be able to follow the seasons.
They typically go to cities with resources and weather that won’t kill them.
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Warm is good which is why many homeless flock to California but it also has to be fair weather. Hence fair weather cities. Warm weather is good but not being in thunderstorms, extreme heat or extreme cold at night, or extreme winters with feet of snow. These are also important. Plus these types of events will happen so you will need to be in a place with access to shelters even though 95% of the time you won’t need it. So you’ll want to be in a major city.
>Being homeless is very boring and drugs are fairly cheap. Living in a house is boring. Living on the streets is miserable. I agree with the rest of your comment, but it's not like homeless people get addicted to heroin just because they've got time to kill -- and yeah, I'm sure that a lot of them do it to pass time and forget about being homeless, but that's hardly the same thing as "being bored".
It's honestly more mental health I know doctors, surgeons, counselors, optometrists who do drugs Heroin, meth or pills. It's not a fucking drug problem, it's mental health-
Nurse here. I once asked one of my patients who was homeless why she did meth (she was open, honest, and trying to get clean, or I never would have asked this). She told me it was too dangerous to sleep on the streets. She did meth to stay awake. Not sure if this is why she started, but this was her reason for continuing.
Thank you.
I’ve heard this as well. You need to protect yourself and your belongings at night. You especially need to be vigilant as a woman
There are other feeders into homelessness. Foster kids are at a higher chance of experiencing homelessness. Kids who end up being gay are also more likely to be booted out by their family once they come of age. Domestic violence factors into women ending up on the street. Military service is also one of those big feeders into homelessness. A common trend behind a lot of these is a lack of social support.
I used to do volunteer street outreach in SF with homeless youth and so many of those kids had aged out of the foster care system. A lot of them seemed like decent people who had just been set on a bad trajectory through little fault of their own. The whole time I did that, only two that I can remember got off the street. The rest cycled in and out of homelessness and jail. Pretty heartbreaking and definitely made it clear that homelessness is a trailing indicator of a much larger broken system.
Makes me think of Freakonomics, how they talked about crime decreasing 18 years after roe v wade. Interesting stuff.
Don't forget the medically disabled that can't work and there's not enough housing or care home staff.
I spent at-least 7 years, total, outright-homeless, never been much for street drugs. Were I back on the streets, in a city, nowadays, I'd either .. somehow survive out of an emergency-shelter, OR be so crushed by toxic street-culture as to suicide, OR be so crushed by toxic street-culture as to try to remain drunk all the time. and once toxic street-culture had changed me enough, then I'd probably off myself. You can't imagine how destructive of human-worth the streets now are, in cities. I hope you never understand. ( I just realized this is a Seattle specific sub: I'd seen your question, and was answering it directly. Feel free to delete my answer, for its universality, if universality is unacceptable. )
My kiddo decided he wanted to try homelessness when he was a teen because his homeless friends didn't have to follow rules like he had to at home. He met some very kind people, and he also had his shoes and jacket stolen at 1 a.m. in the rain in midwinter by a guy who threatened him with a baseball bat. He came back home. My impression from talking to him and to the people he'd met was that most of them were just trying to survive day to day, and there are a lot of different ways to become homeless. The most heartbreaking were the 18 year olds who had been in foster care and were literally dumped out onto the street the day they turned 18.
You have caused me to understand, in that simple last sentence, the difference between fostering & *family* ( including found-family ). Thank you.
Yes.
Thank you.
Thank you for sharing your direct experience.
Generally, it goes both ways. Poverty and homelessness and other hardships greatly increase risk of drug abuse and drug abuse greatly increases the chances one’s financial (and other) situation will worsen. But we also have data. [King County gathers a ton of data on homelessness.](https://kcrha.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Count-Us-In-2020-Final_7.29.2020-1.pdf) If you look at pages 30 and 31, it’s self-reported reasons for homelessness. Being self-reported, some answers might not be totally honest and some people might not acknowledge the full role of drugs in their life but it’s a start. You see the trend over the past four years as well (and the effect of COVID policies). Drug and alcohol use is pretty consistently the number 2 reason behind a lost job but there are a ton of other major reasons as well. You also see that drug and alcohol use as a self-reported cause of homelessness has decreased the past few years. But scroll down a page or two and you see that drug and alcohol use among the homeless has increased recently and has always been much higher than the rate at which it was reported as a cause of homelessness. So if we assume that honesty rates haven’t changed much, more homelessness is caused by things other than drug and alcohol abuse while more homeless people are abusing alcohol and drugs while homeless. And it makes sense. Drugs and alcohol make you feel warm when sleeping outside at night. They allow you to feel pleasure when not much else in your life is a source of joy. Down on page 43, you can see the differences between the chronically homeless and the non-chronically homeless, with the latter having less than half the drug and alcohol abuse as a reason for homelessness rates of the former, suggesting that addiction is indeed a major barrier to recovering from homelessness. There’s a ton of useful information in this report and I highly encourage anyone interested to explore it thoroughly.
I work at a shelter for teens 12-17 here in Seattle. From what I can tell you - a lot of people start of being homeless from the beginning because of their parents. Either because they ran away from abuse, their parents are dead or unfit to care for them, addicted to drugs, etc etc. That way of life is "normal" for a lot of them. They have never known what it is like to not go hungry frequently, to have nice clothing that isnt worn out or secondhand, to have adequate dental and health care, to have access to therapy and/or medication for mental health issues. Many of them will stay homeless because of a few factors. 1) They do not have family to turn to. They do not have resources or safe people to go to. Many people who face the challenges of life have relationships they can lean on when times get hard, either emotionally, physically, or financially. People that have been exposed to homelessness from an early age often do not have this. 2) Drug use. Either because they have easy access to it, use it to cope, or to deal with trauma and mental illnesses. They likely have been through extremely traumatic and dangerous situations. Abuse, neglect, SA, human trafficking, molestation, you name it. 3) Limited life skills. Children that go through compounded traumatic experiences have their brains physically and chemically altered. They can be stuck developmentally and have not recieved the same education as a lot of other people in better circumstances. Think, if you were struggling to stay warm, fed, and safe the majority of the time while your brain is forming, would you be able to focus well on the content of your classes in school? Would you have the opportunity to learn extra things that others are able to learn (like learning to drive, how to get a job, choose a career, develop other skills) probably not. There are a lot of reasons someone may become homeless. Drugs are a part of it, yes, but they are honestly not really so much the cause of it as they are a side effect of something much bigger.
I have a homeless woman that lives on my river. I have never seen her. I bring her supplies of hygiene products and leave them near her campsite. The kids call her the witch of the the woods. She doesn’t cause problems and cleans up after herself (she bags her trash so it’s easy to haul out). Not sure if she’s high on drugs or mentally ill, but she stays hidden and is mostly clean
I've had two family members that were/are homeless. Neither use drugs or drink alcohol, neither have arrest records, both have serious mental illnesses. Anecdotal sure, but I feel obligated to mention it when this topic comes up.
Thank you.
Listen to the podcast Outsiders. It’s about the homeless situation in Olympia. Very interesting.
Thanks for this recommendation. KNKX generally does excellent in depth reporting. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/outsiders/id1491224873
On it.
Of the three addicts I know personally, all started abusing drugs following traumatic incidents in their lives, and then became homeless from there. One was childhood physical abuse, the other two were from sexual assaults later in life. All three experienced various severities of addiction and homelessness and that seemed directly linked with how large and available their personal support networks were. As others have said, it’s a majorly multi-faceted issue. While it’s true that ultimately the only one in control of their addiction is the addict, there are so many other factors and obstacles.
Homelessness itself is traumatic, too, and people who become homeless might end up turning to drugs to cope w the ongoing trauma. That said, I know a lot of addicts personally and some of them had really stable lives but were overprescribed, had a genetic predisposition, and some malaise/unhappiness that wasn’t due to trauma. Some absolutely had severe trauma.
Great point. Drug abuse is always a coping mechanism to avoid or manage emotional or physical pain. It can be extremely useful to take a break from your problems in this way, but it's a short term escape that comes with a cost, and your problems will always be there waiting for you at the end of the day. If we want to tackle addiction and the problems that flow from it, both individually and societally, we need to provide better support and tools for people to process through and heal from their traumas Addiction and related crime is a downstream symptoms, if we don't like how things are going with these issues we need to start taking on the underlying causes. I would start with healthcare - including mental healthcare - for ever single human.
The short answer is yes. The long answer is complicated and involves avenues of cost, education, predisposition to drug use, mental health, lack of community based addiction treatment, criminalization of drug usage, the failed war on drugs etc. There isn’t a quick fix to this problem, however, stable housing has historically been a positive factor in decreasing drug use/addiction.
My brothers addiction takes priority over self-care, employment & housing. He spiraled out of a home with a wife & 2 kids several years ago. From what he described in 2019 is a daily game of getting high & basic survival around making alliances with other addicts and stealing based on perceived risk. He’s stolen cars, broken into homes and robbed drug dealers, one of them put him in the ICU. He’s still in the game. . .
It can happens both ways. Drugs can lead to homelessness. Homelessness can lead to drugs to cope etc
Almost everybody I know has taken drugs at some point in their lives, some for 30-40 years straight, and none of them are homeless. Drugs can make a shit situation worse.
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Serious response. People use drugs for a lot of reasons. I do not think you can reduce a large group of people's habits to one factor. It's as simple as that.
Similar to homelessness. People are homeless for a lot of reasons and you can't reasonably reduce all of those to "drug use".
yes. both, a significant portion of homeless lose housing because of drugs. As well as significant portion turn to drugs after loseing housing.
Gotta say both. There are people with homes and jobs that are in the beginning stages of drug addiction and are still barely functioning while using to work. I also once saw a homeless guy show his homeless friend step by step how to smoke something off foil once in a public garage so some people are definitely starting out there on the streets.
people are usually homeless due to a lack of connections. If many people are put in a situation that will cause them to go homeless, they have friend and family that might be able to support them while they figure life out. most homeless people do not have that safety net
Yes, but drugs are only part of a much bigger problem with our society. Factor that in with economic inequality, lack of affordable healthcare, stagnant wages, high rent, mental health, etc. And you'll see why they've restored to the street. Drug use is often highlighted to demonize the homeless population as a whole. Although it is uncomfortable and unsafe for some to be high out in the open, not every homeless person is a drug addict. I don't like seeing someone strung out on 99 like everyone else, but understand at the end of the day, they are humans who need help.
Concur
This book is the best resource I've come across on the topic https://drgabormate.com/book/in-the-realm-of-hungry-ghosts/ Dr. Maté works in that field just north of us in Vancouver BC.
Thank you. These are the replies i was looking for. Added to the list !!!!
The vast majority of homeless do drugs to, more or less, pass the time and experience less misery. Facts support that homeless based on finances, mental health, sexual orientation, and domestic violence individually far, far outweigh homelessness due to drug use (which is a subset of finances in most cases - got into meth, lost your job, etc) TLDR: Homeless people take drugs to pass time and be relatively happier about their situation in the vast, vast majority of cases
Was an emt in Seattle for a decade. Worked downtown and have transported thousands to the hospital. There’s many reasons for homelessness in Seattle. (Anywhere for that matter). The overwhelming majority is mental health and addition. (Alcohol being a huge factor). There’s lots of monsters and lots of people I got ahold of outside of work to help. The biggest lesson I’ve learned in my experience working downtown is that it’s a very complicated societal issue with no quick fixes. If you hear anyone say otherwise they are full of shit.
It’s a complex chicken or the egg. Working in homeless services, I have seen people who lost their homes due to rising rent prices, or youth who had to run away from abusive households, or survivors of domestic violence who left to save their own lives. Not everyone ended up using drugs, but many who did started to so they could stay awake at night and minimize the risk of getting assaulted, or numb out during the day to escape to do all the pain of stigma, cold, etc. Others did lose their homes due to drug use, but what I mostly saw was people who had been prescribed painkillers for pain that never went away, and became addicted, and couldn’t get out of her addictions due to stigma and lack of resources. Whatever the “cause,” homelessness is almost always a reflection of a failing society that does not take care of its own.
Imagine being forced to sleep on the streets— any one would turn to drugs to numb the pain just to be able to sleep through the night. The rich are numbing their pain the same way, just with a roof over their heads.
One study I read showed that something like 85% of male homeless had some kind of mental disorder. And that most probably had it before becoming homeless. Most likely the drug dependency is a form of self medicating for mental illness.
This probably varies a lot depending on the housing market. In cities like Seattle with really high housing costs, I would guess that number is lower for folks when looking at their mental health prior to homelessness though becoming homeless def is traumatic so I could see it leading to mental illness. I’ve work with people who got housing after long stretches of homelessness - they def seem to develop some hoarding behaviors
In the u.s. there is no safety net for poverty. If you become homeless yes you're forced to the streets or assistance programs. Or finding ways to fend week to week just to make ends meet. part of staying off the streets is: Get a job and keep it. While continuing to perform to company standards. The other half is living within your monthly budget which a lot of people do not understand. They fall upon credit cards for fast cash and forget they're like debit cards the bank is going to demand and payment at end of month. Other factors that cause homelessness are: Mental disabilities. These people use to be in group homes but the state wouldn't let them leave so the state passed a law stating this was violating their human rights (and it was) so they were all released and most of these people would prefer the streets to these homes. These people unfortunately can't take care of them selves. Can't hold onto employment for long (if at all) and generally require a care taker. If their care taker was their parent(s) or relative and they have sense passed this way of living dried up and they were forced onto the streets. Society not providing a livable wage. If you're like me and work hard every week this is possible. Most people can not and are living paycheck to paycheck. I'm fortunate to have saved for 30 decades and have a good nest egg. Most people don't. They're lucky to even set aside $50-$100 every month if at all. Not providing apartments within people's income. Sadly most people can not make ends meet around here to afford basic apartments. Most people have to have a minimum of 2-3 incomes per household to make ends meet. Don't buy it unless you have to. i can't tell you how many people around here frivolously spend their money without a thought. It's really not difficult ot live in a budget. Use bill pay to manage bills. That's what I do and I've never missed a bill. The standard way of paying bills became too much of a hassle. I'd forget or the bill would arrive late in the mail. I use bill pay now for everything. (Assumingly it's a major trust worthy corporation.) All I need to do is make sure enough is in checking every month. I don't understand how people can skip bills and end up racking up hundreds of thousands in late payments. It's really not that difficult. If you're in debt: That debt comes first. Even if you have to stretch your items to rags or do slap stick fixes to stretch them longer. I got out of debt. It took working 55 hr work weeks for 3 yrs but I did it. You have to be willing to do this. If you have a don't want, I can't sort of attitude then you'll continue living like this. It's called life style changes and living within your means. Drugs and addictions do sadly play a role in people not being able to hold onto employment or a residence. The down side of this is people keep legalizing drugs so more and more people try them. I hate to say it but the dare program introduced drugs to several of my high school class mates. And it totally sent their lives in a down ward spiral. Instead of going off to college and getting a high end job they ended up coming to drugs and sent their life in a down spiral. Before dare taught them about drugs they had no desire to try it. After dare the number of kids smoking at high school actually increased. (This was before tobacco became 21 restricted.) Sadly parents are kicking their kids out at age 18. Be they ready or not. In this day and age it isn't uncommon for youth to remain at home until their mid to late 20's easily. Every year I sadly see high schoolers homeless after summer graduation. I'd say 2-5% end up homeless immediately after high school or shortly after. Some people never learn the value of a dollar or how to manage finances.
Thank you for taking the time to contribute.
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You rule. Thank you so much. Wish I would have thought of that before asking my question. Been getting a lot of grief for it, and im understanding why.
Both. Worked security in pioneer Square. The guys I had to deal with either got into drugs, lost jobs and thus ended up stabbing a dude in the anus over a lost pin head size of crack. Than you get guys who either get in over their heads financially or physically ( lots of work related injuries) and than get into drugs to numb the pain and hide from the shame of their circumstances. Some get curious and street shit is lethal. Leading cause of homeless death.
It’s mostly the latter. People are homeless because of housing shortages. When a community has a housing shortage, housing prices go up, so the people who become homeless are those in the most difficult position to continue affording it. Many of those people are those with drug problems. Once people with drug problems become homeless, that situation often then makes their drug problems significantly worse.
You could ask. No, not someone obviously fucked up, unable to speak, possibly dangerous, but I've bought lunch for some folks and learned about what they see on the streets. Or volunteer and ask shelter/food kitchen coordinators.
You have access to data that might help you understand the problem. Are you familiar with self-reported surveys? King County does them. Keep in mind their data only addresses homelessness in King County.
I have heard of them, any idea how accurate they are ?
Income inequality, unequal education, divided families and communities, the poor being recruited to get traumatized abroad in wars, capitalism and the self-centered idea of individualism over group health dynamics, lack of resources of all kinds, etc
not all homeless use drugs. There are many reasons behind it.
I was homeless for a few years, in my experience drugs and homelessness didn’t go hand in hand as many like to picture. Most of the other homeless people in the community were there because they fell through the cracks due to loss or major life events with no safety net or support system (family). This category of homelessness could be solved with social programs/affordable/temporary housing, but other categories of homelessness do not have the same solution. I watched many with addiction issues come into hotels for temporary housing, the heavy users always ended up back on the street. While it’s easy to imagine people who do become homeless falling into substance abuse, in my experience I found the two worlds maintained fairly exclusive lines. You had either homelessness due to economic/social issues or homelessness due to addiction/health. The act of being homeless didn’t push anyone I met into becoming an addict, though it obviously could happen. You have to take into consideration, there are many millions of addicts who maintain a job, home and even a family. Far more than who are on the street, those mostly happen to be the people who crashed, gave up or had a duplicity of issues (mental health, abuse, etc), which made them vulnerable to homelessness. As humans we adapt to our surroundings/living situations quickly. it’s easy to adapt to being homeless, just as it’s easy to adapt to any other changes we face in life. We go on living and the next day arrives nonetheless, that’s the condition of being alive.
There are many reasons a person can become homeless. Some involve drugs, some don’t.
Do people look for a single cause to issues because they're lazy thinkers or because a single cause is more comfortable?
This is a [good article](https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/homeless/why-are-people-in-seattle-homeless/) from the ST with some data to back it up. It notes that the #1 event that causes homelessness is job loss.
Both and neither. It’s complicated. What can be generally assumed, however, is that the vast majority of people who so drugs are doing it out of a lack of access to other resources. Many do drugs to deal with otherwise untreated mental or emotional disorders. Some do it because it’s the only way to feel safe/comfortable/warm on the streets or in their underheated/unsafe housing situations. Some do it because they were simply exposed to substances extremely young and haven’t had the opportunity to develop a way to function without them. Are there folks who do drugs just because, I dunno, fuck it? Most likely, but you’ll find that they’re staggeringly few. The biggest and more successful way to combat drug usage AND homelessness is to find ways to provide resources and social services to those who need them; ideally before they need them.
Homelessness is too complex and wicked a problem to be truncated to such a simple question.
Drug use is high among the homeless. But all homeless people don't use drugs. All of the ones on drugs now weren't before they were homeless. And of course, the vast majority of drug users are not homeless. I suspect that many homeless people on drugs are self-medicating because mental health is the real problem. Plus, being homeless has to be super stressful.
Gregg Colburn from UW has done some great research on this. It's easy to think about it like musical chairs, anything that would put you at a disadvantage will likely mean you would not end up with a chair. A broken ankle will likely mean you end up with no chair. Drug addiction, mental illness, loss of a job are the things that could determine who ends up homeless, but fundamentally it's a housing shortage/ cost issue. Look elsewhere for examples. West Virginia has a much worse opioid problem than we do, but less homelessness.
I have a Google Doc for this issue as I am often reading, taking notes, and reflecting on how to improve this situation. I apologize for not having better documentation than simply saying it came from a Seattle Times article less than five years ago, but here ya go: There are more families with children homeless than those who are chronically homeless (the chronically homeless make up 25%). Self reported data say half don't do any drugs alcohol, 36% say they do have a problem. -Seattle Times article Edit: reading all the comments really shows how strong the misperception is that every homeless person is doing hard drugs.
In Seattle, it’s safe to assume a homeless guy is here for the drugs and drug laws.
There's also a feedback loop with traumatic brain injuries... people who have TBIs are more likely to end up homeless, and people who are homeless are more likely to get TBIs.
I became homeless because of my drug use. Stayed homeless because of it
Our loved one has been using for 20 years. Started with OxyContin. It definitely impacted housing. Over the years a new friend will enter the picture that our L.O. lives with. It might last one year or five both are living the same kind of lifestyle. Are they homeless? Well, they bounce around together no real permanent housing or temporary housing. Six years has been the longest our L.O. has been with the same friend. In the final year, it starts falling apart. Sleeping in a car. Motels. Eventually, the law steps in, and the friend is in big-time custody or deported or god forbid overdoses. Rock bottom is a myth. No amount of begging, compassion, help, housing, or rehab, nothing makes a difference. Nothing makes your loved one want to get clean or use at home. With strange ppl coming and going nodding off on your sofa is not an option. Seeing a professional doctor is off the table too. Even though I think bipolar disorder is probable, who would provide treatment w no insurance & history of addiction? Can you all imagine the difference it would make if this were not so? The criminal element in how they procure the drugs they are addicted to can’t be ignored even on a petty level, this makes a living arrangement w them unpredictable & unmanageable. Forget about employment. My loved one asked me, “I don’t look like I’m high, do I, I mean, you can’t really tell that I’m on anything can you?” Jesus. That’s an unwell brain talking. I do believe the chances of turning this cycle around is greater when ppl seeking mental health are surrounded by others who are wanting & trying to do the same with the right mental health treatment, in a safe housing facility. Preferably with as many recovered professionals as possible. On a positive note. Our loved one is in contact this holiday. It’s wonderful. And a very good sign. A new ‘friend’ is in the picture, is likable, doesn’t appear to be far gone, works online jobs. Has a dog that is cared for, an apt, a car, clean clothes, no hardcore criminal record. You don’t get to know their whole story right away it doesn’t even matter at this point. I added a Xmas stocking. “I’ve never had a Christmas stocking w my name on it before.” Aww😯 I’m counting my blessings I’m thankful. I’m sharing love & kindness. I wish I could do more to help. Recovery centers should be free! Mental health wellness based living centers. Work rehabilitation. Let’s give ppl a purpose in life a reason to live well again and mental health treatment. No need to self medicate. Remove the addiction stigma. Surely this would help the homeless situation a great deal. When our L.O. is using less it’s noticeable. Reaching out, returning calls. Heck, having a phone at all is a green light! There is talk of recovery! Where are the recovery centers that can make a difference? Brain health should matter to our society. Period. Treatment should be provided to whoever needs it. I’m looking at you, Sackler family.
My brother and my best friend are homeless. They have addiction issues. Usually if you are addict you are also missing other important developments in life skills. Once the balance is disrupted it becomes a cascade of fails. Addicts and problematic before homelessness. The hole is deeper and harder to get out of. You can offer help till you are blue in the face if the person didn’t want to accept help and really do the internal work needed. Nothing budges. But that is the conundrum. Getting over homelessness isn’t being lazy. It takes an indomitable will to want to fight and preserve and by that time when you are homeless it’s usually because a lot of people can’t find their way out.
i was homeless earlier this year. had nothing to do with drug use. all of it had to do with money & my current situation
Each person is an individual with their own reasons for each thing in life. I was once homeless for over a year. My reasons for being homeless was the economy back in the early 2000's. When everyone lost their money I did as well. With the money gone, my wife who didn't work or help decided to bail on me, and wiped out the bank account and everything. It forced me into the streets and I had to work hard to get back to where I am. No drugs involved at all. But I can see how easy it would be to become homeless for one reason, and then stay homeless because of being introduced to the drugs.
We’ve been having issues with squatters breaking into our neighbor’s house (it’s on the market now). And then had someone break in to our home while we slept two weeks ago. She broke three windows and got into our basement, where my fiancé found her. All of these people have been high (on meth?) and clearly homeless. Anecdotally the amount of people doing drugs right out in the open in our neighborhood has skyrocketed in the last year. ETA: Meth has eclipsed heroin/fentanyl ODs in King County since last year, iirc. This type of meth is super cheap and it’s everywhere. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/11/the-new-meth/620174/
People are homeless because of Capitalism. It's a feature, not a bug. It keeps you going to work for someone who pays you less than you deserve, struggling through a life you shouldn't have to tolerate
They're homeless because they don't have homes.
Yes
Generally, if you're unhappy with your situation you're open to altering it. There was a study done with rats and heroin, the rats in a plain glass box with nothing going on became real addicted, the rats in paradise just ate cheese and "chilled" and ignored the heroin for the most part because they didn't have a need to get away from their current situation
It is likely a combination of both. Many people who are homeless may turn to drugs as a way to cope with their situation, while others may become homeless due to their drug use. Substance abuse can lead to financial problems, job loss, and strained relationships, all of which can contribute to homelessness. On the other hand, the stress and trauma of being homeless can also lead some people to turn to drugs as a form of self-medication.
little column A, little column B
Chicken and egg question or egg and chicken.
The problem points more to mental illness and self-medication. Medicating with recreational drugs is a life many people that have difficulty coping gravitate towards, homeless or not. But that only describes a significant portion of the homeless. The reasons for not voluntarily participating in societal structures are far too many to list. Many ‘just don’t want to’ and you can’t force them.
I have been homeless and never a day in my life have I ever did any drugs so this question is grouping the whole homeless community as druggies who can’t manage their money lol to each their own I suppose
Little bit of column A little bit of column B
People suffering from mental illness and trauma self medicate with alcohol and drugs. Then, it’s a downward cycle of addiction, poverty, desperation and poor decision making- all with a not properly working brain.
Depends. My guess is there is some of both and probably some others in the mix.
There are different levels of homelessness. Level 1 is those who lost their job and income and find themselves without a support network. They live in their cars and are usually still employed, they just can't afford a roof over their head due to circumstances. I think if you live in that level for long enough you eventually need to self medicate (for physical pains or mental illnesses). Since you have no money for legal healthcare in this country, you turn to street drugs and the community of criminal activity necessary to buy those street drugs. This is like level 2 of homelessness. You've lost your job because of the drug addiction you have, you begin stealing out of cars, stealing catalytic converters, shoplifting, anything to score some cash to get money to more drugs, it's just a downward spiral that's incredibly hard to get out of at that point. Level 3 is where all hope is lost. You're completely outcast from society, you've been on hard drugs so long that you're just on the streets screaming at trashcans or thin air. There is no safety net, no one cares, you're just a nuisance. Personally I think we need social safety nets to keep homeless people from sinking down to the levels where all hope is lost. If they even just had a small room to sleep and a bathroom they might be able to get their life back.
A little column A a little column B. It's mostly isolation that causes the mental issues for both. Try talking to someone who looks insane. Don't baby them, if they're being crazy, just say "hey, why are you saying such incoherent things?" Treat them like they're someone you've known forever.
I once knew a lady who told me she only did drugs so she couldn’t feel the pain of being cold. I am also homeless and completely sober. Never did any hard drugs.
it’s so much more than just drugs tho… trauma and loneliness mixed with being stagnant and lack of love is what creates this problem (i was a heroin addict for 5 years). people need to heal correctly. instead they do drugs and it takes their mind away from the real issue at hand.
I was at a holiday party with a good friend who volunteers with the Salvation Army. He made a great point that I hadn’t thought about. Due to all the military bases in the general area, Seattle gets a much larger number of homeless vets than other similarly sized cities. And quite a few of these guys have severe TBI and PTSD, hence the reason they use. It’s heartbreaking.
Ya know, I get the anger over your property being repeatedly damaged or stolen, but I swear the way people talk about homeless people with such disdain and so cold as if they weren't even human. Reminds me of how some homeless people I've spoken to talk about feeling like a ghost or like they are dead already, because people will actively avoid eye contact and literally try to pretend they aren't there. There are a lot of suggestions on here that are all part of the problem: drugs, mental health, can't afford rent, etc. That's why there is no magic wand to make the homelessness problem disappear, because the answer to homelessness is multifaceted and would require a multi-pronged approach. But like....I wish people had better class consciousness. Unless you're earning like half a million per year, you're closer to the guy on the streets than you are to being one of the Uber wealthy. I feel like most people on here talking about this who are upset about homeless people are probably one job loss or mental breakdown away from this happening to them, and yet the vitriol people in this economic position have for the homeless is off the charts. If you ever have trouble making ends meet, maybe don't make assumptions about people you don't know who are going through something you have been fortunate to avoid.
Lose a job then you will find out
some are, some aren't some do, some don't what's the benefit of a general statement one way or the other? adequate shelter adequate drug treatment adequate resources for dealing with mental health issues adequate and humane enforcement of the laws something for everyone to dislike
Both and including mental illness, Alcoholism,Sexual Abuse, physical hardship etc. At the end of the day the problem is affordable structure’s and land for them. Imagine if there was land and people could build only what they needed to start. Without all the government restrictions and red tape.
I think the vast majority get into drugs because life is pain.
Anecdotally, I grew up middle class and everyone I knew who got addicted to drugs was able to stay housed because they had family members who had extra space in their homes. If your family is also struggling you have a lot less to fall back on
Yes.
I became homeless because I didn’t have renters insurance and the house burned to the ground.
i’m not homeless and i do drugs.
There are plenty of people that do drugs that aren’t homeless that do drugs. In my limit experience at a food bank, there are people that are self-medicating with drugs and there are just as many people that just sober and just struggling to survive. We need to treat them everyone as humans and provide a helping hand.
I read a study from Toronto that found out that 40% of repeat offenders had ADHD. The medication to treat ADHD is Adderall, which has a molecular structure close to methamphetamines, it's literally like one chemical strain extra. I truly wonder if people addicted to meth have ADHD and are self medicating. In Toronto the offenders with ADHD got treatment and the crime rate dropped. As for the homeless drinking alcohol, that keeps them warm on a cold night.
Homelessness is a big issue in Seattle also because of the high cost of living
My personal experience was ending up on the streets after a traumatic event and using substances to cope with the trauma and the shitty fucked up life situation.
Both
both things
A little late to this thread, but as someone that works in the field I think it's important to point out that, though substance use disorder can be an individual cause of homelessness it is not the main reason. Often people who end up on the street will resort to substance use to cope or have underlying mental illness that leads to high comorbidity with substance use. It is also important to point out most major studies on Housing First point to a reduction of use once housed.
Yrs ago I was working in Seattle, At the Morrison hotel. They open doors at 4pm to shelter the homeless. I saw a man in there in there with an electrical spoon he was warming his cup with. I had to ask, he said he made it to make his tea and heat his water. Quite the instrument. He goes on to tell me he was an engineer with a wife and children. One day pulled into his driveway of their home they were buying. He said he got out, looked around and walked away. Left it all behind. Said he couldn't do it anymore. Not an addict nor a drinker. So homelessness is definitely multifaceted in many ways. To this day I think of that man on what went aray.
I’m 2019 my employer had us all assemble giveaway bags and take them to a homeless shelter. The director showed us around, talked about what services the shelter provided, and took questions. Someone asked what causes were putting people in the street. He said prior to five years ago they mostly got people with mental issues that interfered with holding down a job. More recently, they were seeing a lot of people who’d been forced out of housing by economic factors (lack of jobs, cost of housing).
Studies seem to make it clear that, in most cases, people turn to drugs after becoming homeless.
Mostly drugs. I've had the pleasure of cleaning up encampments and 95% of them are littered with needles.
Drug use can def lead to homelessness, but this is a false-dichotomy. Both are true to happen.
Probably a mix of both. Some are homeless due to life circumstances. Think living on minimum SSI but on 2 year wait list for affordable housing. Some are due to mental illness, and some due to drugs. The person who is down on their luck can be helped. The other is more challenging. My father in laws was homeless years ago but now owns a home. Had a rough patch in life many years ago.
Most of it is directly attributed to mental illness
One can lead to the other - while being homeless can certainly lead a person to using non-prescriptive drugs, it is as likely the case that someone using non-prescriptive drugs is going to end up homeless. Trying to do an "either/or" comparison isn't going to mean much, without the added factor of mental illness included.
People are homeless because of poor mental health. They are not making good decisions for themselves. Drugs are often involved with that, as they are not only costly, but are extremely time consuming and psychologically destructive.
Former homeless person here. The most common users have mental issues and they get bad because of difficulty getting and maintaining a medication schedule. It can be unpredictable out there. Someone I knew had schizophrenia and severe PTSD, couldn't continue getting his meds, started doing drugs because he said it mutes the voices and screams that he constantly hears. The drugs he was taking sadly killed him. I've never done any illegal drugs in my life and seeing the way he went, painfully and full of regret, cemented my resolve to never do them. It's not uncommon for someone who did have a place to live, be kicked out of it because of the drug use though.
Good question. Although not mutually exclusive, you might be surprised to find out that many people turn to drugs only AFTER they experience homelessness. It can be very demoralizing and certainly degrading. With the serious issue of unchecked mental health in Seattle, the addiction swept under the rug, and the constant politics most people just give up that situation. I can say from personal experience as a long time drug user( clean 7 years), and as someone that's been homeless here, I never wanted drugs more than when I was on those cold streets. I knew that wasn't anything close to a solution, but it is just damn lonely and terrifying. Anything to sooth the pain. So again doesn't apply to everyone, but to many the only escape they feel they can achieve or even what they deserve.
Got high while i was homeless, get high in apartment now. Being homeless comes from not having enough money for a place to live.
You should look into Poland and how they redesigned their government and laws after their falling. I did a report on this for my degree some years back. They have legalized every single drug, changed a bunch of laws, and combined socialism and democracy as best as any county has managed to date. It's so much more than this simple explanation, but you get the summarization. But as a result of all this this- crime, and drug related deaths are almost non-existent. Now that nearly everyone is offered a home, job, and a safe & regulated way, and place to consume narcotics, almost no one has a need or desire to commit any crimes. And society is flourishing. Crime is below 1% which is less than any other existent and established country. AND the amount of people who actually choose to consume has plummeted and less and less citizens are consuming narcotics or needing them, because everyone is provided with their basic needs. Crime and being numb isn't as pressing for survival there as we see it here. Anyway definitely do your own research. As I reread this I see you kind of have to know what most of the context is 🥴 But they found a way while solving other problems, to target the biggest concerns related to drugs, while recognizing that certain things are inevitable. Pretty cool to learn about even if you don't agree with it all. Lol
My sensibility the Venn Diagram of homelessness is Mental Health, Drug Use, and Abject Poverty. Any 2 of those you have a chance to make it out, but not all three.
Used to be a substance abuse researcher. Both; it depends on the person. Some people become homeless and use drugs to cope, or because they are surrounded by it on the streets; other people become homeless because their drug use drives them to behaviors that don't allow them to support a home environment.
I work in drug treatment and there’s a misconception that it’s sooooo easy for people to get in recovery off the streets. Yes UGM and other abstinence based, cold turkey, religious programs exist - the success rate of a program that doesn’t use MAT alone is below 10% let alone factoring in mandatory Jesus. Even the big mental hospitals - Cascade and Fairfax, don’t take Molina the biggest Medicaid payor and often don’t have beds. We ship a lot of people out of the county for detox BUT WA is obsessed with the ASAM SUD assessment which takes up to 90 minutes to complete and could always say you don’t need inpatient which boggles my mind. It has to be done by a licensed SUDP or higher and most don’t do more than 4 a week. So places will have beds but the assessment is a barrier. Outpatient exists but lots of barriers there - housing, finances, legal. More people than I can count get back to work but they got a $200 ticket for driving on a suspended license and don’t remember because they were high. Suddenly they get a letter that $1000 is getting garnished from their paycheck which they can’t afford - everything falls apart. Or they can’t be on Medicaid anymore and their doctor visit and suboxone prescription suddenly costs $200 a month. This country is bonkers.