Substance Abuse Among the Homeless

One common habit which has been adopted by majority of street families and homeless people is the use of alcohol and drugs. This might be an understatement because such individual who fall into these groups actually abuse alcohol and drugs and they are heavily burdened with their struggle against the addictions and lack of basic needs including money to facilitate their substance abuse lifestyle.

Homeless people usually abuse alcohol and substances in their quest to fight stress and depression because of the challenges and miseries that they face out in the streets.

Moreover, people who abuse drugs and alcohol mostly result to become homeless because these substances may hinder an individual from carrying on with his/her particular day-to-day activities and may hence result to being poor which is a leading factor which generalizes all homeless people.

 
 

Factors driving homeless people to alcohol and drugs :

Social Inequalities.

Differences in the social class in the society creates a rift among humans with the rich having a different entity and the at times disregard the poor and never want to relate or mingle with them. This creates tension between the two groups with the homeless believing that the rich earned their status by exploiting them and since they have no voice, then they can at least get consolation to face another day by taking drugs or alcohol which at some stage makes their lives more miserable.

Street Abuses:

More Prone to Abuse.

Homeless people are more prone to abuse both by nature because of the cold or rainy weathers at night and also by other human beings. Being homeless means that the person has no shelter where by the individual can keep his/her property safe and thus whatever the person might earn for that day he/she may be tempted to spend. Drugs or alcohol come handy in budgeting for such earning.

Also the abuse in the streets may induce a person to seek consolation from drugs or alcohols as one tries to get rid of the torturing memories.

Influence from Other Homeless Individuals.

Since most homeless individuals might be addicts, they can easily influence another homeless person because substance and alcohol use is usually regarded as street life.

Lack of social assistance.

Most government policies and programs may fail to capture the plight of the homeless who end up feeling discriminated upon and their only consolation can be derived from alcohol or drugs.

Temptations to Commit Crimes.

Among the homeless, there are released inmates and other individuals who believe that their way out of poverty and homelessness is by stealing, carjacking and other crimes as they attempt to make a living. Most of the times to get the courage to commit such crimes calls for the use of drugs or alcohol.

Lost Hope.

When humans lose hope in life, they oft are tempted to just do anything to hurt others or that which they feel will give them some hope and relate with their current situation and thus may turn to addiction.