“Alcoholism” Antisocial Personality Disorder, and Homelessness

In my experience it seems that the people who engage in highly destructive behaviors related to substance use always have a dual diagnosis of substance abuse AND antisocial personality disorder.

When these people fall into the hands of the chemical dependency treatment industry they are virtually always given a single diagnosis of “addiction” and their antisocial personality disorder goes unrecognized.

Yet the junkie on the street who will rob you for ten dollars is NOT representative of junkies in general–there are a lot of white collar junkies that fly under the radar.

The same is true of boozehounds.

In self righteous American society we always talk about “alcoholism” causing homelessness and never the reverse.

Yet I often wonder if most of the alkies living on the street were driven to drink like that BECAUSE of the fact that they had to live on the streets.

I would like to see some evidence of whether drunkenness is more likely to cause homelessness or homelessness is more likely to cause drunkenness.

Copyright © 2009, The HAMS Harm Reduction Network