LONGECITY

Here's a study that shows it actually blocks the long term (but not short term) effects of drug seeking behaviour by cocaine:

http://www.ncbi.nlm....pubmed/18094234

Not sure about morphine though.

Having once been homeless, I am a bit offended by this post. It kind of implies that homeless people are addicted to cocaine and morphine, but honestly that is not at all true. There are a lot of crackheads who are homeless, but homeless people are not just crackheads. I'd be totally behind this idea if you had said "give out NAC to crackheads" but you didn't. You assumed homeless.

That being said, the nutritional profile of homeless people is, of course, appalling. Not being able to afford a home means you probably don't have enough money to afford to eat properly, and food stamps do not cover vitamins at all.

The idea that homeless people would sniff coke is, frankly, quite absurd. It is the banker's, not the beggar's drug

It would be a great idea though to give a basic multivitamin to the homeless. Those are the people who could certainly benefit most of it!

Guys...
"...homeless people WITH drug addiction"
I really don't see where you are getting the implication that every homeless person is an addict.

It would be a great idea though to give a basic multivitamin to the homeless. Those are the people who could certainly benefit most of it!

Heh, the idea came to me a while back of giving multivitamins to poor Africans. Actual decent food would be preferable, of course, but it is an idea worth entertaining, I think.

Sorry to pounce, but it is just one of my hot button isues whenever someone relates the homeless and drug addicts. The correlation between the two is, I am convinced, one of the main reasons that I spent 5 years on the street. Seemingly every job interview I went to, and every person that I met, assumed that I was a homeless drug addict, even while I could not even afford basic human needs like food on a regular basis, let alone any kind of pharmacological interventions to my mental state (aka drugs). While it is true that many people who fall deeply into crack addiction do end up homeless, there are actually very few people, overall, who are homeless because of drug use, and even fewer that can afford their drug of choice once stripped of all their support structures. The homeless crackhead that you can see is vastly outnumbered by those without homes, or jobs, that you don't see. As a point of reference, the local homeless shelter that I was forced to go to held 300 people, and had over 1000 on the rotation. By contrast, the local drug rehabilitation center only housed 50-100 at a time.
</soapbox>
Edited by Jeoshua, 09 January 2014 - 11:16 PM.

I too recommend use of medication to treat homelessness. Many people with mental illnesses would do well in institutions to treat them with psychotropic compounds, discuss with therapists, and rehabilitate them back to jobs.

Unfortunately, this was much more common in the past. Now, institutions are underfunded and many homeless are left without medication, therapy, or a place to sleep.

Sorry to pounce, but it is just one of my hot button isues whenever someone relates the homeless and drug addicts. The correlation between the two is, I am convinced, one of the main reasons that I spent 5 years on the street. Seemingly every job interview I went to, and every person that I met, assumed that I was a homeless drug addict, even while I could not even afford basic human needs like food on a regular basis, let alone any kind of pharmacological interventions to my mental state (aka drugs). While it is true that many people who fall deeply into crack addiction do end up homeless, there are actually very few people, overall, who are homeless because of drug use, and even fewer that can afford their drug of choice once stripped of all their support structures. The homeless crackhead that you can see is vastly outnumbered by those without homes, or jobs, that you don't see. As a point of reference, the local homeless shelter that I was forced to go to held 300 people, and had over 1000 on the rotation. By contrast, the local drug rehabilitation center only housed 50-100 at a time.
</soapbox>

I think the point is that "they should give [it] out" to the homeless drug addicts. The drug addicts who can afford homes can probably afford NAC.