No one knows this but me, that I had a former life before becoming the person that I am now. Everyone goes through the adolescent stage of finding themselves, and it just so happened that my situation resulted in me leaving home and ending up homeless/transient/drug addicted to some degree for some time, a couple of years. It might not seem like much time, but those couple of years were a huge eye opener to many things including government neglect, police corruption, organized crime, drug dealing, and more. It was not my own personal involvement but others that I met who introduced me to the "real world" -- I would not exactly call it a "scared straight" experience, but the fact is that I could not get far enough awayt from the street life after all that and I realized big time that I had disrespected my own life and parents by becoming so immersed in my own problems that I had gotten depressed and almost ended up dead as a result. Fortunately never got in very deeply just enough to know it was the wrong path to take, and that life provides us with the best we just have to know how to handle it and how to get what we want. It takes courage to be sober, straight, and working towards your goals, even though you know the world is full of corruption and injustice you have to take it one day at a time, it is not going to help anyone if you die.