This blog will be as far from a proper A-Z order as homeless life is from being settled. But I will start with A and see how it goes. This blog is for homeless people and people who want to understand homeless people, though you may well get another homeless person telling you that what I have written is rubbish in their viewpoint.
This is my third blog, I am homeless and blog one tells my past, blog two tells my day to day life on the streets, while this blog aims to answer some of the many questions that people ask me about homeless life and how I stay clean and look after myself.

What begins with A on the streets? The tough ones that will put you off this blog begin with A.

Alcahol - drink that makes people homeless and brings them relief when they are homeless, I am not here to judge, alcohol is one of the only reliefs that some homeless people can find, it drives the hurts away sometimes and sometimes makes them worse.
Some people think that alcohol can keep a rough sleeper warm, but that is a myth, and the physiology of it is that the use of alcohol opens up the capillaries close to the skin and so the blood comes to the surface and makes a person feel warmer but in actual fact they are in more danger of hypothermia as the rest of their body gets cooler as a result, or something. Alcohol is sedative and does help induce sleep, but no-one on the streets and drunk is very safe, they are vulnerable, and I avoid alcohol.
There is a lot of medical and other support for people who admit to themselves that they have an alcohol problem that is harming their life or body.
If you drink then it is less easy to get help from some places, people won't be willing to give or lend money if they know it is going on drink, and people can be nervous of alcoholics or hostile.
An occasional drink is ok if you can control your drinking and your change of behviour associated with drink, if you keep drinking, because your system demands it, because it allows you to escape the problems or because you are lonely and unhappy, you can be denying yourself quality of life, friendships, help, outreach, even the nutrients that your body needs.

If you need to drink a lot frequently then you are unwell, and making yourself unwell and preventing yourself from accessing good things and making yourself vulnerable to police and other trouble.

Overuse of alcohol can lead to accidents, unplanned pregnancies, fights, deaths, collapses, onset of mental illness, and all kinds of problems that happen because a person is not completely aware or in control of what they are doing.

http://www.drinkaware.co.uk/  A site by people who know more than me about it.


The next A is similar in most ways to Alcaholism - addiction.

Addiction to drugs or solvents has a similar pattern of effects and symptoms, it damages your body or mind and can kill you, slowly or a bit faster, depending on what drug you are using. Drugs are anti-social and people using them become addicted to the wonderfully feelings that the drug gives them when they use it and they also become physically dependent in the case of a number of drugs, some drugs such as cannabis and extacy are apparently not addictive, but extacy is often mixed with more harmful substances and can kill instantly, while the effects of cannabis can make people do very irrational things and is also linked to the possible onset of mental illness, people say cannabis should be legalised and that it doesn't kill, but I have seen people doing things under the influence of cannabs that could potentially be lethal. My own grudge against cannabis is that children are bought in the slave trade to tend cannabis plants on cannabis farms, even in England. I had a friend who used to be a cannabis farmer, but she never used children to farm it.
anyway, I digress, drugs are the same as alcohol as they make people wary of you, it is harder to get help sometimes, people who know you are doing drugs won't want to give you money, and from personal experience I get annoyed with people begging off me because they don't know I'm homeless and saying they are hungry and rough sleeping and when I say that I am homeless too and why don't they go to the daycentre and ask for help they can't answer truthfully.
Dishonesty makes being a rough sleeper a lot harder.Drugs and the desparate struggle to get drug money leaves you at the bottom of the pile, stealling, sitting on the ground and begging, walking around lying to people about being hungry or needing bus fare, too many people see through you, it's not worth it, and if you do keep using hard drugs they will kill you, horribly and shamefully. So if you are using drugs and you think 'well who cares? my life has gone and I have been unjustly treated and left like this so why shouldn't I get a little bit of pleasure from drugs?', please try to see a way to a new life and get help with the addiction, it can be hard to see a future or see life as worthwhile, I know that, and I grit my teeth and plod on. You will never triumph over whoever or whatever has hurt you by drugging it or drinking it out of your head, that's why I don't try drugs and alcohol even when I am in unbearable distress.
http://www.homeless.org.uk/drugs
A useful page full of links.