I never used drugs, and arguable didn't have mental health issues. I just... ran out of money, and wasn't making more fast enough to keep having an apartment. I was homeless for about two months before I got back on my feet.

There's a lot of people like that, who just... didn't have the money to stay housed continuously.

I imagine most of those just go off grid. Being a homeless wanderer is very hard. Much easier to shun society from inside a cabin.

That's the vagabond lifestyle, and yes there's a modest number of them. It's apparently a hard life, but at least you're pretty much completely free.

They're basically hippies, they mostly bum rides. Dumpster diving is popular. People give them stuff too. You meet more in places where winter isn't really a thing, just cuz winter gets kinda cold, and they can go where they want, so they don't really stay there.

I've met two. Used to work with them on a ranch when I was a kid. Cool guys, wouldn't live in the same place for more than three months.

One of the dudes carried around a tiny TV with a built in VHS and a handful of movies. The other guy was just heading South, I think maybe going to Mexico.

When they decided to move on they just left, no goodbyes or heads up.. just gone one day.

I don't know about that last part, but like I was hit by a driver riding a bicycle to work and unless something drastic changes, in the next 10 years I will be one of those homeless people.

There is no social safety net in the USA. I was hit by a foreign political refugee with the competency of a 3rd grader, and that is being generous. I'm still able to walk and mostly function so long as I spend most of the day laying down. I can't hold posture, am in constant pain about on par with a bee sting or worse, enough that it never escapes my conscious thought, and never sleep more than 4-6 hours, I'm a zombie of my former self. My problems are difficult to diagnose and our litigious society means neurosurgeons are not willing to look very deeply into complicated cases as risking decades of schooling is not on their priority list. If your radiologist's report from an MRI fails to show an easy diagnosis to treat, no reputable neurosurgeon will chase problems any deeper. It is easy to fall through the cracks. Like my damage is thoracic. That region is rarely damaged and is like 5% of all cases a neurosurgeon treats. I'm the kind of person you see homeless out there or a Fentanyl statistic eventually.

I'm above average smart by most people's admission, but simply turning my head left can send me on a 2-3 week spiral of extraordinary pain and little to no sleep.

The majority of homeless people are homeless because housing is to expensive, and the majority of homeless drug users started after becoming homeless not before

I've met quite a few people like this and anecdotally there seemed to be a trend. Nearly all of them lost someone or had something horrific happen to them and just weren't interested in any of it anymore. I've yet to meet anyone that all of the sudden found some sort of peaceful enlightenment.

Not quite homeless, Paul Erdős was a nomadic mathematician. He use to travel to universities, couch-surf with a mathematician, and solve a problem with them.

He would say, "another roof, another proof." As a result, he has a huge number of collaborators. The stat Erdős number is like the six degrees from Kevin Bacon game.

People seemed glad to have this oddball stranger as a house guest.

I don’t know. Probably. The world’s a big place with a lot of people.

There’s a guy who sits out in front of my cafe every day. You wouldn’t think he was homeless if you saw him, but I see him out there all day every day. He goes to the gym a few doors down for showers and to the laundromat around the corner to wash his clothes. He doesn’t look like he’s on drugs or anything. He’s in his 50’s, his hair is always combed, he’s always clean, appears lucid, etc. He looks like a regular guy you would see at an office job.

The weird thing about him is he does absolutely nothing. No book, no phone, nothing. He just sits there and stares into the parking lot for hours. I don’t know how he does it. We used to say good morning to him and, after he never responded, we kinda just stopped paying him any attention.

Most of the homeless people around here are drugged out zombies. They literally look like they just came off the set of The Walking Dead. This guy in front of my place is the one I notice all the time because of how normal he looks.

There are multiple monastic traditions of shunning all material things, some of which include housing.

It is generally not recommended to diagnosis like you just did. Being weird is not in of itself mental illness. Also to be fair I think the plot was he was looking for his biological father.

But yeah I think there are mentally stable people who just decide that wandering the earth is what they want to do. I don't really get it but they probably don't get me so it works out.

I was this person. Most people who do this are what people would usually call travelers. People who do it voluntarily, like I did, usually had enough money to get to another interesting place or buy a meal anytime they are hungry. Many people have odd jobs in remote places that preclude housing (I have had these jobs too). Some people are also begging as they travel. I never begged. I worked whenever I needed money. Generally speaking, living like this without facing extreme difficulties is exclusively a white male privilege from a country with a strong passport. Non-white people are routinely arrested. Women are routinely raped. Weak passports get deported.

Non-consecutively I spent a little over 4 years living in a tent or on the ground in some capacity. The longest period of time I lived exclusively in a tent was 14 months consecutively.

I hiked backcountry trails, city streets and traveled extensively through a number of countries. I rode a bicycle for some of those years as well. In total I walked somewhere around 1500-2000 miles and rode between 3000 and 4000 miles. The farthest I have ever walked in a single day is 30 miles. The farthest I have ever cycled in a single day is just over 120 miles. The longest period of time I spent in a single national forest was 5 months, but I worked in the back country there for 3 of them so I don't know how to count that. There are thousands of people who work in the back country for many many months on end doing things like trail maintenance throughout the US.

Yes, actually. Very rare, but yes. Diogenes is probably the best example I could think of for that kind of behavior.

I think even the McCandless case probably isn’t a good example of someone who is mentally well, considering his sister has spoken out about how their father was very physically abusive. It’s technically possible to walk away from that without any problems but I wouldn't bet on it.

There used to be (still is?) a guy who lived in Albany NY known as the Mayor of Lark St. I think he said he had a degree, but he was willingly homeless. Made money running errands for local businesses. Everyone in the Lark St neighborhood knew this guy.

He seemed plenty sane to me.

train hoppers come to mind.

I spent the last 8 years living in homeless shelters. I'd say at least 95% of my fellow residents were fleeing domestic violence, drug addicts, people out of jail, elderly, pedophiles, sex offenders, wide variety of mental health issues, some physical disabilities.

Mental health was the majority, so much so that shelters work in concert with mental health programs. Some short term crisis stabilization places for homeless people leaving psych hospitals.

Remember one guy in above category refusing to stay in a shelter, said it was more crowded, less freedom. Some people so beaten by bad experiences, trauma, unable to hold jobs their entire life, who'd give up, living on the streets was only stability they could muster.

It is freeing, in a way. But not as romantic, idealized as some might think.

Well, I know a guy almost like you describe, chooses it, says he's more free. He does love him some crack though.

I know there are. I've met a few. There's a whole scene for this kind of thing in San Francisco. It's a lot of old hippy-types. Cool people.

I literally did just that for a summer a few years back. An extremely exhilarating adventure, but I got bored of that crap after a while.

And no, I have never consumed any hard drugs nor would I ever given a fifth of a third of a quarter of the shit I saw on the road.

Dick Conant. There's speculation he had mental health problems, but not more than most of us. I believe he just wanted to live the life he did.

I did meet a guy once that I believe fit the bill. My dad and I were on our way to a 5-day back mountains backpacking trip, and picked up a hitch-hiker with backpacking gear. He was a kid, must have been early 20's. He'd done a turn in the Peace Corps in Bali, and when he came back he decided he didn't want to get into the rat race. So he got what he needed and had been spending the past few years basically living in the US national forests. He'd get some provisions, live for a couple of weeks, make his way to a town, pick up more food, and range back out. In the off season, he'd pick up odd jobs and save up for what he'd need for food the next year. From what I gathered, he lived mainly on beans and rice, and some spices; cheap, dried, dense goods. But a more homeless person, I've never met. I doubt he slept in the same place more than a couple of times. He was also the most chill, relaxed person I'd ever met. During the 3 hours we spent with him, I saw him get excited only once, when he realized I knew of a Balinese band I'd happened to pick up an interest in after hearing a bit of their stuff on NPR; it surprised him a white American would know about an obscure Balinese band.

I still think about that guy, although I've forgotten his name. Is he still roaming the national forests? I've thought about him enough to know I wouldn't want to live that life; despite it's attractions, freedoms, and aching beauty, you also give up so much: food, friends, music... heck, as I age, mundane tyings like beds and toilets become increasingly important to me.

Still, that guy was a free spirit, it ever there was one.

Do you know about hobos, tramps and bums?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobo
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tramp

I have been watching a YouTube called “cheap RV Living”that interviews a lot of people that live in their car/suv/van nomad living. (Also watching tons of others too, but this is the main channel).

Soon I will need to move so I’m converting my suv into a mini camper. Going to travel and find land to live on. Love being able to live cheaply and freely. No more motel/hotels.

Yeah, I met a retired guy who just went around the country using his pensioner’s bus pass and slept where he could.

No. I think I myself could easily become a wandering hermit, but I use drugs and have mental illness.

I don’t think a person can be that far outside of the social matrix, to even be in a place where rejecting the world is an option, without mental illness driving them out there.

They probably exist just by statistical probability, but you're not likely to run into an old school mountain hermit or voluntary nomad by visiting your local homeless encampments.

Most unhoused folks are facing serious lef problems that require a level of social support that makes sense once you think about it but requires a lot of folks to be unburdened of their fears of what the unhoused are like to feel safe with the possibility of one of them moving into the unfilled unit just up the road, even with a guarantee that some sort of accountability agent will be visiting regularly to make sure their recovery is going steady, which itself would require a SIGNIFICANT uptick in the training of medical professionals qualified for home visits to potentially uncooperative patients.

Yes, I do believe there are some people that choose that life style.

Long-Term Homeless Advice | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gml0yg1K-bs

Nomadland (2020) | https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9770150/

There was a man here in north Alabama like this. He even sometimes pretended to be mentally ill, but he wasn't - and he was actually very wealthy.

I once met a man who was just trekking across the country. Took a rest next to me at the bus stop in my city with his a big ol’ frame backpack; one of those ones you would take on a long multi-day backcountry hike with a sleeping bag. He said he had just come down out of the mountains. Until then, I had not met a single person who even tried to make that journey in either direction on foot, but this person apparently would walk huge portions of an entire state on a frequent basis. You could tell he wasn’t like other homeless people. He actually seemed happy.

The first time my best friend and I did mushrooms, he told me the next day that he decided his calling was to give up all his worldly possessions and just travel the earth spreading the word of the Lord.

I told him that was cool, but to wait six months before starting his quest—besides, he had his whole life to walk the earth, and the blunt I just rolled was 20 minutes away from burn down. It’s been over 15 years, and he still hasn’t left for that pilgrimage…never would have guessed, lol. 🙄

Diogenes?

Diogenes comes to mind.

Totally! But sadly probably not the norm.

Search for “Dag Aabye”. There a short documentary about him https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcJoW9Lwzs0

maybe ask the question otherway around.

Do you think that without all of the evilish illminded so called "economic society" abuse-of-everything pyramid scheme there would be as much or even any sort of mental illness?

imagine not beeing confronted with thousands of commercial advertising lies a day (just walk the streets). imagine not beeing poisoned with all the industry waste they call food today ... imagine not beeing manipulated by century-overpsanning massive propaganda against countries that literally have done no harm to you in the first place (propaganda that solely exists to create war and kill your could-be-friends before you can even try to know them)... and there is a statistically relevant connection between times when cities had lead pipes in fresh water systems and high occurance of murderers that also vanished together with the lead pipes, looking at historic data over decades. (dont have the link though) just by not living in a single place for too long would have prevented that lead-pipes-are-good-for-business that caused murders to cause too much damage to your mental health.

i do believe that there are lots of people who choose to disconnect from the mental illness swarm that calles itself western culture. and i guess that in countries where climate allows living without a "home", some of them will choose to live just like that to "keep" their mental sanity and "not" get such illnesses.

also there are "homeless" insiders of the very same ill-mind-creating society, just think of "digital nomads". and you do not need to have a mental illness to want to live such a lifestyle, do you? some countries have laws to attract difital nomads.

when it comes to mental healthyness and types of sports that include mental balance (like kung fu, yoga, etc) look at people who are fond of yoga, how they talk about how important yoga has become for them.

no, one does not need to have mental problems to choose to live any type of homeless lifestyle, but if you live a lifestyle within western "culture" you are more than a few steps closer to developing a mental illness by design(d by your "wealthy" billionaires) ;-) and if you add a mental balancing element like yoga or kung fu (or others) to your lifestyle that maybe also comes along with a philosophy of its own that is a trillion times more worth beeing lived than the whole western "culture" itself, then i am sure, one cannot persuade those, with no existing luxury, no advertising, propaganda, or other brainwash technics to leaver their "homeless" lifestyle. for what? (list of all low-value "luxuries" that any ill-minded society could "give" them while stealing everything of value from them to be added here)

humans have choosen to wander around, to walk to a different continent or to a religious site for lots of millenia, maybe since humans even exist. Doing such by walking on foot can take years or even decades but deciding to do so does not need a mental illness.

as far as i have met a few people that are on such a course by chance, my best guess is that you maybe just have to change your viewing point and direction to get in contact with some of them, maybe no matter where you are on earth (excluding antarctic and north korea maybe)

maybe make a test by your own, make a backpack travel for some month in a different country/continent, do not start unprepaired, plan how to do it, read and talk to people who have done it, look for a route that is common to do such, think of what you "need" to take with you and fits in a backpack not too heavy, reconsider to leave everything out you "might not" need or could buy on the way if really needed. when starting, stop your time schedule, follow your planned route somehow but allow side trips, talking to strangers for hours about anything if you like, tell your friends at home whenever your route changes, but let things happen and see who you meet. Getting lost can become an advanture with experiences you might not want to have missed for the rest of your life. But take care, there are dangers out there too (better not swim with crocodiles)

there is no substitute for getting your own glimpse of what freedom feels like.

The ones with mental illness are the ones gleefully working 9-5 while being bent over by corpos.

But also to answer this question I'd need to know your definition on mental illness, assuming its the same as mine then yes I can see a reasonably stable, coherent person choosing to not live in a house.

Mental illnesses is what they say you have when you don't fall in line.