meth seems to be the catalyst for the bad behavior done either recreationally (orgies) or while in bad situations arising from a cluster of root causes. I'm only going to address the latter:
the article mentions homeless women who trade sex for shelter. My sister is literally trying to be homeless right now. She has serious mental issues and can't live with anyone for long before she ruins their life and gets kicked out. this is a 20-year-long pattern. She even has access to therapy and shelter, but doesn't accept it. she has adhd and is probably somewhat spectral. she has a very narrow idea of how she wants to live her life: get an easy part-time job, live alone, and pay low rent. But this is not easy when she also freaks out on people, accusing them of abuse, physically assaulting them, etc. So she sometimes starts relationships with people to get access to shelter for short periods. Who knows what she's compromising on behind those closed doors. Could be unprotected sex and offers of drugs. I know for sure pot, alcohol, and cigarettes, but how much farther does it go? I know she's experiment with cocaine and psychedelics. Our family is devastated by all of this, has no idea what to do next, having taking advice from many caring friends, health professionals, etc.
So it's not just one root cause, there are numerous issues of economics, shelter, mental illness, biology, personal responsibility, modernity, inequality, alcoholic parents, realistic expectations and so on that all build on each other creating a "strange attractor," or quite a simply, a "drain."
When our species/culture was all outdoors anyway, I think crazy people like her used to fit in on the fringes. Raising a child had lots of beneficial influence from different types of people instead of just one alcoholic parent like in our case, or lots of phony impressions from self-filtered social media and brain-wave-engineered advertisements. Inequality in native tribes wasn't as extreme and we didn't have "rich kids" in class to compare ourselves to. Once daily living required keeping track of lots of things, like money, and sustaining professional relationships, the fringes of living got narrow and harsh. Then, when having an acceptable online life got added: passwords, service payments, visible resume, working phone, with charge locations, even more people fell through the cracks. They're the ones you seen in tents, in the woods, on the streets. And there is no easy solution... Fix half of the factors I listed above and the rest of the pattern will persist. This doesn't even address how many of these people end up in jail. If there's anything we can do, it's to find small ways to make "traditional life" a little easier for people who can't handle all of this.