Figure 1

Scenes of the Play TUNNELS^#. Scene 1: A mother and father try to place the blame on each other for their son losing his freedom to a robbery gone badly, that ended in murder after the victim dies of his injuries. The mother tells the father he was never there for his son, and that is why he became involved with the wrong crowd. The father tells the mother she was too soft on her son, and that it is her fault that he turned out the way he did. [See Additional File 1]. Scene 2: A woman addicted to heroin allows her drug of choice to become her driving force. In her hallucinating conversations with this powerful entity, she is convinced by it that she will never be able to break free. She allows it to ruin her career and any close relationships. [See Additional File 2]. Scene 3: A drug dealer rationalizes that he is not the problem in his community; rather, he is only providing a service to those who are going to get drugs from him or someone else. He calls himself "the poor man's version of an entrepreneur." His feeling is that his crack dealing business will always do well because "crack sells itself". He gets arrested eventually. [See Additional File 3]. Scene 4: Two men with an alcohol abuse problem have lost everything and are living on the streets. They have no idea where their families are. Their memories of them are very few. They rely on each other to keep their habit supported, until one dies while the other was away. [See Additional File 4]. Scene 5: A young pregnant woman tries to use the welfare system as a means of support for her crack addiction. She has time and time again gotten services by misrepresentation of her situation. Her social worker wants her to go into treatment, but she is reluctant. When she is left alone she steals money from the social worker. [See Additional File 5]. Scene 6: A young man is in jail for murder because he allows his girl-friend's child to be present during a crack binge, and the child inadvertently shoots his mother with the boy-friend's gun. He tries to cover it up giving the child crack. He gets stopped by the police while trying to leave town. He tells a heart-felt story of how using drugs can narrow a life to convoluted TUNNELS. [See Additional File 6].