Crystal, like countless others, is fixed in a succession of addiction, homelessness and disease. Getting HIV through selling sex in order to have the money to more drugs is much more common than many of us would like to think.

"What am I gonna do if I don't use? Who am I gonna be, if I'm not gonna be an addict? I've been an addict all my life, which just leaves you with a lot of empty time, a lot of space in your life; that seems like a dangerous thing to me. People get in trouble when they don't know what to do, or where to go," The 46-year-old half laments, half asks.

An upward of 40,000 people in Georgia is diagnosed with HIV or AIDS. 67% of them live in on the periphery of Atlanta. This is according to a report by the Georgia Department of Community Health's HIV/AIDS Epidemiology Unit.

Fulton County seems to be the central focus of the study, which includes the city's downtown, reported Paula Frew, a researcher at Emory University School of Medicine.

Towering rates of poverty, sex trafficking and the sustained stigma connected to the disease all factor in make Atlanta a focal point of the Southeast pandemic.

To make matters direr, it is an epidemic that sustains itself: Where there's an existing prevalence of HIV, the chance that even a single sexual encounter will lead to spreading of the virus is greater.

Like most that are living with HIV/AIDS in the downtown community of Atlanta, Crystal more anxious about food, shelter and getting clean than coping with her disease. The woman says that it's been a few days since her last drink or brush with drugs and it's something she aspires to maintain.

But as anyone who has ever had to deal with addiction knows, it's hard to keep off a quick fix when it offers a window into grace even for a little while.