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How a Reddit forum has become a lifeline to opioid addicts in the US

theguardian.com

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Re: How a Reddit forum has become a lifeline to opioid addicts in the US

#121

Post by 52-6F-62 »

knowaveragejoe wrote: post #100
52-6F-62 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a safe dwelling for a mix of sycophant bots, Trump supporters/red-pillers, trolls, and possibly Russians (depending on who you ask). Warning: once you see it, you can't un-see it.

To add to this, the ecosystem around this is what really enables their commentary to spread into threads with only the slightest relation to their hot topics(immigration, black people, islam, etc). There's a variety of IRC channels, Discord servers and other sites(4chan, gab, twitter) that are participating and orchestrating their activities on Reddit. I think that's the larger effect the above person describes. Even…

Well put. In short, it's(they are?) insidious.

Re: How a Reddit forum has become a lifeline to opioid addicts in the US

#122

Post by Kalium »

gooseus wrote: post #62

What I find fascinating and disappointing is how much the opioid crisis isn't being talked about or addressed proportional to other societal issues. Billions of dollars of private research being poured into self-driving cars by our greatest minds and millions of dollars in lobbying against gun laws all in the name of preventing unnecessary human deaths... yet according to Ben Bernanke (and his references), opioid ove…

There are a number of factors at work. One of them is existing factions. There are existing political power blocks that stand strongly against "solutions" to "the gun problem".

What do you want to see? What would you consider an ideal world here?

I know how you feel. It's utterly ridiculous that a society should so heartlessly abandon the most vulnerable among us who struggle so needlessly. We should do better! We can do better! We MUST do better! It's a moral imperative.

Yet, for all that, it's possible that resources are limited. And when resources are limited, questions of sustainability, achievability, returns, and cost-effectiveness become relevant. This is particularly true when there multiple goals to be chased - would you be happy if all Medicare funding for the elderly was stripped away in favor of treating opioid addiction?

Re: How a Reddit forum has become a lifeline to opioid addicts in the US

#123

Post by dionidium »

vkou wrote: post #117
pat_space wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you and think the hubbub around r/the_donald is amusing. In my opinion, r/the_donald is a "beautiful" example of mob trolling. If a subreddit doesn't interest you, just unfollow it. If you are browsing /r/all, you're probably procrastinating anyways!

> I agree with you and think the hubbub around r/the_donald is amusing. In my opinion, r/the_donald is a "beautiful" example of mob trolling. If a subreddit doesn't interest you, just unfollow it. The problem with having something r/the_donald on reddit is that its posters don't stay in r/the_donald. They go out to other reddits, and post hateful shit. It's like having a shared space for clubs, that also includes a l…

You're subbed to the wrong subreddits. You could be getting a lot more out of reddit than you are. The comments here make it sound like 95% of all conversations are about race and politics, but if that's what you're seeing, then that's really just a reflection of what you're reading.

There are subreddits about everything. Most of them don't include conversations about police shootings or Islam.

Re: How a Reddit forum has become a lifeline to opioid addicts in the US

#124

Post by lovehashbrowns »

hrktb wrote: post #66
lsmarigo wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit has some fantastic and fascinating communities and really interesting cult-like ones (/r/nofap) However I'd like to point out the admin policy towards hate groups and speech on reddit is in my opinion incredibly dangerous and damaging to our society. They will take action against subreddits like FPH (fat people hate) because of "real life" actions, meawhile there are thousands of highly upvoted calls to violen…

You seem to recognize reddit is mostly a set of somewhat independent community, yet view it as a problematic site for ‘minorities’. Did you face significant hurdles when only participating to subreddits that had decently behaved users ? I think at this point reddit is almost a good representation of the internet, and getting out of reddit because of shitty subs feels like taking distance from internet because of 4cha…

You can participate in only certain subreddits, but you'll still get a lot of trolls. As far as I'm aware, this is more of an issue in trans and feminism related subreddits. This is the reason for having certain "safe spaces" like r/creepypms. Outright banning people who don't go along with the topic is far easier than policing discussions.

Brigading in reddit has always been an issue and it's likely not going away for a very long time. That's also a cause of inter-subreddit mixing that can lead to abuse.

You're mostly correct that if you stick to the smaller and more moderated communities, you'll avoid a lot of the crud.

Edit: and to be further on topic, the r/opiates subreddit also gets a lot of outsiders going in and flinging abuse at the users there.

Re: How a Reddit forum has become a lifeline to opioid addicts in the US

#125

Post by solatic »

gooseus wrote: post #62

What I find fascinating and disappointing is how much the opioid crisis isn't being talked about or addressed proportional to other societal issues. Billions of dollars of private research being poured into self-driving cars by our greatest minds and millions of dollars in lobbying against gun laws all in the name of preventing unnecessary human deaths... yet according to Ben Bernanke (and his references), opioid ove…

> I'm curious whether the disproportionate concern has more to do with the perception of drug addicts as weak and deserving of their fate

This. The AIDS epidemic in the 1980's was the same. Tens of thousands of people dying every year, with more than forty thousand per year at jts peak, and more than 600,000 dead to date. Because of homophobia, the public at large didn't care about the victims - most people, if they took notice at all, only expressed groundless fear in catching HIV just going about their business.

Opiate addiction isn't a disease in the sense that there's a biological virus or bacteria that can be transmitted from person to person, so "normal" people think they can't "catch" it. And so without public sympathy for the victims, no wonder there isn't some mass political movement trying to get Congress to fund a proper response.

Re: How a Reddit forum has become a lifeline to opioid addicts in the US

#127

Post by bdamm »

pyre wrote: post #116
rhizome wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Short of a drug that provided a permanent cure for opioid addiction itself, I'm not sure what sort of solutions can be pursued by scientific/tech research Along with its therapeutic cousins Cannabis and MDMA, look what else we have on the list of substances for which federal research funds are banned (Schedule I): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibogaine

> Ibogaine causes long QT syndrome at therapeutic doses, apparently by blocking hERG potassium channels in the heart. Yea. That doesn't necessarily sound good: > Clinical studies of ibogaine to treat drug addiction began in the early 1990s, but concerns about cardiotoxicity led to termination of those studies. There is currently insufficient data to determine whether it is useful in treating addiction. I'm not really…

The drug is toxic in humans but I think it also means we can't do comparative trials on the mechanism in mice. There might be something to discover about the mechanism that could be brought by a different drug that doesn't have the cardiotoxicity.

Re: How a Reddit forum has become a lifeline to opioid addicts in the US

#128

Post by [deleted] »

pat_space wrote: post #5
icpmacdo wrote: post #2

I think Reddit is interestingly a net social positive. For all the bad things that come out of it you can often see users helping others in a pretty significant way.

I don't think of Reddit as a single entity, but as a platform for communities(subreddits). The differences between subreddit communities are vast, ranging from 100% toxic to 100% positive.

[deleted]

Re: How a Reddit forum has become a lifeline to opioid addicts in the US

#129

Post by KGIII »

smokeyj wrote: post #75
lsmarigo wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit has some fantastic and fascinating communities and really interesting cult-like ones (/r/nofap) However I'd like to point out the admin policy towards hate groups and speech on reddit is in my opinion incredibly dangerous and damaging to our society. They will take action against subreddits like FPH (fat people hate) because of "real life" actions, meawhile there are thousands of highly upvoted calls to violen…

Honest question. Why do you care what people post online? The great thing about reddit is that you get to choose which communities you subscribe to. Your mentality is the equivalent of "I can't go to bed. Someone on the internet is wrong". I think your basic premise is wrong - that "racism and xenophobia" are on the rise. You can't measure the number of people who aren't racist because you don't hear them. And before…

I agree, pretty much entirely.

I am Micmac, Irish, and African American. I don't care if someone is racist. I don't care if they say racially charged things. I care only when it manifests physically.

I don't believe I've the right to control the thoughts or speech of others. I don't let them control my emotions. I do not cede that power over me.

Re: How a Reddit forum has become a lifeline to opioid addicts in the US

#130

Post by gooseus »

aaronbrethorst wrote: post #73
gooseus wrote: post #62

What I find fascinating and disappointing is how much the opioid crisis isn't being talked about or addressed proportional to other societal issues. Billions of dollars of private research being poured into self-driving cars by our greatest minds and millions of dollars in lobbying against gun laws all in the name of preventing unnecessary human deaths... yet according to Ben Bernanke (and his references), opioid ove…

A couple notes: 1. The opioid crisis is getting a lot of airtime in the media outlets that I read. 3. The opioid crisis is one of the biggest reasons why the Senate's Trumpcare bill is now dead, and was also a major topic of discussion in the weeks leading up to its unexpected loss this week. In short, its drastic cuts to Medicaid would have decimated opioid treatment in some of the states hit hardest, and Senator Ca…

What I was referring to was the proportionality, obviously it IS being discussed (I linked a prominent policy maker discussing it), so really what I'm saying is that the amount of airtime/attention given to stories on the opioid crisis was far less than the combined number of stories attending to gun crimes or self-driving car successes/failures.

I remember seeing a Vanguard episode on the "pain management" industry in Florida called the Oxycontin Express [1] back in 2009 (won a Peabody). And yet it's only in the last year or so that I've actually heard about it being addressed more publicly.

If you're telling me that I'm wrong and that actually more people, dollars, and attention are going toward saving people from opioid overdose than automobile accidents and gun crime, then I would be happy to be wrong and would want to see numbers.

Otherwise it sounds like you're telling me to tune my news inputs so I hear stories in a proportion that would please me better?

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGZEvXNqzkM

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