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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

#241

Post by _acme »

cprayingmantis wrote: post #227
unionjack22 wrote: post #211

I can't recall a similar degree of concern and push for treatment during the crack/cocaine epidemic in the 80-90's and the meth epidemic of the 00's. What is it about the opioid/heroin epidemic that differentiates it from those prior?

It's because opioids are legal. Anyone can obtain them with very little effort and they don't have to worry about being 'caught'. The only way to get meth or crack was to engage in an illegal transaction. Now you don't have to be a criminal to be an addict and I think that scares people (Although nothing has really changed other than society's view of it).

It's no longer 'very little effort' to get a doctor to write for an opioid.

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

#242

Post by _acme »

fapjacks wrote: post #199
ghostbrainalpha wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't really fit with my experience. I was a heavy user of alcohol, cigarettes, and occasionally even tried cocaine. Quitting all of those had extremely minimal effects on me physically or mentally. Getting off Kratom resulted in something like a flu that lasted 2-3 weeks. And I wasn't taking an especially high dose, and I had only been using for 3 months.

Where were you getting your kratom? Were you buying it from a vendor that also provides documentation from a testing facility to demonstrate that there were no adulterants? There are people participating in the kratom supply chain that adulterate the kratom that passes through their hands. Testing has shown kratom sprayed with opiates, or kratom adulterated with opiate potentiators (both herbal and not), and even stu…

Unadulterated kratom still affects mu-opioid receptors, just as other opioids, and so stopping taking it will cause opioid-like withdrawal symptoms.

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

#243

Post by PeCaN »

_acme wrote: post #237
burger_moon wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much do you give out then? At some point you'll be giving someone a dose so high they are guaranteed to die. Obviously no one can do that because of legal justifications. However now you have to set an arbitrary limit to what someone can receive. The user may not agree with this amount and will seek to acquire more. Thereby resorting to the same tactics as before it was given away. I don't think it's as simple as…

No, at least opioids don't work that way. There is no dose so high as to be guaranteed to be fatal -- it's entirely dependent upon an individual person's tolerance. There is effectively no ceiling opioid dose.

There is also, IIRC (though it's been a few years since I was last researching this) for many people a limit on the tolerance one builds up (though it certainly gets very high). I recall something about addicts in the Netherlands—which has a program like the one suggested—eventually hitting a stable dose and staying there.

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

#244

Post by rhizome »

_acme wrote: post #240
rhizome wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not really sure this is some sort of miracle drug that the establishment just doesn't want us to know about The thing is, it doesn't matter if you're "sure" or not, because while it's on Schedule I there can be no federal funds used for research into whatever degree it may be a "miracle" (nirvana fallacy) drug. I hope we can agree that therapeutic substances have been derived from harmful ones.

Can't research be done on other countries? Has research anywhere, of any kind, determined ibogaine to be useful in the treatment of addiction?

Here's a relatively recent roundup of the state of research: http://psychedelictimes.com/iboga/the-evidence-for-ibogaine-...

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

#245

Post by markdown »

undersuit wrote: post #230
HlessClaudesman wrote: post #8

r/stopdrinking is also a very supportive community.

Along with r/leaves, a marijuana cessation subreddit.

Note also: /r/quittingkratom/

This one is interesting because many people use kratom to wean off opioids.

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

#246

Post by eplanit »

traverseda wrote: post #32
quchen wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s /r/the_donald, and how did it »then happen«?

/r/the_donald is a subreddit devoted to donald trump. Reddit didn't ban it. It follows the "safe-space" "you're not allowed to dissent" model pioneered by some "leftist" subs, and will ban people for having perfectly legitimate dissent. It managed to exploit some loopholes in how reddit works to take-over the front page. The most interesting one was "stickying" new posts so they were shown on their front page. They d…

It follows the "safe-space" "you're not allowed to dissent" model pioneered by some "leftist" subs, and will ban people for having perfectly legitimate dissent.

Exactly -- and why I lasted only a week on Reddit. It's nothing but a collection of echo chambers. No matter how sincere and thorough I would try and make arguments, if they're weren't in line with the herd I'd get downvoted to oblivion (no counter argument except insults) if not outright banned (never had been banned before). It's no fun participating when the only accepted input is "me, too!"

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

#247

Post by tigershark »

dang wrote: post #235
tigershark wrote: post #152

If you ask me I'd rather spend money to save a child killed by a car, financing self driving cars, than waste money trying to save people that don't want to be saved and that, even after being revived tens of times, continue to abuse drugs until their death, as per the other thread last week.

Posting uncharitably about life-and-death matters is guaranteed to be flamebait, so please don't. Your comments have been breaking the HN guidelines by being uncivil and/or unsubstantive. Would you please fix this? We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14805715 and marked it off-topic.

So let me understand now that we are officially off-topic. Letting people write that opioids are better than alcohol, so that someone will feel incentivised to try them, is not against hacker news guidelines. Answering a direct question expressing my opinion that I would rather save a child than someone that doesn't want to be saved, as shown in the other discussion last week, is against the guidelines and off-topic. I would say that this is the strangest interpretation of the guidelines that I ever witnessed..

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

#248

Post by markdown »

ghostbrainalpha wrote: post #58
Dirlewanger wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://reddit.com/r/kratom

Be Fucking Warned https://www.reddit.com/r/quittingkratom/

The problem arises when they stop at kratom. The ideal pathway is opioids > kratom > kava, or alcohol > kava

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

#249

Post by Animats »

“Around my area, I believe a lot of people use [opioids] out of boredom. There’s no jobs, no way to have fun besides video games and riding four-wheelers and motorcycles. There’s nowhere to go except a run-down mall over in another county.”

Sizable numbers of people get into opiates out of boredom? I thought this was driven by people with chronic pain.

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

#250

Post by SquareWheel »

awkwarddaturtle wrote: post #226
JTon wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What took place in /r/opiaterollcall and why was it banned? EDIT: Looks like it was a place to connect opiate buyers and sellers

One of the bigger subreddits for many years is /r/trees which "promotes" marijuana and they haven't banned that sub even though marijuana is illegal in most states and most countries. Reddit has really gone downhill ever since they turned into a nanny forum where they arbitrary enforce rules.

Drug culture and drug markets are two completely different ball games. Banning the latter is hardly inconsistent behavior.
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