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

theguardian.com

251–260 of 396 posts

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

#251

“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.

A lot of people with chronic pain are also bored (can't work).

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

#252
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's how the website works, that's not anything particular about the /r/politics mods.

Its actually a feature you can turn on and off as a moderator.

Are you talking about spam filter settings? Otherwise no, such a setting does not exist.

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

#255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ironically, the_donald is just one subreddit while there are literally dozens of specifically anti-the_donald subreddits that people complain about having to unfollow

There are just as many if not more trump/hate subreddits. Some of them were always that way, some have been taken over. Off the top of my head: * /whiterights * /uncensorednews * /justiceserved * /conspiracy * /hillaryforprison * /physicalremoval Most of the time when you notice overt bigotry on reddit, the user frequents t_d or one of those subs, or the similar clones that are now all over reddit.

There's an absolutely incredible amount of overt white nationalism and calls for violence and even mass ethnic cleansing on Reddit today.

I would highlight https://reddit.com/r/europeannationalism/ as the very worst of it.

They've also taken over the mod teams of extremely large and supposedly politically neutral subs like https://reddit.com/r/uncensorednews/ (every single mod there is also a mod of /r/europeannationalism).

Check https://reddit.com/r/againsthatesubreddits/ for a running log of much, much more.

And for every one open nazi, there's a dozen more concern-trolling, brigading, vote-manipulating, and quietly recruiting more people towards the fucking genocidal far-right.

It's getting so bad that at it will soon be hard to defend Reddit's admins from charges of complicity.

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

#256
post #115
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…

What I find fascinating and disappointing is how much the opioid crisis isn't being talked about or addressed proportional to other societal issues. I'm not surprised at all, and the only emotion I feel is complete disgust, directed at politicians that refuse to work together. It started the second Obama was elected POTUS and the opposing party declared they would not work with him, and that lasted the full 8 years.

There were two years before the mid terms but yes then it totally changed. People should hold the republicans accountable for that.

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

#257
post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. Anecdotally I know a friend whose doctor offered a potentially addictive medication, when the doctor knew or at least was told the friend drank frequently. The friend did not fill prescription for fear it would become addictive.

Did the doctor just say "Here, have these drugs" or did he/she prescribe the "potentially addictive" medication for a medical issue that should have been treated with that medication? Just not taking medication that your doctor thinks is necessary is not a good choice; you rarely know more than your doctor about the risk/reward profile of the medication.

That's not true at all. Drug companies bribe prominent doctors with multi-million dollar payments to convince other doctors that drugs are safer and more widely applicable than they actually are. If you refuse to take an opioid painkiller for fear of developing addiction, you are empirically demonstrating that you know more care more than your doctor about the risk/reward profile of the medication.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2009/01/15/drug-companies-do...

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

#258

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…

I honestly believe drug addiction is a symptom of a greater issue in someone's life. There is no person who wakes up and says "I think I'll get addicted to heroin today"; it becomes a means of escape and relief from something that gradually turns into its own monster and creates a terrible cycle of dependence. By cutting out the time and money needed to "feed the beast" while providing professional help, they can bre…

The vast majority of heroin addicts today started with prescription painkillers. Many of them went into a doctor's office and took the pill that was prescribed to them by a trusted community member with a diploma on the wall. The problem was that these doctors were frequently either directly corrupt or under the unwitting influence of false advertising from Purdue Pharmaceuticals.

When I had my wisdom teeth pulled and was prescribed an entire bottle of Vicodin, when I didn't even need a single one, that wasn't a greater issue in my life. That was medical malfeasance and a just society would execute the principal architects of it.

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

#259
post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would kindly ask you to review how most opiate addicts in this current wave are created. Unfortunately, opiate medication is really the only 'easy' solution we have for many patients who have chronic, debilitating pain. I speak of patients suffering from malignancies, chronic back pain, post-traumatic injuries like motor vehicle collisions or workplace-related injuries. While there are novel attempts at cognitive b…

From your description of tolerance buildup it sounds like you are describing a drug which is functionally ineffective for chronic pain (eventually tolerance will overtake the maximum does you can safely administer) except where the patient wont live long enough for the tolerance. It sounds like a drug family that would be mostly useful for non-chronic pain, where the patient can be weaned off before the dosages becom…

Yes, you're right. Opioids are a good choice for short term pain. They're a good choice for end of life pain. They're a poor choice for long term pain, although they serve some use if carefully prescribed. Weirdly, the US prescribes a lot of opioid medication, and prescribes it for people with long term pain.

Some of this is because the VA said that untreated pain was an injustice, and said that pain should be the "5th vital sign". That was pretty disastrous. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1924634/

Lots more information from England here: https://www.fpm.ac.uk/faculty-of-pain-medicine/opioids-aware

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

#260
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…

> What I find fascinating and disappointing is how much the opioid crisis isn't being talked about or addressed proportional to other societal issues. Actually, it is the opposite. Gun violence, opioid crisis, etc are given too much attention. The deaths of opioid crisis and gun deaths are minuscule compared to the deaths cause by obesity, sedentary lifestyle, cancer, heart disease, etc. Take the top two killers in a…

I believe at least one of the reasons why those are given more attention is because they are more likely to affect younger people and they seem more preventable. As opposed to cancer and heart disease which are more likely to kill older people and often develop over a lifetime.
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