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60 journalists all spend one week covering Cincinnati's battle with heroin

cincinnati.com

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Re: 60 journalists all spend one week covering Cincinnati's battle with heroin

#41

Post by ThrustVectoring »

blfr wrote: post #34
baldfat wrote: post #4

Let's not forget who to blame for this. Pharmaceutical companies and Doctors. West Virgina is the most effected - http://www.pulitzer.org/winners/eric-eyre These articles shouldn't make you sad but MAD. "In six years, drug wholesalers showered the state with 780 million hydrocodone and oxycodone pills, while 1,728 West Virginians fatally overdosed on those two painkillers" That's 433 pills for every man, woman and ch…

Let's not forget who to blame for this. Pharmaceutical companies and Doctors. It's almost certainly not true. This massive susceptibility to addiction is a larger social problem of alienation, lack of community and purpose, not getting a couple of pills from your doctor. Prohibition worked to some extent and would work tried again but it does not address the root problem.

When you instruct people to wait 12 hours between taking painkillers that last 8, you will reliably get them addicted to painkillers. The on/off whipsaw of the medication will do that.

Sure, the social ills exacerbate the problem. But a lot of it is pure physiology.

Re: 60 journalists all spend one week covering Cincinnati's battle with heroin

#42

Post by spraak »

seldin87 wrote: post #14

ibogaine. saved my life. it's sad more people don't know about this miracle. even sadder that government has chosen to outlaw the best available treatment for addiction that exists. please, if you or someone in your family suffers from drug addiction, especially heroin, please investigate ibogaine. seriously, just google it.

Another helpful plant that maybe is more easily obtainable is Kratom. I don't personally know about using it for opiate/opioid addiction, but many anecdotal accounts on r/Kratom

Re: 60 journalists all spend one week covering Cincinnati's battle with heroin

#43

Post by creaghpatr »

mulmen wrote: post #20
kolbe wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know everyone pictures the kid with a broken arm getting it set when they hear about socializing medicine, but all I picture is the US paying large corporations to make more people OD on opioids.

We don't have socialized (single-payer) medicine but we are still over-prescribing painkillers. Why do you think socializing medicine would change this? Do countries that have single-payer healthcare have more or less problems with heroin and prescription drug abuse?

Because there would be an endless supply of government money for rehab centers. Already the ACA has spawned an entire addiction market in Florida.

https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/megyn-kelly/florida-s-billio...

Re: 60 journalists all spend one week covering Cincinnati's battle with heroin

#44

Post by wolco »

ameister14 wrote: post #18
tudorw wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"a study shows that drug manufacturers paid more than $46 million to more than 68,000 doctors over a 29-month period." https://news.brown.edu/articles/2017/08/opioids-influence "Most recently, the FDA announced that it will begin reviewing prescription opioid products that contain hydrocodone or codeine to treat children's coughs." http://exclusive.multibriefs.com/content/fda-turns-attention... When they are writing…

That's crazy, if this is because of doctors, that shows $280 a year is enough to substantially influence a doctor making 500-2000x that.

I suspect most receive less than 20 dollars worth of free pills. Vacations and cash payouts to the doctors who prescribed the most is usually the game.

Re: 60 journalists all spend one week covering Cincinnati's battle with heroin

#45

Post by ythn »

lurker456 wrote: post #22
mulmen wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't have socialized (single-payer) medicine but we are still over-prescribing painkillers. Why do you think socializing medicine would change this? Do countries that have single-payer healthcare have more or less problems with heroin and prescription drug abuse?

less, for several reasons - in the US system, treating symptoms instead of the underlying cause is easier for the doctor and more profitable in the long run. - "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure"; less patients that wait until pain is unbearable (due to its cost) which then need different treatment. - less conflict of interest that affect what doctors prescribe - there is only one buyer, with a strong n…

Many of these points apply to socialized medicine as well. Take Germany for example:

- "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure"; less patients wait until pain is unbearable and as a result doctors are inundated a lot of mildly sick people (who probably didn't need a doctor).

- Treating symptoms instead of the underlying cause is easier for the doctor who is inundated with people that have mild sniffles and aches.

Hence, a lot of my German friends were prescribed "spa time" in the hopes that it would clear itself up before getting a "real" prescription if spa time didn't work.

Re: 60 journalists all spend one week covering Cincinnati's battle with heroin

#47

Post by mschuster91 »

djmankiewicz wrote: post #31
mschuster91 wrote: post #6

Shocking to read. But what really shocks me is the amount of arrests mentioned for possession of heroin or syringes. When will the US (and the rest of the world) finally learn that locking users up just perpetuates the problem - you won't get a job with a criminal record, same for housing. All this arresting does is fill the coffers of (private) jails and creates needless suffering. Also, why do people keep calling t…

> When will the US (and the rest of the world) finally learn that locking users up just perpetuates the problem... I couldn't agree more with you on this point, but the point in this article when a sentenced addict chose jail instead of treatment nearly made my jaw drop. A lot of these people are simply hopeless. > “You’re not going to change me,” he says. To your point of state-provided heroin, I hope that more conc…

> A lot of these people are simply hopeless.

I can certainly understand his motives: being in jail for 6 months means you have safe housing for 6 months, don't need to scrape together money for food in that time and if you end up in a jail not run by a disgrace like Arpaio or by a greedy corporation you have the chance to receive some medical care.

The core problem is that the hopelessness that is driving people to drugs in the first place won't be gone. The rust belt jobs won't come back, and either politicians find an alternative or they're going to have a drug pandemic more sooner than later.

> To your point of state-provided heroin, I hope that more conclusive data comes out about safe injection sites soon.

In Germany we call them "Druckräume". Effective at keeping needles off public spaces and getting help for ODed people, but I don't know if there's anything in English about them.

Re: 60 journalists all spend one week covering Cincinnati's battle with heroin

#48

Post by blfr »

nxsynonym wrote: post #38
blfr wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's not forget who to blame for this. Pharmaceutical companies and Doctors. It's almost certainly not true. This massive susceptibility to addiction is a larger social problem of alienation, lack of community and purpose, not getting a couple of pills from your doctor. Prohibition worked to some extent and would work tried again but it does not address the root problem.

>>not getting a couple of pills from your doctor. You're gonna have to back that claim up. All the evidence points to the claim that over-prescribing is a real epidemic. You're not wrong that there are larger social problems, but your argument essential boils down to "drugs addicts are drug addicts". The root problem is not being born a heroin addict, or not having a purpose in life, or not having a strong community.…

It's a famous story/finding. Vietnam soldiers who were actively addicted to heroin and came back to the States simply stopped.

http://jamesclear.com/heroin-habits

Obviously you can only become addicted to what is available and opiates are being made available through prescription. But the fact that so many people are susceptible to addiction is a completely different problem.

The huge social changes of 19th century led to the same problem with alcohol. And well meaning activists did try to solve it by banning alcohol. Prohibition did work to some extent. But what really made a difference was an improvement in people's lives, a change in the environment for the better: more rooted, connected communities, less financial stress, migrant work, etc.

Drug addicts are addicts because of their environment first and drugs second. (Some genetic disposition exists as well, of course.)

Re: 60 journalists all spend one week covering Cincinnati's battle with heroin

#49

Post by jdietrich »

gregmac wrote: post #33
joe_the_user wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps you could include poverty and despair (and trace back from there to a collapsing education system, ideological pathology...). It's hard not to see the opioid crisis as anything but an "ensemble effort" of everything that's falling apart in America - punctuated by the refusal of pundits and politicians to acknowledge these problems or move towards solving them. Edit: you could even say the willingness of drug…

> Perhaps you could include poverty and despair (and trace back from there to a collapsing education system, ideological pathology...). It's really not about that -- although that certainly contributes to some drug use. "The opioid epidemic began in the 1990s, when doctors became increasingly aware of the burdens of chronic pain. Pharmaceutical companies saw an opportunity, and pushed doctors — with misleading market…

Chronic pain is strongly correlated with poverty and low educational attainment. You can't separate medical, social and economic factors - they're far too deeply intertwined.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28092650

Re: 60 journalists all spend one week covering Cincinnati's battle with heroin

#50

Post by Theodores »

gregmac wrote: post #33
joe_the_user wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps you could include poverty and despair (and trace back from there to a collapsing education system, ideological pathology...). It's hard not to see the opioid crisis as anything but an "ensemble effort" of everything that's falling apart in America - punctuated by the refusal of pundits and politicians to acknowledge these problems or move towards solving them. Edit: you could even say the willingness of drug…

> Perhaps you could include poverty and despair (and trace back from there to a collapsing education system, ideological pathology...). It's really not about that -- although that certainly contributes to some drug use. "The opioid epidemic began in the 1990s, when doctors became increasingly aware of the burdens of chronic pain. Pharmaceutical companies saw an opportunity, and pushed doctors — with misleading market…

If I was given an infinite supply of free heroin and all the time in the world to sell it to my neighbours, friends, family, workmates and anyone else in the locality then I would struggle to make a sale. My client base would be zero and I would have to go back to the day job.

If you rewind America to before the opioid epidemic then that would be the situation for anyone aspiring to sell heroin in normal America. The demand would not have been there, you would need to get a sizeable community onto crack cocaine before they need heroin too.

The prescription drugs and how that worked out has changed the demand side of the situation. So it is not a matter of some external evil drug kingpins dumping vast quantities of cheap heroin onto the innocent U.S. market, it is more the vast quantities of Americans doing whatever they can to get their fix.

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