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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

#61

Post by bufordsharkley »

CaliforniaKarl wrote: post #15

I was born in Cincinnati, and lived there for 18 years until going to Ohio State. Today I live on the peninsula. I'm here in Cincinnati now, for family stuff. And I'm concerned. Cincinnati still has a large industrial component (P&G has their HQ here), but many factories are gone. A lot of the east side of the city has been converted into microbreweries, homes, and shopping. My Mom works at a biomedical company that'…

Another Cincinnatian, now living in the Peninsula.

Just to nit-pick one part:

> I'm still concerned. Property taxes have grown beyond reasonable limits.

There is some truth in this, but only because property taxes are a weird beast; a combination of one of the worst taxes (a tax on one's home) and one of the best taxes (the tax on the unimproved value of land).

In a land-poor place (bad neighborhoods in the rust belt, say), the property tax lies mostly on improvements, and tends to hurt the most vulnerable.

However, we see how in a land-rich place (the Bay Area), a crippled property tax, in the form of Prop 13, has devastated the land market.

Well, that's all I have to say about that. Love Cincinnati. Hate the peninsula.

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

#62

Post by pattisapu »

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.

Did you get it through an Rx from a doctor?

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

#63

Post by swayvil »

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…

People abuse that stuff when life sucks.

So widespread opiate abuse is a symptom of a "sick society", right?

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

#64

Post by carbocation »

rhcom2 wrote: post #12

> They’ve tried spraying naloxone into his nostrils, but it’s had no effect. He’s not breathing. They’re running out of time. > One of the medics takes a drill out of his bag and turns it on. It whirs like a dental drill as he pushes it into the man’s shin bone, trying to create a more direct path for the naloxone to enter the bloodstream. Wow. Just wow. edit: more info, I'd never heard of it: https://en.wikipedia.or…

We place intraosseous (IO) lines as a crash line during cardiac arrests when we don't already have adequate access. Done right, they permit resuscitation without as much delay as gaining central venous access would require.

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

#65

Post by ahakki »

KGIII wrote: post #52
gregmac wrote: post #33

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 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…

I should probably use a throwaway, but I won't. I'm an addict. I was a functional addict, for many years. When I retired, I no longer needed to be functional. Things went downhill quickly. Today, I am on Suboxone. It reduces the harmful behavior. I tell you that as a way to share that I have some experience. Anyhow, it was in the early-to-mid 70s when I first started. My first exposure was to codeine and morphine. Th…

Thank you for posting this.

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

#66

Post by nnfy »

For anyone who may be struggling with chronic pain and/or opioid addiction, I implore you to research kratom. As far as anyone can tell, it is safe, minimally addictive, and in my experience it is good for head pain, stomach pain, anxiety, minor depression, not to mention potentiation of all kinds of other drugs.

Of course, use at your own risk. It may interact dangerously with many compounds, because it inhibits the cytochrome p450 enzyme. That said, after a six month up to three times a day habit, I've quit cold turkey twice without too much trouble.

I recommend I highly if you're out of other options.

One last warning, do not buy in person, you will be ripped off. You can get 250g for less than $30 online, and a dose for pain is 1-2 grams. Higher doses are mildly psychoactive, but OD is anecdotally impossible because you quickly become nauseaus and throw the powder up if you take in excess of 8-10+grams.

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

#67

Post by KGIII »

ahakki wrote: post #65
KGIII wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I should probably use a throwaway, but I won't. I'm an addict. I was a functional addict, for many years. When I retired, I no longer needed to be functional. Things went downhill quickly. Today, I am on Suboxone. It reduces the harmful behavior. I tell you that as a way to share that I have some experience. Anyhow, it was in the early-to-mid 70s when I first started. My first exposure was to codeine and morphine. Th…

Thank you for posting this.

You're most welcome. I am not 'clean' in that I maintain with Suboxone. For me, it is about harm reduction.

I'm in a position where I was fortunate. I can say these things with my moniker and not have to worry about my reputation or future employment opportunities.

Most of the addicts that I know wear suits to work. They don't have the luxury to admit these sorts of things.

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

#68

Post by joe_the_user »

KGIII wrote: post #54
Theodores wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Err... Heroin was available before the current epidemic. It was easy to find. There were plenty of sellers and users. It may be that you are not a user? However, it was there and easy to find. A user can spot another user, though I'm not sure why. They look just like normal people, to you. Most users aren't homeless and dirty. They have jobs and houses. They have cars and families. Heroin has been here for a long, lo…

You may find it hard to believe but I've been around heroin all my adult life as well (though not using). I've seen a lot of people die, whole groups of friends and so-forth.

Certainly you have the fully functioning addicts. But you also have a lot of people driven by despair.

Plus - the fully functioning addicts functioned a lot more when the economy functioned. Heroin, at the minimum, is one more heavy ball to keep in the air for a person juggling a lot in their lives. The state of the economy today guarantees people are going to be dropping those balls on the ground.

So is it the economy make the addiction problem worse or is it that the economy makes addicts die and we see the problem more? Hey, I bet neither you nor I nor the social scientists can figure out for sure - what with the replication crisis and all.

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

#69

Post by xrd »

KGIII wrote: post #67
ahakki wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for posting this.

You're most welcome. I am not 'clean' in that I maintain with Suboxone. For me, it is about harm reduction. I'm in a position where I was fortunate. I can say these things with my moniker and not have to worry about my reputation or future employment opportunities. Most of the addicts that I know wear suits to work. They don't have the luxury to admit these sorts of things.

Fascinating and brutally honest comment. Very interesting to see the economic realities and how that moved you to more illicit drugs over time. Do you think the solution is legalization then? If the drugs you needed were cheaper and safer, would that change things? Would the Mexican drug cartels ever permit that?

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

#70

Post by replicatorblog »

humbleMouse wrote: post #5
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…

Holy crap that's insane. That's 72 pills per year for each man woman and child.

I've seen this stat repeated quite a bit, but a person with chronic pain might take 2-4 pills a day right? Assuming 28 pills a week, that figure doesn't seem as crazy. Perhaps this is an insane quantity, but it feels like a stat that could be made to sound scarier than it is by using proper vocal intonation.
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