I was on heroin for a few years and I live in the UK. I had managed to keep it hidden for maybe 18 months but eventually it become obvious and my mother started organising help. Within a week we had some people from the local drugs outreach charity turn up at the house with free Naloxone IM kits and they trained us how to use them. A couple of weeks after that I was assigned a counsellor whom I would meet regularly a…
> No one wakes up first thing and thinks "Hmm, I think I'll try shooting heroin today". I couldn't help but remember the story of SpontaniousH on reddit. https://reddit.com/r/MuseumOfReddit/comments/68srty/spontane... > I've heard so much about it and how crazy addictive it is and seen it in the movies and TV (I'm thinking The Wire here, one of my favorite shows) and it really started to intrigue me. I've always wond…
Down Here, They Sometimes Call It 'Boy'
41–50 of 63 posts
Re: Down Here, They Sometimes Call It 'Boy'
#42Ironically as I started to read this I was holding my Oxycodone vial and contemplating taking one. And now I am. At least my impulse is because of post-surgical pain, and hopefully will fade with the pain.
I don't know the details of your surgery but I've been prescribed narcotics three times post-surgery and have always halved my prescribed dosage after day 2 and stopped completely by day 5. Then we bring the extras To get destroyed at a drug drop off (local pharmacies offer this here)
Unfortunately night of day 3 pain was worse so I tried the Oxycodone again (it’s mixed with Tylenol so have to choose one or other). No nausea and an impressive night of sleep convinced me to start taking the opioid at nights and Tylenol for working hours.
But now it’s the night of day 5 and two hours after taking OxyCodone has barely kicked in and not enough to sleep. I don’t know if it’s having an interaction with something I ate it my other medication (taken minutes before). But I can see why people up their dosages.
Re: Down Here, They Sometimes Call It 'Boy'
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you bring up a good point. So what if the consequence for these crimes (any crimes?) was compulsory treatment? That needn't include being imprisoned except for where it's absolutely warranted.
My former coworker was a recovering addict who was also a addiction counselor. He perspective was that the addict has to want to be there for anything to happen. If you cigarettes from a smoker or booze from a drunk and the outcome isn’t walking away from the addiction.
Moreover, because SF and similar cities have so fully decriminalized drug usage, and done so asymmetrically to surrounding jurisdictions, they attract addicts to the city (it's not just the weather or social services). Whether or not you think compulsory treatment is ever effective or morally justified, surely one must admit that the last thing any addict or at-risk person needs is such a permissive environment, where they can surround themselves with others suffering from the same affliction and who will give them license to let go, hit rock bottom, and stay there indefinitely. SF has such a concentrated drug problem partly because it's like some platonic ideal of an enabling environment for codependent, drug-centered relationships.
My family has a long history of alcoholism, including both my parents. My grandfather was a regional AA president or some such, though long after he had destroyed his family. I've seen addiction up close and personal. I've been in foster homes and met kids from families destroyed by drug addiction, or who turned to drugs themselves. I've seen how enablement works, how my mother's alcoholism, while never going away, ebbed and flowed, yet at least for her was invariably precipitated by her alcoholic "friends" coming over or inviting her to drink with them. In the aftermath of a long binge we'd be lucky if she only lost her job; on more than one occasion we ended up on the street, though thankfully we never had to sleep on the street.
Over the years I've also met several very intelligent and otherwise perfectly functional alcoholics who chose to give themselves over to alcoholism. (At least one walked away from his life as a well-paid chemical engineer.) It's what they wanted and they literally said as much. They were perfectly capable of scraping together a lawful subsistence, and did so, though in one case that didn't always include regular electricity and running water, which they were fine with. I'm not sure what it means for an alcoholic to "choose" to live like that, but from my perspective if "choice" has any meaning it applies to those particular people just as much as it applies to me or anyone else. But the contrast between people like that, and people like my mother (or especially like my next door neighbors' daughter, someone whose drug addiction is so thorough she has given herself over to the streets and her codependent addicts and won't even entertain offers of help from family or the city) tells me that there's plenty of legitimate need for various forms of compulsory interventions, including short- and long-term treatment. My mom was forced into compulsory treatment once for 3 months. She lapsed a year or so later but if you ask her I'm sure she'll tell you that that experience was important to hastening the day she had her last drink, even though her darkest days were after that stint in the hospital.
There's a dangerous narrative in our culture that beating addiction is about hitting rock bottom so you can come to the realization about your problem and then seek treatment. I have no doubt that such is the experience of many addicts, but it's hardly universal. Other not uncommon experiences are repeatedly cycling through rock bottom for much of, most of, or all of your life, never once seeking treatment; or hitting rock bottom and staying ay rock bottom until you die. There are people who manage to sustain a heavy substance abuse habit but otherwise seem to live a normal, functional, middle-class lifestyle; maybe perfectly contented or maybe hating themselves and wishing someone would discover their secret and force a reconciliation, through legal compulsion or otherwise. Compulsory interventions don't have to cure people to be effective. They can be effective just by breaking whatever cycle they're stuck in. And no intervention need be used as matter of course.
There are countless dimensions at play when it comes to addiction and addictive behaviors. Everybody has their own stories and their own opinions, both addicts and those around them. There aren't many clear answers to even the simpler aspects, but in my experience and opinion categorically excluding options like compulsory treatment is one of the few wrong answers. It's premised on a similarly flawed and overly simplistic concept of volition as that behind excessively punitive responses. Certainly compulsory treatment can be done wrong, and perhaps in many contexts (e.g. many U.S. jurisdictions) the capacity to do it effectively and judiciously doesn't exist. But that's a different kind of argument.
Re: Down Here, They Sometimes Call It 'Boy'
#44I was on heroin for a few years and I live in the UK. I had managed to keep it hidden for maybe 18 months but eventually it become obvious and my mother started organising help. Within a week we had some people from the local drugs outreach charity turn up at the house with free Naloxone IM kits and they trained us how to use them. A couple of weeks after that I was assigned a counsellor whom I would meet regularly a…
> There are almost always deep-rooted issues that the addiction hides William S Burroughs wrote, at the end of "The Naked Lunch": "Statistically, the people who become addicted to morphine are those who have access to it: doctors, nurses, anyone in contact with black market sources. In Persia, where opium is sold without control in opium shops, 70 per cent of the adult population is addicted. So we should psychoanaly…
Re: Down Here, They Sometimes Call It 'Boy'
#45I was on heroin for a few years and I live in the UK. I had managed to keep it hidden for maybe 18 months but eventually it become obvious and my mother started organising help. Within a week we had some people from the local drugs outreach charity turn up at the house with free Naloxone IM kits and they trained us how to use them. A couple of weeks after that I was assigned a counsellor whom I would meet regularly a…
> There are almost always deep-rooted issues that the addiction hides William S Burroughs wrote, at the end of "The Naked Lunch": "Statistically, the people who become addicted to morphine are those who have access to it: doctors, nurses, anyone in contact with black market sources. In Persia, where opium is sold without control in opium shops, 70 per cent of the adult population is addicted. So we should psychoanaly…
Fast forward today - access to alcohol is even better (apart from minors). Yet society doesn't spiral into alcoholic madness apart form few fringe individuals. Maybe education about the inevitable addiction is better? Or people are smarter than peasants 200 years ago? Or whole cultural mindset about getting wasted as part of being social in nearest pub shifted.
Re: Down Here, They Sometimes Call It 'Boy'
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
> There are almost always deep-rooted issues that the addiction hides William S Burroughs wrote, at the end of "The Naked Lunch": "Statistically, the people who become addicted to morphine are those who have access to it: doctors, nurses, anyone in contact with black market sources. In Persia, where opium is sold without control in opium shops, 70 per cent of the adult population is addicted. So we should psychoanaly…
Alcoholism was extremely common in the past from where I come from. High society acceptance as long as the person didn't wreak too much havoc. It has been idolized in folklore songs, books and stories for children. Just part of the life. Kids drank sometimes too. Fast forward today - access to alcohol is even better (apart from minors). Yet society doesn't spiral into alcoholic madness apart form few fringe individua…
Re: Down Here, They Sometimes Call It 'Boy'
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't know the details of your surgery but I've been prescribed narcotics three times post-surgery and have always halved my prescribed dosage after day 2 and stopped completely by day 5. Then we bring the extras To get destroyed at a drug drop off (local pharmacies offer this here)
My experience is a weird reverse. I took one after the anesthesia wore off day 1, from then on only took Tylenol because the pain wasn’t that bad and I didn’t want the nausea. Unfortunately night of day 3 pain was worse so I tried the Oxycodone again (it’s mixed with Tylenol so have to choose one or other). No nausea and an impressive night of sleep convinced me to start taking the opioid at nights and Tylenol for wo…
Re: Down Here, They Sometimes Call It 'Boy'
#48I also remember the day I sat in the surgeon's office and we had the weekly "what's your pain level?" conversation. And I knew good and well that the pain was basically gone. And he knew I knew it. And he knew I really, really wanted more of those pills. And he asked if it might be time to switch to Tylenol and sort of gave me a certain, probably well-practiced, look. The one where an eyebrow does that thing.
I remember taking stock of the situation, looking longingly into the abyss, and turning back. That doctor fixed my knee, but, more importantly, probably saved my life with a 2-minute conversation.
Thanks doc!
Re: Down Here, They Sometimes Call It 'Boy'
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
> There are almost always deep-rooted issues that the addiction hides, All crime is a consequence of deep-rooted personal issues.[1] Part of the purpose of making something a crime is to put somebody on notice about when personal choices are likely to result in intolerable injury to the public and, hopefully, induce them to reassess their needs and expectations, including recognizing their need for help. And that's t…
>All crime is a consequence of deep-rooted personal issues That is a blanket statement. Yes, i agree with the most crime being like this, and especially almost all or maybe all violent crime, but quite some crime is completely rational. I would commit a crime if it provided a clear benefit outweighing the risks, it's OK to do - it's government's job to organise laws and enforcement system in a way the set of "rationa…
Whoa, that's not OK in any meaningful way and I presume you meant it differently compared to how it came out. There are plenty of situations where nobody sees you yet I presume you don't murder folks for 50$ in their wallets, ie somewhere high on the mountain. Its called being sane moral person, pretty low bar for existence in society.
Re: Down Here, They Sometimes Call It 'Boy'
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most likely. It's not the drug that feels good; it's the respite from pain, and that only by contrast. Lacking that contrast, the drug induces only a profound, if temporary, physical and emotional numbness. It's not pleasurable, because it's not anything; it's as close as anyone alive can get to being dead. Unless that's something you want, you need have little fear of prescription opiates - just as much as is consis…
I don't know if that is consistent. The first time I ever had vicodin (which isn't really that strong a drug in the grand scheme of things, I guess), I felt good . Not just no pain, but more relaxed, carefree, happy than I can remember ever feeling naturally. My immediate reaction was to say out loud to my girlfriend "Umm, not taking any more of this, because oh my god this is way too good." Oddly enough, since then…