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It’s not the chemicals that cause addiction (2017)

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Re: It’s not the chemicals that cause addiction (2017)

#61

Post by daniel-cussen »

xrd wrote: post #29
xrd wrote: post #13

I've got a friend who recently was hospitalized for fentanyl addiction. Twenty years ago he was my first investor in my first startup. He was the guy that taught me about mediation. He was the first vegetarian I knew. He owned four cab licenses in Portland. Then Uber came in and shredded his retirement plan. The cab company forced him out so he wouldn't even capitalize on the partial ownership of the land they owned.…

Also, my friend is in the hospital and apparently will be there for a week or two. So he will leave with several hundred thousand dollars of debt, which will probably be shackled around his mom's neck. This is a medical crisis that will never get solved because our medical system doesn't want to handle people with these addictions. No one does of course. But that's the only way to solve it in my opinion.

[dead]

Re: It’s not the chemicals that cause addiction (2017)

#62

Post by xrd »

xrd wrote: post #13

I've got a friend who recently was hospitalized for fentanyl addiction. Twenty years ago he was my first investor in my first startup. He was the guy that taught me about mediation. He was the first vegetarian I knew. He owned four cab licenses in Portland. Then Uber came in and shredded his retirement plan. The cab company forced him out so he wouldn't even capitalize on the partial ownership of the land they owned.…

Fifteen years ago there was a guy outside my apartment selling the homeless newspaper. He admitted he was addicted to heroin. So I paid for him to go to a halfway house. That was because my friend told me that even though it was unlikely to work, every chance is an extra chance.

That's what I'm hoping for here. I want a story that addiction from these horrible drugs isn't always the end. It would be amazing if he can recover from this. I'm scared but it's all I have for him right now.

Re: It’s not the chemicals that cause addiction (2017)

#63

Post by mikub »

mobilefriendly wrote: post #58
xrd wrote: post #13

I've got a friend who recently was hospitalized for fentanyl addiction. Twenty years ago he was my first investor in my first startup. He was the guy that taught me about mediation. He was the first vegetarian I knew. He owned four cab licenses in Portland. Then Uber came in and shredded his retirement plan. The cab company forced him out so he wouldn't even capitalize on the partial ownership of the land they owned.…

My family member died from his addiction and I'm still angry at him. He made several decades of selfish, disastrous choices. He had every advantage in the world and squandered it all. I'm angry we don't do more to fight these drugs. Drug dealing is very much a violent crime, it killed my cousin. The popular culture that celebrates drugs and dealers. Plenty of blame all around but central is the person who decides to…

I mostly agree with you. But when your doctor is telling you to take some 'medicine', and that is what makes you addicted it's not completly in your hands anymore.

Re: It’s not the chemicals that cause addiction (2017)

#64

Post by civilitty »

mobilefriendly wrote: post #58
xrd wrote: post #13

I've got a friend who recently was hospitalized for fentanyl addiction. Twenty years ago he was my first investor in my first startup. He was the guy that taught me about mediation. He was the first vegetarian I knew. He owned four cab licenses in Portland. Then Uber came in and shredded his retirement plan. The cab company forced him out so he wouldn't even capitalize on the partial ownership of the land they owned.…

My family member died from his addiction and I'm still angry at him. He made several decades of selfish, disastrous choices. He had every advantage in the world and squandered it all. I'm angry we don't do more to fight these drugs. Drug dealing is very much a violent crime, it killed my cousin. The popular culture that celebrates drugs and dealers. Plenty of blame all around but central is the person who decides to…

> The popular culture that celebrates drugs and dealers.

You mean modern medicine? That's what makes this problem so pernicious - so much of it was created by the people fictionalized in shows like House MD and Grey's Anatomy not The Wire and Breaking Bad.

Re: It’s not the chemicals that cause addiction (2017)

#65

Post by xrd »

antonvs wrote: post #38
zoklet-enjoyer wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sucks about your friend. But how did anyone think there was no abuse potential? I was in highschool in the early to mid 2000s and even I knew there was massive abuse potential. There's a reason it was called hillbilly heroin

Yeah. Oxycodone was always known to be addictive, like any other opiate. The claim from the company was that Oxycontin , which was a slow release form of oxycodone, was less addictive because of the slow release. That turned out to be largely BS, but it wasn’t helped by the fact that addicts would crush the tablets, eliminating the slow release aspect.

Ah, I corrected my original post. That's what he was on. It's confusing even now to me. Anyone in this thread suggesting that anyone with half a brain should be intimate with the difference can tell me I've only got half a brain.

Re: It’s not the chemicals that cause addiction (2017)

#66

Post by criddell »

zephrx1111 wrote: post #52

I disagree with this article, not because of it's correctness, which I don't care. It is more about the perspective. This kind of "explanation", has nothing good to solve the problem. It is just yet another aftermath "excuse research". In east Asia, we had an infamous example: Chang Hsueh-liang https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chang%20Hsueh-liang . The problem is clear here: if we could find an excuse for him, then we c…

> this article has little advice

What about this part:

> The war on drugs we have been fighting for almost a century now has made everything worse. Instead of helping people heal and getting their life together, we have cast them out from society. We have made it harder for them to get jobs and become stable. We take benefits and support away from them if we catch them with drugs. We throw them in prison cells which are literally cages. We put people who are not well in a situation that makes them worse and then hate them for not recovering. […] We have to build a society that looks a lot more like Rat Park and a lot less like those isolated cages. The opposite of addiction is not sobriety; the opposite of addiction is connection.”

That seems like pretty solid advice to me.

Re: It’s not the chemicals that cause addiction (2017)

#67

Post by fweimer »

daniel-cussen wrote: post #54
refurb wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oxycodone was always known to be addictive. It’s right on the label from day one. “Also at the time of OxyContin’s approval, FDA product labeling warned of the danger of abuse of the drug and that crushing a controlled-release tablet followed by intravenous injection could result in a lethal overdose. There was no evidence to suggest at the time that crushing the controlled-release capsule followed by oral ingestion…

Yeah that was saying if you crushed n injected it would be addictive. No. It was addictive in literally any form. They knew that too, n it wasn't on the packaging. You kind of have to be a monster to say something that callous.

As far as I understand it, crushing/injecting it makes it more likely to induce pronounced euphoria and other side effects that encourage abuse. But it was known from the start that it was addictive (causing a physical dependency) even if used as intended, simply because it is an opioid. Here's an older package insert:

https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/drugsatfda_docs/label/2009/02...

Among other things, it says “Physical dependence and tolerance are not unusual during chronic opioid therapy.” I'm no expert, but I think that explains why warnings about dependence weren't more pronounced. The drug was supposed to be distributed in a tightly controlled fashion due to these risks, after all.

In retrospect, the warnings at the start, and the information for patients read like recipes for abuse, though.

Re: It’s not the chemicals that cause addiction (2017)

#68

Post by htag »

benreesman wrote: post #16

It’s obviously better when there’s good data. People like myself who frequent HN often do because they want to hear an expert cut through the propaganda with the inside baseball on the real science. And I hope someone does on this thread. But in the absence of a qualified expert interpreting the inside data laypeople are as always thrown back on the thoughtfulness arbitrary creative force gave a rock and anecdata. An…

All of the things you loved about life before COVID are still out there. Caffeine, nicotine, and adderall shouldn't prevent you from being able to experience the world.

Re: It’s not the chemicals that cause addiction (2017)

#69

Post by yieldcrv »

ethanbond wrote: post #33
benreesman wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I said: maybe I’m an outlier and my N=1 study is one of those dots in the corner. But historically I’m a rabid extrovert on paper in terms of coffee shops and bars and comedy clubs and music shows. Before the risk was that I’d meet some cool people and talk until I had to race to the morning’s first meeting. And when I say “empty-seeming” I don’t mean there are no people exactly, but rather that walking up to some…

Another consideration is that you’ve gotten older during the pandemic. Especially given many people’s description of “time distortion” through lockdown, it’s easy to forget you got 2-3 years older, so did all of your friends, and 2-3 years is plenty for some formative changes depending on how old you were. I left New York for the pandemic and came back after a few years just to realize that I’m too old for this shit…

and the 21 year olds completely missed being 18, 19 and 20

really all the teenagers missed 2-3 years of social development in line with what the older crowds they coexist with experienced

I’m down to play, but just something to be aware of

Re: It’s not the chemicals that cause addiction (2017)

#70

Post by standardUser »

stan_kirdey wrote: post #49
pstuart wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We should not treat drug addiction as a crime -- it's a medical condition and should be addressed in that context. That said, we need to find a way to institutionalize and treat those that have become non-functional from their addiction(s). And that power needs to be wielded with extreme transparency and accountability.

"we should not treat drug addiction as a crime" - I don't think anyone is saying otherwise

Everyone is saying that, unless you think drugs materialize out of thin air? Because in reality, a drug user, drug seller and drug producer are all part of the exact same system, completely inseparable and entirely co-dependent on one another. Any differentiation we make is a fantasy we have devised to make ourselves feel better, like we're going after the "real" criminal, not the poor victim/user.

The only way to stop criminalizing drug use is to end the black market for drugs. Half measures like "decriminalization" simply leads to more and problems and solves nothing.

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