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My experience of losing a friend to heroin (2020)

mattlakeman.org

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Re: My experience of losing a friend to heroin (2020)

#101

Post by trhway »

ipnon wrote: post #97
headgasket wrote: post #78

It’s probably a bad forum for this opinion, but I have a relative struggling with addiction and resulting mental issues ( resulting form substance abuse; he was highly functional and threw it all away), and because of this I made a 180 and think some form of prohibition for hard stuff is the only action that would help us. How to put that cat in the bag is anyone’s guess.

I sympathize, but these drugs are already as prohibited as they're going to get. Possession, manufacture and distribution are punished by years and years of prison time. It doesn't make a difference.

Even more - it makes for harder kind of drugs being on the market. It is a known phenomenon - harder prohibition leads to harder stuff on the illegal market. That is why fentanyl is in such a wide use.

Re: My experience of losing a friend to heroin (2020)

#102

Post by klyrs »

yholio wrote: post #74
klyrs wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish this was true. Fentanyl has demand, both all on its own, and cut into other substances for the extra kick. I'm reluctantly convinced that a free clinic should have it on the menu.

It's not a menu, it's a place where you go to get a clean, safe fix for your opioid addiction. You get what you get, the best opioid or analogue that the doctors decide to give you, possibly with a slow release mechanism that avoids the rush but allows you function throughout the day, hold a job, not stick the first AIDS-infected needle in your vein etc.

Look, I'm sure you mean well, but it doesn't sound like you understand the behavior of drug users. So let's re-phrase that: I'm going to out-compete the liquor scene with free but watered-down beer.

If you want to help people, you need to meet them where they're at. The moralizing "you get what you get" approach is only going to tide people over for when they can't afford to score the potent stuff.

Re: My experience of losing a friend to heroin (2020)

#103

Post by [deleted] »

SkittyDog wrote: post #30
ipnon wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems a little insensitive given the original is about a friend dying from drug overdose and video games aren't deadly.

Can I assume you've never had the privilege of knowing a hardcore gambling addict? I'm not taking about weekend poker players, here... I mean people who've lost their wife, kids, house, and job to a gambling habit. They have zero savings, mountains of debt, and if you lend them $20 to get groceries, they'll go hungry after gambling it away? Modern video games are designed by highly paid, PHd-level behavioral scientis…

[deleted]

Re: My experience of losing a friend to heroin (2020)

#104

Post by refurb »

evilos wrote: post #60
colinmhayes wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure you understand how good heroin feels. Nothing comes close, especially not Tennis or a wonderful community. I tried heroin once, and I regret it every day, because I am 100% positive that I will never again be as happy as I was that day. If I didn't have what is effectively a dream job I'm sure that I'd be a heroin addict.

This is the scariest thing about heroin IMO. It's basically game over, you've ruined the game of life by using a cheat code and the rest of the game will feel hollow and pointless.

Why is it scary? Heroin isn’t unique in this aspect.

I had a friend tell me “when I had the first drink ever my first thought was ‘I want to feel like this the rest of my life’”. He was sucked in right away and struggled for years to break that hold.

Plenty of people feel that way and practically kill themselves with alcohol, opioids, cocaine and even food.

And plenty of people take opioids equivalent to heroin and say “i felt terrible, nauseous and dizzy, I don’t get it”.

I cant find the source but there was a DEA (?) report a long time ago that noted “80%+ of cocaine users use it less than 5 times per year”.

When drug use gets pushed into the shadows the only examples you see are the ones where it spirals out of control.

Re: My experience of losing a friend to heroin (2020)

#105

Post by quickthrowman »

dminor wrote: post #34

> There are people and places who specialize in these things. You find them through Google and you use them. > Maybe a Slate Star Codex/Less Wrong reader would start diving into the efficacy rates of different treatment options and crawl through peer-review studies... The best evidence based treatment for opioid addiction is Buprenorphine. Sadly you will not hear that from all treatment/rehab providers.

Buprenorphine worked great for me, it gave me the stability I needed to start the process of recovery. I took it for 2 years, tapering off over the last 6 months. I haven’t done opiates in 10 years, and it would’ve been difficult to achieve without suboxone.

Re: My experience of losing a friend to heroin (2020)

#106

Post by dminor »

oaktrout wrote: post #95

I know someone just like Jack (some of the similarities were shocking). They have a home to go to, a loving family, a large and supportive friend group, opportunities for work. They are not dead yet, but having been through prison, buprenorphine, and multiple expensive rehabs, I begin to wonder what the solution for them is. If there is anyone here who has beat this addiction perhaps it would be insightful for them t…

I haven't personally dealt with addiction, but I work in this space and the most effective treatment we have is Buprenorphine. Try to find a provider who will work with them and not kick them out of their program if they return to use. There are even telehealth options now, which is what my company does.

Re: My experience of losing a friend to heroin (2020)

#107

Post by mlang23 »

I would much prefer this story being written by a real friend of the protagonist. Everyone else knew but me" and proceeds to do an analysis. Rather nosy and self-confident the author. Opinions from afar are not very useful. "Some were dumb, some were smart" oh really, wow, what an insight! This guy is piggy-backing on the death of a person he once met a few times. Go and get some real friend, and then write about them. pfft.

Re: My experience of losing a friend to heroin (2020)

#108

Post by ioseph »

karlmdavis wrote: post #48
ioseph wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was certainly not my experience, it was an intense physical pleasure but ultimately devoid of mental depth. Having tried most drugs I really think the whole addicted after one dose is bullshit and it's far more about your social economic circumstances. It's much more tempting to seek out another hit if you have nothing better to do that day.

This seems to rather callously disregard the parent commenter’s lived experience. Perhaps, just maybe, not everyone is like you; it might be different for different people? Just a thought.

That was certainly not my intention, I was trying to say that the idea that these substances will make anyone a helpless addict if they try them once is misleading and completely ignores the social context around addiction.

Re: My experience of losing a friend to heroin (2020)

#109

Post by WalterSear »

TimTheTinker wrote: post #42
wespiser_2018 wrote: post #24

Good write up. The US is really grappling with diseases of despair, and heroin/fentanyl addition is on of the biggest ones impacting the wellbeing of our society. A massive slice of talent and raw human resource is just dying every year, but the solutions that have worked in other countries are just impossible to implement here due because the the methods that are known to work are politically dead on arrival. I'm a…

> we seem to have this huge moral hang up in the US about giving addicts drugs For many people, what you're describing all comes down to the law of love. It is not loving to give a person more of the thing that is destroying them. Perhaps free methadone would be a better option? EDIT: care to comment? I'd like to know why people disagree.

It's pride, not love.

And a pride that is essentially about avoiding shame; shame being the primary currency of those with an authoritarian bent.

Re: My experience of losing a friend to heroin (2020)

#110

Post by skyechurch »

wespiser_2018 wrote: post #24

Good write up. The US is really grappling with diseases of despair, and heroin/fentanyl addition is on of the biggest ones impacting the wellbeing of our society. A massive slice of talent and raw human resource is just dying every year, but the solutions that have worked in other countries are just impossible to implement here due because the the methods that are known to work are politically dead on arrival. I'm a…

>A massive slice of talent and raw human resource is just dying every year, but the solutions that have worked in other countries are just impossible to implement here due because the the methods that are known to work are politically dead on arrival.

From the essay, it sounds like Jack was not possessed of any great "talent", or of any particular value as a "raw human resource". He was just a dude, probably easily replaceable from a HR perspective, and these are the sorts who, historically, we are willing to sacrifice in order to honorably lose a war on drugs. (If you want to know what kinds of sacrifices are required to win a war on opiates, Mao is the "best" recent example.)

We live in a cruel economy, where the "losers" are left to find solace in electronic toys and mystery fentanyls sold as heroin. Mostly, the losers are determined ahead of time, and their numbers grow as the middle class shrinks. It's an inhumane system with inhumane outcomes built in.

*I know I'm reading too much into your word choice, it's not meant as a personal attack, it's just useful as a jumping-off point for this post. If I were a better writer I would have figured out how to avoid this impression, but I'm not, so please take my word for it. I think you are basically right about the humane way to handle this.

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