My experience of losing a friend to heroin (2020) • Hacker News Board

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

#181

Post by Ansil849 » Tue, Oct 26, 2021, 5:02 AM UTC

legutierr wrote: post #172

Ansil849 wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jaywalking is illegal in several jurisdictions. So no, the jaywalker is not just viewed as a victim. But yes, socially, of course like I said it is extremely sad to see, but also like I said...If someone made a choice to recklessly endanger themselves, then at some point personal responsibility needs to be taken into account.

Jaywalking was instituted as a crime after lobbying by car companies in order to shift the legal liability and moral culpability for pedestrian accidents away from drivers and onto the ordinary people going about their business who were being killed by cars. Your viewpoint with regards to jaywalking is the successful outcome of a propaganda campaign first instituted by people who have probably been dead now for nearl…

So, I take it that you have never ridden in a car? And if you have, you've explicitly assumed responsibility for or complicity with, the potential taking of a life of a pedestrian? Is that what you are saying?

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

#182

Post by si1entstill » Tue, Oct 26, 2021, 5:06 AM UTC

kenneth wrote: post #166

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…

As a Swiss person who spent a few years in the 90s going to primary school on Langstrasse, watching junkies shoot up, and having to be careful in city parks to not step on the mountains of used needles… that is about the WORST idea I have ever heard. The Swiss experiment in the 80s and 90s was a complete disaster, and it wasn't until the 2010s that that part of Zurich was finally cleaned up. It attracted the worst ju…

Is it better now? Were there over initiatives that played a role?

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

#183

Post by asdff » Tue, Oct 26, 2021, 5:07 AM UTC

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.

It absolutely makes a difference. I live a five minute walk from a camp of meth users. They smoke it and use needles in broad daylight, right in front of law enforcement. Their camps are a hotbed of drug trafficking, rape, theft, assaults, and prostitution. Some cartels run the camps themselves and demand rent from their victims. If this stuff was enforced these camps would be cleared out and people put in jail, but as it is in my county most people are let off bail and go on to commit further crimes sometimes within the same day (usually the case when picked up for catalytic converter theft or grand theft auto)

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

#184

Post by nielsbot » Tue, Oct 26, 2021, 5:07 AM UTC

CincinnatiMan wrote: post #69

nielsbot wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Not a libertarian) I get the sentiment, but it's been shown that the war on drugs approach is expensive and ineffective. That said, I haven't lived your experience, so I can't really know what you're feeling...

>(Not a libertarian) I get the sentiment, but it's been shown that the war on drugs approach is expensive and ineffective. Is there really a way to show that if the war on drugs never existed, the same number of drug users would exist, thus making the war ineffective? I'm not sure how one would prove this. It seems possible that without the war on drugs, the impact of drugs could be even greater, but again, hard to p…

You may be right but the downsides are large. I think the effects are knowable, but since it's a complex issue there's lots of ways to view the data.

https://www.vox.com/2016/5/8/18089368/war-on-drugs-marijuana...

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

#185

Post by locallost » Tue, Oct 26, 2021, 5:12 AM UTC

Ansil849 wrote: post #156

My view on drug use has been described as uncompassionate, and I legitimately want to change my perspective, but I haven't been able to. I view drug use as a choice. Yes, there are tons of social, economic, even genetic predisposing factors...but the decision to try drugs or alcohol or smoking or gambling or any other strongly addictive behavior is in the end the user's own choice. It's like it is someone's choice to…

Did you read the article? The person got introduced to drugs through painkillers for his broken foot, and concluded that he finally felt normal.

So, I would understand that maybe you take the position that there was something wrong with him and that there's nothing that could be done. But it's kind of obvious that it's not a choice a teenager is capable of making, not something where they can always fully understand the consequences of taking a hit just to feel normal. Wanting to feel normal is not a choice, it's a need.

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

#186

Post by mrslave » Tue, Oct 26, 2021, 5:14 AM UTC

tombert wrote: post #81

When I was nine years old, my cousin died of a heroin overdose at nineteen years old. Most of the grownups around me were very sad, but I didn't really know my cousin very well; he lived on the opposite side of the country, and he was a full decade older than me so the times I did see him we didn't really play together, and so I wasn't really able to feel "sad" about it. People I don't know die every day, I can't fee…

I'm a recent teetotaler and my quality of life is massively improved. It took me an unreasonably long time to realize many adult role models in my life (family, and then in my first significant professional workplace) were abusing alcohol. None of them would consider themselves alcoholic. A few of them were dependent at significant cost to their health, which I believe is easily classified as alcoholic.

A few years ago I worked a project with a young foreigner who didn't drink and actively spoke out against it as - in his description - the cause of much dysfunction in his country. Politics aside, I was actually inspired by someone significantly my junior to reconsider my attitudes. What if I took a leaf out of the self-improvement culture and just tried it? It might be too much for a lot of people to simply not drink. Life circumstance counts for a lot, but my life no longer includes socializing in venues where alcohol is served so it actually wasn't too hard to stop.

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

#187

Post by Ansil849 » Tue, Oct 26, 2021, 5:15 AM UTC

danjac wrote: post #169

Ansil849 wrote: post #156

My view on drug use has been described as uncompassionate, and I legitimately want to change my perspective, but I haven't been able to. I view drug use as a choice. Yes, there are tons of social, economic, even genetic predisposing factors...but the decision to try drugs or alcohol or smoking or gambling or any other strongly addictive behavior is in the end the user's own choice. It's like it is someone's choice to…

The most harmful forms of drug use (other than alcohol) are not due to someone trying out a drug at a party just for fun, but being addicted to drugs legally prescribed by their doctor for pain due to injury or illness: https://www.addictioncenter.com/news/2019/08/15-most-dangero... But I guess it's just one's personal choice, yeah?

According to the link you provided, the most dangerous drug is acetaminophen.

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

#188

Post by ryan_lane » Tue, Oct 26, 2021, 5:16 AM UTC

I had a friend die this year from heroin (probably from fentanyl, but his family doesn't talk about what happened, so hard to know for sure).

His friend group were always pill poppers, and a number of them started popping oxy. In two years, three of them have died. They all moved from oxy to heroin. All of them were snorting it, rather than shooting up. My friend told me they got heroin with fentanyl without knowing. He told me this when he came to visit from my old hometown, while he proceeded to crush up and snort an oxy in front of me. He told me he'd been buying heroin recently as well.

I knew at that moment he'd be dead soon too, so when his family gave the news, it didn't come as a shock.

The Sacklers are pure evil. Heroin is a serious problem, but there's a major hurdle that it faces: people know that heroin destroys your life. People trust their doctors, and they don't associate oxy with heroin, but it's a life destroyer just as much as heroin.

Most of the discussion here seems to be about hardcore addicts, and the issues that come from them, but they're just the face of the problem.

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

#189

Post by jb1991 » Tue, Oct 26, 2021, 5:17 AM UTC

stef25 wrote: post #124

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…

It's a really complicated problem but one thing that just stands out to me is the role the doctors play: It's not normal to send people home with these massive prescriptions for opiates. Here in Europe doctors are very, very conservative with that stuff (and meds in general) while it seems to me that in the US if your "medical experience" even entails the slightest bit of discomfort people get all up in arms over it.…

Once, about 10 years ago, I had some mild pain in my shoulder after skiing. It was hardly debilitating, just annoying. I went to the doctor, and within about 15 minutes I walked out with a prescription for 60 Vicodin. I don’t know if things have changed in the states much in that time, as I haven’t had a need to find out. But it still strikes me as odd that they would give me that kind of a pain killer so easily.

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

#190

Post by Sophistifunk » Tue, Oct 26, 2021, 5:19 AM UTC

_delirium wrote: post #152

stef25 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a really complicated problem but one thing that just stands out to me is the role the doctors play: It's not normal to send people home with these massive prescriptions for opiates. Here in Europe doctors are very, very conservative with that stuff (and meds in general) while it seems to me that in the US if your "medical experience" even entails the slightest bit of discomfort people get all up in arms over it.…

My recent experience in the U.S. has been that, at least at major hospitals, it's flipped to the opposite extreme, and doctors are so worried about the backlash, that they will leave patients in pain and fail to prescribe analgesics sufficient for post-surgical pain control, if they don't have non-opioid options. My partner had a post-cancer DIEP flap reconstruction last month at a top cancer center in NYC, and due t…

Yup, there are a lot of people with chronic pain, and the only things that reliably treat pain without being really bad for your system are opiates and weed. Paracetemol (and to a lesser degree ibuprofen) are so bad for you they mix it into opiates so that if you take enough to get high the paracetemol sends you to hospital, and weed is stigmatised at best, and still illegal in most of the world. Ketamine in useful doses has too strong side effects, cocaine-derivatives are only really good locally, and also not great for your system. And that's about all we've got.

As a kid I had migraines, and quickly developed an immunity to the pain-relieving aspect of paracetemol, they were basically candy by the time I was a teenager. Luckily they disappeared in my late teens, but now I'm in my 40s and I get weird pains they call "cluster headaches" in my face. I did some tests, got an MRI, and they didn't turn up anything, which is pretty much the end of medicine, pain management is all there is for me. In Australia we need a prescription for any opiates, so I have to be treated like a drug addict to get painkillers the rest of the world can buy over the counter, it's a disgrace.