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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)

#221

Post by evilos »

refurb wrote: post #208
evilos wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it has such a strong effect for most people compared to food, sex, alcohol, etc. Obviously I don't know how strong (and I really really hope I never know, unless I'm on my death bed etc) but by all accounts it is overwhelming. Everything is toxic at the right dosage, and heroin is pure toxic pleasure.

That's the point, it's not. At least not any more than other drugs. Plenty of people try heroin or opioids and hate it.

Local Man Not Impressed By Heroin: "It's Basically Novocaine"

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

#222

Post by iammisc »

DantesKite wrote: post #195

Singapore already solved this problem: Execute all drug dealers. Remarkably effective but at a tremendous cost to personal liberty. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_prevale...

> Remarkably effective but at a tremendous cost to personal liberty

Presuming Singapore correctly identifies the dealers, how is this a violation of liberty? You typically don't have the ability to harm others and drugs cause clear harm. It's not like laws against theft cost me personal liberty.

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

#223

Post by stuaxo »

riffraff wrote: post #180
kenneth wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

FWIW, used needles were a common sight in my childhood and youth in the '80s/'90s in Italy too, and we didn't have such policy. I've literally not seen a used needle in at least a decade, but again, I'm not sure it's because of policy, it seems more likely that people have just, for the most cases, switched to different drugs.

Same in the UK, from Brighton and there has been heroine here on and off, certainly a used to see needles in the 80s.

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

#224

Post by sien »

pronlover723 wrote: post #218

Relevant recent podcast? https://www.econtalk.org/sam-quinones-on-meth-fentanyl-and-t... my summary: Basically claims the majority of the homeless problem is a some "new" meth type addiction. That traditional meth was a "party drug" that made you want to have fun but some new style meth is a "I want to be alone drug" and the majority people living in tents are the casualties of this new type of meth

Quinones previous book on the issue 'Dreamland' was very good.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22529381-dreamland

Econtalk on that book :

https://www.econtalk.org/sam-quinones-on-heroin-the-opioid-e...

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

#225

Post by _delirium »

pkaye wrote: post #220
_delirium wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Are the only options doctors can prescribe NSAIDs vs opioids? There is nothing else in between?

As far as I know, there surprisingly aren't other options. I also assumed they would have something else up their sleeve that was stronger than OTC ibuprofen but weaker than a morphine analogue. But, the three classes of analgesics really seem to be Tylenol, NSAIDs, and opioids. A few other things are usable for anesthesia but not something you can prescribe as a pill for at-home pain control. There is also some evidence for cannabinoids, but they're stuck in legal limbo. The other thing that comes to mind is that benzodiazepines can also help in some patients. They don't have a direct analgesic effect, but can help people relax or sleep so as to ignore pain (they can also be habit-forming, but probably not to the same extent as opioids).

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

#226

Post by nmfisher »

riffraff wrote: post #180
kenneth wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

FWIW, used needles were a common sight in my childhood and youth in the '80s/'90s in Italy too, and we didn't have such policy. I've literally not seen a used needle in at least a decade, but again, I'm not sure it's because of policy, it seems more likely that people have just, for the most cases, switched to different drugs.

Used needles are still a common sight in Melbourne.

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

#227

Post by robbiep »

ioseph wrote: post #108
karlmdavis wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Addiction and the addictive ness of drugs is a multi factorial gradient. It requires the right psychosocial conditions, the right environment, and the right drug, and a person who might become a heroin addiction one day may not be so at a different point in their life.

Roughly 1-2% of people who try heroin once are done forever; many many try once or twice and aren’t. For cigarettes the rate is about 20-30% who become addicted

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

#228

Post by chitowneats »

nindalf wrote: post #212
klyrs wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...why would any drugs even leave the facility. They wouldn't need to. Supply follows demand. When you get enough users in one spot, you'll find dealers. I'm strongly anti-prohibition and I think safe supply and safe injection sites are crucial, but there's no silver bullet. Every simple solution will cause knock-on problems.

Why would addicts pay dealers when they could get it for free? Genuine question.

Typically quantity is limited at safe sites. You can use, but you don't get to blow a whole 8 ball in one go.

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

#229

Post by endymi0n »

galaxyLogic wrote: post #219
mrslave wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

I stopped drinking because I realized it kept me from accomplishing things I wanted to accomplish. I think (based on my experience, can't speak for others) it's relatively easy to quit once you know why you want to quit. I don't much regret my drinking days because I had fun and met many people. But then I realized I want to do other things than just get drunk and get a hangover. I think, based on my experience again…

…which by the way is also an approach Richard Feynman took: He basically stopped drinking because he liked thinking itself way too much to ever let something impair that.

I‘m fortunate enough to be able to keep my drinking level at a point that helps me socialize and enhance enjoyment (the occasional bottle of wine with friends and peers), but not above.

I‘ve also experimented with drugs in the past because I was just too curious, but in the end, I was lucky to not end up some place I didn‘t want to.

By now I’ve experienced that ability wasn‘t just personal strength, but also my predisposition and experiences.

That does‘t excuse anyone from not trying harder, but it was a sober reminder for me to see that addiction is a way steeper slope for some of us.

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

#230

Post by watwut »

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.…

I can tell from experience that having to go to doctor, then wait there then having to go to pharmacy then wait there, all in pain massively massively sux.

Having to do it on the regular would be just cruel.

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