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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)

#281

Post by vintermann »

HWR_14 wrote: post #198
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…

> It attracted the worst junkies from all around Europe, it created a crime wave in a country that was crime-free. Well, that's the issue. No one area within a zone of free travel can exclusively do this. That is, if Ohio did it, druggies throughout the US would go there. But, as I understood the idea, the free drugs were required to be consumed on premises under the watch of a professional. So why would any drugs ev…

AFAIK, Switzerland wasn't all that free travel until the Schengen agreement.

But yeah, implicit in these free drugs proposals is a good deal of concentration: bring in the addicts from all over the place, and make them take their drugs in this place here. It brings it's own can of worms. Which I guess is why many methadone programs come with no requirement of supervised use. Sure, they ask for too much (given tolerance, there's little way to know how much they need except skiing), and sell the surplus on the illegal market to users who aren't able or willing to join the methadone program... leading to more deaths from methadon overdoses than heroin in many years. But it's not clear the alternatives are any better.

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

#282

Post by diordiderot »

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.

In Toronto you're 10 meters from a needle at all times! (Fake number, but they're everywhere)

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

#283

Post by denton-scratch »

somethoughts wrote: post #80
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'd be interesting if there were any country wide experiments that are similar to the approach that has been taken with tobacco. Basically legalize it for those over 18, slap it silly with warning labels and then tax the heck out it to make it prohibitively expensive. And raise the tax every year. And then fund ad campaigns and social media campaigns which make it generally look dumb and unfashionable as well as tre…

I'm a smoker. I have heard that the addictive properties of nicotine are more powerful than those of heroin. As the old joke goes:

"It's easy to quit smoking. I've done it scores of times."

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

#284

Post by killtimeatwork »

m0zg wrote: post #233

This is kinda like me (ex-Soviet person) explaining that the policies a lot of US "progressives" are proposing would, if followed to their logical conclusion, result in everyone living in poverty, and them personally being sent to a labor camp as "counter-revolutionary element" if they were to "succeed". This gets downvoted and flagged right away, but it's still something I will keep telling people, because there's n…

I'm not sure about that. Norway or Sweden are infinitely more progressive than the US and yet people there are neither in poverty nor in Gulags. Are you saying it's only a matter of time until they end up there? What's your estimated timeframe for that?

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

#285

Post by diordiderot »

qaq wrote: post #249
glogla wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US progressives are not asking for US to be more like Soviet Union, they are asking for it to be more like Europe. Pretending the only two options are unrestrained capitalism with at-will employment, no vacations, and no healthcare for majority of people, and Soviet Union, is actively making the world a worse place.

Do they really though? The most common response I get when I ask people why they just don't move to EU outside of family reasons is that after tax comp is way less than US. It never clicks though why is it way less.

The problem is you're asking people who reasonable could move to Europe. You live in a class bubble. I'd imagine you don't know beyond a surface level understanding. Visit the cotton belts of the south, the dying towns of the Midwest. Where most people don't know what the EU is. Most of Britain didn't know and they were in it.

Those people don't have the option and probably don't know the difference.

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

#286

Post by _qn3k »

hedberg10 wrote: post #272
_qn3k wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I started writing out a much longer response to this, but it just got very ranty so I'll cut it short. If you insist on such a reevaluation as to why people aren't in their best state, a one word answer "lazy", "attention seeking" (okay thats two words, you get the idea), "weak" isn't going to cut it. You need to continue to ask yourself why that is the case, why are these people so apparently lazy, that they would a…

I have seen the homeless as people to be pitied and helped. Just weak people, down on their luck. So you help them, right? I let a homeless man sleep in the hallway of my building. He took a shit in front of my door. Now if I had seen the homeless as what they actually are, maybe weak, maybe helpless, but still people with agency who can be absolute assholes, that wouldn't have happened. And I hate that this is overl…

You don't seem to have much interest in answering the crux of my point, which is the continual asking of why until you get to the true reasons why things are the case. Instead, you've just given another high level example.

To be honest I'm not even sure how this new example relates at all. You're simply saying that people can do bad things, which I guess is true, though I don't see how that supports your argument. I don't think anyone was suggesting people have no agency, and can't possibly make any changes in their life, the suggestion is they don't have complete agency, and their life will always be governed by factors beyond their control. Taking your point, yeh, people can be assholes, but why? "Just because" isn't a proper answer, and if it is the same can be used to dispel your argument just as easily.

> notice how you are seeing them as that, not me

Hmmmm, not quite. Your whole argument rests on people refusing to make changes in their life for no apparent reason, and these are typically the words used. You didn't use them yourself, no, but I think it can be quite easily inferred, not least by the fact you called another commenter a coward. Again, following my argument, ask yourself why I thought you would think of them in those terms.

> That actually solves the problem.

Maybe you're right, maybe you're wrong. I suspect you're right in part, but things tend to be more complicated. Either way, thats not my point. My point is asking why they don't do their part, for example.

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

#287

Post by Wohlf »

denton-scratch wrote: post #279

I found this acccount utterly riveting, and I really appreciated the frankness. One thing I picked up on, though: the OP refers to people dying from OD. I believe it's quite unusual to die from an overdose; my understanding is that nearly all "OD" deaths are not poisonings, but the consequence of inhaling your own vomit. Hendrix, Joplin and Jim Morrison all died from inhaling vomit. Opiates depress your respiratory r…

>I believe it's quite unusual to die from an overdose; my understanding is that nearly all "OD" deaths are not poisonings, but the consequence of inhaling your own vomit.

This is probably true but it's true of most anything. People rarely die of stabbings and gunshots but the blood loss, shock, and organ failure they cause.

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

#288

Post by vintermann »

yholio wrote: post #76
germinalphrase wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“ The effect on new users would be profound as well: as all the current users naturally age out of wanting to use hard drugs, the majority of drug dealers (other users themselves), won't have the capability to introduce new people to hard drugs” Why do you believe this to be true?

Giving free, safe drugs will depress demand for illegal drugs: most dealers are users, and are pushed to a high risk criminal activity - drug dealing - in order to finance their expensive habit. They take extraordinary risk for this, including actively seeking out new clients. If you give out free product, you not only kill the primary demand, but most dealers themselves don't have a reason to continue taking risks -…

I'm not sure that market is so much smaller. The "recreational" market includes anyone who couldn't afford to publicly admit their use, including for instance single parents who use amphetamines to try to have energy to do necessary things after a full day's work at the meatpacking plant.

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

#289

Post by rsj_hn »

killtimeatwork wrote: post #284
m0zg wrote: post #233

This is kinda like me (ex-Soviet person) explaining that the policies a lot of US "progressives" are proposing would, if followed to their logical conclusion, result in everyone living in poverty, and them personally being sent to a labor camp as "counter-revolutionary element" if they were to "succeed". This gets downvoted and flagged right away, but it's still something I will keep telling people, because there's n…

I'm not sure about that. Norway or Sweden are infinitely more progressive than the US and yet people there are neither in poverty nor in Gulags. Are you saying it's only a matter of time until they end up there? What's your estimated timeframe for that?

In what sense is Sweden infinitely more progressive? Is it the privatized retirement accounts, for-profit privatized schooling, privatized police forces, privatized public transit, privatized welfare, or having the most billionaires per capita?

Sweden is a social democracy that has generous welfare benefits, which are funded primarily via sales taxes (VAT) of 25%[2] and "high, but flat" income taxes[3] that are much less progressive than in the U.S., and much lower corporate tax rates than in the U.S.

It is also a country that respects private property and has a mania for privatizing everything under the sun. It's the home of enormous global corporate empires like Ikea, Volvo (trucks, the cars were sold off), H&M, Atlas Copco, Ericcson, Spotify, etc.

Sweden is the only country I know where private for profit schools compete for public school dollars, and for profit private companies are allowed to run welfare programs. Sweden has famously been called a "capitalist welfare state".[1]

[1]https://iea.org.uk/sites/default/files/publications/files/Pr...

[2]https://www.avalara.com/vatlive/en/country-guides/europe/swe...

[3]https://taxfoundation.org/how-scandinavian-countries-pay-the...

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

#290

Post by wruza »

hedberg10 wrote: post #274
wruza wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exactly does that restatement change? Also, what is your background?

It removes the victim mindset. My background is a recovering asshole, partially failing, aka the son in the article.

I see. I had a hard (physically manifested) depression episode recently and had to pull myself by hair and stubborness out of it, so your viewpoint seems valid for the ones who do. But it’s not what society feels. Your anger towards “yourselfness” does a good job, but I guess you’ve been helped, at least instructed on some details. That kid may not have had such privilege, spiralling down on his own (you can’t be strong if you don’t realize that you’re vulnerable, if it doesn’t click as “I allow it to happen”). And one can OD by chance while not being anywhere near the end of that slippery slope.
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