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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)

#291

Post by denton-scratch »

stichers wrote: post #277

I lost a friend to meth and GHB at the beginning of this year, and although details are different, the trajectory is similar. He suffered anxiety and was fearful about his life for years. Meth was what gave him fleeting confidence and euphoria, but also what finished that life. He was terrified to live, and he was terrified of death, so he self-medicated to manage, and ultimately that killed him. As one of the people…

> I've struggled for answers, but I don't think there are any.

It took me a long time to learn this: there are problems for which there is no answer.

I got this from Buddhism (I have renounced Buddhism, but I've retained some of the insights). The world is intrinsically fucked-up, and not fixable. You can sometimes fix some things, but in the end the world is an incorrigible mess (samsara).

It's quite a relief once you take that on board. You can go on raging against injustice, war, and political cynicism, and so you should; but there's no need to feel inadequate because you don't know how to fix it.

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

#292

Post by HamburgerEmoji »

colinmhayes wrote: post #19
aazaa wrote: post #4

> I wish I had a happier note to end this on, but honestly, my biggest takeaway from the whole experience is that maybe some puzzles just can’t be solved. We can try to attribute Jack’s problems to intrinsic biological/psychological issues (social phobia, migraines, etc.) or to environmental causes (super high rate of heroin use and OD in the community), but both sides seem fundamentally lacking in explanatory power.…

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.

> I am 100% positive that I will never again be as happy as I was that day.

I think you might be too certain about that. It's possible to train oneself to be happier than most people imagine is possible.

https://library.dhammasukha.org/uploads/1/2/8/6/12865490/the...

I mention it because you say you're in a precarious situation. Wouldn't it be good to cultivate a kind of happiness that doesn't depend on a wonderful job or anything else?

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

#293

Post by hedberg10 »

_qn3k wrote: post #286
hedberg10 wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

They don't do their part because they are not expected to. That is my problem with the "disease" label. That is my problem when talking about homelessness. That is my problem when talking about addiction.

And there are people who make a good living keeping it exactly this way, making bank in the wake of the moral outrage of the "helpers".

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

#294

Post by hilbert42 »

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.

That's the theory and it's been shown to work to some extent. The trouble is the drug problem is very complex and essentially intractable.

The best we can do is to aim for harm minimization whilst understanding that the minimum will never be a deep notch but will always be shallow.

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

#295

Post by 4thwaywastrel »

colinmhayes wrote: post #19
aazaa wrote: post #4

> I wish I had a happier note to end this on, but honestly, my biggest takeaway from the whole experience is that maybe some puzzles just can’t be solved. We can try to attribute Jack’s problems to intrinsic biological/psychological issues (social phobia, migraines, etc.) or to environmental causes (super high rate of heroin use and OD in the community), but both sides seem fundamentally lacking in explanatory power.…

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.

I can't be sure because I've never tried heroin, but it might be possible to feel that good without drugs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhy%C4%81na_in_Buddhism

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

#296

Post by vintermann »

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.

Free methadone isn't all that much better from that perspective. You come to your doctor and tell him, "I'm useless, my life's hardly worth living, I'll never amount to anything so I might as well take opiates to dull the pain" - is it then the doctors job to basically say, "yes, clinically your life is not worth living", even if it is a milder opiate?

It's writing people off as lost cases. And many addicts WANT to be written off as lost cases, because a) they already did so themselves, but feel guilty about it, an official confirmation would be nice and b) it will give them access to painkillers.

Which is why I'm very skeptical of involving doctors in the first place in free methadone programs, if such programs should exist. It shouldn't be anyone's job to validate you if you say you're a lost cause.

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

#297

Post by barbs »

asdff wrote: post #183
ipnon wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The fact that it's criminalized causes those sorts of marginalized camps and cartels to form in the first place. Even if they were cleared out, they would simply move elsewhere.

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

#298

Post by kingkawn »

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.

Straw man emptiness

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

#299

Post by denton-scratch »

robocat wrote: post #111
d136o wrote: post #54

I’ve just finished reading Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty , and I highly recommend it. An amazing multi generational history of how the Sacklers inflicted opioids on the US, made a fortune, and got away with no consequence. It was pretty interesting to read this during pandemic times, and it’s a prime example of how institutions lose legitimacy in the public’s eye. The Sacklers had the FDA…

Probably the wrong place to ask, but is there any information on the social costs for the Sacklers of their criminality? (I'm not excusing it, I'm just interested). Although they have stuffed Giga$ into their pockets, most people also care deeply about their own social status, so have the Sacklers had severe social repercussions from their peers? Some of their peers or acquaintances of their peers must have been addi…

> Although they have stuffed Giga$ into their pockets

I don't suppose that Giga$ makes you happy. I'm not sure what "social status" is like; is that the same as having friends who own Giga$?

I possess what I'd call "social status" - I'm not a pariah, my neighbours greet me on the street, and my kids and my ex-wives treat me as a friend. I own my home, and I have no debts. That's quite enough "status" for me. I consider myself pretty fortunate.

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

#300

Post by vintermann »

standardUser wrote: post #90
TimTheTinker wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

More often than not, lives are in greater threat of being "destroyed" by the consequences of drug prohibition than the drugs themselves. Addiction is a serious health problem, but impure drugs that lead to overdose deaths, spreading disease through needle use, avoiding medical care for fear of legal consequences, going to jail and having a criminal record, and becoming involved in black market violence are all vastly…

I disagree. Alcohol, being legal, has very few of these problems, and it still causes immense damage to its users - more so than illegal drugs, by many measures.

Which is not to say there aren't humane reasons to fix these problems, especially if they aren't effective at reducing drug use anyway. But yeah, drugs actually are a huge problem and would be even if they were legal and free for all.

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