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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)

#341

Post by kkjjkgjjgg »

toyg wrote: post #273
kkjjkgjjgg wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, Singapore has the death penalty? I thought it was such an exemplary modern country?

"Exemplary" - it's effectively a very authoritarian one-party state, organized over racial lines, that profits parasitically from their neighbours (refining Indonesian oil, dodging Chinese taxes, etc etc). It works, for sure, which is a sad indictment of humanity in the third millennium, but personally I wouldn't want to follow that "example".

Sometimes it ranks highly in "freedom lists" - for example economic freedom. It is cited for being well run and achieving a successful diverse society. At other times they write how rigid their system is.

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

#343

Post by vintermann »

hycaria wrote: post #340
vintermann wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a perspective I feel is sorely missing in this otherwise great piece and the discussion around it: the larger social and even political perspective. We treat it as an individual problem. What could Jack, as an individual, do? In truth, not much. What could the patents do? In truth, not much. But maybe we can change things on a larger level. Create a society where heroin isn't as appealing by comparison. Where…

What is this historical community? A cult?

What you would call an NGO today, or a civil society organization. It's still around as one of the many national teetotaller organizations today organized under Movendi international, but it's got a tiny fraction of its original membership numbers.

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

#344

Post by tinus_hn »

mettamage wrote: post #342

Edit: it was too close to home this comment. So I deleted it. To the child commenter: you're not looking systemic enough. They either get cash or go to prison (Dutch prison, my perspective is Dutch). So either way it's a win for them in their mind.

* Be prosecuted for petty crime (e.g. stealing bikes)

You make it sound like this is a bad thing. If you catch someone stealing your bike do you just offer them your wallet as well?

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

#345

Post by barbs »

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…

> I can have compassion and ask them to do their part. That actually solves the problem.

Have you actually done this, and did it solve the problem?

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

#346

Post by microtherion »

kenneth wrote: post #252
otherme123 wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This puzzles me. The Medication Assisted Treatment (metadone and buprenorphine) started in 1991. The Heroin Assisted Treatment (HAT) started in 1994. People that failed the MAT were enroled into the HAT. Limited first HAT experiments were found sucessful, and thus expanded in 1999. In 2008 both approaches entered the law. All data from here: https://doi.org/10.1186/s12954-020-00412-0 , but you can found it in a lot o…

The first phase of the experiment was to have a free zone in the Platzspitz park, with a needle exchanges, and no interference to drug sales and use. The park became known as "needle park." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platzspitz_park They shut it down in '92, which led to junkies spreading throughout the city, particularly on and around Langstrasse. It wasn't until a real crackdown that things got better. They trie…

Yes, the Platzspitz/Letten scenes were awful, but these are not what the post that you were initially were responding to was describing.

> It wasn’t until a real crackdown that things got better.

Yes, there was a crackdown, but it’s not like this hadn’t been done numerous times before, both in Switzerland and in other countries, so this hardly could have been the major cause of the permanent improvement (which I think we both agree did indeed occur around that time).

> They tried […] the treatments you mentioned

And THOSE were the new factor, and THAT is what made the difference. The Heroin assisted treatment is still in force (an article a few years ago mentioned that about 1400 addicts in Switzerland are in the program).

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

#347

Post by vintermann »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #335
vintermann wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a perspective I feel is sorely missing in this otherwise great piece and the discussion around it: the larger social and even political perspective. We treat it as an individual problem. What could Jack, as an individual, do? In truth, not much. What could the patents do? In truth, not much. But maybe we can change things on a larger level. Create a society where heroin isn't as appealing by comparison. Where…

>What could Jack, as an individual, do? In truth, not much. What could the patents do? In truth, not much. This is bullshit. People who want to beat their addiction and have the support from their immediate family are the demographic that most readily beats addiction. When it comes to beating addiction, losing weight and all sorts of other things that require a lot of willpower having some personal motivation to do w…

I said not much, not "nothing". It's AFAIK true involving family is one of the most effective things you can do in rehab.

But it can be very costly on a human level, and there's still depressing outcomes.

It's not easy to run such family intervention initiatives. An old friend in my teetotaller org did it for a while, starting up family clubs after the design of a little known Yugoslav/Italian academic, Vladimir Hudolin.

There are things you can do, but they're not very effective and at best they help you and the ones closest to you. I'm saying, I think we should see it as a social problem more than an individual problem, and try to address it at the social level first and foremost. We'll likely always need rehab in some form, for humane reasons, but it's not possible to use it to paper over the deeper problems surrounding drug use. That's like replacing traffic safety with emergency medicine.

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

#348

Post by hunterb123 »

pennaMan wrote: post #325
hunterb123 wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My friend told me they got heroin with fentanyl without knowing. This is an all too common trend. Most people aren't dying from an accidental overdose, they are being poisoned with fentanyl. You get addicted to pain killers. Then go to heroin because it's cheaper and more effective. Then you get it laced with fentanyl because dealers are cutting it. Then you die. To slow it you have to pressure China to stop the la…

> Most people aren't dying from an accidental overdose Yes they are. Before fentanyl contaminated heroin came around most heroin overdoses were because of massive differences in product purity. You know the dosage for your usual 10-20% heroin and when you get a batch of 60%+ you are doing over 3 times your usual dose without having a clue and because heroin has a low delta of LD50 to active dose, your usual dose is n…

> Before fentanyl contaminated heroin came around

But today, fentanyl poisoning is fueling the massive increase in deaths, it's over half of all overdose deaths.

Benzos are lower than prescription opioids, heroin, and cocaine in terms of overdose death.

https://www.drugabuse.gov/drug-topics/trends-statistics/over...

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

#349

Post by ddorian43 »

hedberg10 wrote: post #247
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…

> my cousin had been taken so young? He wasn't taken. He took himself. Exercise: Everytime you remove agency, reintroduce it. "I am depressed". No, you are depressing yourself. "I am helpless". No, you are making yourself helpless. These are active processes. Let's get more controversial: "I am being bullied". No, you are letting people bully you. I know this is harsh. I know the societal memes and phrases are the wa…

> "I am depressed". No, you are depressing yourself.

What about Bipolar and Schizophrenia, do you think about them same as depression?

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

#350

Post by raxxorrax »

mrslave wrote: post #186
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 a…

I think this is really socialization, surroundings and trivial occasions. My family drinks alcohol, but very rarely so. I studied in another city where alcohol consumption is far more common and I was drunk nearly every weekend (didn't have much training). Now I am back to a beer every two weeks and I don't miss drinking more. I don't consider that self-improvement though, that would be a bit much, although it probably is far more healthy to not regularly intoxicate yourself. I also don't think most people were addicts, at least not yet.
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