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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)

#371

Post by jamiek88 »

c23gooey wrote: post #66
nwienert wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to throw in my 2c, I’ve had dilaudid a few times for an injury and other opiates for various reasons, and while they feel great, they really never cross my mind much and I don’t hold them close to many sober experiences. Not even as good as other drugs, of which I could list 3-4 I’d consider as or more enjoyable. The above comment feels like a really dramatic description of opiates. I don’t think most anyone wit…

I think people experience the euphoria of opiates differently. Anecdotally - i've never found opiates compelling. I appreciate their ability to numb severe pain, but they don't do anything for me as a mental release. Whereas a good friend is the opposite, he loves the feeling opiates give him and gets quite a kick out of them. He is very careful around them because he understands that he could easily slip into a full…

My wife had chemo and was given oxycodone. She hated it as it just made her nauseous. I had one low dose 5mg pill of hers and suddenly felt as if everything was finally right, the euphoria was there but it was more. ‘I finally feel normal’. It was dramatic and I’ve been battling the temptation ever since.

I wish I’d never tried it.

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

#372

Post by pirate787 »

LeanderK wrote: post #336
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. I've also experienced drug-related loss and I think one can still find some lessons. Life is terrifying for some and they feel incredibly overwhelmed. We lack Compassion and Respect for those who don't really make it. We glorify individualism and grow up with the expectation that we can also be just like them, but some just can't. The gig-economy is incre…

Sorry you're trying to make this fit your political worldview. The addicts in my family are privileged lazy, spoiled, selfish people. They literally had every economic and educational advantage, in the top 1% of all people globally. It is a cultural rot and nihilism and indulgence.

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

#373

Post by jon-wood »

m0zg wrote: post #246
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.

[flagged]

As a lifetime resident of the UK, a country that is more left-wing than the US, but still distinctly conservative I can tell you that it is in fact possible to introduce mandatory minimum holidays, maternity leave, and a social security system without condemning people to labour camps in order to maintain order.

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

#374

Post by AlgorithmicTime »

diordiderot wrote: post #285
qaq wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The people in those towns are also largely not asking for progressive policies.

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

#375

Post by yung_steezy »

raxxorrax wrote: post #359
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…

Plus, I don't think you can really overdose Heroin, people mostly die from contamination.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_lethal_dose

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

#376

Post by goodells »

Wohlf wrote: post #287
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.

Heart attacks rarely kill people, but the resulting arrhythmias and ventricular wall ruptures certainly do.

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

#377

Post by hcurtiss »

lagadu wrote: post #365
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…

They generally don't want to go to a soviet system, but rather one based on Europe, which arguably has shown for decades that it's a success to some extent. Things like fewer police powers and criminalization, free education and health and vastly wider social policies including worker protections.

Maybe. But that is not a universally held view. Many Europeans, including our family friends in Germany and Poland, would prefer to live in the American system, with its relatively low taxes and relatively greater freedoms (and tools to check the government).

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

#378

Post by ziggus »

I'm seeing a lot of responses to this article and to some comments that are of the "just don't do drugs or drink alcohol, what's the big deal?" variety.

To the people with that attitude I'd like to plainly say that you don't know what you're talking about. At all.

Alcoholism in it's true form - physical alcohol dependency - is a terrifying and debilitating disease, that captures the very will of the afflicted. There is no escaping the siren song of alcohol for the sufferer. It isn't a question of "just say no", it's a minute-by-minute willful struggle against an urge so powerful that at times, the alcoholic would gladly trade the lives of his children for another drink.

The same applies to drugs like heroin. Unless you've felt the craving, the absolute need for more, a need that outweighs any rational argument against it, or can conjure up an ounce of imagination and understanding, then keep your pithy, profoundly unhelpful comments to yourself.

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

#379

Post by gmadsen »

rootsudo wrote: post #353
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…

Hearing alcohol addiction, it seems so "unreal" in the sense that, I can see it as a problem but I always feel it can't be that hard. I think alcohol, tastes disgusting in general. It's fun to mix with other things to have a stronger effect, but I've always enjoyed everclear to accomplish that, which basically is just pure ethanol. I never understood alcohol culture, bars, going out, etc. And I always related that to…

I understand not wanting to be apart of it, but it seems silly to say you literally can't understand why others do it.

It is very obvious. It lowers inhibitions, causes euphoria, thus increasing the enjoyment of social interactions for many many people.

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

#380

Post by yholio »

klyrs wrote: post #102
yholio wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a menu, it's a place where you go to get a clean, safe fix for your opioid addiction. You get what you get, the best opioid or analogue that the doctors decide to give you, possibly with a slow release mechanism that avoids the rush but allows you function throughout the day, hold a job, not stick the first AIDS-infected needle in your vein etc.

Look, I'm sure you mean well, but it doesn't sound like you understand the behavior of drug users. So let's re-phrase that: I'm going to out-compete the liquor scene with free but watered-down beer. If you want to help people, you need to meet them where they're at. The moralizing "you get what you get" approach is only going to tide people over for when they can't afford to score the potent stuff.

> out-compete the liquor scene with free but watered-down beer.

Make that: free strong beer versus liquor that has a 2% chance to be mixed with rat poison, is illegal to sell or buy, and costs more to use than the average job pays. A quite compelling offer for any drunk, but, yes, some lost souls will still go for the "real" shit.

I understand the whole "reduce harm, addicts are lab mice caught in a chemical trap" philosophy. But providing ever increasing doses of hard drugs, as most addicts eventually require when left to their own devices, might be an even faster way to the grave.

Let a doctor make the choice minimizes overall harm, not consumer preferences.

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