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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)

#401

Post by ysris »

ziggus wrote: post #378

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…

For the 2 people I know who are addicted to heroin, the drug addiction is not the cause of their problems, it's a consequence of a trauma of the past.

They relive this trauma every damn minute. In the beginning of taking drugs, it seemed for them a way to escape reality for some time; to feel in peace.

So yeah, saying "just don't do drugs" to a drug addict is as stupid as saying "just forget your life is a living hell".

Of course, I'm not encouraging drug consumption in any way, but we should have some empathy with them. Most of the time, it's not as simple as it appears.

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

#402

Post by tombert »

hedberg10 wrote: post #339
Fnoord wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now who sells that pill? Who lobbied to have depression seen as a disease? > Who invented the CO2 footprint? BP. Emacs contains doctor.el which can help with issues like these. Back when I was into conspiracy theories (~2004-2007?), it helped me. One advantage of it is that you can keep your conspiracy theories for yourself.

It’s here that British Petroleum, or BP, first promoted and soon successfully popularized the term “carbon footprint" in the early aughts. The company unveiled its “carbon footprint calculator” in 2004 so one could assess how their normal daily life — going to work, buying food, and (gasp) traveling — is largely responsible for heating the globe. A decade and a half later, “carbon footprint” is everywhere. “This is o…

Your previous comments are dead so I have to respond to multiple posts at once here. Sorry.

> He wasn't taken. He took himself. Exercise: Everytime you remove agency, reintroduce it.

I used the term "taken" as a rhetorical thing to ask a deeper question about cosmic unfairness. It makes no claims of level of responsibility and I feel like you knew this and just wanted to make a bizarre ramble about something you read in a bad self-help book.

> "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.

The hell does this have to do with my post exactly? I told a story about my cousin dying from a heroin overdose and you go off on (not even) a tangent about bullying or something.

Also, that's a pretty ridiculous thing to begin with. How are bullied people "letting themselves" be bullied? A kid that's bigger than them decides to physically hurt a kid smaller/weaker than them. What exactly is the smaller kid supposed to do? This isn't the god damn Karate Kid, life isn't a cheesy eighties movie, most of the time the kid just has to be bullied. It's not fair, it sucks, and victim blaming is not helping anything.

> Let's say depression is a purely biological problem, the chemical imbalance (it isn't), take a pill and be be healed! Right?

Depression is a blanket term for a lot of things, and is somewhat overloaded. Sometimes people just feel sad, and maybe telling them to get over it will work, but for people like myself with manic depression, it really isn't that simple. You can do any amount of exercise or dieting trying to suck it up, and everything will still feel hopeless, you'll still blame yourself for everything, you'll still catastrophize everything, you'll still yell at people who don't deserve it, and you'll still have to talk yourself out of bed every morning [1]. When that's the case, what exactly are you supposed to do? Are you disputing that those people exist?

Also, your hypothetical is completely absurd, there are plenty of things that have physiological causes that we can't just take a pill and be healed with. Do you think cancer is just an attitude problem? How about amputees? Are they just so stupid that they don't take a pill and be healed? What a strange and completely misinformed take.

I honestly feel bad for you. Whatever sequence of events led to this strange pseudo-edgelord hardass chud persona must have been tough.

[1] Not all depressed people and not all manic depressives. Describing my symptoms.

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

#403

Post by gwbas1c »

ioseph wrote: post #38
colinmhayes wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That was certainly not my experience, it was an intense physical pleasure but ultimately devoid of mental depth. Having tried most drugs I really think the whole addicted after one dose is bullshit and it's far more about your social economic circumstances. It's much more tempting to seek out another hit if you have nothing better to do that day.

> I really think the whole addicted after one dose is bullshit

When I was ~12 I got nitrous in the dentist's chair.

I remember the thought going through my head: Wow, this is really cool.

However, I didn't have ready access to nitrous! If my parents had a whipped cream maker, would I have started huffing whip-its? Maybe, but at least they aren't addictive. It's not like I would have gone into withdrawl after going through a box.

I think the bigger issue is the physical dependency that opiates have. Once the drug is no longer the "new toy," but the physical dependency is there, it's much harder to stop once the novelty is gone.

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

#404

Post by standardUser »

asdff wrote: post #158
standardUser wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The long term mental damage from stuff like meth induced psychosis is not something that the state should be furthering, especially when the state isn't even picking up the ball for mental health treatment facilities. If we were serious about addiction, we would heavily crack down on users and send them to detox facilities where they will remain until they are clean and well rather than maintaining the status quo of…

"we would heavily crack down on user"

Learn some history. We tried this. It failed spectacularly, as if in slow motion, for decade after decade.

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

#406

Post by DantesKite »

ipnon wrote: post #202
DantesKite wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does in Singapore. Lowest rates of drug abuse in the world. But they execute you if you have over 500 grams of marijuana so a bit extreme.

Drug trafficking is a capitol crime in China, but China has an epidemic of methamphetamine and ketamine abuse, to give you one counterexample. My claim is that law enforcement is highly effective in all areas at the scale of a city.

That's a good point. Scale changes law enforcement capabilities.

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

#407

Post by denton-scratch »

Yajirobe wrote: post #329
denton-scratch wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dhyana meditation comes with its own risks. In general, "religion" is quite dangerous stuff, and should not be fed to children.

Expand on this please

Meditating on the six dhyanas (or "janas") is a kind of single-pointed concentration. One of the side-effects is supposedly "bliss" (sukha). It's strong medicine, and if it works, it will alter your mind - that's what it's for.

I have to say I've never tried it; I was warned off it.

If you're doing it for the bliss, your motivation is wrong, and you are at risk of vanity and playing power-games with people. If that happens, you will suffer harm.

If you were asking why I think religion is not for children, well: I think tales about fairies, angels and Santa Claus are not for children. I don't think you should lie to children, nor encourage them to subscribe to superstitious beliefs. By "children", I mean anyone with underdeveloped critical faculties. I read fairy stories to my kids, at bedtime; but I didn't pretend they were true.

Some religious systems present very interesting ways of looking at the world, the mind, and morality. But it's like hard drugs; it affects your mind and your relationships, and not necessarily for the better. I think that tangling with a religious system should only be done with care, and under appropriate supervision. The matter of how to choose a suitable spiritual mentor is an unsolved problem.

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

#408

Post by denton-scratch »

watwut wrote: post #316
denton-scratch wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is correct. You have to work on an alcohol addiction. It takes a few months to develop a dependency severe-enough that withdrawal might result in seizures. Short of that, you can just quit, if you can get time off work for a few days in bed. You also have to work on a heroin addiction, so I have heard. It simply isn't true that "one dose and you're hooked". People become addicts because they want to be addicts,…

> You also have to work on a heroin addiction, so I have heard. It simply isn't true that "one dose and you're hooked". When I looked at it, it is something like 30% of people develop dependence after first one-two usages. Then there are people who can use it casually for a long time before developing it.

Could it be that those people were "dependent" even before their first dose? My argument is that some people want to be dependent. So they work on it.

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

#409

Post by LeanderK »

pirate787 wrote: post #372
LeanderK wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Maybe we just learned different lessons ;) People can become addicts under different circumstances and we can't predict individual behaviour. Just because someone exists that violates a principle does not mean the principle is wrong.

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

#410

Post by spurgu »

ldiracdelta wrote: post #386
ziggus wrote: post #378

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…

The absolutely accurate word used to describe that level of addiction in Christian theology is "slavery" Completely captures the idea of unmitigated subservience to the drug or alcohol master.

> drug or alcohol master.

Nitpicking, but since political correctness seems to be all the rage nowadays, please consider removing "or alcohol" from that sentence (at least mentally) since alcohol is a drug, just like heroin or coffee or nicotine or LSD, only with varying degrees of effects, damage and dependency.

Disclaimer: Have tried most common drugs at least once in my life and find alcohol to be one of the most dangerous ones, since dependency tends to creep up so slowly (years) and is practically impossible to get rid of once acquired, barring abstaining completely.

Edit: Saw that you replied but then deleted, referring to common parlance of the English language. Yes, that's exactly why I posted this. It's established (boomer) language to say "drugs and alcohol" and it needs to change. Hence I referred to changing the sentence mentally. This change will take time though and/but it'll happen, one person at a time.

I suppose people seem to look at "drugs" as illegal drugs and everything legal as non-drugs. So now with weed widely decriminalized it'd go from "drugs or alcohol" to "drugs or alcohol or weed". Maybe? /tangent

Edit2: I also suppose people don't want to look at themselves as drug users. This is probably due to anti-drug propaganda, associating any drug user with a "junky". It's also a mental image that needs to change. Most people in the western world are functional drug users and that's fine. Or should be.

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