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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)

#431

Post by gwbas1c »

kamranjon wrote: post #395

This hit like a train. I was Jack in highschool, addicted to heroin, destroying my family for 4 years. In and out of rehab. At one point my mother chased me through her house with me holding a needle full of heroin over her head, she had caught me using in the bathroom, I didn't want to let the hit go. My mother died a little over a month ago, brain cancer, from diagnosis to death it happened in 5 months. Reading thi…

Good for you. I'm happy you were able to straighten out your life.

A few months ago I watched a child, maybe 11-13 years old, run out of a hospital barely clothed. A security guard ran after him and must have wrestled something away. Then the child kept jumping for what the guard was holding, like jumping for a toy. The mother ran after him with clothes.

I felt so bad for the family.

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

#432

Post by denton-scratch »

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.

Those advantages are not any kind of protection against addiction; if anything, they're a risk factor.

I have no idea what "cultural rot" means. I do know what nihilism is; I don't think it is a philosophy that predisposes people to addiction (could be wrong about that).

"Indulgence" would be when you do what you feel like doing, even if you think you shouldn't? OK, so your relatives indulge themselves. Almost everyone who can indulge themselves goes ahead and indulges themselves. Privilege comes with costs.

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

#434

Post by denton-scratch »

mrslave wrote: post #385
galaxyLogic wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I stopped drinking because I realized it kept me from accomplishing things I wanted to accomplish. I think (based on my experience, can't speak for others) it's relatively easy to quit once you know why you want to quit. I don't much regret my drinking days because I had fun and met many people. But then I realized I want to do other things than just get drunk and get a hangover. I think, based on my experience again…

I appreciate your comment. And I found a similar experience in my life quitting smoking: once the decision was firm, and an understanding of the barriers it was erecting between myself and my goals, my resolve was total and quitting was easy. But you're a tad flippant about AA so let me share my thoughts as I have attended it many times - not for myself, but in support of an old school friend who was drinking himself…

> and that you need the help of a higher being

For that to work, you have to suspend your critical faculties. There are no telepathic aliens. Angels don't exist.

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

#435

Post by MikusR »

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…

It's 2021. If somebody still doesn't know about harm from cigarettes, drugs and alcohol it's 100% on them.

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

#436

Post by denton-scratch »

spoonjim wrote: post #154
sneak wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. This is a false narrative. Tobacco use kills 7-8x more every day, week, and month in the USA. That's a legitimate industry, though, so that's not pushed on the news. Opiates aren't that big an issue, they're just the one the media tells you to care about.

Absolutely ludicrous comparison. The people dying of opiate overdoses are much younger than cigarette deaths, and the smokers don't have their lives debilitated by their addiction.

Really? COPD is an incurable and debilitating illness, almost always caused by smoking. Also, smoking causes death, which I would put in the "debilitating" category.

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

#437

Post by xyzzy21 »

There's a phrase (every man I know knows it):

"Life sucks and then you die"

Which is in some ways a variant of Buddhism's "Life is pain".

At least for men, there are always a number of times in one's life when you start thinking these phrases to describe your life.

I've been pretty successful but I've also been divorced twice, bankrupted, made homeless, age-discriminated out of jobs, and bizarrely (even to me) I clawed my way back from each of these. Always thinking "Life sucks and then you die" to gather strength.

I can easily imagine most men being wiped out by merely experiencing ONE of these situations and never "coming back to bat" again.

And once you can imagine that, it's easy to imagine having zero of these or having even minor tragedies being overwhelmed from the get-go - it's all on a spectrum of individual constitutions and strengths that probably starts at "zero". I know plenty of men in that situation.

So as sad as this story is, I'm not surprised by it. It's way more common than a lot of people think. But that's precisely why such stories are so valuable - no one is born with an understanding of the realities of life. You can only learn things the hard way or learn from others' stories.

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

#438

Post by denton-scratch »

astura wrote: post #358
iammisc wrote: post #216

This is a sad story. I have lots of sympathy. But I can't help but think this is a spiritual problem. In particular, rehab seems utterly useless. Obviously, it helps them get over the chemical dependency. But it seems to completely neglect the spiritual one. Unfortunately you cannot install the spiritual tools that lead to non nihilism later in life which is why childhood spirituality and culture are so important. Ma…

Rehab in the US is almost always 12-step based which entirely spiritual in nature. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/04/the-irr...

I suspect that US judges inflict AA-style rehab as punishment; my experience of USAians is that they tend to reach for punishment as their first resort (I have USAian relatives, and I've lived there). Having judges elected is part of the problem.

SMART recovery doesn't involve any religious beliefs, doesn't require you to deny that you have agency, and doesn't require you to say "recovering" if you've actually recovered. For some people, it works better than 12-step.

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

#439

Post by denton-scratch »

sodality2 wrote: post #147
robocat wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>Some of their peers or acquaintances of their peers must have been addicted Rich people can afford the absolute top-tier rehab (and probably can just start doing coke w/o repercussions).

Top-tier rehab is a bit like a nice holiday - class-A cuisine, saunas, massages, therapists who are paid to listen to you wibbling on about your childhood, nice beds, nice gardens. I can imagine people falling back into addiction just so they can have another spell in rehab.

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

#440

Post by michael1999 »

abyrne10 wrote: post #370
iammisc wrote: post #216

This is a sad story. I have lots of sympathy. But I can't help but think this is a spiritual problem. In particular, rehab seems utterly useless. Obviously, it helps them get over the chemical dependency. But it seems to completely neglect the spiritual one. Unfortunately you cannot install the spiritual tools that lead to non nihilism later in life which is why childhood spirituality and culture are so important. Ma…

Would you be able to expand on what you mean by it being a spiritual problem? And what the spiritual tools for the avoidance of nihilism are? I'm only just now, in my thirties, learning about spirituality, so I'd be interested to hear your views.

The collapse of organized religion in the 20th century has left many people spiritually alone with the great difficulties of life. A caring god, and a church of fellowship can be great supports.

https://meaningness.com/nihilism https://meaningness.com/nihilist-apocalypse

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