My experience of losing a friend to heroin (2020) • Hacker News Board

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

#451

Post by asdff » Tue, Oct 26, 2021, 10:31 PM UTC

barbs wrote: post #297

asdff wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What I'm saying is that its de facto decriminalized and this is the result. If it were criminalized you wouldn't be able to live like this unhindered and unchecked on any particular piece of public land you can find. If it were decriminalized nominally, nothing would change, because people aren't being criminalized for meth use currently.

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

#452

Post by asdff » Tue, Oct 26, 2021, 10:37 PM UTC

standardUser wrote: post #404

asdff wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Nothing will stop trafficking since its a lucrative product and we live in a capitalist society, but crackdowns at least push drug use out of the open and cause people who get picked up to end up in jail or some facility rather than turned back out to the street where they often continue to commit more crimes. It keeps these chronic hard drug users out of public places like train stations where they are less likely to harm innocent bystanders. I've seen meth users on the train go off in racist tirades and start fights on transit just because someone happened to make eye contact with them. The status quo of not doing anything and shrugging our collective shoulders just leads to more people getting harmed, both the addicts and random other people.

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

#453

Post by asdff » Tue, Oct 26, 2021, 10:39 PM UTC

HWR_14 wrote: post #201

asdff wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Introducing friction to your ability to satiate your vice is the first step in battling addiction.

That doesn't agree with anything I've learned about battling addiction. Do you have any research or studies that support that? Or other programs with a good track record? Because, unless you are using the term "friction" to be so all-encompassing as to be meaningless, this sounds like a recipe for a lot of failed attempts to fight addiction.

Every addiction treatment effort is to introduce friction, like dumping out your booze in your home into the toilet, getting a new job that doesn't tolerate smoke breaks, or finding new friends that aren't going to peer pressure you into using. If the vice is easy to act upon, you will continue to act upon it indefinitely.

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

#454

Post by diordiderot » Wed, Oct 27, 2021, 12:01 AM UTC

qaq wrote: post #302

diordiderot wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They also most likely support Trump and not left leaning policies.

The mitochondria is the power house of the cell.

An equally related fact

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

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Post by nmfisher » Wed, Oct 27, 2021, 12:13 AM UTC

hilbert42 wrote: post #259

nmfisher wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Used needles are still a common sight in Melbourne.

I grew up in a rural town in NSW and we kids had hardly ever heard of hard drugs let alone ever having been offered any. At best, all we knew of them was that it was an overseas problem and that there were strange opium dens up in Asia somewhere. We were never warned about drugs in primary and secondary school as there weren't any - with the exception of cigarettes, which some kids tried down behind the school toilet…

The sad thing is that that’s probably no longer the case, it sounds like ice/meth is a big problem in rural Australia.

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

#456

Post by bufordtwain » Wed, Oct 27, 2021, 1:07 AM UTC

Thanks for posting the article. I am going through this with my son at the moment and most of the things written here are familiar to me. It's good to get this stuff in the open, it's not as uncommon a situation as people think.

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

#457

Post by Igelau » Wed, Oct 27, 2021, 1:08 AM UTC

hedberg10 wrote: post #449

dang wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't post in the flamewar style to HN. If you want to make a nuanced point about personal responsibility, ok, but turning it into a big binary polarity and then blaring condemnatory, dismissive rhetoric at the pole you disapprove of is no way to do this. You say you know it is harsh—that's already a reason not to do it here. Maybe "harsh" can do some good when there's already a strong relational connection wi…

> A good critical comment teaches us something. I feel as if I did that. Maybe my writing comes across way differently, maybe my comments are not as direct as they could be - but if that is already too upsetting for this crowd, you will never get any actual critical comments. You will never arrive at any traction, at any truth. Too bad, I expected more here. My error. Case in point: > Please respond to the strongest…

> > Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says

> Nobody replying to me did that. Amazing.

You worded everything in absolutes. If you ask people to take the strongest interpretation of that, you're asking them to just concede that you're right.

I think you actually seem to get it that there's something dangerous about identifying with the problem (e.g. I am depressed) but you're jumping to conclusions about agency from there. No one who replied wanted to make that leap, nor did you offer any compelling reason to do so.

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

#458

Post by Sophistifunk » Wed, Oct 27, 2021, 2:18 AM UTC

panta wrote: post #234

Sophistifunk wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, there are a lot of people with chronic pain, and the only things that reliably treat pain without being really bad for your system are opiates and weed. Paracetemol (and to a lesser degree ibuprofen) are so bad for you they mix it into opiates so that if you take enough to get high the paracetemol sends you to hospital, and weed is stigmatised at best, and still illegal in most of the world. Ketamine in useful d…

> I get weird pains they call "cluster headaches" in my face if you have not already done this, you could consult an "migraine center". There is no cure but there are some effective (for some people at least) options for treating cluster headaches, like triptans and lifestyle changes (regularity in sleep patterns, etc.)

They're very different from migraines (which I had as a kid), in that there's no visual effects or nausea, and seem to be more localised and less "systemic". I'm always trying to work on my sleep, with very little success overall. I've never tried any of the serious sleeping pills, they seem too risky; but a combination of restavit (an antihystamine) and melatonin can get me to sleep pretty reliably, the problem becomes that it sometimes leaves me a bit too slow and stupid in the mornings.

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

#459

Post by hilbert42 » Wed, Oct 27, 2021, 2:57 AM UTC

nmfisher wrote: post #455

hilbert42 wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I grew up in a rural town in NSW and we kids had hardly ever heard of hard drugs let alone ever having been offered any. At best, all we knew of them was that it was an overseas problem and that there were strange opium dens up in Asia somewhere. We were never warned about drugs in primary and secondary school as there weren't any - with the exception of cigarettes, which some kids tried down behind the school toilet…

The sad thing is that that’s probably no longer the case, it sounds like ice/meth is a big problem in rural Australia.

Tragically, that's ever so true, rural country towns both in the US and Australia are now in the vanguard of the drug epidemic. It's not only ice/meth but also opioids thanks in part to the Sacklers.

Fortunately, my family seems to have escaped the illicit drug problem and I no longer live in a rural area, nevertheless sometimes I wish I had Dr Who's tardis to escape back to a much simpler time - at least for a short respite anyway. :-)

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

#460

Post by mgkimsal » Wed, Oct 27, 2021, 3:00 AM UTC

ipnon wrote: post #97

headgasket wrote: post #78

It’s probably a bad forum for this opinion, but I have a relative struggling with addiction and resulting mental issues ( resulting form substance abuse; he was highly functional and threw it all away), and because of this I made a 180 and think some form of prohibition for hard stuff is the only action that would help us. How to put that cat in the bag is anyone’s guess.

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.

there's the laws, then there's enforcement. enforcement is he harder part, and I don't see any easy wins there. you're right though - much is already "prohibited". it still happens.