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

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

#471

Post by TimTheTinker » Wed, Oct 27, 2021, 5:48 PM UTC

thatcat wrote: post #468

TimTheTinker wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we seem to have this huge moral hang up in the US about giving addicts drugs For many people, what you're describing all comes down to the law of love. It is not loving to give a person more of the thing that is destroying them. Perhaps free methadone would be a better option? EDIT: care to comment? I'd like to know why people disagree.

Its not loving to control another person with draconian measures that further harm them with criminal sanctions that cause economic stress and stigmatize the person socially. Love would be creating a social environment that is capable of providing safer options, therapy, and letting people make their own choice about their health instead of treating them like criminals.

I mostly agree. I was arguing against free heroin, not in favor of prohibition.

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

#472

Post by MisterMower » Wed, Oct 27, 2021, 6:15 PM UTC

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #275

MisterMower wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“My cousin died because he made a choice to try heroin, got hooked on it and made a choice to share needles, contracted hepatitis, which turned into hepatoma.” Fixed that for you. Truly sorry for your loss, but people make choices, and those choices have consequences. Can we hold these two things to be true at the same time: 1. No one is forcing people to take these drugs. The choice to start is theirs. They are ulti…

>Truly sorry for your loss If that was the case I don't think you would have written what you did.

It is always a sad thing when a person dies. Unfortunately, some deaths are much more predictable than others.

Until we're able to talk candidly about the decisions that led to those outcomes, we will continue to mourn preventable deaths in the future.

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

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Post by asdff » Wed, Oct 27, 2021, 6:43 PM UTC

barbs wrote: post #466

asdff wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm not sure what you mean, drug possession is still criminalized? Has been for years, and drug use still happens, it just creates conditions which increase crime and unsafe use. Unless, do you mean that the laws aren't enforced enough, hence the drug use outside law enforcement? I would argue that increased enforcement still doesn't help the problem, and crime and drug harm increase. Not to mention the public costs…

It's criminalized but cops don't enforce these laws, because the DA isn't going to prosecute a homeless person for these laws. Police cite them and release them and then you get stories like this (1) where people might get arrested and released for separate crimes three times in one day. I can find dozens and dozens of stories like this, some more tragic like the final crime of the day being a murder of an innocent victim.

Are these policies helping these people get their lives back on track? I'd say its clearly doing the exact opposite. By offering no consequence to bad behavior, bad behavior continues. If this person was arrested and taken into custody vs released, they'd at least be put into a controlled environment where they would be fed and sheltered and have their medical needs attended to, versus let out onto the street with no direction where they end up right back where they started.

There are costs to the public for sheltering and treating addicted and mentally unwell, certainly, but I'd argue the costs to the public of the status quo are much higher if you were to quantify them. All the petty crime, the emotional toll on innocent people victimized, the price of a life when innocent people are murdered by psychotic people on methamphetamine, the price of ER bills passed on to everyone from someone coming far too late on deaths door with zero insurance, versus the much cheaper price on preventative care that would prevent these situations in the first place, is not a cheap price. But by continuing this status quo this is the price we all bear.

1. https://abc7.com/california-zero-bail-prison-overcrowding-gl...

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

#474

Post by MisterMower » Wed, Oct 27, 2021, 6:54 PM UTC

woah wrote: post #355

MisterMower wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They’ve been fighting the suppliers. It’s time to go after the demand side, too. Every user bought their drugs from a dealer. Throw them in jail with the dealer. It seems like every solution in this thread is something other than “punish people who buy or sell drugs.” Can we at least try ruthless enforcement before we try free drugs for addicts paid for by taxpayers?

What’s more expensive, a few grams of an easy to synthesize pharmaceutical or keeping someone in prison? It sounds like your idea would be a massive waste of taxpayer money serving only to gratify a perverse fantasy of sadism and domination.

Take Jack's story and multiply it by at least a million. That's the cost we're currently paying for it. Throwing a small fraction of those people in jail in order to prevent this epidemic is the humane thing to do.

That you'd rather call a real solution to this issue "perverse" and "sadistic" betrays your own cynical view: you really don't care that much about people like Jack. You'd rather grandstand with your smug, politically correct view than actually help people like him.

Why was it so easy for Jack, a high school kid in a small town in the Northeast, to get his hand on hard drugs like this? The answer: we stopped having the stomach for being tough on anyone connected with drugs, by throwing them in prison, and creating incentives to strongly discourage its use.

We don't hesitate to jail people for decades when we find them with illegal explosives or plans to commit acts of terrorism. If those people are successful, at most they kill hundreds of people. The use and distribution of drugs does much more damage and impacts millions in a massively negative way.

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

#475

Post by zer0tonin » Wed, Oct 27, 2021, 7:59 PM UTC

MisterMower wrote: post #470

zer0tonin wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your whole comment is so naive about the economics of drug trafficking but I think: > If users are in prison, they can’t buy street drugs. is really the ultimate cherry on top. Do you really think prison contraband is extinct?

Just to make sure I understand, you're saying it's just as easy to obtain drugs in prison as it is on the streets?

Yes, or not much more difficult. This is a well studied subject: http://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/31877/

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

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Post by bamboozled » Wed, Oct 27, 2021, 10:48 PM UTC

stef25 wrote: post #150

bamboozled wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's a really complicated problem, other countries have tried different things that have worked. It's complicated for some people to admit the 'war on drugs' has failed maybe, but that's a different issues all together.

What's complicated is that it's not really the drugs, it's the fact that people experience their lives in such a miserable way that oblivion through opiates is a better option. IMHO this is because of alienation, a loss of community, strong personal bonds, lack of goals. There's a famous experiment that sums it all up perfectly - the one where animals were given an unlimited supply of cocaine and they took it until t…

Still relevant though because if you have a medical problem (addiction) and rather than be provided with care you’re treated like a criminal, you’d feel even more isolated and less part of something good.

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

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Post by ryan_lane » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 4:15 AM UTC

DevoidSimo wrote: post #307

ryan_lane wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't give out free heroin in SF. There are needle exchange programs, and a small number of safe usage sites. Also, you're assuming most of the addicts are heroin addicts. Quite a few of them are meth addicts, who are harder to reach, partially because the type of meth they're getting causes severe psychosis. Giving meth addicts forms of meth that are produced more cleanly would reduce the level of psychosis and…

Is it impurities in meth that give you psychosis? I was of the impression that often it was due to sleep deprivation due to being on meth and not sleeping for days.

All forms of meth give you psychosis, slowly, with continued use. The sleep deprivation adds to that. Meth created via the P2P method is apparently considerably worse for you, and leads to psychosis at a much higher rate than ephedrine methods: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/11/the-new...

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

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Post by vintermann » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 7:41 AM UTC

thatcat wrote: post #469

vintermann wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. Alcohol, being legal, has very few of these problems, and it still causes immense damage to its users - more so than illegal drugs, by many measures. Which is not to say there aren't humane reasons to fix these problems, especially if they aren't effective at reducing drug use anyway. But yeah, drugs actually are a huge problem and would be even if they were legal and free for all.

Alcohol is legal bc fermentation is easy so restrictions fail, not bc its harmless. Weed is by comparison harmless but easy and lucrative to enforce laws against. The reason for legalization isnt bc drugs are good, its abt the emerging economic dynamic with drug dealers and drug enforcement. drugs have become a profit center for the state and it has created perverse incentives that do not benefit the end user or soci…

OP is saying most of the harms come from illegality.

I'm pointing out that alcohol causes immense harms despite being legal, so likely other drugs too would still cause considerable harms when legal (even though yes, it's likely some, like cannabis, would be less harmful than alcohol almost no matter what total consumption settles on under legalization).

I was not arguing about why things are legal or not, only challenging the assertion that drugs aren't very harmful when legal.

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

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Post by abyrne10 » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 9:45 AM UTC

iammisc wrote: post #415

abyrne10 wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well I'm Catholic, so I'm going to offer this to you from that perspective. While I understand the tenets of many other world religions, having never experienced any of their spiritualities, I can't comment on them. A big part of Christian spirituality is feeling joy even while in pain, and of finding hope even when there is no reason to hope. In the Book of Job, Job is tested in his faith by having almost every suff…

Thank you for taking the time to write this out, it was really interesting to hear your point of view.

I can't imagine what it must have been like to lose seven children before birth. I have a young daughter myself, so things like that really hit home. I'm glad that you were able to recover and keep going with the help of your faith.

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

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Post by jokethrowaway » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 11:52 AM UTC

hpoe wrote: post #39

jokethrowaway wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see the same in London, where everything is illegal. I think it's unrelated to whether drugs are a crime or not - homeless and drug users in general will find a way to get it. It's a sad reflection on the state of society and our cities. Personally, after a terrible experience in Paris, I decided I will avoid all big cities. I think we should do something about it and forcefully throw homeless and drug users out of…

If you don't mind me asking what incident let to you to taking to such a hardline stance? I don't necessarily disagree or agree I just would love to hear that kind of perspective?

As a guy (as weird as it may sound) I've been followed and jumped on by a drugged up homeless making sexual advances in an isolated street next to Gare du Nord. There was a small altercation and I ran away.

In the same trip I've experienced several instances of homeless or just economic immigrants from Africa grabbing your arm trying to steal / sell you something.

There is also plenty of homeless peeing and pooping pretty much everywhere in Paris, which is disgusting enough.

I found London to be much better compared to Paris, even if things got way worse in the last few years. 5-10 years ago it was a rare occurrence to see homeless people, now you see homeless people sleeping everywhere and shooting drugs on the street like it's nothing.

I've since moved in the middle of nowhere and I'm definitely not going to raise my kids in a city.