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

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

#481

Post by jokethrowaway » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 1:43 PM UTC

denton-scratch wrote: post #313

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…

> forcefully throw I live in a market town. Small towns are often a magnet for druggies - they're safer than big cities, and they're often much nicer places. We don't really want all the druggies from the Big City forcibly ejected, so they end up in small towns. Why should townies have to deal with the problems that Big City folk can't be bothered with?

I don't think you should, keep them out in the same way.

If they can't integrate in society, they can go and live in the woods or start their own town, for what I care.

I'm not opposed to helping people with problems: I think we should use voluntary charities (eg. not forcibly taken taxes) to help them - but healthy citizens' lives should not affected because of the problems of a minority.

If that means keeping someone outside of cities, so be it.

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

#482

Post by exikyut » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 3:58 PM UTC

brailsafe wrote: post #85

evilos wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the scariest thing about heroin IMO. It's basically game over, you've ruined the game of life by using a cheat code and the rest of the game will feel hollow and pointless.

You don't need heroin to reveal this to you. That's in part why burnout is a thing. Just try really hard to do what you think is right, and then be shown that what you put your energy into is basically worthless. Then you start thinking about what ultimate prospects every hypothetical financial reward could result in, and it's pretty bleak out there. Then once you're ready to get back into it after being fired, becau…

I've been pondering for a while if being at certain points on the bathtub curve of learning/integrating new things (the disorientation phase, the sense of no progress) may create exponential sensitivity to emotional stress (like burnout) and make it feel 100x worse. Reading this, now I'm wondering if maybe a similar bathtub curve effect (specifically the "I can't see the light at the end of the tunnel" part) associated with the open-ended constant mental engagement of looking for work precipitates a similar sort of sensitivity to ROI outcomes (with obvious preferences toward lots of positivity).

If this is the case, then as direct as it is to say - these mechanisms are just that, mental mechanisms, and it just happens that when "low point of bathtub curve" bounces off of "really badly timed negative ROI event" bounce off of each other, it's like the result is amplified almost beyond reason. Long-term the signal value ("this will kill your spirit") is absolutely true, but in the immediate (ultra-short) term, compartmentalizing and ignoring it may be both safe and actively helpful. (Standard internet advice disclaimer applies)

TL;DR: Good luck, and may circumstances and equilibrium materially improve and solidify.

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

#483

Post by exikyut » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 4:12 PM UTC

goatsi wrote: post #461

damontal wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Say you use heroin or have used it in the past. Now you have to go in for some kind of surgery. Guess what? The opiate pain meds won't work for you! I've seen it first hand. It's awful. Hospitals are only allowed to give so much and if you're a user or were a user, the amount they give you won't touch your pain. Guy who used heroin shattered his hand in a fall off a roof. Had pins put in. When he came around after su…

Opioid tolerance will absolutely decline if you stop using. it's actually a significant cause of death. People will quit (or go without due to jail, etc) and then relapse with the same dose they has used before and have a fatal overdose.

Morbid but curious question: when tolerance declines, does a de-rated dose (say, 100% of the body's safe mechanical limit) produce the same mental effect as the previous, now way higher dose would? IOW, does the tolerance affect the mental response as well?

(NB. Have integrated the understanding that pushing The Button™ is a generally bad idea. The above is purely intellectual curiosity.)

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

#484

Post by iammisc » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 5:06 PM UTC

abyrne10 wrote: post #479

iammisc wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Thank you for the kind words. It was an horrific experience, I had thoughts of jumping off of any bridge I crossed / walking into SF traffic, but in those moments, I'd feel the angels hold me back.

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

#485

Post by diordiderot » Fri, Oct 29, 2021, 3:34 PM UTC

qaq wrote: post #463

diordiderot wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The mitochondria is the power house of the cell. An equally related fact

The people you gave as an example who would benefit from EU style policies but are not in a position to move are people who are actively against implementing that style of policies. Which is much more relevant fact than a random factoid. E.G. their pref is trade barriers and on-shoring of jobs not socialism.

There are progressives near the bottom of the economic ladder. Poor != Conservative

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

#486

Post by denton-scratch » Fri, Oct 29, 2021, 4:04 PM UTC

jokethrowaway wrote: post #481

denton-scratch wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> forcefully throw I live in a market town. Small towns are often a magnet for druggies - they're safer than big cities, and they're often much nicer places. We don't really want all the druggies from the Big City forcibly ejected, so they end up in small towns. Why should townies have to deal with the problems that Big City folk can't be bothered with?

I don't think you should, keep them out in the same way. If they can't integrate in society, they can go and live in the woods or start their own town, for what I care. I'm not opposed to helping people with problems: I think we should use voluntary charities (eg. not forcibly taken taxes) to help them - but healthy citizens' lives should not affected because of the problems of a minority. If that means keeping someo…

I know that many share your views.

If you have no home, it's hard to get a job. But it's hard to get a home if you have no income. So people end up on the street. They then face a choice of a street in a town, near to shops and services; or sleeping in a ditch in the boonies. I've slept in a ditch in the boonies, and I can't recommend it. And Social Services don't patrol ditches in the boonies.

A homeless person can disappear in a big city; it's easier for services to find them and help them in smaller towns. So if I was in a scrape, I'd head out of the city, to a smaller town.

With respect to forcibly taken taxes: they're taken "forcibly" because it's the law that you have to pay taxes. They don't usually come around with guns, to separate you from your belongings. We have a social contract, where I live, that we get free education and health-care and stuff, in exchange for paying taxes.

I was a fairly high earner, until I retired. I've never objected to paying taxes. I do object, very strongly, to corrupt politicians taking the piss with taxpayers' money; but in fact it's a small proportion of tax revenues that get stolen like that (here).

Frankly, I'm OK with the taxpayer paying up so that we don't have an underclass of people who are ill, psychologically troubled, homeless or intellectually challenged, and who are compelled to live under hedges. It could be me that's down on their luck, some day. If I were in that situation, there's a pretty good chance that I'd be resorting to substance abuse.

You're entitled to your views; but it seems pretty harsh to me, to simply declare that those people need to solve their own problems, and leave the taxpayer alone.

Is it perhaps also your view that the only legitimate use for taxpayers funds is to send armies to foreign countries? I'm not in favour of that. And I'm not in favour of taxpayer subsidies for diesel-oil for motor cars. I cough up, because the deal is that I either put up with the way collective taxpayer resources are spent (after making my point at the ballot box), or I leave the country.

As it happens, there's no other place I'd prefer to live. So here I'm is, very comfortable thank you, and I try to be kind to people who have to live on the street. Nobody would choose that if they had an alternative.

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

#487

Post by wespiser_2018 » Sun, Oct 31, 2021, 2:52 PM UTC

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #251

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…

>I'm a strong proponent of the US taking the approach the Swiss took to combat their opiate epidemic in the late 80s and early 90s. I suspect you have your dates wrong, they didn't get a handle on their problems until the late nineties and early 2010s. https://ssir.org/articles/entry/inside_switzerlands_radical_...

Yes, I'm attributing the later successes to the early efforts. I did a quick google search when I posted the original comment and got the dates for the start of the program, which started as a mess, not much later when they finally introduced effective measures.

The aspects of the Swiss approach I wish the US would take the most are the willingness to try something fundamentally different. For the Swiss, it took a few tries to ultimately work out, but I don't see why the current solutions to the problem they use wouldn't work in the US.

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

#488

Post by wespiser_2018 » Sun, Oct 31, 2021, 11:48 PM UTC

kenneth wrote: post #166

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…

As a Swiss person who spent a few years in the 90s going to primary school on Langstrasse, watching junkies shoot up, and having to be careful in city parks to not step on the mountains of used needles… that is about the WORST idea I have ever heard. The Swiss experiment in the 80s and 90s was a complete disaster, and it wasn't until the 2010s that that part of Zurich was finally cleaned up. It attracted the worst ju…

That's fair: I've been to Zurich in 2019 a few times, and I was amazed by how clean it was. Remarkable. Even compared to a US, east coast city, it was much more cleaner than anything I've seen. However that doesn't mean the problems don't exist.

I do think I got the dates wrong. What I'd like the US to do is adopt a similar liberal approach to prescribing medication assisted therapy, and go as far as we need to go in finding the medication that work for people, like is done today in CH. I don't think the "free firezone" approach is a good idea (akin to "hampsterdam" in The Wire), but getting addicts healthcare and a medically supervised substitute is what I meant. The big part of that in the US, IMO, is fighting the social stigma around adopting science based approaches large scale addiction management, and right now the only acceptable solution is to get people off drugs, then have them OD when they get back on. There is a better way!

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

#489

Post by wespiser_2018 » Mon, Nov 01, 2021, 4:53 AM UTC

otherme123 wrote: post #270

kenneth wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first phase of the experiment was to have a free zone in the Platzspitz park, with a needle exchanges, and no interference to drug sales and use. The park became known as "needle park." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platzspitz_park They shut it down in '92, which led to junkies spreading throughout the city, particularly on and around Langstrasse. It wasn't until a real crackdown that things got better. They trie…

When a non-Swiss person talks about "the Swiss heroing/drug experiment", they are referring specifically to the HAT program, and not to a free-for-drug park. It's obvious that if you put all the junkies of a county in a single park , without even the minimal hygienic measures, you create a mess. That's not laissez-faire, that's a mess, but to their credit at least they tried something different than the cycle "heroin…

Yes, I was a bit surprised someone thought I was thinking of a free-for-all drug park. Have they not seen The Wire?

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

#490

Post by wespiser_2018 » Mon, Nov 01, 2021, 5:05 AM UTC

germinalphrase wrote: post #51

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…

“ The effect on new users would be profound as well: as all the current users naturally age out of wanting to use hard drugs, the majority of drug dealers (other users themselves), won't have the capability to introduce new people to hard drugs” Why do you believe this to be true?

Pareto law effects on the consumption of drugs, and network effects that result from the fact that the majority of street level dealers are doing it for the sole purpose of supporting their habit? No life ruining class A felony is worth the money you get selling drugs, but people do it it all the time because they are sick with a disease and feel they must.

New people will still be introduced to drugs, but there are definitely network effects in opiate addiction that can be mitigated when supply is transferred from an illegal source that requires people to organize and recruit new users with cash, to one that is organized and paid for by the government.

It's not perfect, but even decriminalization has had a pretty remarkable effect on Portugal, at least that's what the latest studies are saying.