Is there a drug problem in Payson ? (Mesa, Bullhead City: insurance, trip)

[AnniArizona]

I have another post concerning job availability in Payson. I'd also like to know if there is alot of drug use in Payson. A couple years ago I moved to a small town in N. Cali & found out that most everyone there was either un-employed or collected disability (even tho they didn't seem to need it!) and drug use, especially Meth was VERY prevalent! I know drugs are everywhere but I swear this city had more Meth users p/capita than I'd seen in LA or the suburbs of Chicago where I lived for years !!!! Please give me your input as I'd rather not live in a drug (Meth) town .. thanks !

[RCL]

Originally Posted by AnniArizona

I have another post concerning job availability in Payson. I'd also like to know if there is alot of drug use in Payson. A couple years ago I moved to a small town in N. Cali & found out that most everyone there was either un-employed or collected disability (even tho they didn't seem to need it!) and drug use, especially Meth was VERY prevalent! I know drugs are everywhere but I swear this city had more Meth users p/capita than I'd seen in LA or the suburbs of Chicago where I lived for years !!!! Please give me your input as I'd rather not live in a drug (Meth) town .. thanks !

Just a note on your comment on disability "...even though they don't seem to need it...", there are a lot of debilitating medical conditions that are not visible on the outside. Do some research and until you learn the facts, please refrain from judgment. You just may end up on disability one day. A catastrophic illness can strike at any time, and eat up everything you have no matter how well you prepare with long term insurance policies and retirement savings. I know this first hand. My disability is physical and neurological and it's not visible from the outside (though often I wish it were...and because of brash attitudes like yours (even though you probably don't mean to be brash))

There are also work incentive programs to help those on disability get re-established and begin working again while they are still collecting disability.

Meth is another thing entirely, I wholly agree with your statements there.

[Sean_Harrington]

Yes, Payson in the past couple of years has developed a pretty bad Meth problem. It's very obvious. If you go shopping at night, they are out buying candy and soda at Wal-Mart and Circle K. Everyone talks about the horrors of California People, but they don't want to talk about the drug addicts and LOW LIFE who have lived there for generations, and have migrated up from Mesa. (I"m not from CA I am from NYC so don't even start with me)

The weather in Payson is mostly very good. Summer afternoons can get a little warm, but it always cools down. The Winters are sunny and very pleasant, with occasional snow that does not last long.

There are friendly pleasant people around, but then again there are nasty viscious rotten old ^$*#s who are totally rude and will argue and fight about anything. They are usually the ones who moved to the area 4 years ago, and think they own the place.


If you really want to move there, go right ahead, don't let them scare you, they are actually harmless, and have nothing better to do with their time.

[skitow]

Originally Posted by RCL

Just a note on your comment on disability "...even though they don't seem to need it...", there are a lot of debilitating medical conditions that are not visible on the outside. Do some research and until you learn the facts, please refrain from judgment. You just may end up on disability one day. A catastrophic illness can strike at any time, and eat up everything you have no matter how well you prepare with long term insurance policies and retirement savings. I know this first hand. My disability is physical and neurological and it's not visible from the outside (though often I wish it were...and because of brash attitudes like yours (even though you probably don't mean to be brash))

There are also work incentive programs to help those on disability get re-established and begin working again while they are still collecting disability.

Meth is another thing entirely, I wholly agree with your statements there.

RCL, your comment on disability is right on! It happened to me also. Eats your money up quick. Hope you are okay. Hope you see this post. Take care, skitow.

[pennylane]

Originally Posted by RCL

Just a note on your comment on disability "...even though they don't seem to need it...", there are a lot of debilitating medical conditions that are not visible on the outside. Do some research and until you learn the facts, please refrain from judgment. You just may end up on disability one day. A catastrophic illness can strike at any time, and eat up everything you have no matter how well you prepare with long term insurance policies and retirement savings. I know this first hand. My disability is physical and neurological and it's not visible from the outside (though often I wish it were...and because of brash attitudes like yours (even though you probably don't mean to be brash))

There are also work incentive programs to help those on disability get re-established and begin working again while they are still collecting disability.

Meth is another thing entirely, I wholly agree with your statements there.

If you label yourself disabled, you will manifest that in your life. A better label would be "Challenged." We all have challanges in life, but most of us are ABLE to do something about it, or with it, or we would be bed ridden or dead. Many "disabled" abuse the system and are a burden to society. Good luck with your challanges.

[RCL]

Originally Posted by pennylane

If you label yourself disabled, you will manifest that in your life. A better label would be "Challenged." We all have challanges in life, but most of us are ABLE to do something about it, or with it, or we would be bed ridden or dead. Many "disabled" abuse the system and are a burden to society. Good luck with your challanges.

How pathetically, disgustingly, self-righteously trite.

Yes, most of us were perfectly fine then we chose to label ourselves disabled because we are lazy. It was a choice we made to become ill through no fault of our own and lose everything, our homes, savings, careers, friends, independence, health, activities we loved, etc.. Why should we try to keep any of it when we all worked so hard for it? Maybe we just didn't deserve it in the first place.

And when others like you are hard at work to support all of us leeches, here we are choosing each day to be chronically ill just so we can give self-righteous pompass asses like you something to gripe about being inconvenienced about. Sorry we are such a burden, pal. Excuse us for living.

And by the way we chipped into the same Social Security system as you, which is NOT a hand-out rather an insurance policy. So if you have a gripe about it, go take it up with congress. SSDI is not welfare, not even close.

And aside from this, you don't think most of us feel really bad deep inside in our consciences that we are not able to be as productive as we once were? Most of us were very productive, hard workers, and got hit out of nowhere. Wait, that's not true. That's right, we chose to attract catastrophic illness. How dumb of us.

I mean, really, why should any of us work for a living when it's easier to stay at home all day, doing things like puking our guts out, in constant pain/discomfort, and in general unable to go do anything pleasurable that most people take for granted like maybe a trip to the grocery store.

But according to you, we should just re-label all our cares away right? Visualize everything well again.
Maybe we need to wish all these "challenges" into the corn-field?

I would label you a troll but that would be an insult to trolls everywhere.

"Be gone, before someone drops a house on you too."

[RCL]

Originally Posted by skitow

RCL, your comment on disability is right on! It happened to me also. Eats your money up quick. Hope you are okay. Hope you see this post. Take care, skitow.

Thanks for the kind words Skitow. I am doing the best I can to make the most of it. I'm so sorry to hear you have gone through the same thing. I would not wish this kind of an ordeal on anyone. I hope all things work out well for you. Off topic if you have gone through the SSDI process I would appreciate hearing about your experience. Contrary to the opinion of some people on this board, SSDI is not easy to get, it's almost easier to get blood from a stone.

Back on topic, I read your posts that you are thinking of leaving the bay area, where are you thinking about and why? I'm leaning toward the climate of Arizona, but at the same time heavily leaning against it because I want to get as far away from Californians as I possibly can. There are now so many of them here in Southern Utah and they are bringing horrible ways with them. Greed and materialism has its own stench and you can detect it a mile off.

I think they should change the border sign now so it reads "Welcome back to California".

[RCL]

Originally Posted by pennylane

If you label yourself disabled, you will manifest that in your life. A better label would be "Challenged." We all have challanges in life, but most of us are ABLE to do something about it, or with it, or we would be bed ridden or dead. Many "disabled" abuse the system and are a burden to society. Good luck with your challanges.

So you think disability is just a label, huh? Try this. I'm not the author of this, but it's what I deal with. I didn't choose it and it's not because I decided to label myself as such. Disability is a very real thing.

Life with Menieres Disease: There is a misnomer being perpetuated that if you are disabled, you're not allowed to have a good day, to be up and ambulatory. But before you judge me on one of my good days, you need to understand what one of my frequent bad days is like.

Tinnitus - imagine having a headache caused by a fire alarm ringing or a bee buzzing in your ear continually for a long period of time. You can't hear anything but that fire alarm or bee - It drowns everything else out.

Vertigo- Now imagine yourself as really drunk or with the flu at the same time as the fire alarm is going off. Now imagine that with these two things, you'd be dumb enough to get on one of the super roller coasters that does loop-de-loops or the amusement park rides that spin in two different directions at the same time. I'm not that dumb, but unfortunately I have no choice in feeling these sensations.

During one of these vertigo attacks that can last from several minutes to several hours if not days. I can't keep food or water down, I can't walk, and in order to get out of bed to go to the bathroom, I have to crawl like a baby on my hands and knees. The movement makes me so ill, if I'm able to crawl back to bed, I'm covered in sweat from exhaustion. Otherwise, I keep a pillow and a blanket at the bottom of a linen closet in the bathroom so that I can pass out lying across the bathroom floor. I end up sleeping for days after one of these attacks, only getting out of bed to go to the bathroom or to get something to drink, if I think I can keep it down. I have to call my family to see what day it is when I wake up. That is, if I can hear.

You see, this disease while playing havoc with your balance and equilibrium, also reeks havoc with your hearing. It wouldn't be so bad if the hearing loss was constant and predictable. But no, one day I can hear conversation fairly OK, and the next I can be virtually deaf, then the next day I can hear again. The hearing loss can fluctuate, but is usually progressive, and many with the disease end up severely hard-of-hearing or deaf.

Even on a daily basis, your mind is so confused by the signals its getting from your ears that your balance sucks. You run into things constantly because you can't balance well enough to avoid walking into things, or your mind is telling you the object is a couple of inches from where it really is. I don't know whether to laugh or cry when someone teases me about being such a klutz. I could make the Keystone Cops look graceful.

I also have days that my coordination just doesn't seem to be together. I'm carrying something, and all of the sudden I drop it because my brain seems confused as to whether my hand is really attached to my body. I sometimes miss a step and fall because of the feeling that my legs are not quite part of me and I have to focus on them to realize they are there. Apparently this happens because the part of your brain that recognizes parts of your body as belonging to you is the parietal brain lobe and it sits right above your ear, so if the nerves around your ear are inflamed, it can press on this part of the brain, or send the wrong signals to it (I'm not quite sure which), and you can lose coordination.

Ironically, the few high frequencies I don't seem to have a hearing loss in can sound extremely loud, unbearably so. When a baby cries, an alarm goes off, or a microphone gives off feedback, I'd be willing to climb up a wall to get away if I thought I could make it. This symptom is called recruitment.

(see part 2 below)

[RCL]

(part 2 continued from above)

The disease also plays tricks on your vision. For some strange reason, the nerve that goes from your inner ear to your brain also controls some of your eye movement. Your eyes can twitch or bounce constantly, making focusing on objects, much less print, extremely difficult at times. Your eyes tend not to be able to "track" movement at the same speed, giving you double vision, and a bad headache. Using the computer is very difficult, as is reading a book. Watching TV just makes you seasick. And going to a movie? Forget it.

You can get confused easily and your memory and concentration aren't reliable. It's what some people with the disease refer to as "brain fog". Many of them originally were afraid that they may have a brain tumor or Alzheimer's because it can sometimes gets so bad. Finally they find either a doctor whose very knowledgeable regarding the symptoms, or they happen to ask someone else with the disease, and find that this too is a symptom of this blasted disease.

Now try to imagine living with this disease never knowing when one of these periods of tinnitus, vertigo, hearing loss, double vision, lack of coordination, recruitment, disequilibrium, or "brain fog" is going to hit, or how bad it will be. At least with being drunk or riding an amusement park ride, you know what's causing it, you know it will eventually "wear off", and you can make the choice not to do it again. With this disease, there's very little warning if any for these attacks, you don't know what's causing it, and there's no cure - only devices, surgeries, and some medications that can somewhat help alleviate the symptoms. And some of the surgeries are so radical, you think they came from a horror movie about a mad doctor. My ENT surgeon won't even perform any more surgery on my left side, since I have the disease in both ears. He's concerned about what would happen if my right side became worse than what my left side is now.

Understandably, anxiety and depression seem to go hand-in-hand with Meniere's for many sufferers. We often ask how much worse can this disease get? For some strange reason, doctors aren't very willing to give out worst case scenarios.

Now decide if you think I'd be able to do the same things you do on as punctual and regular of a schedule. For me, there's no way. I'm being up front about my limitations. I try the best I can at living up to my full potential. Could if you were in my shoes? They think now that Van Gogh suffered from this disease, and he cut off his own ear trying to escape it.

Yet on my not-so-bad days I may look like a totally healthy, able-bodied person. You ask me "why can't you bend down - pick it up - lift it - drive - get a job - walk without a cane" Its because I know these things can either bring on an attack - I couldn't do them on a regular schedule because of the symptoms - or if I did do them, I could put myself and others in jeopardy if I should have an attack. You have to realize that with my friendship, love, dedication, and loyalty comes the fact that I can't decide when I'm going to have a bad day, and the more stress I'm under, the more likely I will have a bad day.

So, please don't judge me unless you've been in my shoes."

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OK so I realize this isn't really about city-data, but for me in a roundabout way it is because I NEED to live in a place that is QUIET and tranquil and I have found the all of the information and insights posted here on this board to be invaluable in helping me make good decisions about where I will eventually move to. This board is a great service and I appreciate it very much. thank you

[kawgpz550]

geesh, talk about a thread being off topic...
Anyway Anni, Payson, just like almost every other area in Arizona has it's meth problem. Although every state has a growing meth problem Arizona is still in the top 5 if not #1 for meth. I'm pretty sure it is safe to say there isn't too many Arizona towns/cities that are NOT riddled with meth these days. It's really very sad.
HOWEVER, as Sean said in an earlier post, don't let them scare you. Don't let the meth users rule your life decisions. Wherever you are now, I'm sure you will start having a meth problem as well eventually. You might as well deal with it somewhere you love and Payson is the most gorgeous place in Arizona that I have seen. I live in Bullhead City, which is DESERT and HOT! We have 10 casinos here across the river. You wanna talk about meth??? Up until maybe the last 5 years as the area has grown so much, I am convinced there once was more people on meth than not.
Anyway, good luck on your move...YOU WILL LOVE PAYSON!