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Well first of all, I'm sorry about your cousin and her sister. It's definitely a sad thing when someone OD's.
I clearly said in my post, "but there are other problems that present as dysfunctional". I've not had to directly deal with drug addiction, but I've dealt with enough family/extended family/friends who keep doing destructive things to themselves and then wondering how they ended up in the sorry state they are.
Destructive things can take on many forms, all the way from financial issues, largely of their own making, to loving the wrong people who they allow to continually mistreat them....and dozens of other types of similar things.
I didn't say I wasn't willing to help. What did I say to make you think that ?
What I did say was that I've grown weary of trying to "fix" people who don't seem to want to be fixed. I can't imagine anyone getting totally inspired and pumped up by repeatedly going through the same dysfunctional/destructive issues with a loved one only to have them go back to their previously destructive behavior. If you do get inspired by this situation, you're a better person than I.
Thanks. Gotcha-yeah I agree, it is frustrating and I probably don't/wouldn't have the patience to deal with someone so persistent on destroying their lives. I call it "slow suicide".
Thanks. Gotcha-yeah I agree, it is frustrating and I probably don't/wouldn't have the patience to deal with someone so persistent on destroying their lives. I call it "slow suicide".
Exactly....sometimes you just got to let them go their own way, unencumbered by your thoughts and judgments on how they should live their lives.
If you want help, I'll help you....but if you want to continue receiving my help, and you want me to continue investing my time and effort in helping you, you need to change your behavior to something less destructive. If you repeatedly don't change your behavior, and you end up in the same sorry state once again, I'm not doing either of us any good. I'd be far better off putting my time and effort into helping someone who's willing to make positive changes. A person where I can actually make a positive difference.
What's interesting to me is how regionalized the drug OD epidemic seems to be. I live in Greater Louisville and grew up in Lexington and rural KY. From my mostly middle class high school in highly educated Lexington I'm not aware of a single OD death from my class of at large (2k students) high school. Lots of people used marijuana but few used heavy drugs. Meanwhile here there are high schools in working class areas where dozens of people have died of ODs. For some reason heroin is mostly a drug used by blue collar low income Whites. I assume in areas with the worst problems those high schools had a drug culture that included heroin. I live in lower middle class neighborhood and apparently one of my neighbors are heroin users. During one front yard screaming match the woman told the man that she wished the paramedics hadn't used narcan to revive him!
In my area they are primarily white people from the working to middle classes. Most of them are not poor and they live in the suburbs. There are poor whites too who are suffering in the inner city neighborhoods with the epidemic, but it is mostly a middle income zip code issue, predominantly white.
I know people who are professionals whose children are addicts or who have lost children to narcotics overdoses over the past 5 years. These are co-workers and friends who are not poor or working class.
I didn't say anything about ignoring the drug dealers....
I said they need to focus more on the users. Right now, where I live, they are not focusing much at all on the users except feeling sorry for them and boo-hooing them and making them seem like victims.
What, are you envious of IV heroin addicts, like many Republicans are of American men thrown in US prisons. You both sing the same f---Ingrid song.
In action how does the American state "feel sorry" for the American drug addict? What, legislation prohibits companies conduct drug tests on applicants and on employees, and prohibits companies from discriminating against applicants or employees that pop positive on a drug test? The United States must be like the United Kingdom where 25 year-old men in their prime working age years, unemployed due solely to their drug addiction are given free government housing and an income by the tax payers of the U.K.?
This must be an image of London and not liberal LA then, given, the United States "coddles" drug addicts.
Look, I know ethnic Black-American women sympathize with drug dealers the way white racists due with the KKK or sone even with Trump. And repeatedly online you will find ethnic Black-American women defend drug dealers. In part because even if said black woman has a law degree, is a teacher of 7th graders, or is in medical school she is likely giving oral sex to some drug dealer, or she has and plans on doing so again.
I got it. It is no secret.
Nonetheless, drug addicts are victims. There are a trillion different ways to be a victim in life and drug addiction is one of them. Usually, for the drug addict it starts with sone character defect. A character defect can result in many different ways and under a number of different conditions. One black woman I know that is a crack addict and prostitutes and looks for men to rule over her was repeatedly sexually molested by her own father as a child. Other circumstances that may result in a character defect need not be so dramatic. I've routinely heard Black-Americans bemoan the psychological and emotional damage caused by colorism, of light skinned people being hailed as better than darker skinned black people. If a dark skinned black person incurs a character defect through this (Alcoholics Anonymous teaches we as individuals are this: our personal perceptions; thoughts; and emotions. That if you were locked in a closet for 5 years you would still be you because you are not as much your actions as those other 3 things which results in your actions) they are still a victim.
I have a young white neighbor that is an IV heroin addict. I once watched him shoot up actually. He is also married to a hard working young white wife who is of course discouraged by her husband's drug addiction and all the problems that come with that. But I do not envy him nor am I jealous of him. Envy and jealousy are not one and the same. I am in fact thankful I'm not an IV drug addict. I'm thankful I'm not a transsexual on the streets of Milwaukee. I'm thankful I'm not in prison. I'm thankful I have no felony on my record even though I estimate about 95% of the black men in my age range as well as younger, and within the neighborhood I grew up in, do have felonies on their record. A good number of the felonies from drug possession charges with intent to sell. I suspect at least.
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Instead of locking up the users or realizing the fact that an addict who doesn't change their ways will eventually kill themselves due to their habit - in Ohio they are making drug dealers go to prison for life for homicide because some middle class to wealthy kid wanted to get high and chose to buy drugs and kill themselves with them. IMO drug dealers should go to prison for dealing drugs, not for murder/homicide.
A Milwaukee man charged with killing two people, plotting to kill a third and trafficking heroin will represent himself during a massive trial that starts Monday and highlights the growing problem of witness intimidation.
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Antonio Smith, known as "Tone," is charged in two 2015 homicides: the killing of Eddie Powe, and the fatal shooting of a witness to that homicide, Breanna Eskridge, 17, eight days later.
Prosecutors say Smith, 35, then orchestrated a plot to kill another witness, John Spivey, from behind bars. Two other people charged in that plot, including Smith's former girlfriend, have pleaded guilty and are expected to testify against him. Shaheem M. Smith, Smith's nephew, is charged in that plot and is set to go on trial with his uncle.
So, as the article above shows, we can get rid of this idea black heroin dealers never harm anyone and only white drug addicts do.
That black drug dealer in Ohio profited off of the destruction of that wealthy white kid. I don't care if the addict is white and wealthy. So the hell what. Just because a woman is white, wealthy, and beautiful does not give me the right to stalk her, or jump out on her and rape her.
Envy and jealousy are character defects too. So is indifference to the suffering of others. As we see in this tread non-drug addicts have plenty of character defects. In fact, as I said, often and usually drug addiction's roots begin before a person ever tries a substance for the first time, it begins with some undelying character defect. A good portion (not all) of drug addicts have had great insecurities, not unlike the dark skinned black woman, and in a number of stories they had found that alcohol or sone other mind altering substance masked their insecurities, self doubts, feelings of inferiority, and it gave them pleasures. Some get addicted through long use of pain meds for some personal physical problem.
No one wakes up and says "hey, I want to be gay, damage my anus, and contract HIV," nor more than they wake up and say, "hey, I want to become an IV drug addict."
So many young people with character defects, with personal fears and pains, are turning to heroin because the American public and the media present the issue as a choice, a will power, that once a problem occurs per your own will and choice you can abort ship. It's a f---ing lie. You can abort ship the same way a gay person can abort ship. Just like my lesbian friend had sex with men for crack. She aborted the gay ship. But the base neurological functions, are altered through epigenetics, meaning their is no choice at the level and speed the triggers themselves occur when an IV heroin addict looks at a needle (trigger) or a gay dude looks at a man with a nice chest (trigger).
If the War on Drugs ended no one would need to go to prison. While I don't think drug dealers or drug addicts (anyone that gives drugs to someone that dies can be charged in a homicide, even another addict) ought be tried for homicide the fact is IF I (meaning me) sell cocaine or heroin to a woman, or a pregnant woman, especially so I can put money in my pocket I am morally profiting and complicit in her destruction.
I really don't care if most ethnic Black-American women in college or with advanced college degrees enjoy sharing a black male drug dealer sexually and romantically with 3 or 5 other black women. One way to reduce your chances of being brought up on rape charges or homicide charges per selling drugs to some addict that dies, is guess what [drum roll....] don't rape a person and don't illegally sell drugs. F---in brilliant I know. Took Einstein to figure that out.
Frogburn, you sure make a lot of lengthy posts...geesh...!
Read my other post on the subject instead of going crazy about a few lines. I specifically said that dealers should go to prison for dealing drugs, not for murder/homicide. They do not force those kids to do drugs. The kid sought them out. If you believe that drug dealers should go to prison for murder then you also need to put all the bartenders in prison in this country who sold a drunk a beer or shot and that drunk later died of alcoholism (my grandfather died of alcoholism at 44, I guess I should look up his favorite bar keep and press charges of murder against him for killing my grandfather according to you....that is one of the things that set my father off on being a drug addict....)
On addicts, I think if they are caught with drugs they need to go to jail/prison and hopefully that will be a catalyst to them turning their lives around.
Also I've shared many times I'm neither a liberal or conservative and am more of a moderate, middle of the road person politically. I don't get all boo-hoo-ish over drug addicts because I have personal experience with family members who were addicts and I lived through a lot during the crack epidemic and know first hand how addiction ruins individuals and families. But I agree with many posters in that the families are enablers and that ultimately, it is the addict who has to be the change they are seeking. No program is going to get an addict clean unless they want to get clean.
Look, I know ethnic Black-American women sympathize with drug dealers the way white racists due with the KKK or sone even with Trump. And repeatedly online you will find ethnic Black-American women defend drug dealers. In part because even if said black woman has a law degree, is a teacher of 7th graders, or is in medical school she is likely giving oral sex to some drug dealer, or she has and plans on doing so again.
I got it. It is no secret.
.
LOL on the blue. I've never given oral sex to a drug dealer....I'm a black woman who is educated.
Also everyone is a victim of something at one point in time or another in their lives.
And I did say addiction is a disease. It requires treatment. You cannot force anyone to treat any disease unless they are a ward of state (via instutionalization like prison ) or if they are deemed unable to make decisions for themselves via a court decision.
People are very well aware today that doing drugs can cause you to be addicted. Once you are addicted, you basically become infected with that disease. I do feel for people with diseases but know I cannot do anything for them if they don't seek the help and want to get treatment for themselves.
You going on tirades about black women loving to have sex with drug dealers is not relevant to the facts I stated above. An addict has to want to help him/her self. The dealer didn't force them to buy drugs. And no one can make them get treatment successfully unless they want to do it. The only way they will want to do it is if they suffer enough from their disease that it forces them to seek the help they need.
I have not read this but the opiate epidemic is very widespread. I hesitate to relate it to a southern culture since it is such a major problem nationally. There is a also a history of New England immigrant mill workers, northwestern logging communities, etc, which have been devastated and generations impoverished. Yes there are ingrained generational issues and no you cant just say move and get educated and voila. I know of people who were shamed into not going to college as if it was a betrayal of tradition and family. Lectures and shaming from people who don't get it will not help this situation.
I wasn't really talking about opiate addiction. Although, that is part of the tangled story. I was talking about a deeper more complex issue. One that is not all cotton candy and rainbows. Both my Black-American grandparents were alcoholics. One of my German-American grandparents was an alcoholic. Like J.D. Vance my black grandparents came out of the South (Mississippi) as sharecroppers during Jim Crow. Some of my grandfather's family lived in Chicago as at least one of his brothers moved their whilst he moved to Milwaukee. His mother I am told did not like my grandmother (his wife) or my father and his siblings because as a light skinned black woman from the South she despised dark skinned blacks. So, imagine your own black grandmother does not like you because you are dark skinned. That's a reality my father and a number of his siblings went through. It was a failure to fully escape the traumas and problems of Mississippi.
Then there is the violence issue in middle-class Black-American neighborhoods in Midwestern cities like Chicago and Milwaukee the black middle-class has never fully escaped from. Apparently, in Ohio towns like Middleton that was true of Scots-Irish hillbilly transplants from Appalachia, too, moving into the blue collar industrial middle-class of Ohio.
Bearing in mind almost all of the white population of Milwaukee by the late 1800s were from Europe. Italians, Poles, Germans, Irish that kind of thing. I think if I recall correctly Milwaukee's white immigrant population from Europe made up something like 80% or 85% of the city by the late 1800s. It was one of if not the most immigrant of cities in the country per percentage of population wise. So, I bring that up because I've personally never ran into white hillbillies from Appalachia and the Appalachia mountains portion of Kentucky in Milwaukee. So, Ohio and Pennsylvania probably have a different story in that since than Southeastern Wisconsin. Or at least Milwaukee.
Milwaukee did have WASPs in the 1800s but they primarily came from New York City and were known as "Yankees." Ergo, a section of Milwaukee called the Yankees Hill. Back in the 1800s that was where rich money men from New York that were WASPs settled in Milwaukee.
But see... if I say these things I get attacked with a hatred on par with ISIS for infidels. The only story I am supposed to recite according to American dogma is that blacks came to Milwaukee from all over the country, some became middle-class by hard work, some became medical doctors, and they all look like the family portrayed on the Cosby Show. And happy ever after.
This is also part of the legacy of America. Two former Marines. One will get applauded for telling the true story of things, drawing upon the ethnic background and regional cultures that impact that story, and I will get verbally attacked. And attacked by Black-Americans. And white Americans. Actually Americans in general.
But if I were in France, Russia, or the Netherlands explaining Milwaukee as I know it to people there, I seriously doubt anyone would attack me. They would be like, "Oh, okay, didn't know that."
Ergo, my enemies are here in this country, they surround me and out number me. Yet I survive. My enemies are not in Russia nor the poor Muslims in Syria. My enemies are Americans. And I make no mistake about it.
So you equate someone "addicted" to television as the same as someone addicted to heroin?
Is that your way of condoning drug addiction? And yes I will judge a true addict. They are weak people who use their addiction as a crutch. To hell with them. If they OD all the better. They contribute nothing and only take from society.
And how did Prince and Philip Seymour Hoffman "take from you"? Oh, let me guess, they got more p---y and far better looking women than you could or ever did.
I don't really care if you don't care if drug addicts OD. I don't care if your or your child get a leg blown off or permanently blinded by an explosive device set by one of your Muslim enemies. So, we are on the same page.
Some how I doubt you've discovered a cure for cancer, helped send man to the moon, or rescued a drowning dog. So, I have zero faith you contribute anything to society, other than your delusion you are something special.
I'm reading J.D. Vance's best selling book "Hillbilly Elegy" and he has a great paragraph about how Republicans coddle working class Whites (including drug addicts) by telling them that all their problems are caused by Big Government and Obama. The reality is many such people make bad choice after bad choice and totally refuse to take the blame for their life failures. Vance knew a guy about to become a father who quite a good job because he didn't like to get up early. Vance then saw the guy putting things on Facebook like "I can't get a job in the Obama economy, get that monkey out of the White House". Was it Obama or the guy's own decisions to blame? Vance is a GOP diehard and openly admits it's the later.
Vance has stated a number of things in his book--communicated in tone and at other times explicitly stated in his prose--that cover broad territory. He is a Marine combat veteran that served in Iraq but exhibits more compassion for his fallen "people" than 99% on this forum.
I read the portion about the white guy and his pregnant girlfriend. What came to my mind would be different than most Americans. What came to my mind was Wisconsin work ethic culture and how that guy even as a white guy would have been fired long before he was in what was it, Kentucky or Ohio, I can't remember which.
But more importantly what came to my mind was how I worked for less, after having a very hard time landing a job, had no child, no girlfriend, no wife, and worked twice as hard, twice as fast, and was very reliable but still regarded as inferior. That boss went above and beyond for both that young white guy and his lazy unreliable young white girldfriend that was pregnant. He was laboring for $13 an hour where as I was laboring for $5 an hour under the table breathing in the toxic fumes of dryfall paint I was spraying. I along with my other black coworkers with no respirator on were all getting high off the fumes in the poorly ventilated former factory space being converted over to office space.
That's what came to my f---in mind. No, "America Land of the Great." But "America the Land that will f--- me over."
Here is an excerpt from his book. Page 9 last paragraph.
Quote:
Nor am I an unbiased observer. Nearly every person you will read about is deeply flawed. Some have tried to murder other people, and a few were successful. Some have abused their children, physically or emotionally. Many abused (and still abuse) drugs. But I love these people, even those to whom I avoid speaking for my own sanity. And if I leave you with the impression that there are bad people in my life, then I am sorry, both to you and to the people so portrayed. For there are no villains in this story. There's just a ragtag band of hillbillies struggling to find their way--both for their sake and, by the grace of God, for mine.
Here J.D. Vance is interviewed and speaks about being a Republican and his views on welfare. Notice he mentions his book is about the value and place of family, community, culture, and Church. And not merely the sole roles of state and individual that he says Democrats promote.
Because those parents refuse to see the truth. They are E-N-A-B-L-E-R-S. And until they do, their children will always be worthless, loser drug addicts. The ones that died from an OD actually did their parents a favor.
And as far as needing "help", I have never used drugs, never been arrested because of drugs( or any other reason), never received a DUI, always worked, obeyed the law, paid my taxes, held a job, and raised drug free productive children who are contributing working members of society.
How many drug addicts can say that? Thought so.
So what? Your views of other people, your lack of compassion, and your anger amounts to one big zero and detracts from the rest of it.
I feel pity for you.
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