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Answers? I have no idea. Obvious what we have been doing hasn't worked. Back in the early 70's when I was contemplating becoming a lawyer, my professor at the time was in favor of legalization as he stated that the majority of crimes were being committed as direct result of drug addiction.
I agree that what we have been doing hasn't worked, because we refuse to consider the root cause - our sick and decaying culture. Disintegration of family, neighborhood and community social structures, leading to greater and greater isolation. We've know for decades that isolation leads to many different emotional and psychological problems, and people often turn to substance abuse for self medication. It's cheap and it is effective as it makes the pain of isolation go away for awhile.
This IS fixable but unlikely to improve because this requires everyone to realize that THEY are part of the problem.
I agree that what we have been doing hasn't worked, because we refuse to consider the root cause - our sick and decaying culture. Disintegration of family, neighborhood and community social structures, leading to greater and greater isolation. We've know for decades that isolation leads to many different emotional and psychological problems, and people often turn to substance abuse for self medication. It's cheap and it is effective as it makes the pain of isolation go away for awhile.
This IS fixable but unlikely to improve because this requires everyone to realize that THEY are part of the problem.
People have been chasing altered states of consciousness since the beginning of time. There were Opium dens hundreds of years ago, and many ancient civilizations used mind-altering substances. Escape from the human condition has been a constant forever. Right now however, the biggest reason for heroin's rise is over-prescribing of prescription opiates.
About the addictive personality, that is me...I am ADD, and people with any sort of disorder are much more likely to self-medicate. I have been addicted to nicotine for 40 years (I use gum now, not smoke, but still can't go without it) and also have a lot of food issues. Alcohol for some reason I have never had an issue with, I can take it or leave it. BUT if a doctor offered me Oxy after a surgery, I would have to say NO, I can't take that, I have an addictive personality.
If it was also due to the decay of the family (it doesn't help to have no parents home all day but both at work), what can we do anyway? You can't mandate that no one gets divorced if they have kids, and you can't turn back the clock to an economic time when the mom didn't have to work and someone was home with the kids.
Heroin is very deadly. People taking drugs in general, have pains inside of them that they want to escape from. Sometimes we are surprise if some have done multiple treatments already but still going back to their drug of choice, is because they didn't find the true meaning of life. They are too focus on the pain they want to be comforted. They want to escape from the reality.
They need to decide for themselves even we are very eager to help them. It's very saddening to keep seeing these people ending dead despite of the warnings around.
Last edited by Jeo123; 01-03-2016 at 10:34 PM..
Reason: Changed Font Coloring
I don't know the answer to the question of what should be done about "epidemic" heroin addiction in the Northeast or elsewhere. I would have reservations about legalization, but not nearly to the extent I would have reservations about the legalization of, say, methamphetamine use. I don't think that heroin addicts pose near the same threat to public health and safety as meth users often do, and from what I can tell, the Northeast has been spared an explosion of meth abuse in the region, with Vermont being somewhat of an exception. It could be worse, believe me.
I would like to see this documentary, though. I remember in the late 90s that HBO released a similar documentary about San Fransisco's black tar heroin scene--The Dark End of the Street was its title, and it "showcased" about a half-dozen young addicts, a few of whom are now deceased. I'll be keeping an eye out for this if I can't find it on YouTube.
There are many reasons why a kid tries drugs and part of it may be peer pressure or perhaps because they are there at a party so why not. We see drinking, drugs, sex on TV and in movies all the time and often without any negative side effects so the kids are eager to try these things as soon as they get a chance.
Do American kids have it too easy? are they bored with school that doesn't challenge them, are hey bored with a life of hanging out playing video games so they take some drugs to shake things up? Who knows?
We do know that the "war on drugs" isn't working. Should we legalize drugs and get them off the streets but then the Gov. would be in charge and we all know how they overly burden and screw things up.
I still think better security at the border would slow the drug flow down.
Throw the dealers in prison and get the addicts into a program that is locked down like a jail. Don't revive the OD's
If we didn't have this drug problem think of all the resources that would be saved.
It's funny, I just watched a documentary about alcohol prohibition last night. It made the very valid point that it's more difficult to get alcohol today than it was when it was illegal. Because when the gov gets involved in something, it has so many regulations that it becomes less accessible.
Almost any kid under 21 will tell you it's easier to get drugs than beer. It's certainly not only an American problem or a new problem. The only thing new is the drug of choice. In Japan (and/or S Korea?) their youth right now also use drugs but just lean towards the stimulants. And so do a lot of kids in the US with stimulants ESPECIALLY on the Cape, but thankfully no one is dying from that.
I thought the show did a good job showing "reasons" and they were really varied and the addicts also had varying levels of insight:
Stripper: she was 19 going to rehab/detox and her mom didn't know she was addicted?! WTF?!!! That obviously tells you something.
Blond girl getting hair done: started after face ruined by drunk driver. Started on pills. It was (?is) the only way she could look self in mirror.
Dealer boy: Said he only likes things that have an element of danger. Admitted to not feeling he was grown up or not wanting to grow up.
Another blond girl: said she had no idea but crying and seemed depressed with lack of insight.
2 people talking in house/apartment: one female just liked the feeling, one guy was passively suicidal.
Etc.....
If we have the means to revive them, then we should just like in any other disease unless they want to sign a DNR. I would like to see ALL OFFERED a DNR because I think that might have a small impact on motivations and I'm curious to see the results. My guess is only about 5-10% would want a DNR.
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Originally Posted by GearHeadDave
Personally I think that the increasing numbers of people reaching out to the numbing drugs like heroin and alcohol is illustrative of the increasing hopelessness in America. When you believe that you have nowhere to turn in a friendless world, these are not bad options. I do believe it is possible to do something about that. We have to start moving away from self-centered materialism and hedonism and back toward family and community values.
I somewhat agree about the hopelessness causing some of the epidemic. I have been depressed many times in my life and actually considered trying to get addicted or "start using street drugs more often" to make my emotional pain go away. Sounds ridiculous but desperate times breed desperate thoughts.
Fortunately, my body just doesn't work like that. My body takes more time to metabolize almost all drugs, including alcohol, than most people.
Makes me wonder if big pharma is yet working on a drug to be to opiates what Antabuse is to alcohol. That could certainly help if prescribed on last day of rehab. Maybe they should even make it a patch or a 30 day drug you swallow or inject.
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Originally Posted by Cliffie
One major change has been that when I was in high school, MDs were VERY cagey about prescribing opiate painkillers. Even hospice patients who had just days to live might be refused opiates because "they might get addicted;" that's how ridiculous it was then. A guy I went to high school with had a very nasty spiral fracture and was given morphine when they set the bone, but was only allowed Excedrin after the first 3 days. I remember seeing the sweat pop out on his forehead as he sat there leaning against the wall at the back of the classroom. That was standard operating procedure in those days.
Now it's 180 degrees different. Doctors appear to agree with the ridiculous idea that people somehow have a "right" to be pain-free at all times, so they hand out opiates as if they were Skittles. They seem to have zero awareness of the fact that opiates lower your pain threshold, so the more you take the more pain you have when the pills wear off, and that's the root of rising drug tolerance and addiction. They NEVER warn you about how dangerous these drugs are when they start you on them, the way they used to when I was in high school. They never tell you how to know if your use is becoming a problem or what to do about it if it does. They tell patients -- with straight faces! -- that "if you're really in pain you can't get addicted," as if the addictive properties of opiates were unknown. Then they finally realize they've given you too much of the stuff for too long, cut you off (sometimes very suddenly, guaranteeing a nasty withdrawal) and there you are, hurting all over and sick at both ends. That where many people start stealing leftover tablets from other people's medicine cabinets -- it's clean pharmaceutical product so it must be safe -- and finally wind up going downtown for some Mexican black tar.
And those leftover tablets are a nice side income for kids, who get their friends hooked if they aren't getting hooked themselves. There were a couple of teenaged pharmacy techs near here who stole one of those 1,000-tablet bottles of Oxycontin from their workplace and went into business for themselves, setting off a major heroin epidemic in their high school. That happened less than 5 miles from a free clinic on the same road that was shut down by the DEA for handing out opiates and benzos -- both deadly and addictive -- without using proper precautions. At the other end of the county, another teenaged boy was getting kilos of heroin in the mail from his brother who was deployed to the Middle East. It's an open question which kid got more people addicted.
Your first 2 paragraphs are the exact opposite of what I've experienced. Primary care docs everywhere I've ever lived have been much too tight in prescribing habits which lead to people in legit pain going unhelped. But 20 years ago, dentists where i lived gave out Vicodin like cereal prizes.
I would bet you anything your experience not getting anything "stronger" was *because* you were a kid. This is still SOP with most MDs and then some.
It's irresponsible medicine to punish all for mistakes of the few.
I do agree about kids using/selling/stealing the leftovers though. I dont endore that of course but its certainly opportunistic. I would not expect kids, or poor people needing cash, to use restraints when it comes to the matter.
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Originally Posted by ms12345
I recall the elementary school annual drug classes. I don't remember if they started in the second or third grade. They always painted heroin as the worst of the worst. Highly addictive, life destroying, and almost impossible to kick. That stuck with a lot of people from my generation, having it ingrained in them from a young age, and they never tried it. They may have experimented with a lot of things but not Heroin. I wonder if they still have the drug classes each year in early elementary school.
In my day it was crack. And weed. That was gonna be the "horrendous downfall of American youth." I know for certain that most people I grew up with still think that way because the same ones who have done/do coke think I'm crazy or "beneath them" for having no shame in admitting I've done crack. They are basically scared of it yet don't really know why. Paranoid based ignorance and absolutes are always dangerous. (Like Trump and his wall.)
And neither crack nor coke is likely to kill you. You *might* have a heart attack or stroke, but the odds are pretty strong that you won't.
I'm glad they are now educating about heroin and opiates. My main problem with drug education programs like DARE have always been that they give much propaganda and little "substance." As soon as they spewed all the BS about weed and I later learned you could not OD and die from weed, DARE lost all credibility to me and people like me.
One thing I think would help is being taught about drugs from a biology POV or maybe even mandatory in biology class which most kids take around 9th- 10th grade. I'm sure some start before then but it's certainly not the norm.
self-medicating is probably a big reason for kids to start using any drug. we aren't raising them right. I'd like recovered addicts like James Taylor, for example, to be more vocal about their own recovery.
self-medicating is probably a big reason for kids to start using any drug. we aren't raising them right. I'd like recovered addicts like James Taylor, for example, to be more vocal about their own recovery.
That would be a good idea and there are many dead musicians that could be rezerected to help spread the word that doing drugs is stupid and will Kill you.
In the end the kids that are thinking about using drugs need to have more respect for themselves and their parents not to take them.
We can show kids the negative affects of taking drugs all day long but in the end they will still try them
thinking they are invincible.
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It is more of a bandaid than a 'cure'. Taking methadone only suppresses the craving.
It's a honorable attempt at helping these addicts, but many go back to using.
Saying it "suppresses the craving" isn't really a reflection of what it does. It is sort of a band-aid, though, which is why it's called "methadone maintenance therapy" - it's a tool to maintain an addict, not to cure them of addiction. The goal with methadone program's is rarely to "cure" an addict, but to reduce the medical and social costs addicts create. When an addict has ready access to an opiate they're far less likely to use sketchy street drugs or to commit secondary crimes to support their habit. They may still use on top of the methadone, but the methadone allows them to be more picky about how and when and what they use. It also keeps their tolerance up so that they're at least somewhat less likely to overdose if they take heroin that is unexpectedly stronger than they expected. All of these are good goals, but you're right that it is more of a band-aid than a cure.
Keep in mind, though, that a band-aid serves an important purpose. At its best it gives protection and time for a wound to heal. The wounds that enable opiate addiction are far deeper and worse than a minor cut or scrape, though, and many never really heal, especially with the social stigma surrounding addiction.
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Originally Posted by OwlKaMyst
Recently a real cure has been found, but it is controversial. However, it works, really works.
Calling Ibogaine a "cure" is an overstatement. Saying it's a "recent" discovery is also inaccurate, as it's been known about in some settings for quite a long time, and was most recently rediscovered in the West as a potential opiate addition treatment in the early 1960s.
Anyone desiring to undergo treatment with it should do so understanding the risks - even in clinical settings about 1 in 300 patients die and some number higher than that relapse back into active opiate addiction. So it's not magical. Absolutely even a rate of 1 death in 300 treatments is, in most cases, a better outcome than the death rate for untreated opiate addiction, so it may very well be a lesser risk than other approaches. But it would also be irresponsible to lead people to believe it was without any risk.
It's worth noting that some aspects of ibogaine's use in addiction treatment can also be achieved using LSD, which is generally considered medically safe in a clinical setting. One difference is that, based solely on effect and not on actual brain studies, ibogaine appears to have some function in "resetting" dopamine receptors. This is supported not only by the reduction in cravings, but also in ibogaine's reduction in tolerance for opiates in treated individuals (which would also mean those who immediately relapse - and there are some - are at somewhat higher risk of overdose.
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Originally Posted by Phil P
It does seem that way, but I don't know why exactly. I think the reason is that there's no hangover, no side effects that kick you down like alcohol would if you drank for a week solid. It's so easy to redose and redose. And people that redose and redose are so traumatized by real life or they are so weak they can't tell themselves no. That's my theory.
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Well there is that whole dope-sick thing once you do reach physical dependence - it generally takes quite a bit more abuse of alcohol to reach physical dependence than with opiates. It generally takes many months, even years, to become physically dependent on alcohol (to the point that you'd get DTs if you don't drink), whereas you can get physically dependant on opiates in a matter of weeks.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Phil P
I don't believe that opiates have superpowers that are guaranteed to turn regular people into wretched addicts though. I've done some of them and it didn't pull me into a vicious downward spiral. I liked them, but I never took them regularly and live just fine without them with no flashbacks or cravings.
...
Multiple expects put the rate of actual addiction - as opposed to mere physical dependence - for opiates at only slightly higher than other drugs, still in the 10-20% range for any type of potentially addictive drugs. Almost anyone would become physically dependent on opiates given them long enough, but only a fraction of them reach the state described by the medical term (as opposed to the colloquial description as) addiction.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Phil P
I place more of the blame on the person than the pill. You don't get addicted after your first dose, you get addicted when you make a conscious choice to redose for days on end. It really comes down to a person who is unable to tell themselves no and can't forgo present rewards for future benefits.
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You don't get physically dependent on one dose. But I think for people strongly pre-disposed to addiction that saying they're addicted from their first use isn't entirely inaccurate. Addiction, as opposed to "just" physical dependence, is more of a mental illness than anything else.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cliffie
One major change has been that when I was in high school, MDs were VERY cagey about prescribing opiate painkillers. Even hospice patients who had just days to live might be refused opiates because "they might get addicted;" that's how ridiculous it was then. A guy I went to high school with had a very nasty spiral fracture and was given morphine when they set the bone, but was only allowed Excedrin after the first 3 days. I remember seeing the sweat pop out on his forehead as he sat there leaning against the wall at the back of the classroom. That was standard operating procedure in those days.
It still varies a lot doctor to doctor, based on where they interned, and when they went to med school. For a long time, the balance was probably too far toward avoiding addiction at the expense of patient comfort, and then it swung too far the other way putting patient comfort ahead of concerns about addiction. Hopefully medical training is reaching a better balance now.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cliffie
Now it's 180 degrees different. Doctors appear to agree with the ridiculous idea that people somehow have a "right" to be pain-free at all times, so they hand out opiates as if they were Skittles.
This was true until recently. In the past 5-7 years the FDA and DEA have been cracking down on unusual prescribing patterns and threatening doctors licenses when they see unusual patterns. This has dramatically reduced the number of doctors willing to "hand out opiates as if they were Skittles," which is part of the reason we've seen a spike in heroin use - because people who'd become dependent on medical opiates lost their legal source, with their doctors either scared to wean them off, or ignorant about how to do so, so just cutting off their patients and leaving them to the wolves.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cliffie
...
And those leftover tablets are a nice side income for kids, who get their friends hooked if they aren't getting hooked themselves. There were a couple of teenaged pharmacy techs near here who stole one of those 1,000-tablet bottles of Oxycontin from their workplace and went into business for themselves, setting off a major heroin epidemic in their high school. That happened less than 5 miles from a free clinic on the same road that was shut down by the DEA for handing out opiates and benzos -- both deadly and addictive -- without using proper precautions. At the other end of the county, another teenaged boy was getting kilos of heroin in the mail from his brother who was deployed to the Middle East. It's an open question which kid got more people addicted.
When I was in high school in rural Oregon, it was the rich kids who did anything other than alcohol or, maybe, weed. Anything else was just too expensive for poor kids to get into. I think the economics of that are different in today's inner cities, but drugs are still relatively expensive compared to cheap beer or bottom-shelf vodka.
Quote:
Originally Posted by carcrazy67
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Answers? I have no idea. Obvious what we have been doing hasn't worked. Back in the early 70's when I was contemplating becoming a lawyer, my professor at the time was in favor of legalization as he stated that the majority of cimes were being committed as direct result of drug addiction.
Philosophically I support full legalization, although pragmatically I'd be fine with mere decriminalization. I think there is zero evidence that the current state for how the US handles drugs is in any way effective, though, and hope that it can stop being a political football and start to be approached in a scientific, medically thoughtful way in the near future. Politically that will be a tough pill to swallow (pun intended) for some, because some people have so much invested in the current "war on drugs," but things won't get better without a better approach.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Utopian Slums
It's funny, I just watched a documentary about alcohol prohibition last night. It made the very valid point that it's more difficult to get alcohol today than it was when it was illegal. Because when the gov gets involved in something, it has so many regulations that it becomes less accessible.
...
Yep. You can still get illegal moonshine, but it's really more of a novelty because a) there's not really any money in it, b) given the choice, people want the predictability of branded, legal alcohols, and c) people know the risk (methanol vs. ethanol) involved with moonshine and know their friends would mock them if they did get sick from moonshine. Positive peer pressure. A decade or so ago, Al Gore said he didn't advocate drug legalization because he thought it would make them more socially popular. The way he said it, though, really revealed a lack of understanding of drug culture among youth - part of the reason people push it is for escape, but part is as an act of rebellion. Legalizing it and treating problems with it as medical issues make it seem like much less rebellious and most as foolhardy, even among adventurous kids.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Utopian Slums
In my day it was crack. And weed. That was gonna be the "horrendous downfall of American youth." I know for certain that most people I grew up with still think that way because the same ones who have done/do coke think I'm crazy or "beneath them" for having no shame in admitting I've done crack. They are basically scared of it yet don't really know why. Paranoid based ignorance and absolutes are always dangerous. (Like Trump and his wall.)
...
The differentiation between crack and coke is, in my opinion (even as a 40-something white guy), pretty accurately described as institutional racism. Which applies to many other aspects of the war on drugs in general.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Utopian Slums
...My main problem with drug education programs like DARE have always been that they give much propaganda and little "substance." As soon as they spewed all the BS about weed and I later learned you could not OD and die from weed, DARE lost all credibility to me and people like me.
One thing I think would help is being taught about drugs from a biology POV or maybe even mandatory in biology class which most kids take around 9th- 10th grade. I'm sure some start before then but it's certainly not the norm.
I agree that being inaccurate in their description of drugs created a big credibility issues for programs like DARE, rending them (much?) less effective. Ideally, though, educating youth about drugs would be combined with policy to treat drug problems as medical problems to further reinforce the idea of drug abuse as foolhardy instead of rebellious.
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Heroin is a epidemic in the Northeast according to the show. The drugs are coming in from Mexico, more reason to build the TRUMP wall... The cartels have switched over from marijuana to heroin due to several states that have made weed legal...
The above is erroneous in my experience. The switch-over started long before legalized marijuana in any of the states. That is totally uninformed BS. As for this wall idea: Plenty of narcotics come in by boat and plane; and if building a wall were to appreciably cut down on the inflow of heroin and cocaine I hope no one is stupid enough to think those who want these highs are just going to say, "Aw shucks!"
In the 1980's drug enforcement went very big time after marijuana. Now in my neck of the woods in the mid-Eighties you could get an OUNCE of marijuana for around $90, or less. But the price of cocaine at that point was $125.00 per GRAM. Unfortunately for America it was far easier to detect marijuana shipments, the large number of casual dealers and the out-in-the-open smokers; and hey! hey! it made big news about the success of the War on Drugs. Once the poorly thought out and publicity hungry War on Drugs got going the price of marijuana climbed, and the price of cocaine went steadily down. The effects of the two drugs are radically different, but there was a large move over to cocaine use...it actually enjoyed a good rep. For those who could not afford the still pricey cocaine, there was now that bargain bin product called "crack," folks. Forget the rolling papers, buy a crack pipe. I can remember a neighborhood dealer grinning and saying: "Weed was, crack is."
From the point view of the drug cartels there was no longer a good reason in trying to smuggle in the huge amounts of marijuana that were needed to make a profit, when you could make a lot of dough with vastly smaller, easier to conceal cocaine. Cocaine was a far better business product, and the War on Drugs gave it the initial impetus it needed to grow. And the crack product was cheap, cheap, cheap for the low end consumers.
It was in this same period that I began to run into a few white, working, middle class heroin users. Heroin was a harder sell because it had a bad rep as a low-life, fast-addicting drug...but my understanding was that as with cocaine its price was going down. And I knew two suckers who tried it and tried it....until they hit the rehab.
Looking at the drug problem from a business point of view: Would there be massive exporting of heroin and cocaine to the U.S., if there was not a big consumer demand in the U.S.? Is anyone fool enough to believe that if we build a wall, cut down on the supply..........then we can start thinking about why there is such a huge demand for narcotics in the U.S. Better believe, before the last cinder block is laid on that wall, the country will already be having another type of drug problem to take up the slack.
As usual it seems, once again too many people think that solving our own problems begins by blaming them on someone else first. We need to do a lot of looking in the mirror before we hang our heads out the window and stare south of the border.
Very sad documentary. I was thinking Marissa was "recovered" early into the film, so it was so sad to see she died. And Arianna-3 years clean ever since the birth of her children then wam-bam, overdosed and died. So terrible. My 24 year old Cousin was addicted to heroin/pills and eventually overdosed intentionally on pills. Months later her younger sister was in the Hospital for a heroin OD-she survived and along with her Twin is sober today. But it really does hit close to home. I have several friends currently addicted to oxys-30 mgs or suboxone, which is supposed to be used to get off opiates but apparently has worse withdrawal-much like methadone.
Things really seemed to take a turn for the worse when Oxycontin was brought to the market in 1996. Never had there been an opiod so powerful and addicting available to so many people. I'm afraid the only way forward is legalization and treatment/education. Today most people OD because of the black market and the use of unknown substances. Heroin use by itself actually does not pose significant health risks, which I found astonishing. It is when users do not know the potency, and ingredients that there are significant dangers. It happened with alcohol and is happening with heroin today. Yes, it is extremely addicting but it is so fascinating that people can live very healthy lives with medical grade heroin, as the documentary below shows.
This was really interesting. It is about how patients in the UK are routinely prescribed heroin but with very different outcomes.
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