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Until we find another way for people to escape their lives or learn to be happy with "what is" without the need of drugs,booze etc this is where we are. I don't know that we'll ever get there as we've not yet after HUNDREDS of years.
Just wait as tech takes over more and more and people sit around doing nothing but staring at screens more and more, the need to escape from whatever (be it boredom or?) will skyrocket. Back in the days of the Industrial Revolution and before people were so busy just surviving they didn't have TIME to think about drugs and such, at least not at today's levels.
Just my opinion...
{P.S. The above is NOT referencing pain, it's a comment on why people keep taking drugs WITHOUT pain.}
Humans have been trying to alter their state of consciousness since the beginning of time. There were opium dens even in ancient times. Alcohol is also to alter the state you’re in, even if it’s a glass of wine to relax. It’s really not a modern thing to desire to alter consciousness.
I think in hard times the pressure to want to stay altered is greater. Most of these epidemics are in areas of poverty and little hope for the future. If you look at alcoholism rates in these communities such as exist in the coal mining towns of West Virginia they are higher than average as well. If we just address the drugs and not the poverty, it’ll just be a different substance (like the Fentynal).
Humans have been trying to alter their state of consciousness since the beginning of time. There were opium dens even in ancient times. Alcohol is also to alter the state you’re in, even if it’s a glass of wine to relax. It’s really not a modern thing to desire to alter consciousness.
I think in hard times the pressure to want to stay altered is greater. Most of these epidemics are in areas of poverty and little hope for the future. If you look at alcoholism rates in these communities such as exist in the coal mining towns of West Virginia they are higher than average as well. If we just address the drugs and not the poverty, it’ll just be a different substance (like the Fentynal).
As long has mankind has walked the earth the desire to alter one's mind has been constant. And there is nothing really wrong with that as long as it doesn't take over one's life, be it alcohol, opiates, weed, whatever.
Opiates are highly addictive yet not everyone who takes them will become addicted. The VAST majority of people that take them do not become addicted.
And in depressed areas where people live barely above the poverty line, or under it, the desire to escape mentally can be very alluring. Then we have the government and big Pharma working together to ensure these areas have more opioids that these communities can handle. Epidemic drug use is the next logical progression. Fentanyl and heroin are now needed to keep the high going.
Right now there doesn't seem to be any good answers on how to deal with this. But one thing that cannot happen is to deprive legitimate pain sufferers the medication they need.
Your hyperbole regarding opioids is amusing. Until a better pain medication is made people who are in debilitating pain need their opioids. You calling them heroin doesn't solve any problems.
I'm not calling it anything. Oxy IS synthetic heroin.
It does not have the same effect. Nothing in pill form is even going to come close. Taken as directed people will not feel high from them like that.
You're comparing it to street heroin, which is unregulated, no idea how potent it is, no idea what it's been cut with. That is what people only think of now, but heroin used to be prescribed, regulated, pure uncut dope, and no, it is not different hardly at all. It's the same stuff formulated only slightly differently and marketed as something totally different.
But the information is at your fingertips. Oxy is synthetic heroin. It's derived from the same plant for the same purpose.
Humans have been trying to alter their state of consciousness since the beginning of time. There were opium dens even in ancient times. Alcohol is also to alter the state you’re in, even if it’s a glass of wine to relax. It’s really not a modern thing to desire to alter consciousness.
I think in hard times the pressure to want to stay altered is greater. Most of these epidemics are in areas of poverty and little hope for the future. If you look at alcoholism rates in these communities such as exist in the coal mining towns of West Virginia they are higher than average as well. If we just address the drugs and not the poverty, it’ll just be a different substance (like the Fentynal).
You pretty much nailed it. This is from "Chasing the Scream" I think it's worth passing along
"In a famous advert by the Partnership for a Drug-Free America. The experiment is simple. Put a rat in a cage, alone, with two water bottles. One is just water. The other is water laced with heroin or cocaine. Almost every time you run this experiment, the rat will become obsessed with the drugged water, and keep coming back for more and more, until it kills itself.
But in the 1970s, a professor of Psychology in Vancouver called Bruce Alexander noticed something odd about this experiment. The rat is put in the cage all alone. It has nothing to do but take the drugs. What would happen, he wondered, if we tried this differently? So Professor Alexander built Rat Park. It is a lush cage where the rats would have colored balls and the best rat-food and tunnels to scamper down and plenty of friends: everything a rat about town could want. The rats with good lives didn’t like the drugged water. They mostly shunned it, consuming less than a quarter of the drugs the isolated rats used. None of them died. While all the rats who were alone and unhappy became heavy users, none of the rats who had a happy environment did.
At first, I thought this was merely a quirk of rats, until I discovered that there was — at the same time as the Rat Park experiment — a helpful human equivalent taking place. It was called the Vietnam War. Time magazine reported using heroin was “as common as chewing gum” among U.S. soldiers, and there is solid evidence to back this up: some 20 percent of U.S. soldiers had become addicted to heroin there, according to a study published in the Archives of General Psychiatry. Many people were understandably terrified; they believed a huge number of addicts were about to head home when the war ended.
But in fact some 95 percent of the addicted soldiers — according to the same study — simply stopped. Very few had rehab. They shifted from a terrifying cage back to a pleasant one, so didn’t want the drug any more."
As long as sentient beings have been on Earth, some of them have been in pain from time-to-time. In rare cases, people have acute pain, which hopefully can be treated effectively for the short term, and once the issue resolves, then the pain meds can be discontinued.
I have heard some people say they have chronic pain that is unrelenting.
In most cases, pain is short-lived.
Have any of you seeking pills also tried other methods of pain management? I won't list them here because I don't want to be ridiculed, but I have done a little research and there are many methods besides pills and drugs administered in other ways that can be helpful.
In the states where marijuana is legal for medical or recreational use, it would be worth a trip to the dispensary to find out what might be useful.
Railing against the current system is not a good look - mainly because the use of pain pills got so out-of-control that not only are addicts suffering (and dead), but their families are suffering, as well.
I think most reasonable people want to see easy access to powerful medications controlled more effectively.
Researching this, the double-talk and semantics is rather funny:
Quote:
Heroin and oxycodone are both classified as opioids, and their molecular structure is nearly an exact match. But oxycodone is considered a legal painkiller, and heroin serves no legitimate medical purpose whatsoever
LOL, they are the same thing, but one form comes from Drs. and is labeled as medicinal, which makes it ok and the other not.
Note the word 'considered'. There is -0- evidence that one is safer than the other or more legitimate medicinally.
How could there be? That is like saying wine is safer than vodka. (And actually, people believe that too). It's all alcohol! It has the same effect! Yes, wine, beer, vodka all affect me personally a bit differently. But mostly the same in the end.
As long as sentient beings have been on Earth, some of them have been in pain from time-to-time. In rare cases, people have acute pain, which hopefully can be treated effectively for the short term, and once the issue resolves, then the pain meds can be discontinued.
I have heard some people say they have chronic pain that is unrelenting.
In most cases, pain is short-lived.
Have any of you seeking pills also tried other methods of pain management? I won't list them here because I don't want to be ridiculed, but I have done a little research and there are many methods besides pills and drugs administered in other ways that can be helpful.
In the states where marijuana is legal for medical or recreational use, it would be worth a trip to the dispensary to find out what might be useful.
Railing against the current system is not a good look - mainly because the use of pain pills got so out-of-control that not only are addicts suffering (and dead), but their families are suffering, as well.
I think most reasonable people want to see easy access to powerful medications controlled more effectively.
I'm 71 I have had severe chronic pain since my early 40's due to arthritis and work related injuries. I never could take opioids, I liked them too much so I refused to take them. For years I relied on ibuprofen, heating pads and occasionally aspirin. In the past few years I have been using marijuana, high CBD, low THC and it helps my pain more than anything I ever tried. I highly recommend it. I don't like to roll joints or use a pipe and edibles are a little hard to gauge the dosage and when it will start working so I vape it. I am not sure why it's not prescribed to every chronic pain patient, it's amazing.
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