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The drugging in those places is an obscenity. If you're going to do that, you should be intentionally shortening people's lives with opiates, which at least is

The drugging in those places is an obscenity. If you're going to do that, you should be intentionally shortening people's lives with opiates, which at least is a lot more pleasant than getting loaded up with anti-psychotics to make people compliant. Unfortunately, the jig is generally up with that - everyone knows what opiates do. I'm seeing a lot of bullshit on all these threads from people who are doing the whole "fake bravery about how they would just be euthanized" in this situation, and how life isn't worth living if you're demented, etc. Here's how life goes for a demented person close to me: A "fulfilling life" with dementia isn't that different from one without. You wake up, someone makes you a nice meal, you read the papers, shuffle around a bit, get helped to take a shower and dress, watch a movie (which you won't really take in, but it's some nice pictures), get a call from your daughter (who either lives down the road or thousands of miles away, depending on what you're remembering today), etc. On some days your carers will take you for a drive to look at the ocean, or out to a dinner. You might dream that you went on an exciting adventure down the California coast and tell everyone about it; surprising that an 80-year-old man who can't walk unaided can take a sailboat out by himself. Everyone you talk to will enjoy your story and no-one will try to tell you that you are deluded. Some days will be better than others, which is the same for anyone. That's 24 hour home care - and it's not cheap. Neither is living at a facility at this stage. Often the money spent on medical heroics would be better spent on quality of life. Of course, packing folks off to a facility is necessary for some (in this case, we're talking about outright home ownership plus a modest level of wealth). And then a lot of other people frankly want to put hands on grandpa/grandma's money and/or house which is tricky if they are still living in it.

crunchytartar 5y ago
> That's 24 hour home care - and it's not cheap Why don't they just eat cake? This is the good end of the spectrum. The other end is that the patient lives alone, soils his clothes and doesn't change them for months/ gets lost and becomes homeless, gets infected and dies an animals death. Most of the patients live closer to the bad end.
- glangdale 5y ago
  Two points. First of all, a lot of the grandiose claims here about how "if I was demented I would just get myself put down" are coming from tech people who could afford this end of the spectrum. Second, 24 hour home care - or 'family care plus a certain amount of professional relief' is, while expensive, not much more expensive than medicalized fulltime care in a lot of facilities. You're not paying the overheads of a bunch of salaries and potentially the profit margin. At the lowest end of the spectrum, things are indeed terrible. Aside from fairly extreme small government people, I think most people would want the state to step in. A lot of the places that are over-medicating their patients are collecting vast amounts of subsidies and pocketing the improved profits that come from getting to run staffing levels as low as they can get away with.
  - adamcharnock 5y ago
    You’re mention of HN(/tech) people got me thinking about the difference between the experiencing self and the remembering self. I can illustrate it as follows: You can go on a wonderful free holiday for two weeks, but the deal is you will not be able to remember it. Do you want to go? Some people will say no. After all, if they cannot remember it then it is just loosing two weeks. These people prioritise the remembering self. But some people will say yes, because woohoo it’s a holiday! It’ll be fun in the moment. These people prioritise the experiencing self. I think this is a really interesting concept by itself. In the case of tech people, I suspect they are mostly in the first category. So they are more in the ‘if I cannot remember anything then put me out of my misery. I essentially don’t have a self anymore.’ But I wonder if people in the second category will be of the mindset, ‘well, I’ll still have good days, which I guess I’ll enjoy at the time’

crunchytartar 5y ago

> That's 24 hour home care - and it's not cheap Why don't they just eat cake? This is the good end of the spectrum. The other end is that the patient lives alone, soils his clothes and doesn't change them for months/ gets lost and becomes homeless, gets infected and dies an animals death. Most of the patients live closer to the bad end.

glangdale 5y ago
Two points. First of all, a lot of the grandiose claims here about how "if I was demented I would just get myself put down" are coming from tech people who could afford this end of the spectrum. Second, 24 hour home care - or 'family care plus a certain amount of professional relief' is, while expensive, not much more expensive than medicalized fulltime care in a lot of facilities. You're not paying the overheads of a bunch of salaries and potentially the profit margin. At the lowest end of the spectrum, things are indeed terrible. Aside from fairly extreme small government people, I think most people would want the state to step in. A lot of the places that are over-medicating their patients are collecting vast amounts of subsidies and pocketing the improved profits that come from getting to run staffing levels as low as they can get away with.
- adamcharnock 5y ago
  You’re mention of HN(/tech) people got me thinking about the difference between the experiencing self and the remembering self. I can illustrate it as follows: You can go on a wonderful free holiday for two weeks, but the deal is you will not be able to remember it. Do you want to go? Some people will say no. After all, if they cannot remember it then it is just loosing two weeks. These people prioritise the remembering self. But some people will say yes, because woohoo it’s a holiday! It’ll be fun in the moment. These people prioritise the experiencing self. I think this is a really interesting concept by itself. In the case of tech people, I suspect they are mostly in the first category. So they are more in the ‘if I cannot remember anything then put me out of my misery. I essentially don’t have a self anymore.’ But I wonder if people in the second category will be of the mindset, ‘well, I’ll still have good days, which I guess I’ll enjoy at the time’