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Are drugs really the issue though? In my experience people who ruin their life with drugs have underlying mental health issues which are the cause of their sel

by copx 3y ago

Are drugs really the issue though? In my experience people who ruin their life with drugs have underlying mental health issues which are the cause of their self-destructive usage patterns. What is the difference between a Wall Street banker and a homeless junkie? Not the regular use of hard drugs.. Pure addiction therapy thus almost never works. The homeless junkies have PTSDs, personality disorders, bipolar disorder, severe cases of ADHS etc. all of that needs to be treated together with the addiction for a reasonable chance of success.

johnea 3y ago
Its funny you mention this. While working for some years in the south bay tech hub (san jose), I knew a guy who was a VP at a tech company. Everyday he would lock his office door at lunch and do a shot of heroin. He'd lay back at his desk and zone out for an hour or so, then wash his face and go back to work. When I left the bay area and lost track of him, he was still in the same cycle and not spiraling into destruciton. A big difference in outcomes is dictated by WHY a person is using drugs. Someone with mental health problems (and/or major life problems in general) is going to do far worse than someone who just wants a little temporary escape. After growning up in the US souteast, I can athoritatively say that a big part of the US situation is due to the uneducated, uninformed, hateful, religous population that mmakes up a significant part of the total...
akira2501 3y ago
Do you have experiences which would give you good perspective and the wide range of drug abuse that occurs within our society? Do you have a sense of how much of it goes unnoticed? Who do you think paid rehabilitation clinics are for exactly? I think drugs are the issue. People have plenty of other problems outside of the scope you mention. These typically provide negative feedback which leads the person towards solutions. Drugs interfere with this and turn them into positive feedback loops which just drags the person further into addiction. And these problems are most definitely commonly experienced outside of the "homeless junkie" caste, which is a very recent problem in the grand scheme of this issue and _seems_ to be correlated with recent changes in drug policy and resulting availability. I am with you though in that treating the _addiction_ is insane. The drugs are just a response to other conditions and unless you treat and examine those you stand no chance of improving someones life. The best you can hope for is they hurt themselves badly enough that the trauma causes them to recognize their circumstances for what they really are. Which is why I think criminalization is also insane; however, that doesn't mean the state just has to stand by while massive quantities of illicit substances change hands freely across our country. That's a problem you can address without even having to jail anyone other than dealers and traffickers. And at the end of the day, even this minor action would bring massive improvements, by preventing people from prolonging their problems with addictions that destroy their lives, health and wealth.

by copx 3y ago

johnea 3y ago

Its funny you mention this. While working for some years in the south bay tech hub (san jose), I knew a guy who was a VP at a tech company. Everyday he would lock his office door at lunch and do a shot of heroin. He'd lay back at his desk and zone out for an hour or so, then wash his face and go back to work. When I left the bay area and lost track of him, he was still in the same cycle and not spiraling into destruciton. A big difference in outcomes is dictated by WHY a person is using drugs. Someone with mental health problems (and/or major life problems in general) is going to do far worse than someone who just wants a little temporary escape. After growning up in the US souteast, I can athoritatively say that a big part of the US situation is due to the uneducated, uninformed, hateful, religous population that mmakes up a significant part of the total...

akira2501 3y ago

Do you have experiences which would give you good perspective and the wide range of drug abuse that occurs within our society? Do you have a sense of how much of it goes unnoticed? Who do you think paid rehabilitation clinics are for exactly? I think drugs are the issue. People have plenty of other problems outside of the scope you mention. These typically provide negative feedback which leads the person towards solutions. Drugs interfere with this and turn them into positive feedback loops which just drags the person further into addiction. And these problems are most definitely commonly experienced outside of the "homeless junkie" caste, which is a very recent problem in the grand scheme of this issue and _seems_ to be correlated with recent changes in drug policy and resulting availability. I am with you though in that treating the _addiction_ is insane. The drugs are just a response to other conditions and unless you treat and examine those you stand no chance of improving someones life. The best you can hope for is they hurt themselves badly enough that the trauma causes them to recognize their circumstances for what they really are. Which is why I think criminalization is also insane; however, that doesn't mean the state just has to stand by while massive quantities of illicit substances change hands freely across our country. That's a problem you can address without even having to jail anyone other than dealers and traffickers. And at the end of the day, even this minor action would bring massive improvements, by preventing people from prolonging their problems with addictions that destroy their lives, health and wealth.