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thanks for sharing your story. based on your experience, what do you think can be done to address the situation?

• onelittlepoint 12y ago
  Social stigma is a huge problem. The people who won't get help because "A bum sitting under a bridge with a needle in his arm, robbing houses to feed his addiction," c.f. the article, is what people think of when they think of heroin. There are people who won't seek help out of fear they will be thrown away by society. Nobody wants to stop being who they are and start being "an addict." Part of what can help this is education. To most people, heroin is a mythical creature. It's either glamorized or demonized, but neither of these things have any grounds in reality. There's obviously nothing glamorous about being so broken that you need to turn to powerful opiates to solve it. And there's obviously nothing so demonic about it, either: it's some sort of cognitive or emotional failure on the user's part, but it's not evil. While I share some of the concerns of others about it, I think "safe heroin or similar to addicts for free / low cost at addiction treatment centres" is still worth consideration. I think "not heroin" is the reasonable choice, though picking something (eg opiate replacements) completely devoid of pleasure fails to solve the real problem. People tend to neglect that money is a big part of the reason that drugs turn up in a community. We're a society built on money and illicit drugs are a profit area that huge corporations, by law, cannot capitalize upon. But that doesn't mean that people won't, and those people have profit motives to do things that encourage use of their product. It's clear that killing these people or putting them in prisons doesn't help. This is why the "war on drugs" is a failure: it just opens up the market for new players. In truth, heroin is no more strange or evil than alcohol. In fact, they're fairly similar: they both feel good, hobble your senses, and dull "pain." But drugs carry with them certain cultures, and the culture of alcohol is a reasonable one. An obscure and "dangerous" substance like heroin carries with it an obscure and dangerous drug market. That is what's truly dangerous; moreso than even the drug. So some combination of (1) educating the public in a sane way rather than fearmongering and (2) using the newly-earned social support to open doors for tactics that destroy the black market are my idea of a solution. I could be wrong, though. I'm just one data point.
  • lmg643 12y ago
    I've had leftover opioid painkillers from surgeries and I can see how easily this could turn into a gateway. I often feel simply lucky that oxy et al wasn't prevalent when I was 16-24yrs old, as I'm sure I would have encountered it. And as a new father I am also worried what kids will be up to in 10-15 years if we can't learn from experiences like yours. So again, thank you - I really appreciate your story.
  • netcan 12y ago
    The point on stigma is a hard one. On one hand, I see your point. There's a lot of merit in allowing various mental and emotional illnesses to be treated as illnesses rather than moral failings. On the other, this seems orthogonal to the AA/NA approach. "I am an addict. I am no different from other addicts." Own the problem. Make it your primary mission. Many members give "recovering addict" a very central place in their identity. Do you think it's better to encourage addicts embrace the label or allow them to wear it lightly? Also, regarding the "drug culture." I don't know much about the heroin culture but the prescription painkiller culture seems to be very different. Recreational users seem to treat it like a party drug. A lot of addicts seem to treat it like medicine. There's an obvious compulsiveness to it, but it's not incompatible with a normal life the way heroine seems to be. I don't know if it's mostly stigma and culture or properties of the actual substance, but using heroin and going to work and then picking up the kids seems like a total contradiction. I know as a smoker that smoking and exorcise (and healthy eating) feel incompatible. If you do this self destructive thing 10-20 time a day, going into a gym or playing soccer seems ridiculous. This is something that changed over the last generation. In the 50s, you could see professional athletes take smoke breaks between training sessions. But now, with the current cultural treatment of cigarettes, relapsing on smoking usually means relapsing on exercise too. Again, I think there's a contradiction between AA/NA approach and another approach. One is to encourage the oxy culture in heroin. Shooting heroin doesn't mean your whole life is derelict. The NA/AA approach is the other way, oxy addicts need to see that they're addicts just like the bum with a needle in his arm. Thoughts?
    • mercer 12y ago
      I think that in the same way that depression can have many causes, and that different solutions might apply to each of them, addiction is not one 'thing' either. I tried to explain my view elsewhere: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8658316 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8658316