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How a former addict uses Reddit to save drug users’ lives
- dummy7953 11y agoA Redditor finally gets some good press. Oh, but it's a female, and we know what Reddit thinks of them. God help her if she's overweight, or non-white. Maybe some other Redditors will send her some nice death threats or maybe dox her so that all the good work she does for people will come to a halt. And then someone will die. Reddit, you rock.
- forgottenpass 11y agoSaving drug user's lives? I don't believe it. The press has clearly told me multiple times that reddit is just for despicable people to be be sexist and racist.
- prezjordan 11y agoI don't think anyone is saying that Reddit is just for despicable people, but you can't deny that they're all over it. Look at the front page right now.
- mschuster91 11y ago> Look at the front page right now. Not a single racist or otherwise scummy content on mine, I stick with the defaults - and I doubt /r/CoonTown etc. end up on your frontpage by accident
- prezjordan 11y agoI should have clarified - the logged-out homepage. The one Reddit exposes to the internet at large. There is currently a post with several thousand points: a picture of two women on the back of a garbage truck with the caption "Actual feminism." I'm not sure what that has to do with feminism, but I guess Reddit thinks women need to work seemingly "dirty" jobs before they're allowed to complain about work conditions. But you're right, if you customize your subreddits you can avoid a lot of the scum.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- Lawtonfogle 11y agoAh, the common belief that criticizing feminism, be it well or poorly done, is sexism.
- mschuster91 11y ago> There is currently a post with several thousand points: a picture of two women on the back of a garbage truck with the caption "Actual feminism." I don't see any problem with the picture itself or its description. Isn't feminism after all also that women can work in previously male-dominated jobs? Challenge accomplished for these two, I dare say. As for "dirty" jobs, well I highly respect garbage men/women, even more so when they strike in Italy again and pictures of trash-filled streets make headlines.
- prezjordan 11y agoWomen can and have been able to work those jobs for many decades. There's a certain undertone with the word "actual" - as if other depictions of feminism are not valid. It's just strange that it's there at all. But whatever, words are hard.
- roninb 11y agoSo, just so you know, your guess is dead wrong. The user who posted that picture had this to say about it: "When I think of people working behind a garbage truck I think of men, that is my own prejudice but I think many people share that (look at this thread). So when I saw this picture the first thing I thought was oh nice they don't give a fuck about other peoples prejudices and just do what they want, more importantly CAN do what they want. This could very well be a bad example to you, but it speaks to me." [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/3e1q3j/actual_feminism/ctapyph https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/3e1q3j/actual_feminis...
- prezjordan 11y agoNice detective work, roninb. Did you happen to catch this gem that they also posted? > women working a 'typical' male job is actual (not true) feminism when you compare it to bitching on tumblr or bitching about a shirt of a scientist. in my opinion. [0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/3e1q3j/actual_feminism/ctaqyex?context=1 https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/3e1q3j/actual_feminis...
- sehr 11y agoTry reading literally any comment thread next time
- mahyarm 11y agoBlank pieces of paper are horrible, bad people can write horrible bigoted things on it! /s
- 1-more 11y agoI'm reasonably active on /r/stopdrinking and it's one of the most positive corners of my life. I've taken a few cats that I've met on there to their first meeting. I find /r/opiates very interesting: recovery mixed with active usage mixed with harm reduction. A very interesting scene that can definitely appeal to the active user way more than a sub with "stop" right in the title.
- digler999 11y agoI'm pretty sure there is an /r/opiaterecovery or similar forum. Overall I think opiates is a good subreddit, because obviously with an addiction that strong there are going to be many people who refuse/aren't ready to quit. I've hung out there for a few weeks, and I will say when someone posts "about to try Heroin the first time, any tips?" many of them will try to dissuade them from ever starting. And the people who post who are going through withdrawals and posting the lurid details of what life is really like as a heroin addict also serve as an indirect influence on others.
- ysleepy 11y agoI just put a script on my openwrt router to get all A dns records for reddit and iptables block them. reddit has become the lowest common denominator of procrastination and my human side cant reasonably control itself. I dont care anymore about all these fabricated stories and the hivemind filterbubble.
- Polecat 11y agoHow do you know they are fabricated?
- geographomics 11y agoAt its core, this article isn't so much about reddit, rather it's reflecting on the benefits of harm reduction via an altruistic, personal narrative of recovery from opiate dependence. Reddit is just the communications medium.
- ysleepy 11y agoI know. But suddenly everybody cares whats going on on reddit and its just lame. Even the headline here on HN reads like some buzzfed upliftingNews regurgle.
- joaorj 11y agoLOL. Is this for real or are you trying to be funny?
- vonklaus 11y agoThis wouldn't actually block this article or stop reddit from appearing in google searches, no? You just basically edited your host file to resolve these to 0.0.0.0 making the links dead when you follow them. If you have a way to make these links not appear in google, I would be interested to apply this to other sites, but how does this help? Legitimately interested, please expand.
- ysleepy 11y agoIt is almost eqivalent to the hostfile trick. But since switching DNS is too easy and some of my devices default to 8.8.8.8 it is not a sufficient solution.
- WhoIsSatoshi 11y agolink to the reddit thread regarding the article: https://www.reddit.com/r/opiates/comments/3e2ord/the_article_about_us_came_out/ https://www.reddit.com/r/opiates/comments/3e2ord/the_article...
- cwyers 11y agoI'm not sure that assisting people to treat drug overdoses themselves without medical supervision is unambiguously saving lives; many of those people would have been saved if they had sought medical treatment instead of self-aid, and I don't see any data about how many died attempting self-aid that could have been saved if they had sought medical attention.
- mschuster91 11y ago> many of those people would have been saved if they had sought medical treatment instead of self-aid The problem is that unlike here in Germany, where the state is required to be able to send help in 10-15 minutes at your house (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilfsfrist https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilfsfrist), there is no such requirement in the US. Overdoses are time critical, especially as not every overdosed guy gets noticed in time.
- joesmo 11y agoI'm not sure that assisting people to treat bleeding themselves without medical supervision is unambiguously saving lives; many of those people would have been saved if they had sought medical treatment instead of self-aid, and I don't see any data about how many died attempting self-aid that could have been saved if they had sought medical attention.
- cwyers 11y agoVery droll. But band-aids don't have side effects. Naloxone does. For instance:[1] > a reversal of opiate effects achieved too rapidly may induce nausea, vomiting, sweating, tremor, tachycardia, increased BP, seizures, ventricular tachycardia and fibrillation, pulmonary edema, and cardiac arrest, which may result in death. http://www.drugs.com/monograph/naloxone-hydrochloride.html http://www.drugs.com/monograph/naloxone-hydrochloride.html
- marcos123 11y agoThose are not really side-effects of Naloxone, they are side-effects of reversing the effect of opiates. So if an addict were to quit an opiate addiction cold turkey, they would experience some (or very rarely, all) of the effects you listed. If you give Naloxone to someone without opiates in their system, they wouldn't experience those effects. What Naloxone does is kick opiates off of opiate receptors in the body, which instantly puts the addict into a state of opiate withdrawal.
- stephengillie 11y agoWhat's the hacker angle on this story? It seems like a common human-interest story about someone donating their time to help others. Is it supposed to be intellectually fascinating because it happens on an internet forum? Is that all it takes to get upvotes on HN?
- revscat 11y agoThe answer to your question now is the same whenever it has come up before: it is on the front page because HN readers voted it up and are discussing it.
- stephengillie 11y agoHow do we know that HN readers upvoted it, and not an upvote-bot-ring or other upvoting group? This really doesn't seem like the kind of article that should be on HN.
- cwyers 11y agoReddit isn't just "an Internet forum," it's a company that's received investment from Y Combinator (or at least people like sama who are heavily involved in Y Combinator). This site is hosted at news.ycombinator.com. Shockingly, people here are interested in articles about such things. In addition, technology does not exist in a vacuum. It's very, very possible to be interested in how people are actually using that technology, and the effect that the technology is having on people, both individually and in the larger context of community and society. This article definitely talks about those issues.
- stephengillie 11y agoRight, reddit is an internet forum with massive funding and leadership backing from some of the most connected people in existence. And so anything related to reddit is automatically interesting? Technology doesn't exist in a vacuum, and apparently anything even remotely tangentially connected to anything technological is HN front-page material.
- rflrob 11y agoIt seems insane to me that naloxone isn't over the counter everywhere. It's a drug with (as far as my limited reading goes) literally no potential for abuse. To be fair, it has no purpose unless you are taking opiates, but it seems the worst kind of paternalism to say that you can't have something because it makes it less dangerous to do drugs.
- revscat 11y agoI suspect that the thought behind not making it available is the same line of reasoning that leads to various prohibitions on contraceptives: "if they use it, then the 'bad' behavior will increase."
- joesmo 11y agoYou forgot to fully finish the line of reasoning: "if they use it, then the 'bad' behavior will increase, so let them die."
- vonklaus 11y agoI was an active member on /r/opiates for ~2 years and it is a great place that talks extensively about harm reduction the pifalls of being an addict and operating safety in a high-friction low reputation seedy underworld of drug culture. If you have never done heroin, it is dangerous as hell. Not just the drug, but the people you have to deal with to get it. Obviously, there were people on the subreddit tellng first time vicodin users to "bang that shit"[0] but there were people giving safe advice and counseling as well. It is a strange place where people post a bundle of heroin and some cocaine and title the post "my breakfast (:", but also when a long time member says that they quit, there are dozens of congratulatory posts. This community is the biggest thing I miss about reddit. I still try to go to tripsit IRC to chat with people even after being clean. [0]a slang term for IV injection of a substance.
- joshstrange 11y ago> A person can’t get clean if they’re dead. That line stood out the most to me and is something I think people regularly forget or choose to ignore. It really is a shame that due to the stigma most people don't bother sharing their story of recovery or more often don't even try to get better. For all of Reddit's warts things like this and subs like /r/leaves (weed), /r/stopdrinking (alcohol), and I'm sure many more that I've never heard of are awesome resources where someone can ask for help without judgement or shame. Really it's just part of the internet as a whole allowing people to ask questions or read up on topics that normally would be taboo for them in their communities and is why I love the internet so much.