My family member died from his addiction and I'm still angry at him. He made several decades of selfish, disastrous choices. He had every advantage in the world and squandered it all. I'm angry we don't do more to fight these drugs. Drug dealing is very much a violent crime, it killed my cousin. The popular culture that celebrates drugs and dealers.
Plenty of blame all around but central is the person who decides to use.
> He had every advantage in the world and squandered it all.
I don't believe people get on addictive drugs and squander their lives when they truly have "every advantage in the world". I've been to rehab and recovery programs and I haven't a single person for whom this was the case.
Usually when people say this, they're talking about privileged people who outwardly seem like they have everything they need to succeed. But they have demons: depression, bipolar disorder, mental health, trauma, chronic pain. What's worse, other people are often unwilling acknowledge those demons, and say things like "you have every advantage in the world" which can just make them feel more isolated.
This can lead people to seek relief however they can get it.
I'm sorry for your family member and for you and your family; but for anyone reading this with a loved one struggling with similar issues, know that helping them can sometimes require willingness to understand them first.
> The popular culture that celebrates drugs and dealers.
You mean modern medicine? That's what makes this problem so pernicious - so much of it was created by the people fictionalized in shows like House MD and Grey's Anatomy not The Wire and Breaking Bad.
For thousands of years the natural opioids morphine & codeine have been almost universally recognized as harmful dependency-inducing substances in their own category, that build a tolerance which can almost never be limited beyond a certain number of years, before the toxicity overcomes any therapeutic benefit there might have been upon initial administration.
After all this time a religious person of many different faiths over the recent centuries might have often said that for long-term use they were put on earth by god for people who can not be expected to recover.
Synthetic opioids are just the modern version which were developed because the natural product itself can not be patented.
Hence "patent medicine".
The habit-forming effect is what made the Sacklers the richest pharmaceutical barons so far.
Obviously he doesn't mean that, there's an enormous body of media and art that glamorizes drug dealing and using. It stretches across ethnicity and class. It begins with alcohol and weed, stretches into cocaine and hallucinogens, and from there gets into the heavy drugs.
If the only input into drug addiction was the modern medical industry over-prescribing opioids, the landscape of modern drug use would look very different.
> Plenty of blame all around but central is the person who decides to use.
Oh get off your high horse.
I've had two uncles die from alcoholism. In reality, it was the divorces and way more complex circumstances that really did them in. It really is the cage.
It's important that we avoid the twin extremes of, on the one hand, categorically blaming circumstance for everything, and on the other hand, categorically assuming 100% culpability. The proper view is that human beings operate at a nexus between circumstance and decision. Circumstances can create good or bad incentives, and statistically, people will follow incentives (hence the need to legislate properly, for example). These incentives can be strong or weak. They can create more or less pressure to follow through with the incentive. But we must ultimately make a choice and that rests with us (in the extreme case, something like extreme pain can blind a person and effectively rob him of the freedom to choose intentionally which is to say with the capacity to use reason). So how culpable we are for a decision varies on a variety of factors, but there is almost always some culpability.
In the case of your parent comment, it sounds like the person in question is very culpable, that he had the capacity to reason, to know he should have chosen otherwise, but did not. There's nothing wrong with the content of that claim as such.
I mostly agree with you. But when your doctor is telling you to take some 'medicine', and that is what makes you addicted it's not completly in your hands anymore.
After I had surgery on my ankle in college, my dad took away the pain medicine the moment it was no longer necessary (1 day later) and just gave me Advil after that.
I didn’t fully appreciate why until I saw somebody go through it.
But then I got the entire picture. This man struggled. Hid it from his family. Finally confessed it to his wife who stuck by him and sent him to a rehab program to get clean. He was gone for about 4 months and got clean. Got his life back. Got his family back and got back to work.
And then his old dealer came back around. It took another family member telling the dealer he’d shoot him on sight if he ever came around again to get that predator to leave.
pcthrowaway|2 years ago
I don't believe people get on addictive drugs and squander their lives when they truly have "every advantage in the world". I've been to rehab and recovery programs and I haven't a single person for whom this was the case.
Usually when people say this, they're talking about privileged people who outwardly seem like they have everything they need to succeed. But they have demons: depression, bipolar disorder, mental health, trauma, chronic pain. What's worse, other people are often unwilling acknowledge those demons, and say things like "you have every advantage in the world" which can just make them feel more isolated.
This can lead people to seek relief however they can get it.
I'm sorry for your family member and for you and your family; but for anyone reading this with a loved one struggling with similar issues, know that helping them can sometimes require willingness to understand them first.
civilitty|2 years ago
You mean modern medicine? That's what makes this problem so pernicious - so much of it was created by the people fictionalized in shows like House MD and Grey's Anatomy not The Wire and Breaking Bad.
fuzzfactor|2 years ago
After all this time a religious person of many different faiths over the recent centuries might have often said that for long-term use they were put on earth by god for people who can not be expected to recover.
Synthetic opioids are just the modern version which were developed because the natural product itself can not be patented.
Hence "patent medicine".
The habit-forming effect is what made the Sacklers the richest pharmaceutical barons so far.
quacked|2 years ago
If the only input into drug addiction was the modern medical industry over-prescribing opioids, the landscape of modern drug use would look very different.
unknown|2 years ago
[deleted]
mordae|2 years ago
Oh get off your high horse.
I've had two uncles die from alcoholism. In reality, it was the divorces and way more complex circumstances that really did them in. It really is the cage.
lo_zamoyski|2 years ago
It's important that we avoid the twin extremes of, on the one hand, categorically blaming circumstance for everything, and on the other hand, categorically assuming 100% culpability. The proper view is that human beings operate at a nexus between circumstance and decision. Circumstances can create good or bad incentives, and statistically, people will follow incentives (hence the need to legislate properly, for example). These incentives can be strong or weak. They can create more or less pressure to follow through with the incentive. But we must ultimately make a choice and that rests with us (in the extreme case, something like extreme pain can blind a person and effectively rob him of the freedom to choose intentionally which is to say with the capacity to use reason). So how culpable we are for a decision varies on a variety of factors, but there is almost always some culpability.
In the case of your parent comment, it sounds like the person in question is very culpable, that he had the capacity to reason, to know he should have chosen otherwise, but did not. There's nothing wrong with the content of that claim as such.
mikub|2 years ago
brightball|2 years ago
I didn’t fully appreciate why until I saw somebody go through it.
But then I got the entire picture. This man struggled. Hid it from his family. Finally confessed it to his wife who stuck by him and sent him to a rehab program to get clean. He was gone for about 4 months and got clean. Got his life back. Got his family back and got back to work.
And then his old dealer came back around. It took another family member telling the dealer he’d shoot him on sight if he ever came around again to get that predator to leave.
c22|2 years ago
Do your own research. Get a second opinion. Etc. I rarely end up taking medication that's prescribed to me and overall I think I'm the better for it.
brightball|2 years ago
It’s difficult to argue with the logic. The worse the problem gets, the more it seems like correct path.
civilitty|2 years ago