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KingFisher posted:Sorry I just don't get it. Some people use just to get high. But some, possibly many become addicts because: -They are in chronic pain that OTC anti inflamitories don't help. -They, under the care of a doctor, get their pain managed. -Assholes not unlike you don't like people taking opiate painkillers, more draconian laws get passed, doctors and pharmacies get threatened and the patient gets cut off sometime without even weaning them off. -The pain is still there, now amplified by sudden opiate withdrawal -Many start buying off the street but the street cost of a single Percocet can be up to $20. -For $20 you can get enough heroin to be equivalent to $100 worth of pills -The news starts freaking out over the "heroin epidemic", return to step three. I'm in that category but have not hit the street stage. I've gotten loving tired of explaining to people that chronic pain is a thing and no, aspirin does not stop many of it, in my case my digestive system spasiming 24/7. If you take one slice of time, no the pain is not more than a 4 or 5 on that pain scale. Imagine a dull throbbing headache. Tolerable, sure. For a day. How about after 3 days. A week. A month. Years. It never stops. You can't concentrate. You can't sleep. You can't enjoy anything because part of your brain just wants the loving pain to stop. Try keeping a job because you're in the bathroom an hour a day making GBS threads out everything in your GI tract till it's just stomach acid because you dared eat lunch. I watched a guy who worked with my wife, lost his arm in a motorcycle accident, his neck was so hosed his head was locked ear to shoulder and his back was nothing but ruptured discs. When his pain was managed he had a job, had a normal life as far as someone in his condition could have. Then the DEA leaned on his doctor for "writing too many painkiller prescriptions" trying to find a new doctor put him on the "doctor shopping" blacklist. He lost his job and became an evil junkie because all he could get was heroin. He OD'd but survived and luckily for him finally found a doctor who got a morphine pump put in his spine. The sole reason he became a 'junkie' was because the medical field threw him aside and left him to suffer horribly. A big step in stopping this "opiate epidemic" is stop loving Demonizing people in pain. So they take an addictive painkiller. If it lets them lead normal, productive, happy lives who the gently caress cares. Be under the care of a doctor to make sure it's properly managed and leave us the gently caress alone and you've cut the number of people turning to heroin. Even if it's 10% it's 10% less people turning to what literally is their only option. I'm not sorry for a wall of text rant because nobody ever even acknowledges this part of it and instead focuses on how to 'stop' them, get them addicted to even worse drugs like suboxone (try it for a month and try to quit. See how many days it takes before you want to eat a bullet) and ignoring or dismissing that some people do have chronic pain.
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Mar 25, 2016 18:32
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Guavanaut posted:Which is exactly the same logic that they used when saying that runaway slaves, outspoken women, lazy servants, communists, anti-communists, unwed mothers, and homosexuals should be locked away. We believe in free will, but obviously no sane person would do that, therefore we need to lock up anyone doing that. What do you mean we're just saying this because they're inconvenient to our social values? hot take, but consider this: the vast majority of suicidal people literally have a problem with their brain. I'm willing to disrespect the gently caress out of consent if it leads to more living happy people, and stopping people from killing themselves tends to do that.
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Mar 26, 2016 04:10
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A big flaming stink posted:hot take, but consider this: the vast majority of suicidal people literally have a problem with their brain. I'm willing to disrespect the gently caress out of consent if it leads to more living happy people, and stopping people from killing themselves tends to do that. You're just an anti-death bigot. EDIT: To elaborate, I think the rhetoric defending the right of non-terminally ill people to kill themselves as some sort of good and noble cause is pretty bizarre. At best it's a loving tragedy, something you should support reluctantly, not something to compare to the civil rights movement or gay rights. MaxxBot fucked around with this message at 05:39 on Mar 26, 2016 |
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Mar 26, 2016 05:32
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A big flaming stink posted:hot take, but consider this: the vast majority of suicidal people literally have a problem with their brain. I'm willing to disrespect the gently caress out of consent if it leads to more living happy people, and stopping people from killing themselves tends to do that.  However going by references like Joiner's 'Why People Die By Suicide', the vast majority of suicides are neurotypical people who either feel alienated from their surroundings or feel as if they are a burden to other people or are in constant chronic pain. In short, their brain isn't broken but their life sucks. I don't even know how to address anyone who thinks that these people should be fixed by drugging them against their will, throwing them naked into a room under constant fluorescent lighting, and waking them up every three hours until their mental state improves instead of, I dunno, trying to make their life suck less. The exact same thing goes for addiction. People don't decide to become addicts because their brains are broken or they are inclined to criminality. They usually end up that way because of some combination of alienation or feeling of burden, or chronic pain like the post above mentioned. We've seen how much good throwing addicts into prison does at creating more living happy people.
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Mar 26, 2016 11:35
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Can you find a less obviously stupid argument than the constant comparison of people who want suicide to gays and communists? People didn't imprison those people because they wanted to save their lives, they were imprisoned because they were despised by society. If you think trying to stop suicide is comparable to trying to "cure" homosexuality or force someone out of a political ideology I don't know what to tell you. Guavanaut posted:We've seen how much good throwing addicts into prison does at creating more living happy people. You know what else tends to be bad at creating more living happy people? Literally killing them. Like I understand that determining when to commit people to a hospital for mental issues is a very tough issue but to say that just letting them die is more humane defies comprehension. Do you not view death as an inherently bad thing? That's the only way I can start to make sense of your view here.
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Mar 26, 2016 17:58
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MaxxBot posted:Do you not view death as an inherently bad thing? That's the only way I can start to make sense of your view here. It manifestly isn't in many people's view otherwise they wouldn't kill themselves. There is a difference between saying "euthanasia as a first resort is loving stupid" and "we should try as hard as we can to prevent people killing themselves by all means we have available" Because what almost invariably happens is you end up in a position where suicide is discouraged but the conditions of living are not improved. There is a rather stark disconnect with how people direct their concern towards the suicidal, living in misery is afforded far more leeway than actively trying to kill yourself. If you want people not to kill themselves you must provide a good reason for them not to want to, reactionary measures to prevent suicide are rather suspect because they have a remarkable tendency to extend no further than keeping the suicide statistics low.
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Mar 26, 2016 18:20
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Basically what OwlFancier said. Suicide can be seen to occur when a person's quality of life falls below what they are prepared to tolerate, coupled with a perceived lack of alternatives. As an example, several thousand disabled people in the UK have ended their lives shortly after being found 'fit to work', having their disability benefit sanctioned, or otherwise facing cuts. If you subscribe to the 'broken brain' theory you'd either say "well their brain is all hosed up so they'd probably have done it anyway, fact of life, our sympathies to the family, P.S. ban any research into causal links with our policies" (this is the official government response) or "well their brain is all hosed up better shove them in a psychiatric facility until they stop trying, that'll improve their quality of life." It seems to me that the obvious solution here would have been not to make their lives awful in the first place. Criminalizing or medicalizing (which is de facto criminalizing) suicide and addiction is a cop-out that allows the social causes of it (alienation and making people's lives suck rear end) to be neatly dismissed.
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Mar 26, 2016 18:41
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OwlFancier posted:It manifestly isn't in many people's view otherwise they wouldn't kill themselves. Yeah I agree there, I don't think our current approaches are exactly productive and the best way stop suicide would be to try improve people's lives first rather than resorting to draconian laws and the criminal justice system like we do for everything. I just think that literally comparing consent in the context of suicide to consent in the context of freed slaves, gays, and communists is patently absurd since none of those things involve harm either to oneself or others. I think that suicide is a bad thing that we should try hard to prevent but I would stop short of the "by all means we have available" part because as you said that can lead down a counterproductive road.
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Mar 26, 2016 18:47
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I think my comparison there was badly phrased. I meant more in the sense that the psychiatric community has been used for aggressively bad political ends in the past, and the same thing may be in play here. I don't want to go down a  route of evil psychiatrist cabals or whatever, I just mean in the softer route of governments or society in general not wanting to own up to the fact that treating people like poo poo makes them more likely to be addicted or suicidal, and instead turning it into a 'broken brains' thing, not that suicide is a wonderful thing that they're keeping us from.There is something of a link with the homosexuality thing though, because a big part of its medicalization was "these people have such lovely lives, therefore it must be an illness" which discarded the possibility that maybe they had lovely lives because of how other people were treating them. Same goes here for the stigmas behind addiction and suicide. By medicalizing I mean the complete transference of the issue to an individual medical issue with no wider causes. Of course if someone goes to the doctor and says 'I'm feeling suicidal' or 'I can't stop taking these painkillers' the medical system should endeavor to help them. It's when it gets to court ordered rehabs and abusive suicide watch methods that I find the whole thing gets a bit sketchy (and often not proven to do much good).
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Mar 26, 2016 19:01
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Ok I think i am misunderstanding you. I am talking about mental illness in general, not just limited to addiction.
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Mar 26, 2016 20:41
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If being suicidal is not mental illness, nothing is. And maybe nothing is, but that strikes me as something of a separate debate.
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Mar 26, 2016 20:45
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SedanChair posted:If being suicidal is not mental illness, nothing is. And maybe nothing is, but that strikes me as something of a separate debate. I don't think it's automatically mental illness to consider the conditions of your life to be so poor that the act of living does not seem worth it. As Guavanaut mentioned we have a wonderfully swept under the rug problem in the UK at the moment that the government is arbitrarily cutting support for the disabled and then the disabled kill themselves, because without that support their lives become unlivable. I don't think they're mentally ill, I think they're quite rational in judging that they need a thing to live a life they judge worth living, and that the thing has been taken away and they don't have the power to get it back, so their life is now not worth living in their judgement. Unless you believe that life is inherently good or something rather than simply being the state in which good or bad can happen to a person, your assertion doesn't make much sense.
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Mar 26, 2016 20:50
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SedanChair posted:If being suicidal is not mental illness, nothing is. And maybe nothing is, but that strikes me as something of a separate debate. I read a thing about a guy who was paralyzed from the neck down wanting to commit suicide. Would that mean he had a mental illness, suffering under an impairment most people can't imagine? edit: plus you have to account for cultural differences, where in some cultures suicide would be held up as a rational, even laudable act.
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Mar 26, 2016 21:14
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Those examples are just clouding the issue. Euthanasia for the terminally ill or quadriplegic is a separate matter from people who have their whole lives ahead of them. Drug addiction, homelessness, ostracism, suffering the effects of personal and systemic racism: these are all barriers to functioning that some respond to with suicidality and others not. It is reasonable to respond with clinical tools to those who are struggling with it. Hence the imperfect but sufficient term "mental illness." e: and yes, if a quadriplegic is suicidal it would be unethical for any clinician or service provider to treat it any differently than when an able-bodied person is suicidal. Y'all are just gagging to fire up the lethal injection bus huh? woke wedding drone fucked around with this message at 21:23 on Mar 26, 2016 |
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Mar 26, 2016 21:21
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SedanChair posted:If being suicidal is not mental illness, nothing is. And maybe nothing is, but that strikes me as something of a separate debate.
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Mar 26, 2016 21:40
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SedanChair posted:Those examples are just clouding the issue. Euthanasia for the terminally ill or quadriplegic is a separate matter from people who have their whole lives ahead of them. Drug addiction, homelessness, ostracism, suffering the effects of personal and systemic racism: these are all barriers to functioning that some respond to with suicidality and others not. It is reasonable to respond with clinical tools to those who are struggling with it. Hence the imperfect but sufficient term "mental illness." I think the imperfections of the term "mental illness" in these cases make it insufficient, unless you're making a case that all despair or hopelessness is a diagnosable illness. I'm not in a rush to pathologize these things. And regarding the quadriplegic, you didn't directly answer the question. I should assume that this person would, in your view, be having a mental illness? I'm not "gagging to fire up the lethal injection bus(?)"  , I'm just not willing to tell someone who is undergoing permanent extreme disability that the only reason they don't want to live anymore is because they have a mental defect, and if their mind was operating properly they would realize they would rather be trapped in an inescapable, immovable shell. Or that someone who doesn't want to be a staggering burden on their family should actually, if everything was working properly, realize that the only sane thing to do would be to suffer agonizing pain while draining their family's emotional and physical resources. I don't think you can say that not wanting to live is inherently the product of mental illness without defining "mental illness" so broadly it becomes useless, or using circular logic.
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Mar 26, 2016 22:11
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Being as this whole thing started with a post saying 'lol junkies should just kill themselves' I think it's important to identify who we're actually talking about here. A chronic pain patient told to quit morphine cold turkey, an alienated addict being thrown through the wringer of a drug camp, and someone who has voices saying 'kill yourself' all have different reasons to end their life. In the first case they need proper pain care, and if denied that I could understand suicidality, everyone has a limit. In the second case they need a support network, not demonization, but it's more of a social issue so it's more complex. Social alienation is a major cause of both addiction and suicide though, so I can understand while at the same time hoping for a non-clinical solution like 'people being dicks less'. The third case is the only one I'd call mental illness, but is beyond the scope of this thread really outside of any comorbidity of addiction and mental health.
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Mar 26, 2016 22:40
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Guavanaut posted:That'd be great if it was true. Just lock them all up with the queers and the commies until the shape of their cranium corrects itself. I recall reading a study years ago that depressed and suicidal individuals tended to have more accurate perceptions of their lives and opportunities available than non-depressed and non-suicidal individuals have of theirs.
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Mar 26, 2016 23:42
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My Imaginary GF posted:I recall reading a study years ago that depressed and suicidal individuals tended to have more accurate perceptions of their lives and opportunities available than non-depressed and non-suicidal individuals have of theirs. Trying to quantify things like "life opportunity" seems like bad, vague science. There are, however, studies on depressed individuals being able to make more accurate and realistic predictions about themselves. But the predictions refer to tasks in control labs. Some people try to translate those findings into "real life" and you might have read about that. It's called "Depressive Realism" Depressed people will be more cynical and realistic predicting their abilities performing tasks in a controlled testing session. Non-depressed people usually have a positive bias rating their abilities. The thing is that depressed people have a positive-bias when they rate other people, while optimistic people don't. This leads us right back to Gauvenaut's point about alienation and seeing yourself as a burden. It doesn't matter how realistically you can rate your abilities because if you think everyone else is superior your still perceive yourself as an alienated loner dragging everybody down. crowoutofcontext fucked around with this message at 03:36 on Mar 27, 2016 |
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Mar 27, 2016 03:27
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Guavanaut posted:Being as this whole thing started with a post saying 'lol junkies should just kill themselves' I think it's important to identify who we're actually talking about here. A chronic pain patient told to quit morphine cold turkey, an alienated addict being thrown through the wringer of a drug camp, and someone who has voices saying 'kill yourself' all have different reasons to end their life. They didn't let their own personal baggage fundamentally cloud their perception of the topic. That SedanChair, of all people, would deny an individual the autonomy of choice in this respect is hilariously awful. Dude, I'm sorry if you or someone you love has had mental health concerns in the past or if you've been targeted by someone who said what you now wrongly accuse me of saying, but please try to give things a little more thought before such a kneejerk reaction. Edit: to be clear—assisted suicide would be a final alternative for those who have gone through incredible suffering and have found they wish to reassert their individual autonomy by choosing to end their lives on their own terms, peacefully and with those they love. This is not a substitute for correcting the underlying social malaise that leads people down such a path. This is, as has been stated above, not going to be politically feasible in our lifetimes because of a combination of opposition from radical Christian nutjobs and the general taboo American culture has toward the subject of death. Cugel the Clever fucked around with this message at 05:13 on Mar 27, 2016 |
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Mar 27, 2016 05:05
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Cugel the Clever posted:...the gently caress? The only ones who have said that are you, SedanChair, and a handful of other semi-literate, try-hard "Woe-Is-Me"-ers. I made it very loving clear in my original post that assisted suicide is an option that should be available to those who might desire it, not a death sentence imposed on the mentally ill, you shitbags. Every post that has followed it has reemphasized that point, and there are plenty of people in this thread who have expanded on my original point very eloquently. You didn't at all say that in your OP, you said that people should be offering to kill addicts because it's easier for everyone.
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Mar 27, 2016 05:49
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OwlFancier posted:You didn't at all say that in your OP, you said that people should be offering to kill addicts because it's easier for everyone. 
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Mar 27, 2016 05:58
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Cugel the Clever posted:Watching the Frontline episode on the Opiode epidemic and it's reaffirmed my Your words, not mine.
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Mar 27, 2016 06:00
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Cugel the Clever posted:Congratulations, you're one of the semi-literate, try-hard "Woe-Is-Me"-ers Yes, it's all trying harder than Mr. Come Into The Thread With A Radical Idea About Killing Addicts.
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Mar 27, 2016 09:05
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Trying to get a bit sentimental?? "Die peacefully surrounded by loved ones" haha, no. There's far too many success stories for support groups to give up hope and resign themselves to this. Holding hands and singing hymns as their son or daughter or whatever is given their last needle is kinda unrealistic. Suicides based upon manageable mental illnesses are different from suicides due to deliberating chronic pain or unreversable brain death.
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Mar 27, 2016 20:33
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crowoutofcontext posted:Suicides based upon manageable mental illnesses are different from suicides due to deliberating chronic pain or unreversable brain death.  "Okay, abortion in the case of rape, incest, or the health of the mother is fine, but your average hussy doesn't deserve to make decisions about her own body." How do you have any right to flatly deny anyone the choice over their own lives? If you don't want one, don't get one.
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Mar 27, 2016 22:07
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Cugel the Clever posted:You guys are sounding an awful lot like anti-choice zealots saying: To me its less like abortion and its more like offering an option to mothers suffering from cases of postpartum depression to "die peacefully with their loved ones" before they are a further burden on their family, the court system and their at-risk children. Instead of, you know, figuring out a way to battle postpartum depression.
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Mar 27, 2016 23:18
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Cugel the Clever posted:You guys are sounding an awful lot like anti-choice zealots saying: Or are you saying it should be a public service offered to everyone? That's a different argument and one where I think there are some points that could be made in favor of that if it was tightly controlled, such that it might actually decrease the suicide rate and stop parasuicides, but this is the opioid addiction thread and that would be a debate better settled elsewhere, although iirc the suicide thread got locked because it turned to poo poo.
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Mar 27, 2016 23:30
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Cugel the Clever posted:How do you have any right to flatly deny anyone the choice over their own lives? If you don't want one, don't get one. Because it's a psychopathic 'choice' whether it's being denied relief from pain or just wanting to get high, just give them the loving drug. If someone wants to die because they can't take the pain or it makes their lives less miserable you are hosed in the head if just giving them the drug isn't an option. The guy I mentioned who lost his arm was suicidal because he was living in constant agony. As soon as he got the morphine pump installed he didn't want to die anymore. Every heroin addict I've known who just wanted to get high lead perfectly functional lives. Had jobs, were happy, they just chose opiates over say alcohol. I knew indirectly some addicts who didn't want to do anything but get high but the number who just wanted to be drunk 24/7 was five times higher. In both cases it was almost always because they had lovely lives and it was their escape. Let them be happy if that's what makes them happy. What the gently caress is wrong with you?
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Mar 28, 2016 05:53
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Today in group at the methadone clinic, I pitched the idea of government-sponsored suicide booths for junkies. Votes were 12/12 against.
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Mar 28, 2016 16:11
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Toasticle posted:Because it's a psychopathic 'choice' whether it's being denied relief from pain or just wanting to get high, just give them the loving drug. If someone wants to die because they can't take the pain or it makes their lives less miserable you are hosed in the head if just giving them the drug isn't an option. This is why I don't consider merely being suicidal to be a mental illness for reasons you mention here. It's entirely possible to make a rational consideration of your environment and possibilities and to resort to suicide as your only means of escaping your lovely life situation. If opportunities for making your life bearable are yanked away by government for "doctor shopping" and "addictive drug seeking behavior" and are subsequently barred indefinitely, you are literally trapped and only have suicide as the only conscious option left to take. It's grim but not limited to the mentally impaired. E: If you have a felony and jail time for drug possession/use, your employment prospects are drastically reduced for life. Throw in being broke on top of that, and there isn't much in the way of possibilities to living a bearable, let alone an optimistic life and future to look forward to. Retorting by saying "well, you can always be self-employed/start your own business!" is a cop-out too. What social networking, start-up capital, personal finances, and training/educational resources do you likely have as a junkie? Keep in mind federal loans are cut for any sort drug-related charges anywhere from marijuana to heroin. Teriyaki Koinku fucked around with this message at 16:26 on Mar 28, 2016 |
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Mar 28, 2016 16:17
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Your Dunkle Sans posted:Retorting by saying "well, you can always be self-employed/start your own business!" is a cop-out too. What social networking, start-up capital, personal finances, and training/educational resources do you likely have as a junkie? Keep in mind federal loans are cut for any sort drug-related charges anywhere from marijuana to heroin. You could always tend your own garden.
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Mar 28, 2016 17:08
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My Imaginary GF posted:You could always tend your own garden. Does that pay the rent?
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Mar 28, 2016 18:36
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Your Dunkle Sans posted:Does that pay the rent? If you can afford a spot with a yard (as a recovering addict), you probably will have a commute that requires a well-maintained, insured, registered vehicle. Which means you need a steady job with decent pay. There are more than a couple companies willing to take the risk of hiring employees "in recovery." Understandably, though, many of these companies want the applicant to have achieved years of stability. This puts people in the sort of situation where I am...grinding at a low-wage job that barely makes ends meet. Eventually, I might be able to save for reinstating my license, buy a car/etc, but it's going to rely on my patience, thrift and health...not all of which is solely under my control. Many of my peers can do everything I am, still never escaping abject poverty. Far too many people get where I am and say, "my situation is arguably worse than when I was strung out! I'm still overworked, stressed and broke...without my dope! I might as well go back to the needle...one last time...gently caress it!" And just that easily, the downward spiral returns. Without some sort of HOPE or serious mindfulness practice, abstinence-alone is not enough to create meaning and value in people's lives.
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Mar 28, 2016 19:13
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The_Book_Of_Harry posted:If you can afford a spot with a yard (as a recovering addict), you probably will have a commute that requires a well-maintained, insured, registered vehicle. I agree and sympathize with your situation. Although I am not an addict, I am stuck with two dead end menial jobs and I'm working on escaping that poverty trap. I have no patience for people like MIGF who blithely dismiss the complicated factors that keep people trapped in the cycle of poverty, addiction, and suicidality and the hopelessness that accompanies that kind of life.
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Mar 28, 2016 19:35
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Your Dunkle Sans posted:I agree and sympathize with your situation. Although I am not an addict, I am stuck with two dead end menial jobs and I'm working on escaping that poverty trap. I'm still young(ish), but plenty of my peers have a decade+ on me, in addition to a kid or more. Good fuckin' luck, ya know?
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Mar 28, 2016 20:26
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Your Dunkle Sans posted:Does that pay the rent? Quite so. And, worst comes to worst, you can always plant a garden on public land and encamp rent-free near it.
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Mar 28, 2016 21:00
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My Imaginary GF posted:Quite so. And, worst comes to worst, you can always plant a garden on public land and encamp rent-free near it. Could you cite this please? I'd be interested in hearing about how people have made this work.
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Mar 28, 2016 21:32
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My Imaginary GF posted:Quite so. And, worst comes to worst, you can always plant a garden on public land and encamp rent-free near it. What magical place do you live where someone could garden on public land and live there rent-free? Because most places I've been to in the real world seem to have laws against that kind of junk just to gently caress with the homeless.
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Mar 28, 2016 23:52
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I think he's talking about being a ganja farmer.
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Mar 28, 2016 23:56
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