Topic: The Drug Crisis - excellent NY Mag. article
Keebler
Honored Contributor (25K+ posts)
Member # 12673
posted
- As I'm so very sensitive to various chemicals, I actually often have passed out with even a whiff of someone's cologne, pretty sure I'd not last long with stronger stuff.
you know, I just don't know how to say this without maybe insulting someone. Still, I'll try and forgive if my words aren't right.
While I would guess all / most / nearly all here are so sensitive to even household chemicals or scents in personal care products that we may not (or may) . . . well, the point is that this matters to all of us, to those we know and love --
even if we aren't "into" the drug culture, even that term sets up such misconception. People experience PAIN. That's what this is about. Pain. Intense. Crippling. And they need pain relief. Who wouldn't?
History - and the current paradigm - of medical care . . . much explained here. I had no idea it goes so far back in time.
Whatever we think we know about how this happened, about the people "using" or whatever,
this article explains so much. It's eye opening. Each paragraph, alone, takes a while to read and sink in.
Let it. Take the time. Set it aside a while and go back. Print it out. Share it. The writing, itself, shows excellent journalism both in the way with words but the research undertaken to bring this home is inspiring. Someone, and their bosses, think this vital enough to give it the time and space.
Be sure to scroll down past the various photos, this is a very long article yet well worth the time it will take to read (I had to go in intervals and it took me a day).
Very well written, sometimes the way a paragraph winds up can seem like an ending to the article - but there is so much more - so just keep scrolling past the interspirsed photos. -
[ 02-20-2018, 07:36 PM: Message edited by: Keebler ]
Posts: 48021 | From Tree House | Registered: Jul 2007
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Keebler
Honored Contributor (25K+ posts)
Member # 12673
This nation pioneered modern life. Now epic numbers of Americans are killing themselves with opioids to escape it.
By Andrew Sullivan - New York Magazine - February 20, 2018
Excerpts:
. . . It is a story of pain and the search for an end to it. It is a story of how the most ancient painkiller known to humanity has emerged to numb the agonies of the world’s most highly evolved liberal democracy. . . .
. . . The scale and darkness of this phenomenon is a sign of a civilization in a more acute crisis than we knew, a nation overwhelmed by a warp-speed, postindustrial world, a culture yearning to give up, indifferent to life and death, enraptured by withdrawal and nothingness.
America, having pioneered the modern way of life, is now in the midst of trying to escape it. . . .
. . . But unless you understand what users get out of an illicit substance, it’s impossible to understand its appeal, or why an epidemic takes off, or what purpose it is serving in so many people’s lives.
And it is significant, it seems to me, that the drugs now conquering America are downers: They are not the means to engage in life more vividly but to seek a respite from its ordeals. . . .
. . . No other developed country is as devoted to the poppy as America. We consume 99 percent of the world’s hydrocodone and 81 percent of its oxycodone.
We use an estimated 30 times more opioids than is medically necessary for a population our size. And this love affair has been with us from the start.
The drug was ubiquitous among both the British and American forces in the War of Independence as an indispensable medicine for the pain of battlefield injuries. . . .
. . . Some historians estimate that as much as 10 percent of a working family’s income in industrializing Britain was spent on opium.
By 1870, opium was more available in the United States than tobacco was in 1970. It was as if the shift toward modernity and a wholly different kind of life for humanity necessitated for most working people some kind of relief . . . .
. . .In the mid-1990s, OxyContin emerged as the latest innovation: A slow timed release would prevent sudden highs or lows, which, researchers hoped, would remove craving and thereby addiction.
Relying on a single study based on a mere 38 subjects, scientists concluded that the vast majority of hospital inpatients who underwent pain treatment with strong opioids did not go on to develop an addiction, spurring the drug to be administered more widely. . .
. . . The more expensive and laborious methods for treating pain — physical and psychological therapy — were abandoned almost overnight in favor of the magic pills. . . . -
Posts: 48021 | From Tree House | Registered: Jul 2007
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posted
I remember reading in the late 1970s, that the Russians were still using tincture of opium in their hospitals, rather than morphine and similar drugs. They wrote that it was far less likely to result in addiction.
Why did that memory come back from nearly 40 years ago, and yet I can't remember what I did yesterday? Posts: 180 | From UK | Registered: Nov 2005
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"It may be best to think of this wave therefore not as a function of miserable people turning to drugs en masse but of people who didn’t realize how miserable they were until they found out what life without misery could be."
wow
nice post keebler
Posts: 61 | From Lees Summit, MO | Registered: Jun 2017
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posted
When I was a D&A facilitator, we discussed how when chronic users became sober and clean they became very, very ill.
What was happening was that the drugs were keeping them from feeling the pain from their illnesses.
Many, like my alcoholic brother, complained that they had not ever been sick before they stopped using without realizing the drugs were masking.
-------------------- I still have a good time wherever I go! Posts: 138 | From Lost Wages | Registered: Oct 2016
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Keebler
Honored Contributor (25K+ posts)
Member # 12673
posted
- Thanks for the eloquent observations. I am glad that others can see deeply into this, too. I found not just the writing - the way with words - but the sheer depth of maturity to be able to see all this by the reporter to be wonderful.
It gives me hope for the world that such a deep look is possible. -
Posts: 48021 | From Tree House | Registered: Jul 2007
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