Author Topic: Everything you think you Know about Addiction is Wrong  (Read 321 times)

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Offline Oak

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Everything you think you Know about Addiction is Wrong
« on: May 30, 2019, 09:37:18 PM »
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Offline AMF

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Re: Everything you think you Know about Addiction is Wrong
« Reply #1 on: May 31, 2019, 08:30:09 AM »
..."if you were going to design a system that would make addiction worse, you would design THAT system."

This is a great talk, and even though he fails to credit Stanton Peele for his seminal 1975 book "Love and Addiction," in which he first connected the dots in the specific case of Vietnam vets addicted to heroin.  Nothing Peele has done since then has been very useful, sadly.  Other trail blazers like Patrick Carnes have had the same thing happen, because in nearly every case they've become part of the fucking System, and the search for Truth has become subsumed by the search for "I'll bet I can make a million bucks offa this."

I'll wait for @Dovey so I can have some other thoughts to riff off of.  And maybe Oak if she comes back.

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Dovey

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Re: Everything you think you Know about Addiction is Wrong
« Reply #2 on: May 31, 2019, 08:48:43 AM »
 Well, i only watched half.

 The problem im having is with his conflation of dependency and addiction.

 Any one who takes an opiate(or any benzo, or even alcohol) for any extended period....and it can be different for everyone, WILL develop a dependency. This is just how the brain works, you form receptors in the brain to accommodate the chemicals in the drug.  Its the same with anti depressants. Some meds you cannot just abruptly stop taking without very uncomfortable symptoms.  Alot of people who have had to take opiate meds for a valid medical problem have been suddenly cut from the meds and went to the street for relief. Over regulating doctors hasnt helped at all. It puts patients at a higher risk.

 But actual addiction disorder is a different thing than the dependence. Addiction is compulsive abuse of a substance. So you are not JUST dependent, you are addicted and abusing that drug. A dependent person can take the percocet as prescribed and get uncomfortable if they skip or miss their prescribed doses for a day or two.

 An addict will take the entire months prescription in a few days, buy some extras, maybe bang some dope and spend the entire next day sick and seeking for more.

 Its both a disorder and a choice. It says alot about our culture that we have so many broken, hurting people trying to dull out their suffering with drugs. We cannot fix this with laws and regulations. We need to start making changes on the community level that address the issues that drive people to use, maybe decriminalize drug use and treat it as a health crisis. Thats what it is.
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Offline Oliver Clotheshoffe

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Re: Everything you think you Know about Addiction is Wrong
« Reply #3 on: May 31, 2019, 10:32:55 AM »

Trolls Anonymous has greatly helped me with my trolling addiction - https://www.facebook.com/Trolls.Anonymous.US/
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No Okie

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Re: Everything you think you Know about Addiction is Wrong
« Reply #4 on: May 31, 2019, 11:20:47 AM »
Legalize. Give them what they need.
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Dovey

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Re: Everything you think you Know about Addiction is Wrong
« Reply #5 on: May 31, 2019, 11:25:51 AM »


This dude isnt an addict. He was just very dependent.  This is alot how it started for me, but i discovered i am indeed an addict.

The horror story he describes is run of mill for addicts. I would have told him on his taper to go ahead and adjust to the first cut in meds, and when he was normalized for at LEAST a week on that dose, to cut again, and so on. Never cut down more until you are balanced out on that lower dose. You got mag you can take for restless leg, zophran for the puking, catapress for anxiety, drink tons of water....get a good playlist for the anger and depression and find someone willing to listen to you cry for hours about all the shit that happened in your childhood. You are going to think you will never be okay again, you are going to think you are a hollow gutted ghost of your former self. You will need to discuss it for DAYS and sound like a total whack job while you do it. You'll be fucking FINE. He would have been fine if doctors didnt spook so easy. Thank God the attitude is changing.  You need a buddy with a good sense of humor who doesnt shock easy.

He sounds kinda ridiculous to me, to be honest.  He could have just taken half dose until he felt somewhat more stable and went slower.  He probably should have googled it, addicts all over the internet discuss comfy ways to detox.

 Going to a rehab detox helps. You just wait until you are well into withdraws and they toss some crushed subutex under your tongue. It tastes like rotten tangerines grown in the ass of satan but it works. They lower the dose everyday and you are off in 3, 4 days tops. I could never do this at home because i would just abuse the detox drug.

 This is the difference between normal people being dependent and addicts. He legit cried talking about the withdraw. Addicts just accept it, willing do this horrific shit over and over and over.

 I rawdog detoxed from heroin more than once, only to celebrate my freedom by using "one last time, now that im in control again" dumb dumd dumb addict thinking. That hell terrifies normal people enough to where they wont touch it ever again.

 
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Offline H.C.Trouble

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Re: Everything you think you Know about Addiction is Wrong
« Reply #6 on: May 31, 2019, 06:55:49 PM »
Huge respect to Dovey for sharing something so personal, doing it in an educational way.

I love my pot and beer, even after a health scare.  The pills they gave me sucked.

Maybe it's a denial of my bad lifestyle choices but I am able to convince myself I'm doing - "harm reduction"  -   by just drinking beer and using pot.

I am a dependent -  I usually go to sleep long before my weed and beer are done. 



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Dovey

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Re: Everything you think you Know about Addiction is Wrong
« Reply #7 on: May 31, 2019, 07:00:48 PM »
Huge respect to Dovey for sharing something so personal, doing it in an educational way.

I love my pot and beer, even after a health scare.  The pills they gave me sucked.

Maybe it's a denial of my bad lifestyle choices but I am able to convince myself I'm doing - "harm reduction"  -   by just drinking beer and using pot.

I am a dependent -  I usually go to sleep long before my weed and beer are done.

 Honestly, i wish i could like weed. I get the worst panick attacks from it. If i could get along with weed, it would probably help out alot when i deal with the kidney stones.

 The pills they give that you hated....i fell in love with.

 I never thought i would ever be an addict. My mother was always a drunk, beer drinker...so keep in mind that can get out of control and the after math is VERY messy. She has drank herself psychotic. Im not being dramatic, i had to cut her out of my life.

 She tells people heroin killed her daughter. Nice, eh? She has never met my youngest child. She never will either.

 But for me, it was a matter of finding that right substance. Im glad if i was gonna go through it, it was later in my life because had i discovered it in my twenties id probably be dead.

 Enjoy the weed i wish i could enjoy  :biglaugha:
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Offline Blurt

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Re: Everything you think you Know about Addiction is Wrong
« Reply #8 on: June 01, 2019, 12:56:51 AM »
Props here, too, to Dovey for the kind of self-disclosure that sheds a little more light on the subject. While not taking away from the intensely personal nature of the journey any human being undertakes between the moment of their birth and the moment of their death, I would exhort Dove to watch the entire vid in the OP.

The author of the talk has much to say about those systemic issues that hamper not only individual recovery but social recovery as well.

The "War on Drugs" model has failed. While it may not have failed those who profit from that model, it has failed those individuals who are struggling with addiction and, by extension, those who are close to them as well as, eventually, society at large. All evidence points to the inefficacy of criminalizing drug use and drug users whereas harm reduction models have been shown to work, and to work extremely well.

This is a complex issue with no easy answers. But the conversation needs to continue happening.
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Offline AMF

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Re: Everything you think you Know about Addiction is Wrong
« Reply #9 on: June 01, 2019, 01:34:35 AM »
I agree, and after watching all of the clip I still think the take-away for me is the comment I quoted in my first reply to this thread.  I, too, will have more to say about this when I'm not dead tired.

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Dovey

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Re: Everything you think you Know about Addiction is Wrong
« Reply #10 on: June 01, 2019, 06:57:35 AM »
 Well....that's kinda why I said it should be decriminalized and treated as the health crisis it is. Tackled on the community level to address some of the major ills that lead people down that road.

 The reasons why people struggle with addiction are as varied as the individual. There are common factors, sure. But ultimately everyone is different and their reasoning is different.

 NA is a fucking joke....sorry not sorry. I cant even tell you what a joke it was. People nodding out during meetings, hooking up, finding new plugs(drug hook ups).  And the way this ordeal was presented to me in early recover made me want to just kill myself and get it over with.

 If I see one more "Dopeless hopefiend" t shirt....

 Anyway, our mental health system is SEVERELY lacking. We gotta work on that in a big way.
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Offline Blurt

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Re: Everything you think you Know about Addiction is Wrong
« Reply #11 on: June 01, 2019, 11:26:13 AM »
Calling the current opioid crisis a health crisis is a winning strategy on the part of those make a buck off the backs of suffering individuals.

Just follow the money.

As for the reasons individuals struggle with addiction, they're not as varied as one might suppose. This was the TED talk author's main point. And it was a good point, in my view. I see the truth of it every day in my work.

Every addict (and former addict) has horror stories to tell, but the real horror resides in how we, as a society, have made choices--social, political, and moral--that have led to the loss of our sense of connectedness to each other and to the rise and pervasiveness of loneliness. This also underpins the current popularity (if one can call it that) of mood and anxiety disorders. And Big Pharma, backed by Big Politics, is making a killing. Literally.

Yes, there are many individual tragedies (psychological or emotional trauma is inherently personal), but the solution doesn't reside in making the lives of those who suffer even more tragic by punishing them for seeking relief through one of the very few means on offer in this particular society.

Moral panic, another outcome of fires stoked by the powers that be that have much to gain from hiding in the smoke, clouds our view and make it hard to see our way to sunnier climes.

Combat disaffiliation with social connection. Put your phone down, look up into the eyes of the familiar stranger sitting or standing in front of you and smile.

Combat spiritual anemia with a firm rootedness in whatever transcendent narrative gives meaning to your lives. Let your roots go deep but let your branches touch the sky.

Combat social despair by getting involved in your community for the betterment of the lives of those who also live within it. Anomie loves to keep empowered individuals at bay.

Combat emotional pain through the numbing power of drug addiction if you must, but know that there are structures in place that have a vested interest in seeing you continue to suffer. One favourite strategy is to make you believe this is only about your neurotransmitters and synaptic vesicles and receptor sites. It isn't.

Above all, carry on being who you are. Eleanor Roosevelt, for one, was of the opinion that we have a moral duty to do so for only in this way would we be able to contribute what is uniquely ours to contribute to the world around us.
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Offline Captain Caveman

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Re: Everything you think you Know about Addiction is Wrong
« Reply #12 on: June 01, 2019, 11:32:00 AM »
True...

...but Eleanor was an unabashed Socialist cuckoo...

(There are much better people to highlight, IMHO...)
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Offline Blurt

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Re: Everything you think you Know about Addiction is Wrong
« Reply #13 on: June 01, 2019, 12:30:19 PM »
No doubt.

But an ad hominem doesn't lessen the impact of her words.
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Dovey

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Re: Everything you think you Know about Addiction is Wrong
« Reply #14 on: June 01, 2019, 12:48:14 PM »
 I'm not disagreeing with anything you are saying, really.

 But this IS a health crisis. Mental health, physical health, play huge factors in addiction. 

 I believe countries that decriminalize and take the harm reduction, health crisis approach have better outcomes than we do with this "war on drugs" that in reality tends to turn patients into addicts and perpetuate the addict lifestyle for those ready in the trenches.

 Get a few felonies involving drugs. Get clean. Now go try to get a job and repair your life....ain't gonna happen. Alot of people go right back to drugs.  That's just one example.

 That's why I say it needs to start on a community level with a sharper focus on and better mental health resources. Many addictions are comorbid with mental health issues like clinical depression,  bipolar, severe anxiety.  I will always hold that addiction is a symptom of much deeper issues within the individual and within communities and families.

 I see alot of it as well, as one myself and within the program I went through and worked for, for a little while.  I still work in the inner city and there is SO MUCH that could be done for this community in general. We got people in mental health crisis of all sorts bouncing in and out of the ER because there are just very little resources.

 It's a really complicated, messy issue.  That's why I addressed from the rip the conflation of dependency with addiction disorder.  There is a very important distinction to be made in order to get the appropriate care. The chemistry behind dependency can be dealt with and managed properly. Addiction needs more than that.  It's what separates the dependent from the addicted. Addiction is deeper than chemical hooks.

 A failure to draw that distinction has caused alot of avoidable issues for alot of people.
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