Are we too hard on addicts?

For some reason, I have never been addicted to anything, not even coffee. This may be the reason that I am impatient with drug addicts. "Why don't they just say no?" I ask with disdain.

But it's also the case that I am about 5 to 10 pounds overweight, depending on the season, and I seem unable to generate the willpower to do what is obviously needed to stay at an ideal weight year round.

Is there really any difference between my lack of will to get in better shape and the addict's inability to stop using drugs?

 

There is a huge difference. For starters, you can die from some forms of withdrawal. Yes, it gets so bad you can die.

Nobody dies if they don't get their Twinkie.

 

I might die if I don't get my Twinkie.

Naw, I've never even had a Twinkie.

 

I will never forget one woman I saw on a documentary about meth. Before people knew better, meth was making the rounds as a weight loss aid for mothers. One woman interviewed said she was a happy, middle-age wife and mother who loved her family but wanted to lose weight. Her friend told her about this weight-loss aid and she decided to try it.

As happens with many if not most people, she was addicted almost instantly. And she said that by the end of the week, she would have sold her kids to get more meth.

5 Days from a happy mom to being completely out of control.

 

I was given shots of IM morphine for four days in the hospital. By the end of the first day, I was addicted. If they hadn't cut me off after 4 days, I couldn't have stopped myself. It was all I could think about.

Morphine is the pharmaceutical version of heroin.

It isn't just great like a great steak. It is as happy as you've ever been in your life. You feel as good as you've ever felt. And all you can think about is feeling like that again. Addicts spend their lives chasing this feeling. But it is fleeting and only works for a short time. Then you are just chasing the memory and trying not to feel horrible.

 

probably, not much, if you are only 5-10 pounds overweight. Addiction is usually defined by the continued use despite its significant destructive force and impact of usage on more than one aspect of the addict's life. If you had been pressured off your bowling league team, could not comfortably fit in the seats of the theater you loved attending, could not make it from your car to the grocery store entrance and shop, was no longer able to do quality work at your job of choice, secondary to your poor conditioning and weight, had already developed diabetes and was having increasing trouble with your romantic life or social like because of your weight, and still could not find that will, we could talk about food addiction.

 

I've seen people smoking through their tracheostomy tube.

If you have had three heart attacks, your doctor says stop eating fat all day or you won't survive the next heart attack, and you keep eating fat, then we can talk about a similar addiction to drugs.

 

You guys are misunderstanding my question completely. And one of you is getting all pissed off for some reason.

But it doesn't matter.

Dumb thread. Mods can close.

 

Yes and no. There are different ways to be "hard". Hopefully we would try to focus on the ways that could help them. Even if that means using force to help them break their addiction.

What I have come to the conclusion of over the years is that we often hold a mistaken assumption that everyone else thinks the same way we do or has the same mental faculties or has the same intelligence level. Drug addicts are often the type of people with lower levels of self control in the first place. There is also the phenomena of "an addictive personality". There are definitely people like this that exist. Some people may have been rendered vulnerable for certain life circumstances that made them stressed or depressed. You might not understand how they felt if you have never experienced those life circumstances or emotions.

And yes, there also are some people whose addiction is entirely their own fault. It's hard to know exactly who those people are.

Once many people have already become addicted to drugs, it becomes much harder for them to break the addiction. That is something you probably cannot understand.

Imagine not being able to eat any of your favorite foods, or not being able to do any of your favorite activities for a whole year, or maybe going without sex for one year, or constantly feeling hungry and not entirely full. Imagine trying to sleep on a very uncomfortable mattress. Or imagine having to wake up extremely early in the morning every day. All those things might give you some idea of what it's like for drug addicts trying to break their addiction.

 

Then you do, in some sense, understand addiction.

It is fundamentally the same, but just taken to a different level.

The addict feels he should "probably" try to quit, but just doesn't feel like doing it anytime soon, and does not have the motivation.

 

even alcohol, if you get drunk every day for a few weeks, the body can become dependent, this is due to epigenetics

"The Epigenetic Landscape of Alcoholism"

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4337828/

sugar, coffee, smoking, the list goes on

 

There is such a thing as an “addictive personality” although it is not without its controversies

 

More pain relief addiction is caused by under treatment of pain than over treatment. The brain rapidly associates relief with medication and therein lies an addictive pathway

 

In the 1950s, meth was an OTC drug. Moms, truck drivers, you name it. Pro bike racers used it, it was allowed.

It was also cheap.

It's not instantly addictive, some people are just really prone to dependence on drugs.

It got banned, but the Drug War created an incentive for people to create a Black Market for it, and that made pretty much everything worse.

 

I pretty much get addicted to anything I like. But not like a drug addiction.

My brother was a meth addict for many years. We went through much the same thing. In the end, after over 30 years, he got off the hard drugs. I don't know how long he was clean but last year he got cancer and died. The months before he died is the only time I can remember him when he wasn't out of control. I hadn't talked to him in over 10 years but did reconnect about 9 months before he died.

That song makes me think of my brother as well and on two levels. One of the few things my brother and I had in common was our love of music and Pink Floyd in particular.

The entire family had given up and sent him up to me. For a decade I tried everything I could think of between loving support, tough love, and getting professional help. But it was hopeless. Nothing worked.

 

Thank you, and likewise.

 

Here is the paradox faced by the friends and family of addicts. Treatment is astronomically expensive. And if you turn them in they go to jail. So there are no real options.

If we had access to help instead of just sending him to jail, we certainly would have taken it. But at $4000-$8000 a month, who can afford treatment? So even if you can convince them to get help, there is nowhere to turn.

Most of all they hide everything because they don't want to go to jail. If it isn't illegal, that helps bring things out in the open where we have a chance of doing something.

And clearly the laws don't work anyway.

 

Hard on them in the sense that we should focus on helping them rather than judging them, sure. The hard part is when they harm others and don't want to help themselves. But just putting them behind bars doesn't solve the problem in the long run.

 

Well, ask yourself this. Why do you think you are 5-10 lbs. overweight and what is your motivation in wanting to lose that weight?

Can you imagine a world in which people were not judged based on their size, weight, color, religion, sexuality, etc.?

Can you imagine a world where people didn't want to start and fight in wars just because they don't like people <somewhere else>?

Can you imagine a world in which people were kind to one another just because they SINCERELY believe "do unto others..."?

If you can imagine any of those possibilities, there would be no need for people to overeat, take drugs, drink alcohol, hurt one another and/or themselves.

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Many years ago I was traveling to some destination for work and had the displeasure of sitting next to a man who was very loud. During the entire flight I could hear the person on the other end of the phone. She was crying, sobbing really. The man told her that he would be home the following week and when he returned she had better found a way to lose the 10 lbs. she had gained. He told her that he didn't care if she had to go find a drug dealer to get some heroin but she better be thinner when he got home or she could pack her stuff and get the hell out of his house.

I sat silently trying to process a mindset in which something like 10 lbs. could make or break a *whole relationship*. To this day, I can't fathom it.
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My point is this. What if we all stopped trying to find reasons to reject each other and look for those things that we have in common?

What if we stopped projecting our own huts and pain onto other people in the form of petty gossip, mud slinging, all-kinds-of-"isms" and just learn to appreciate for who they are WHERE they are?

I think if we could try that for a spell, a lot of things people do to escape "the pain of everyday life" would vanish or significantly diminish.

A friend asked me to create something for a project and I submitted this today.

 

Addiction is the use of a substance that alters your ability to function..Not much you can do for an addict they must do it.

 

I could share my story here but I hesitate to do that because either I will be called a liar or I will be ridiculed later for it.

Just like I was when I spoke of a loved ones cancer so I think I will keep it to myself.

And the person that is reading this that called me that liar I hope you see this and you're ashamed of yourself

 

I'm personally not one of those people who believe government should pay for everything, but I think the government should provide free drug treatment help. It is cheaper than putting people in prison, and would be effective at trying to stop the drug flow. I don't think most people realize how expensive courts, prisons, and police law enforcement is. Paying for free drug treatment is not so expensive when compared to those costs.
The drug addict could sign a consent form at the beginning, agreeing to be held in the treatment center for a certain period of time where they would not be allowed to leave. The first step to breaking their addiction is to just get them off drugs for a certain period of time.

There could be a special modification in the law so that nothing about them voluntarily seeking help in a drug treatment center could be used against them. It would be considered inadmissible evidence in any court, and would be kept private from police.

 

Oh please. This sounds like the fat acceptance movement (i.e. "body acceptance" movement).

There are some women out there, radicalized into this ideology, who use that as an excuse to just keep stuffing themselves into morbid obesity, claiming it doesn't really matter and the problem is everyone else.