One of the coolest bullet point lists I've seen in a while

[aiyanah]

i reckon rehab clinics are treated as vacations by most who get admitted to them.
i know i did that, it wasn't a rehab clinic that made me stop.
it's also problematic when there's the twelve step guide which can be done without a clinical admission and has been proven to work better than the clinics with their noted 95% failure rate which you're informed of upon arrival.
again that's not what got me to stop getting high.

and the 12 step guide just about boils down to giving yourself some purpose even if it doesn't escape the boundaries of "the room" the AA/NA meeting is happening in.
"hey look at me i'm 2 years clean, look how smiley and healthy looking i am, dont you guys that are still using wanna be like me"
albeit one can grow tired of being part of a human zoo rather quickly.

i also reckon there's too much sympathy given to addicts...these are more often than not viciously smart people who you "cannot stop" from getting what they want (they can sneak any narcotic into a rehab facility and find a spot to use it just as discreetly too).
that's valuable, let them know so and tell them to get their act together instead of implying there's this "safety net" waiting for you if your experimenting gets out of hand.

i mean...it's supposed to get out of hand, or else why bother humoring the dragon. how is one meant to find new knowledge without assessing risk first hand in person.
dare i say it's the ego flattening properties of drugs that makes them addictive, opening new avenues of thought constantly that your ego otherwise wouldn't accept without forewarning.
is it healthy to become dependent? no
is there some value to partaking in the activity? most definitely
i get why cocaine users can't stop using cocaine, not a chemical dependency but because it literally forces your brain to concentrate on what you want it to concentrate on.
granted speech might not be quite the same but if the task is a silent one...well.

P.S. alcohol has far more problematic withdrawal symptoms than any opioid, it can sometimes result in death.

 

[aiyanah]

let me add i can understand putting teen addicts into rehab clinics.
but after that you're just wasting time and money on people who legitimately know better but just aren't interested in the better option just yet.

will they die before they become interested? who knows, it's part of the dangerous game we play when chasing occult knowledge with these narcotics.

 

[Ex-User (14663)]

The point of the sentence is that if they REALLY wanted to, they could quit, he even writes an entire book about this, of which I have now read many summaries by both people reviewing it positively, or criticizing it. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/117160.Romancing_Opiates

The point of this book and the underlying meaning of this sentence is that we should shut down addiction clinics because they're just pandering to morally corrupt people who should just take responsibility. Withdrawal is not *just* like a flu because it is also heavily accompanied by depression and CRAVINGS. Furthermore neuroscientific research shows that addicts have re-wired their brain through drug use in such a manner that they get little reward from every day life activities but disproportionate reward from the use of their drug. Drugs feel good and are craved because they literally hack your reward system so that you don't care about other stuff except the drug. You have to accept that there are some powerful elements of physiological determinism that takes a disproportionate amount of willpower and so it makes sense that the path to recovery be greatly facilitated by medical assistance amongst other things.

https://www.orlandorecovery.com/blog/3-stages-opiate-withdrawal/

well, there's no doubt that drug addition is tough to combat. but you gotta separate two things: 1) the psychological challenge of overcoming addiction, 2) the barrier which is represented by physical withdrawals. I don't know what his opinion on the first one is – I would have to read the book – but that statement in OP is clearly just about the physical part. You're talking about both of these things simultaneously, as if he said "opioids are easy to quit". To me, the problem is as it's manifested in that video I posted: the guy doesn't even want to try to quit, because supposedly the physical withdrawals are so bad (from what I read in the link you provided, the worst part lasts about 1-2 days, which sounds better than a flu if you ask me). In that addict's mind, it's all someone else's fault – the government doesn't provide him with the drugs, he needs his fix to do anything at all, etc.

 

[Ex-User (13503)]

Mod moment : This thread has been sufficiently derailed, could discussions about Dubai, aquariums, relationships, november, interesting though they may be, or anything not related to the author in any way please be confined to another thread. At least make some attempt about it. Please XD.

I am now genuinely interested in discussing this in depth if anyone wants to take me up on it.

I lol'd. I'm quite proud of my defense ITT. I killed a 50+ post mod-sanctioned derail.

@Drugs My beef was the impression he was using the popular understanding of the "flu" being basically a hangover with some sniffles vs something relatively uncommon that actually kills.

I agree that drugs should be legalized. Prostitution too.

I really don't see the awful consequences of rights in the law. Again, not sure what he's referring to, vague.

This... I think he's differentiating rights vs "rights" in a postmodern sense (The book linked in the wiki is behind a paywall). I do agree that it fosters unnecessary resentment, say, someone getting upset because they weren't called by their chosen obscure pronoun.

But I also think gratefulness coupled with obligations is regressive as hell because it creates a pressure for passivity by occupying people. I liken it to something like wage slavery. Gratefulness alone is quite peachy though.

Yeah sure. Whatever. What are you gonna do? Police art ? Most people are not non-judgementalists. And art is weird anyway, judge it however you like, argue about it, but it should be very free, the terrible consequence of the opposite would be that it would become uniform and lack innovation etc.

I'd argue they're worth defending, they just shouldn't be as "exclusive," which is probably what led to the erosion he complains about to begin with.

 

[redbaron]

instead of talking shit on the internet, why don't you start shooting up heroin for the next 6 months and then prove to us how easy it is to quit serac

you talk about wanting science, so go do science

also can we please get a citation for recovery from opiate addiction being "hardly worse than the flu"

and i guess we can gloss over the fact that depending on the strain of flu people often die, or are bed-ridden for days to weeks, potentially hospitalised or requiring modern medicine to make a recovery while we're at it.

 

[Ex-User (13503)]

instead of talking shit on the internet, why don't you start shooting up heroin for the next 6 months and then prove to us how easy it is to quit serac

you talk about wanting science, so go do science

also can we please get a citation for recovery from opiate addiction being "hardly worse than the flu"

and i guess we can gloss over the fact that depending on the strain of flu people often die, or are bed-ridden for days to weeks, potentially hospitalised or requiring modern medicine to make a recovery while we're at it.

Obvious strawman remains obvious.

Also, given that you just said the flu is potentially fatal, are you aware of any sources showing opiate withdrawal is more fatal? I find claims of death via electrolyte imbalance but no actual stats.

 

[redbaron]

where did i say opiate withdrawal is more fatal?

i'm pointing out the flaw of conflating opiate withdrawal and the flu in the first place - they're two different phenomena. so unless otherwise evidenced, conflating the two because some conservative pundit finds it convenient for peddling his ideology isn't a robust claim that anyone should take seriously.

claims made without evidence, are fairly dismissed without evidence.

 

[a_ghost_from_your_past]

Not really "so cool", but merely "snow job".

 

[Ex-User (13503)]

where did i say opiate withdrawal is more fatal?

i'm pointing out the flaw of conflating opiate withdrawal and the flu in the first place - they're two different phenomena. so unless otherwise evidenced, conflating the two because some conservative pundit finds it convenient for peddling his ideology isn't a robust claim that anyone should take seriously.

claims made without evidence, are fairly dismissed without evidence. if you want to be taken seriously and not laughed at, don't make laughable claims

I haven't seen any proof that sir Smitty Whatshisname is referencing actual flu vs pop culture sniffles. The latter was my initial assumption, but I stated it as such. So then, that leaves us with "can we please get a citation for recovery from opiate addiction being "hardly worse than the flu"" which you follow by saying how fucking terrible the flu is.

Flu: often kills people
Opiate withdrawal: Doesn't often kill people

So the answer to "can we please get a citation for recovery from opiate addiction being "hardly worse than the flu"" is yeah, the flu has a higher kill count, probably in total as well as proportionately given the apparent absence of readily accessible data on opiate withdrawal deaths because they're apparently not that common, which looks like withdrawal is indeed "hardly worse than the flu." Shabam.

If that's what you were trying to say, then that's what you should have said...? Double shabam...?

"claims made without evidence, are fairly dismissed without evidence."

If you just keep repeating that mantra, does it mean there's no evidence? I mean, it seems to me that no argument was presented because Serac wasn't making an argument. You're acting as if he worships this dude and all his writings as unquestionable gospel when he openly stated in the OP he hadn't read the guy and was ostensibly looking for casual conversation.

What's the last book you've read? Because I'm going to disagree with all of their works and then make you justify all their claims.

 

[redbaron]

*opens thread*

Spoiler

*closes thread*

 

[Ex-User (13503)]

Yes, I'm totally strawmanning you by literally quoting you. If you screwed up your phrasing, you're allowed to admit that, you know.

Why I'm giving you that out, I have no idea.

 

[redbaron]

jokes aside my point is the same as it was before

that theodore dingleberry is trying to minimise the severity of opiate withdrawal by conflating it with the flu. which displays ignorance both of how severe the flu can really be as well as ignorance of the differences in physiological mechanisms behind substance addiction and viruses

and also apparently fails to provide any sort of evidence for the conflation of the two

you can stop being a nuisance now

 

[Ex-User (13503)]

jokes aside my point is the same as it was before

that theodore dingleberry is trying to minimise the severity of opiate withdrawal by conflating it with the flu. which displays ignorance both of how severe the flu can really be as well as ignorance of the differences in physiological mechanisms behind substance addiction and viruses

and also apparently fails to provide any sort of evidence for the conflation of the two

you can stop being a nuisance now

We don't know his understanding of the flu, and opiate withdrawal is literally described in the medical literature as "flu-like."

I'm sorry the truth is annoying and you'd prefer to be outraged over the man's politics instead?

If someone's inferences are flawed, I'm going to point that out, because flawed inferences don't reflect truth and accuracy. It's that simple, regardless of whether it's me or anyone else doing it.

 

[redbaron]

lol still missing the point

notice how he says it's not true that the symptoms are "not virtually unbearable, it's hardly worse than the flu"

um yeah, and depending on the strain, the flu kills people. in 2017 it was the 11th leading cause of death in Australia. in many cases the flu is quite literally unbearable for thousands of people.

there's no outrage here, the statement is plainly ignorant. he makes it in an attempt to minimise the severity of opiate withdrawal, by conflating it with a highly deadly disease. simultaneously ignoring the deadliness of many strains of influenza, as well as misrepresenting the differences between addiction and influenza.

similarity of symptom does not mean similarity of cause and nor does it take into account psychological and neurological differences.

 

[Ex-User (13503)]

I guess I'm just going to leave this thread, since I've been threatened with a permaban.

Peace.

 

[aiyanah]

so it's all good to cite this and that paper but actual real world experience doesn't matter?
opioid withdrawal is akin to being very tired, you will sleep for a day or two while your joints unstiffen, might sweat, no sniffles, remember to drink water.

 

[Ex-User (14663)]

and i guess we can gloss over the fact that depending on the strain of flu people often die, or are bed-ridden for days to weeks, potentially hospitalised or requiring modern medicine to make a recovery while we're at it.

wow, "requiring modern medicine", that sounds very dramatic

flu has a mortality rate of about 0.5/100000 (i.e. you have a 99.9999% chance of survival), with predominately the elderly (65+) being most exposed

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2374803/

 

[redbaron]

yeah, severity is strain dependent. and even in non severe cases people are usually too sick to work and feel dreadful.

this is also not taking into account the psychological aspects of withdrawal, and the fact that dependent on the time spent taken the drug and other factors surrounding the person's health, withdrawal symptoms can be again more severe

it also fails to take into account that many addicts become addicted in teenage years, in circumstances they're not fully capable of controlling - which then solidifies in their mind that their coping mechanism of choice is a drug. by becoming addicts in formative years, they then turn to it as a coping mechanism when under stress, and as a result they fail to develop other, more appropriate coping mechanisms - relying on friends, family and their own ability to rationalise and process difficult thoughts and emotions

to chalk up a phenomena as similar to the flu simply because some of its symptoms can be described as 'flu-like' is entirely erroneous and patently false. a point of view rooted in ideology, not reality

 

[Black Rose]

How many milligrams of opiate do you need to take a day to become addicted or does it vary person to person. I take 100mg a day. one week now.

 

[Ex-User (14663)]

@redbaron
don't you see the absurdity of what you're saying? it's obvious that a regular flu is not lethal to any significant extent. I've had it myself multiple times. But you're saying "it depends on the strain". is your interpretation that the quote in OP was talking about the H5N1 virus or something? that would make it a very strange quote, no?

 

[redbaron]

it's just one example among many of his lack of intellectual rigour and understanding of complex issues

if he wanted to claim that it's relatable to a generic few days case of the flu, that would be equally absurd. addiction and viruses are two entirely different things for one, and attempting to minimise the severity of opiate addiction is just one way that the statement is not simply uninformed and ignorant, but dangerous

 

[Black Rose]

so is opiate withdraw worse than a few days of having a cold? I've had colds feel pretty bad.

 

[aiyanah]

 

[Hadoblado]

@aiyanah
Anecdotes can provide insight, but they're not even close to the same level of evidence. For instance, if the symptoms vary from person to person (which when dealing with anything psychoactive, is basically guaranteed), then all you've done is prove that some people experience it a certain way.

I was just knocked out for two days by a single starting dose of medication that "may include side effects such as drowsiness". That doesn't mean that the medication doesn't work well for other people.

@Animekitty
As above. It works differently for different people. Some people smoke their entire lives and can quit cold turkey with ease. Some people have a single cigarette and can't put the damn things down.

Very loosely and broadly, it's [heritability] x [circumstance] x [exposure].

 

[aiyanah]

of the 17 opioid addicts i've come across in clinics and around the bend they all describe their withdrawal the same way.
-ungodly tired
-joints stiffer than an ironing board
-"help me i'm freezing cold"
-"my sheets are wet"

which is then over after 1-4 days pending how long you were using.
never longer than 4 days even if we're counting 20+ years of using btw.

i experienced the same thing albeit off of 2 weeks of using the things recreationally, again after a month of doing so.
both withdrawals were 1-2 days long.
the substance itself wasn't addictive but dodging those hyphenated points above seems enough justification to go out and buy another bag when you can feel yourself slowly grinding to a temporary halt.

I was knocked out for 2 days, the guys that were actual opioid heads were knocked out for 4 at most, give them a blanket and make sure they got some food and water for when they do wake up.
by contrast the heavy drinkers were OOC for a week while they had to have their hearts monitored and given anti-stroke medication.

 

[kora]

well, there's no doubt that drug addition is tough to combat. but you gotta separate two things: 1) the psychological challenge of overcoming addiction, 2) the barrier which is represented by physical withdrawals. I don't know what his opinion on the first one is – I would have to read the book – but that statement in OP is clearly just about the physical part. You're talking about both of these things simultaneously, as if he said "opioids are easy to quit". To me, the problem is as it's manifested in that video I posted: the guy doesn't even want to try to quit, because supposedly the physical withdrawals are so bad (from what I read in the link you provided, the worst part lasts about 1-2 days, which sounds better than a flu if you ask me). In that addict's mind, it's all someone else's fault – the government doesn't provide him with the drugs, he needs his fix to do anything at all, etc.

Clearly, for all your interest in these bullet points, I am the only one so far who has bothered supplementing my understanding of them with external readings, you don't need to read the book, you can go to interviews to understand what this man is generally getting at. Either you're being underhanded and dishonest, or you're actually obtuse. I don't consider you to be a stupid man so for the moment I'm going with the former. If you are in fact being being underhanded, it means you are on some level actually ashamed of what you really think and don't want to say it explicitely, it probably means you KNOW on some level that you're ethically in the wrong. I guess it could also be trolling. Yes I'm accusing you now of willfull intellectual dishnoesty.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/2013/11/should-we-be-threatening-cocaine-addicts-with-execution/

Nice psychiatry there huh ? As a side note: Mao executed the dealers mostly, he cut off the supply train, so the title is not even accurate.

And this article https://www.theglobeandmail.com/new...ed-approach-to-drug-addiction/article1102279/

Featuring lovely gems such as :

"Mr. Daniels said he is not without compassion; he understands that many addicts are products of their environments. Many have had horrible upbringings. But that doesn't justify a drug-reduction strategy that is, in his view, fundamentally infantilizing.

"Doctors lie to addicts and addicts lie back," he said. "The addicts pretend to be ill and doctors pretend to treat them. But there is no treatment because there is nothing wrong with the addicts. It's a matter of empirical fact that everything we think we know about heroin addiction is wrong."

and :

"I suppose the argument for the safe injection site is it would reduce the number of deaths," he said. "But I don't see why we should reduce the number of deaths. It is not our responsibility to do so. It's the responsibility of the addicts themselves.

"If they want to inject themselves with heroin it's a very bad choice. If people die from it, I don't feel any particular guilt because I don't feel any responsibility for it."

And another

"Dr Dalrymple's radical solution that the only way out of this bind is to close down the drug addiction clinics and restrict medical intervention to such physical complications as abscesses, hepatitis and Aids: 'Addicts would then have to face the truth, that they are as responsible for their actions as anyone else."

from https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture...ddicted-to-getting-it-wrong-about-heroin.html

--------------------

Lets stop pretending now. This guy's not just a psychiatrist trying to be objective, he's an ideologically motivated sophist who willfully ignores (in this case neuroscientific) data to push an agenda, as can be seen from every bullet point here and these interviews AND of course the articles I posted on climate change. His general underhanded point is to minimize the fact that drug addiction produces very real psychological damage that interferes with people's autonomy and their actual capacity to make choices. He highlights the obvious physical symptoms as proof that it's just not that big a deal while ignoring the real sickness which is actually mental, it's in the BRAIN. My grandmother was a psychiatrist and she can tell you that the cravings are CHEMICAL and PHYSICAL caused, it's not just "well they're selfish and lazy duh."

So, why is he getting media exposure as a conservative voice? Because he frames his "scientific" endeavor in a partisan way ("look at these liberal bleeding heart policies succumbing to the evil manipulation of lazy fucks who have no desire to get better") Implication ? Lets cut government and public spending on healthcare sections. Implications ? LETS PAY LESS TAXES SOCIALIST POLICIES SUCK!! <- And THIS Serac is the actual reason why he appeals to you.

Also I have not watched any videos you have posted on anecdotal evidence of addicts supposedly arguing that the physical symptoms are too much. Who gives a damn? Probably they are manipulative yes, the desire above all else to continue taking something that is destroying you IS the illness. It's like pointing at someone with psychiatric delusions and saying they're just trying to get attention by pretending to have delusions.

 

[Hadoblado]

Here is an article: Click me
The journal has an impact factor of nearly 80, I don't know what a normal impact factor for medicine is, but that's high compared to what I normally work with. Scholar indicates it's been cited 550 times which is a fucking truckload.

Here's a neat figure from this paper that compares the severity of heroin to other opioids:

This isn't my area, but I trust scientists more than I trust political pundits or non-specific anecdotes. I don't know how these numbers were arrived at, but for me, scientific findings filtered through expert interpretation is my default belief if I don't know enough to arrive at my own conclusions (and when you understand just how deep the science rabbit hole goes, that quickly becomes pretty much everything).
I may have beliefs before I read a paper, but they're placeholders and subject to frequent revision.

So I guess the next question is, were the people you were around (and your own experience) specifically to do with heroin withdrawals within the first week? Because if they are not, they don't even address the issue, and if they are, then we've got to look at why your experience doesn't match up to the science.

And for the record, I don't care about this issue. If heroin withdrawal wasn't that bad, I wouldn't care. For whatever reason, I don't have much empathy for addicts.

That doesn't mean I'm blind to the heavy political tone underlying these bulletpoints. It's crazy how people think that they've got some magical insight into an issue without addressing the scientific literature. Even if science can be wrong, the findings represent a heavy investment into finding the answers the author purports to seek.

This isn't supposed to be the last word in the discussion, but to me it seems like where it should have started...

 

[Black Rose]

So, why is he getting media exposure as a conservative voice? Because he frames his "scientific" endeavor in a partisan way ("look at these liberal bleeding heart policies succumbing to the evil manipulation of lazy fucks who have no desire to get better") Implication ? Lets cut government and public spending on healthcare sections. Implications ? LETS PAY LESS TAXES SOCIALIST POLICIES SUCK!! <- And THIS Serac is the actual reason why he appeals to you.

Conservatives value individual responsibility above all else.
Liberals value fairness above all else.

The conflict is obvious.
liberals are pussies (weaklings) and conservatives are hardasses (just suck it up and deal with it).

This isn't exactly the middle but I have noticed it from certain people on other forums more conservative than this one.

If you're a pussy they don't need to respect you. Therefore what you say is just wrong.

conversely

If you don't care about fair play then you are a dishonest and untrustworthy hardass.

(respect) vs. (trust)

That's how the political spectrum manifests. It's unresolvable.

 

[kora]

Sure AK I see what you mean but when it comes to the point where you're willfully ignoring scientific data or twisting it to suit your purposes then you're just being an immoral douche, on either side of the spectrum because EVERYONE is supposed to value truth.

 

[kora]

Neuroscience of addiction : http://sci-hub.se/10.1176/appi.ajp.2018.17101174

Abstract :

Mechanisms of Psychiatric Illness
Neuroscience of Addiction: Relevance to Prevention
and Treatment
Nora D. Volkow, M.D., Maureen Boyle, Ph.D.

"Addiction, the most severe form of substance use disorder, is a chronic brain disorder molded by strong biosocial factors that has devastating consequences to individuals and to society. Our understanding of substance use disorder has advanced significantly over the last 3 decades in part due to major progress in genetics and neuroscience research and to the development of new technologies, including tools to interrogate molecular changes in specific neuronal pop-ulations in animal models of substance use disorder, as well as brain imaging devices to assess brain function and neuro-chemistry in humans. These advances have illuminated the neurobiological processes through which biological and sociocultural factors contribute to resilience against or vulnerability for drug use and addiction. The delineation of the neurocircuitry disrupted in addiction, which includes circuits that mediate reward and motivation, executive control, and emotional processing, has given us an understanding of the aberrant behaviors displayed by addicted individuals and has provided new targets for treatment. Most prominent are the disruptions of an individual’s ability to prioritize behaviors that result in long-term benefit over those that provideshort-term rewards and the increasing difficulty exerting control over these behaviors even when associated with catastrophic consequences. These advances in our understanding of brain development and of the role of genes and environment on brain structure and function have built a foundation on which to develop more effective tools to prevent and treat substance use disorder."

 

[Ex-User (14663)]

Clearly, for all your interest in these bullet points, I am the only one so far who has bothered supplementing my understanding of them with external readings, you don't need to read the book, you can go to interviews to understand what this man is generally getting at. Either you're being underhanded and dishonest, or you're actually obtuse. I don't consider you to be a stupid man so for the moment I'm going with the former. If you are in fact being being underhanded, it means you are on some level actually ashamed of what you really think and don't want to say it explicitely, it probably means you KNOW on some level that you're ethically in the wrong. I guess it could also be trolling. Yes I'm accusing you now of willfull intellectual dishnoesty.

I didn't understand a single thing from this paragraph. It seems to me that one of the problems here is that you badly want to discredit the guy wholesale, treating the world as a binary place: if you agree with someone's politics, you buy all their opinions wholesale. If you don't, they are "political pundits" and all their opinions are discarded wholesale again. Anyone who agrees with any of their opinions necessarily agrees with all their opinions. If they don't appear to have a certain opinion which they supposedly should hold as per their supposed political stance, they are being underhanded.

I have never even dreamed of being against, say, public means to help addicts. but where I would agree with [the dude – his name is too fucked up] is that it certainly doesn't help to indulge addicts in claims to how unbearable the physical withdrawals are if these claims are not true. That would entail that in addition to the psychological challenge of quitting drugs, you'll have an imaginary barrier which would be impossible to overcome.

In his own words on addition:

Addiction is a real physiological phenomenon, of course, and there are addictions to drugs from which withdrawal can actually be dangerous: alcohol is the one that springs to mind. Withdrawal from barbiturates (addiction to which is now rare) is also dangerous; the despair that follows the cessation of the regular consumption of amphetamines can lead to suicide; and even withdrawal from the tranquilliser diazepam is sometimes far worse than anything suffered by an opiate addict.

But there is no drug from which withdrawal, albeit under medical supervision, and subsequent abstention are impossible: the flesh is willing but the spirit is weak.

https://web.archive.org/web/20150623113544/http://www.newstatesman.com/node/134528

that last line sounds a bit cheesy and overconfident to me, but I get the general point: it's avoiding giving people an excuse to transfer what could be personal responsibility to an external factor out of their control. It doesn't mean it's always realistic for them to take full personal responsibility, but at least here we start with the assumption that it's conceivable.

So, why is he getting media exposure as a conservative voice? Because he frames his "scientific" endeavor in a partisan way ("look at these liberal bleeding heart policies succumbing to the evil manipulation of lazy fucks who have no desire to get better") Implication ? Lets cut government and public spending on healthcare sections. Implications ? LETS PAY LESS TAXES SOCIALIST POLICIES SUCK!! <- And THIS Serac is the actual reason why he appeals to you.

because of taxes? not even close, ma'am.

 

[Ex-User (14663)]

Here's a neat figure from this paper that compares the severity of heroin to other opioids:
View attachment 3934

I was looking through that whole article to find out what that graph is based on, or what the scale on the y-axis is, without any luck.

 

[aiyanah]

Here is an article: Click me
The journal has an impact factor of nearly 80, I don't know what a normal impact factor for medicine is, but that's high compared to what I normally work with. Scholar indicates it's been cited 550 times which is a fucking truckload.

Here's a neat figure from this paper that compares the severity of heroin to other opioids:
View attachment 3934

This isn't my area, but I trust scientists more than I trust political pundits or non-specific anecdotes. I don't know how these numbers were arrived at, but for me, scientific findings filtered through expert interpretation is my default belief if I don't know enough to arrive at my own conclusions (and when you understand just how deep the science rabbit hole goes, that quickly becomes pretty much everything).
I may have beliefs before I read a paper, but they're placeholders and subject to frequent revision.

So I guess the next question is, were the people you were around (and your own experience) specifically to do with heroin withdrawals within the first week? Because if they are not, they don't even address the issue, and if they are, then we've got to look at why your experience doesn't match up to the science.

And for the record, I don't care about this issue. If heroin withdrawal wasn't that bad, I wouldn't care. For whatever reason, I don't have much empathy for addicts.

That doesn't mean I'm blind to the heavy political tone underlying these bulletpoints. It's crazy how people think that they've got some magical insight into an issue without addressing the scientific literature. Even if science can be wrong, the findings represent a heavy investment into finding the answers the author purports to seek.

This isn't supposed to be the last word in the discussion, but to me it seems like where it should have started...

well the only 2 heroin addicts i met...one had attempted suicide so his withdrawals were more to do with "my wrists hurt like a motherfucker and i cant scratch my own arse."
he did say his withdrawal was a solitary day and he was on painkillers for his slashed wrists most of the time so it was all a blur for him.

the second one refused hospital treatment after a week, i'm guessing he went back on his merry way clicking the crystals out of his bones after playing nice with the staff at the clinic for that week.
can't speak for any withdrawals he had cause he carried his substances with him, he spent 40 minutes sucking out the alcohol from his deodorant can as an example of what type of person we're dealing with.

there might have been a girl as a third addict, but she was on lots of stuff and had gang affiliations, seemed to have more of an affinity for snorting cocain anyway and an interesting list of feats...but i digress.

i really don't think there's any science people can throw up for addicts, it all looks like an excuse to keep on being an addict to an addict.
i agree that addicts shouldn't be given sympathy lol, to do so makes them a victim when the choice was their own to take another hit.

i don't do needles btw, seems like a good way to catch some weird shit. i also can't get myself around the idea of putting in a needle of my own volition (literally why would anyone do this?)

if it's a needle it's evil
if it's white it aint right
if it has to be cracked then put it back

granted i have broken the second and third lines on this at some point.

 

[kora]

Man it's starting to look like reactionary conservatism is some kind of addiction.

I didn't understand a single thing from this paragraph. It seems to me that one of the problems here is that you badly want to discredit the guy wholesale, treating the world as a binary place: if you agree with someone's politics, you buy all their opinions wholesale. If you don't, they are "political pundits" and all their opinions are discarded wholesale again. Anyone who agrees with any of their opinions necessarily agrees with all their opinions. If they don't appear to have a certain opinion which they supposedly should hold as per their supposed political stance, they are being underhanded.

I have never even dreamed of being against, say, public means to help addicts. but where I would agree with [the dude – his name is too fucked up] is that it certainly doesn't help to indulge addicts in claims to how unbearable the physical withdrawals are if these claims are not true. That would entail that in addition to the psychological challenge of quitting drugs, you'll have an imaginary barrier which would be impossible to overcome.

And who is doing this ? Which trained medical professionals are doing this and more importantly, are they they really the norm ? He gives one unsourced example in the article you linked of a prison doctor who makes his patients overdose AND the dude gets disbarred anyway? What's the point of this ?

Look here's the classic protocol for treating drug addiction : https://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/drugfacts/treatment-approaches-drug-addiction

Oh my, medication given to reduce cravings (which Dimplymple repeatedly refuses to mention are symptoms of withdrawal) AS WELL as flu like symptoms ! How terrible ! All those prick smokers cutting off smoking by using nicotine patches, how weak willed of them, they should stop being pussies and quit cold turkey, let me write loads of articles on how overly sentimental prescribed nicotine patches are and how Smokers are so manipulative, just trying to get more nicotine through any means possible.

It was silly of me to assume your intentions, I can't prove them either way. I don't want to talk about yours, I want to talk about his. I don't WANT to discredit this guy wholesale, he bloody well discredits himself provided a modicum of intellectual honesty. I'm showing you that if you look at research on addiction, his views are misguided at best and dangerous at worst.

Addiction is a real physiological phenomenon, of course, and there are addictions to drugs from which withdrawal can actually be dangerous: alcohol is the one that springs to mind. Withdrawal from barbiturates (addiction to which is now rare) is also dangerous; the despair that follows the cessation of the regular consumption of amphetamines can lead to suicide; and even withdrawal from the tranquilliser diazepam is sometimes far worse than anything suffered by an opiate addict.

But there is no drug from which withdrawal, albeit under medical supervision, and subsequent abstention are impossible: the flesh is willing but the spirit is weak.

https://web.archive.org/web/20150623113544/http://www.newstatesman.com/node/134528

that last line sounds a bit cheesy and overconfident to me, but I get the general point: it's avoiding giving people an excuse to transfer what could be personal responsibility to an external factor out of their control. It doesn't mean it's always realistic for them to take full personal responsibility, but at least here we start with the assumption that it's conceivable.

Again in this post, he is focusing ENTIRELY on the external physiological symptoms (he briefly conceded that sometimes ppl quitting amphetamines get suicidal.)

Did you read my posts at all and the various quotes I linked? Did you think I wouldn't bother reading the article that you yourself have linked? The quote you post is immediately followed by this :

"Real as addiction is, then, it is not quite the enslavement that it is often portrayed as. No substance known to man is capable of binding the mind with such hoops of psychic steel that cannot be burst asunder by an effort of will. There is no addictive drug from which abstention has not been achieved by many of those once addicted to it.

Contrary to what is often claimed (in the name of compassion), addiction is more a moral, cultural or spiritual problem than it is a physiological or medical one. This is strenuously denied because of a characteristic modern form of sentimentality, according to which troubled people who need help must be immaculate victims of circumstance who contribute nothing to their own downfall."

He is quite literally saying that addiction is more a matter of personal choice than physiological elements ! There is strictly no mention of what addiction entails on a neural and psychological level, namely, the actual REAL and DOCUMENTED effects it has on the ability to make CHOICES.

I could rephrase him like this :
"SJW's are mollycoddling addicts out of their personal responsibility !"

Also you clearly missed the quotes from him that I linked in my last post so I'm putting them back in :

In this one it is reported that he actively supports cutting the public funding for the treatment of addicts :

"Dr Dalrymple's radical solution that the only way out of this bind is to close down the drug addiction clinics and restrict medical intervention to such physical complications as abscesses, hepatitis and Aids: 'Addicts would then have to face the truth, that they are as responsible for their actions as anyone else."

In this one he explicitly and unequivocally states that there is nothing "wrong" with addicts other that the flu like stuff from quitting and that they're essentially just pretendsies saying they can't stop self destructing through drug use (also evil lib doctors are in it for personal profit) :

"Doctors lie to addicts and addicts lie back," he said. "The addicts pretend to be ill and doctors pretend to treat them. But there is no treatment because there is nothing wrong with the addicts. It's a matter of empirical fact that everything we think we know about heroin addiction is wrong."

Let's do a thought experiment Serac. I'm an insane scientist and you're my patient. I tell you I'm going to operate on your brain and make you feel really awesome. You accept because hey, who doesn't want to feel awesome? Meanwhile, whilst I'm performing the operation, I also go into the part of your brain that deals with choice and modify this so that I can make you do my bidding, I make it so that all you want to do is sit in a chair and have me operate on your brain. Obviously this results in you giving "consent" again and again. You even lie to people to be able to keep doing it. You tell people it's UNBEARABLE if I stop operating on you (actually just for fun, I have made it so that if you go too long between ops You start to get flu symptoms.) I then write long articles explaining how you could stop if you JUST had the willpower and how you have a "moral and spiritual corruption" that is preventing you from doing so. That's what this guy is doing.

___________

That's strike two from this guy. He bulshitted and tried to manipulate opinion on climate change for ideological purposes and now we see him bulshitting and trying to manipulate opinions on addicts for ideological purposes. How many shots does he get before we realize that he's blinded by ideology?

 

[redbaron]

ahh, the backpedaling has begun

it certainly doesn't help to indulge addicts in claims to how unbearable the physical withdrawals are

1. who is even doing this? do you presume to know the bearability of withdrawals in each drug user, to a degree of accuracy that you'd know when it was being exaggerated or not?

2. empathy towards patients has been demonstrated as one of the key factors in recovery. when people feel like they're underatood, they respond better to other parts of the treatment process

so when an addict is going through withdrawals and mentions it being unbearable, seeing as we have robust science that clearly shows the significant impact of addiction on a person, and that their stress is not just physical, but emotional and psychological - we take the empathetic approach, proven to improve patient outcomes.

rather than assuming or communicating, "oh it can't be THAT bad, it's barely worse than the flu!"

 

[Hadoblado]

I was looking through that whole article to find out what that graph is based on, or what the scale on the y-axis is, without any luck.

Yeah - I think there were some papers that it referred back to, they're presumably the source. Regardless, my point isn't that the science I presented is necessarily good or the last word or even especially relevant. It's that science hasn't really had a word in this conversation and that's where it should have started.

If, as portrayed by that figure (and presumably representing scientific consensus though again, not my area), heroin has a completely different pattern of withdrawal symptoms, then the phrase "opiates such as heroin" demonstrates a lack of correspondence with science. Is he talking about heroin or is he talking about other opiates? From everything I've read, people tend to treat heroin withdrawal differently and yet this isn't being acknowledged.

There's a fundamental issue with the way the discussion is playing out if we can get this far without even knowing which drugs the original claim was about.

@aiyanah
I didn't say they shouldn't be given sympathy. It's just not something I'm currently concerned about.

i really don't think there's any science people can throw up for addicts, it all looks like an excuse to keep on being an addict to an addict.

This is ridiculous. You don't know the science (and neither do I), but that doesn't mean there isn't any. If I type in 'opiate withdrawal' to google scholar I get over 16,000 articles since 2014. I think a far better conclusion would be that we're both uninformed and should therefore keep an open mind.

 

[Ex-User (14663)]

And who is doing this ? Which trained medical professionals are doing this and more importantly, are they they really the norm ? He gives one unsourced example in the article you linked of a prison doctor who makes his patients overdose AND the dude gets disbarred anyway? What's the point of this ?

uhm.. I'm confused. If you claim that no one is doing that, are you saying that you and everyone else agree with his statement that withdrawal symptoms from opioids are not really unbearable?

Look here's the classic protocol for treating drug addiction : https://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/drugfacts/treatment-approaches-drug-addiction

Oh my, medication given to reduce cravings (which Dimplymple repeatedly refuses to mention are symptoms of withdrawal) AS WELL as flu like symptoms ! How terrible ! All those prick smokers cutting off smoking by using nicotine patches, how weak willed of them, they should stop being pussies and quit cold turkey, let me write loads of articles on how overly sentimental prescribed nicotine patches are and how Smokers are so manipulative, just trying to get more nicotine through any means possible.

no one has claimed that medication to ease withdrawal symptoms is not in existence. But very few cigarette smokers claim that it is impossible to quit without nicotine patches, and that consequently, they are completely without reponsibility for their situation unless someone else provides them with them.

I'm showing you that if you look at research on addiction, his views are misguided at best and dangerous at worst.

what research? so far in this thread, no one has referenced any source that suggests opioid withdrawals, including heorin, pose an insurmountable challenge in terms of physical symptoms. so far we still only know that 1) symptoms are flu-like, and 2) they peak around 2 days after going cold turkey.

Again in this post, he is focusing ENTIRELY on the external physiological symptoms (he briefly conceded that sometimes ppl quitting amphetamines get suicidal.)

yes, because the physical symptoms is what is under scrutiny here. this is like me saying "I can't quit nicotine because the physical symptoms are unbearable", and then someone else pointing out that the physical symptoms are actually not unbearable, and then me going "BUT ADDICTION CHANGES MY BRAIN AND I CAN GET SUICIDAL IF I DONT GET MY CIGARETTES ". It's called moving the goalposts.

Also you clearly missed the quotes from him that I linked in my last post so I'm putting them back in :
[...]

yes, I took note of those quotes. But I didn't understand what their purpose was other than appealing to emotion.

Let's do a thought experiment Serac. I'm an insane scientist and you're my patient. I tell you I'm going to operate on your brain and make you feel really awesome. You accept because hey, who doesn't want to feel awesome? Meanwhile, whilst I'm performing the operation, I also go into the part of your brain that deals with choice and modify this so that I can make you do my bidding, I make it so that all you want to do is sit in a chair and have me operate on your brain. Obviously this results in you giving "consent" again and again. You even lie to people to be able to keep doing it. You tell people it's UNBEARABLE if I stop operating on you (actually just for fun, I have made it so that if you go too long between ops You start to get flu symptoms.) I then write long articles explaining how you could stop if you JUST had the willpower and how you have a "moral and spiritual corruption" that is preventing you from doing so. That's what this guy is doing.

that's not really how opioids work though. As far as I know, a heroin addict is still a sentient being. watch the video of that addict I posted earlier. he acknowledges that heroin is ruining his life, but he also states that he cannot quit because of the physical withdrawals. here is another example:


this dude is actually pretty much saying: yeah the physical withdrawal symptoms suck, but I could quit, I just don't want to because I like the feeling of heroin too much and it's not too bad to live on the street. he's not some possessed, brainless creature like the one you describe in your example.

also note, funnily enough, that he says using methadone to quit heroin is much worse than just quitting heroin

 

[aiyanah]

@aiyanah
I didn't say they shouldn't be given sympathy. It's just not something I'm currently concerned about.

i really don't think there's any science people can throw up for addicts, it all looks like an excuse to keep on being an addict to an addict.

This is ridiculous. You don't know the science (and neither do I), but that doesn't mean there isn't any. If I type in 'opiate withdrawal' to google scholar I get over 16,000 articles since 2014. I think a far better conclusion would be that we're both uninformed and should therefore keep an open mind.

i have experienced the "science" first hand (and second hand), all the shit being peddled is excuses lol.
there's no other way to say it. withdrawal is never as bad as advertised unless you're dealing with alcohol withdrawal.
quitting is genuinely mind over matter and has little to do with whatever your psychologist might have told you or writing out your life story or not having access to the streets.

given a 95% failure rate at rehab clinics one can safely assume that withdrawal wasn't scary enough to keep people away from the narcotics.
"wow i made it through that horrible withdrawal, never gonnna do that again."
2 days later that same person is ringing up their dealer from the payphones within the building.

 

[Hadoblado]

Okay just so we're clear:

Your experience is more important than any amount of scientific inquiry? Is this an accurate representation of your view?

 

[aiyanah]

yes lol, if the science doesn't match up with real life testing then the science is incorrect.
the science does this itself years after something has been copied by everyone else attempting to look smarter than the other monkeys.

 

[redbaron]

at least you're honest enough to admit you're in an echo chamber

 

[aiyanah]

at least I'm honest enough to do the research myself

 

[redbaron]

oh sorry i didn't realise you'd researched this topic!

where can i find your published study?

 

[washti]

how big are your samples?

 

[aiyanah]

oh sorry i didn't realise you'd researched this topic!

where can i find your published study?

sorry, i didn't know those published studies had any first person experience with narcotics.
must be some amazing scientists to be coked out and taking measurements.
would love to see them try that with DMT

how big are your samples?

realistically my sample size is 300+ but that would include alcoholics and people whose drug of choice i can't pinpoint and realistically don't care about.
go to a few NA meetings perhaps hearing people who do drugs talk about drugs will enlighten you.

 

[redbaron]

what was your control group?

can you outline the methodology you used to investigate the effects of opiate withdrawal on participants?

 

[Ex-User (14663)]

even in a "rigorous" field like computer science, about 50% of publications is more or less garbage. In economics – maybe 80%. I don't know what it is in social sciences, but it's quite naive to treat academic research as religion, and "trust" "scientists". Sample size + academic paper doesn't amount to anything unless you can personally critique and verify the contents of the research. Argument from authority – very much pervasive in this thread – applies as a fallacy even (or maybe especially so) when it comes to academia.

 

[aiyanah]

what was your control group?

can you outline the methodology you used to investigate the effects of opiate withdrawal on participants?

you ask people about it....
...amazing innit

you can use the staff at these clinics as control groups.
if you mean for withdrawal...use the pot heads, they just get cold when they're in withdrawal, probably a worse withdrawal then the opioids if i'm being honest about it.

i'm curious, when did this science report become the word of god? i am a sinner, i am telling you the experience i had while i sinned and how i discovered god at the end of it.
you are the priest who read the bible back to front but never left the church, and you are telling me it is impossible that i found god.

 

[redbaron]

even in a "rigorous" field like computer science, about 50% of publications is more or less garbage. In economics – maybe 80%. I don't know what it is in social sciences, but it's quite naive to treat academic research as religion, and "trust" "scientists". Sample size + academic paper doesn't amount to anything unless you can personally critique and verify the contents of the research. Argument from authority – very much pervasive in this thread – applies as a fallacy even (or maybe especially so) when it comes to academia.

do you have cause to believe that the neuroscience and biology on opiate addiction is garbage? what percentage is more or less garbage in these fields?

if you do believe the science in these areas is garbage, please demonstrate why.

can you point to any instances of this occurring?

~

or on the climate science issue, what percentage of data and publications do you believe are 'more or less garbage'? how are you assessing this as garbage? lack of replicability? lack of falsifiability? p-hacking?

when multiple independent researchers corroborate the same results across a large number of studies, does that indicate reliability in your eyes? if not, what does?

interesting that your opinion has now shifted from, "people need to review the science before they make an argument" to, "many publications are more or less garbage"

what caused this shift in your attitude? before you were simply unsure of the science, now you seem to be calling the validity of science as a whole into question - why is that?

 

[redbaron]

what was your control group?

can you outline the methodology you used to investigate the effects of opiate withdrawal on participants?

you ask people about it....
...amazing innit

you can use the staff at these clinics as control groups.
if you mean for withdrawal...use the pot heads, they just get cold when they're in withdrawal, probably a worse withdrawal then the opioids if i'm being honest about it.

did you record responses?

how many opiate addicts did you talk to? how long had they been addicted to opiates? what withdrawal symptoms did they present with?

were the symptoms each person presented with consistent with one another? to what degree did individual experiences of opiate withdrawals vary between individuals?

was this variance in withdrawal symptoms, if any, at all correlated with time spent addicted to opiates?

were assessments of neurological differences between control and sample groups conducted? if so, were there any significant differences between the two?