What is the matter with our country and addictions: alcohol, crack, opiods?

[CTyankee]

David Brooks had a column in the nyt about the latest panic over opiods. It made me wonder: is there any other country in the world with as many addictions as we have?

I think this is a serious question and important. I can understand that ME countries might have addicts of hash and are lulled into a state of inebriation at their pipes. That seems cultural to me. And it is a way to control large numbers of people. But we seem to have numerous addictions to various substances.

If my guess is right then we have serious problems...

[RKP5637]

1. The US is a very disturbed nation with many filled with anxieties and problems, and it's

no wonder.

[EllieBC]

2. We have a very big problem with opiod related deaths in BC

http://globalnews.ca/news/3190108/drug-overdose-among-the-top-10-causes-of-death-in-bc/

[CTyankee]

3. Is that related to weather and isolation?

I remember a book I read that discussed what a nation of drunks we were back during westward expansion and the isolation of people in the plains states. We drank a lot of ale.

[Stargazer99]

5. not only drinking/drugs also people are killing themselves

In one of the riches countries in the world...something is wrong in this nation and it isn't because we are drunks

[CTyankee]

6. The book pointed out that during the early 19th century, it got to where the

drinking didn't work any more. I know that when I stopped smoking years ago I did it because people treated smokers as social outcasts and I hated the way the smoke made my clothing smell awful.

Americans had vast areas of land, also, to grow corn. We had to do something with all that corn besides put it in our food. Voila, grain alcohol! Potent stuff. The workforces in cities suffered from bad hangovers and lost time in the newly founded factories.

And certainly, feelings of alienation contributed, as it seems to do today.

[MicaelS]

12. Lack of potable water was a big factor.

If you wanted something safe to drink, often your only choice was alcohol. Including children.

[EllieBC]

13. Well it's a nationwide issue. I would guess it's more related

to doctors being told opioids weren't addictive and the prescribing of them so freely for so long.

And now they've cracked down on that but people with chronic pain issues (I have a friend with ankylosing spondylitis) have to jump through hoops to get the medications they need.

[CTyankee]

26. How can we solve this? I mean how to separate the sufferers from the addicts who

aren't suffering (but who need help). That's hard to do.

[EllieBC]

27. I think there needs to be increased specialization

in pain management. Those health professionals can work out better pain management plans as opposed to, "here's the strongest stuff we have. Good luck.".

My friend with AS said that her doctor who is very realistic and she is too about pain. Their goal is not complete eradication of pain but a functional level of comfort. So that needs to be a conversation between patient and doctor. Her doctor is also a doctor who believes in starting with small doses and building up while having the patient check in with themselves on pain levels.

Contrast this with an ER doctor who tried to give me hydromorohone when I herniated a disk. Or the dentist who tried to give me Vicodin after 2 wisdom teeth needed to be extracted.

We also need to increase coverage of things like PT. I am fortunate because my husband works somewhere that has an extended benefits plan which buffs the provincial health plan. Under the standard provincial health plan I would get maybe 5 PT sessions. That's not going to cut it for most injuries.

[Stargazer99]

4. If we start talking to each other instead of dividing one against the other

Dividing and blaming each other is a tactic your "owners" use to distract you on an emotional level and not to analyse the situation to find solutions to the problems. People, even the very young, have been killing themselves more than in the past. Most families are barely hanging on financially. The conservative says go get a job, knowing damn well jobs have gone overseas (cheaper labor)
(the owner's even get a tax break for such lack of loyalty to their own country). How about business/commerce start being responsible and loyal to the country that allowed them to have such success? I see labor being drained of what few assets they have (homes, etc-see reverse mortgages, interest rates beyond the limits used in the past, educational loans that take a life time to pay out, medical care that destroys families.
When I was young in the 50's & 60's a foreign enitity could not buy an American asset-who profited by releasing this law?
One person could earn enough to support a family, buy a home, car and college education for the children. Where is all that money going? When 1% of this nation has more wealth than the rest of the nation...do the math.
The well off are putting their money in offshore accounts to save taxes-well really they aren't starving, homeless even with paying the taxes like in prior years.
those of you who do not profit from this setup...when are you going to wake up?

[CTyankee]

8. we also don't have a social safety net like many other civilized nations.

In fact, we spurn it because the RW kept telling us those countries were wrong and we were right. In advanced countries with strong safety nets people who do have addictions can get the help they need.

[RedWedge]

7. It's tied up with a bunch of different issues: Economic insecurity, social insecurity, a lack of

quality and accessible health care, a lack of quality and accessible mental health care, a culture that values busy-ness and work over emotional growth and leisure, a culture that sees addiction as a moral issue rather than a physical one, a low value placed on public health and public health initiatives, and so on.

[raccoon]

17. ITA with what you said, and IMO this culture doesn't value emotional growth AT ALL.

a culture that values busy-ness and work over emotional growth and leisure,

[msongs]

9. religion is the worst addiction nt

[mythology]

10. Addiction is a human problem

Eastern Europe has higher rates of alcoholism abuse than the U.S.

[CTyankee]

11. Quite right. Culturally, I think heavy drinking is their way of coping with the significant

problems that exist there and probably have exissted for a long time.

[Kentonio]

21. Yet the US has the highest level of prescription drug addiction on the planet.

[Warren DeMontague]

14. I think the real addiction here is the obsession with telling other people what to do.

Human beings have been altering their consciousness for tens of thousands of years. Other animals do so as well, any chance they get. Some entheogens tend to be better for us, less physiologically addictive, and even more psychologically beneficial/transformative/growth-facilitating for many people (cannabis, psychedelics) whereas others tend more towards the addictive, habit forming or growth stunting (opiates, alcohol) however, one size does not fit all nor is it anything but a childlike ridiculous oversimplification to say "drugs are bad" or "drugs are good".

It is also silly to assert that somehow "we" are unique in this regard. Russians drink a frightening amount of alcohol. Opiate use and addiction takes place worldwide. Etc etc.

We are long past overdue for a mature approach as a society and species to issues of substance use, abuse, and addiction (which are not necessarily the same thing).

As for the so-called "opiate crisis", what is really missing is real debate on appropriate responses, specifically taking a long overdue harm reduction approach to things like heroin addiction, even though such programs have worked in places like scandanavia.

Rather, the knee jerk response- no doubt driven by a DEA that sees its primary budgetary excuse for existence, the war on marijuana, rapidly losing public support-- involves the same tired and failed rhetoric of "crackdowns" and "war" and "increased restrictions and control"... several pieces of fallout are already taking place, all of them easily predictable to anyone who has been paying attention, the first one being increasing difficulty for pain patients to get adequate pain management, because "we need to crack down on prescription drugs, because addicts" --- well, great, but then pain patients suffer (and are told to do yoga, or suck it up) ...meanwhile, the addicts- along with some pain patients-- just move to the black market.

Are there people who have problems with prescription opiates, or heroin? Well, yes, of course.

But only one piece of public policy has been shown to reduce levels of both heroin and prescription drug use in states-- know what that is?

Marijuana legalization.

Wow. Gee, thats odd. And here we thought 40 years of Nixon's drug war was going so well.

But facts like that simply dont compute with the puritan/prohibitionist mindset (witness Jeff Sessions' statements on the matter)

[nikibatts]

15. Keeping us high and drunk so that the powers can rob us blind like they did in Russia.

Check out the history of Russia for the past 60 years. The people (not the pols or elites) can't even think straight. Their story of national alcoholism and addiction cost them a huge defeat in Afghanistan and blinded them to the biggest economic swindle in their history and it is still going on.

Most of their oligarchs live here, own property here and intend to stay here, raise rents and housing costs, support folks like 45 and infiltrate our political, social, and economic systems to either destroy or control them. And they are doing a fairly good job of it so far.

Until a larger portion of their population sobers up and joins the reformists and anti-Putin ranks, Russia will be like a national gulag warehousing "the others" while their elite travel, immigrate, and buy up the western democracies and control their dumbed-down populace.

[lindysalsagal]

16. My 2 cents: we are a species that evolved to reproduce rather than be happy. After our reproductive

Years pass We can no longer afford our own upkeep. Without cottage industries and local farming, we have nothing productive to do. We live longer but are overweight, with all the health problems that entails. And with fast food poison on every corner, we're slowly killing ourselves.

[Lucinda]

18. Our govt keeps people poor, hence escapism, and our food supply keeps people sick, hence opiods

I have chronic pain and know of soooooooo many people who got screwed out of good pain management, and went the opiate or harder route. A large part of the reason people were fighting back so much when the govt wanted to kill Kratom, is that so many have found it a good way to step back their harder drug/opiate addictions.

[Warren DeMontague]

22. Exactly. The authoritarian "solutions" pretty much always make the situation worse.

But, you know, the alternative is authoritarians not being able to control the behavior of other people as much, and where's the fun in that.

[RandiFan1290]

19. For a lot of Americans

It is a life of work, pain, and restlessness.

We all can't take off on a European vacation to forget our troubles.

[Warren DeMontague]

20. And, some people just enjoy getting a good buzz on, too.

That's part of it.

[mnhtnbb]

23. Addictions are all self-destructive behaviors and voting for Trump will turn out to be

equally self-destructive.

Yes, America has serious problems and they are showing up in politics.

[FDRsGhost]

24. Well I got addicted to Oxy while hospitalized

After I had surgery 3 years ago I was given Oxycodone and my body got addicted to it. Never in a million years would I thought this would happen. Ever.

I understand why so many get addicted now. It isn't the "buzz" or whatever, it's more along the fear of withdrawing from it because it's incredibly awful. Even under a hospitalized setting, given Adderall to combat the side effects, it was horrific.

The shaking, the cold sweats, the anxiety, it's like anything I've ever known and to say it sucked would be a understatement. It took about 3 weeks to fully recover from it and I will never touch another Schedule II opioid again.

[DFW]

25. Don't know about crack and opiods

But Northern and Eastern Europe have devastating alcohol addiction.

[hatrack]

28. Human nature - people enjoy getting fucked up; Brooks apparently doesn't get that . . .

Key difference is that people have so many more options than the old jug of beer as in days of yore (or bowl of kava or handful of peyote buttons).

Now we have meth and synthetics and they work even better - which is precisely the problem.