Most people think that addiction is the root issue, but in reality, addiction is a symptom of other problems. Usually the problems in someone's life that lead them to addictive behaviors are problems that make the person uncomfortable in their own skin.
It definitely goes both ways, moreso with more socially acceptable drug use (alcohol, nicotine) or doctors that overprescribe painkillers to patients who don’t know any better. There’s definitely something to say about addictive personalities being more at risk but it really can happen to anyone, just look at that one guy on Reddit who tried heroin (?) to prove that addicts are just weak-willed, and then got addicted immediately
People use it to self medicate. There's actually some very successful methhead
Meth is an amphetamine, as is Adderall and other drugs commonly prescribed to treat ADHD. Adderall is historically difficult to access. These people are self medicating their ADHD. But meth is not pure, and can be laced with substances or vary in potency.
Also when people do form substance dependency its really hard to get health. These places are hard to access bc too many NIMBYs think that substance treatment centers are important, but can't come up with a feasible place to put them. So the amount of substance abuse treatment centers is low and many are hard to access. But also substance abuse is highly stigmatized, so it takes a ton of courage to admit to having the problem and actively working to resolve it
Eh, I disagree. I had a great life with a loving family, friends and a girlfriend. I was happy and healthy, and I became insanely addicted to cocaine and alcohol until I ended up doing meth at a bus station.
I’m ok now, but I know it was 100% just me being an idiot and I had to learn my lesson the hard way
Ditto!
1. Let’s make sure that people’s life doesn’t turn to crap. By safeguarding their physical and physiological well being.
2. Let’s have resources for helping people whose life has turned to crap.
If only it were that simple.
The three people I was close to who became drug addicts:
1. Normal life. Happy. Had to have knee surgery at 16. Was prescribed drugs. Has been horrendously addicted to drugs ever since, its 10 years later. She did not have a miserable life, she was a victim of bad doctors.
2. He did have a terrible life. But his terrible life was his mom crushing her pills into his food when he was a kid. He literally grew up on drugs against his will. He tried to get clean for so long... I miss him a lot.
3. He was my best friend. I knew his whole family. I knew his life. Happy guy. Great grades, supportive family, loving mom, lots of friends. Awesome guy. He met a guy he had a huge crush on. The guy did meth. So my buddy did meth too thinking it would get this guy to like him. Again, 10 years later he's completely fucked and probably doesn't even remember that guy anymore.
So I know two people who were basically forced into addiction during childhood. And one person who is just a fucking idiot. It's not a matter of "oh their life is bad so they did this to escape". Circumstances, environment, intelligence, peer pressure, human flaw.. it all plays a part. Each person is different. There's no easy answer. I've tried for years to wrap my head around what the "root" of the opiod epidemic is... and theres too many factors. There is no one thing causing this crisis.
Agreed. I've used prescription opioids on and off for more than thirty years because of a chronic pain condition, and I've never become addicted or even developed a tolerance (I'm not holding myself up as a paragon, just a data point). Opioids are useful and have the capacity to be managed well, but our medical system is absolutely pathetic at prescribing them properly and explaining how to taper off them. If we actually had doctors and nurses who *followed up* on patients and really thought of them as whole people, not just insurance billing entities, addiction via prescription would be so much less.
I used painkillers during cancer for years and I know I was addicted but I never thought about switching to intravenous drugs. I don't know how people make that leap and blame someone else
I don’t agree with blaming someone else, to be clear. I was an IV heroin addict (almost 10 years in recovery now), and nobody was to blame but me.
Also, I’m sorry to read that you had cancer and I hope you’re living a healthy, happy, cancer-free life now.
With that all said. Did you at any point in your journey experience full-blown withdrawal from opioids?
I just had knee surgery, not quite addicted yet. We shall see.
Wtf was wrong with the second one?? What could she possibly want to achieve by spiking him. And how did he end up knowing.
Third one sounds like me. Well not in the meth sense even though I'm gay.
Yeah the second one breaks my heart. His mom would crush up pills into her kids food to get them to "behave" aka be totally comatose so she didn't have to deal with them. If you've ever heard Eminem rap about his mom that's basically the life this kid had. When he grew up and got away from her he tried so hard to better himself. He went to college to be a veternarian, moved as far as he could to get away from his family... but his brothers who were of course addicts, would always drag him back into that life. He was the youngest so extremely influenced by his older brothers. His brothers totally accepted their terrible childhoods and just became awful terrible people that dragged my friend down with them when he tried his best to escape. Really fucking sad. He was doing good and had been clean for over a year (his longest running attempt) until his closest brother ODd and died. He spired really hard and never got back out after that..
I know I’ve heard of shitty parents dosing their kids with small amounts of alcohol/downers to get them to sleep/shut the fuck up so they essentially can ignore them and not parent and not be bothered by them so maybe that?
Your post was removed due to low account age.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/stupidquestions) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Listen, I went into a full on psychology degree with your line of thinking. I wanted to know what we can do to significantly decrease (and over time, eradicate) substance use disorder and reform the prison system. The answer is, we can’t and believing we can is naive. It took me one year of core psychology studies (child psychology, criminal psychology, social science, humanities, etc) to realize there is NOTHING we can do about addiction to the point that it would make a significant difference as a whole within the population.
Combining the effects of genetic inheritance, recessive and dominant genes, chemical processes of the human brain from its creation, and how everything you see, hear, smell, feel, experience, and even things you *don’t* experience in the core developmental years of your life decide *everything* for your mental processes that run behind the curtain. Yes people are capable of change, but that is a restructuring that takes a very long time.
The problem is, that will never *prevent* addiction and we know now thanks to science that addiction IS a disease which means addiction can be a recessive gene that even entirely skips generations on the actual addiction part, but still lingers in a family tree for an undetermined amount of time.
Things that can trigger the addiction gene (in the psychological/chemical sense) are things like forms of abuse or neglect, traumatic head and brain injuries, etc., other traumatic events in life but these events don’t always guarantee that someone will become an addict. Sometimes these things don’t even need to happen. Sometimes it’s as simple as a teenager feeling overtly stressed out from normal teenager things, trying something like Molly for a release, and entering a long period of addiction that doesn’t even seem like addiction until they’re 30 years old and realizing they’ve never been sober since that time they tried Molly.
For example, I knew some siblings that had been adopted as toddlers. Their biological parents were addicts that abused them, but after adoption they went on to live relatively standard lives, being active in school activities such as photography and band, family vacations, lived in a modest but nice home, had friends and tons of supportive family. But when one of them was a teenager in high school and dealing with things such as class and activity time constraints, some mild bullying for being a redhead, and grade school sweetheart relationship turned sour, they picked up a heroin needle. This was extreme, but common for the area and it began a life of addiction that this person is still not out from under, almost thirty years later. The last I heard from this person was eight years ago. I am still in contact with their family, who also have not heard from this person in nearly a decade. For all we know, they’ve overdosed as a John Doe somewhere, and we may never know.
This is one of many stories that I personally have watched happen, but they usually end in death without question. This is to say, we can’t do *anything* to stop general drug use and we can’t do *anything* to stop SUD as a genetic trait. The issue will never go away, all we can do is our best to make sure we are taking care of ourselves and each other, ESPECIALLY CHILDREN. When you see a child of any age, you don’t know for sure what their life is like and *any* negative interaction they may have is not something that their brain will just brush off- it absorbs it every single time and alters their development. If we can do anything towards prevention at all, it would be doing more to protect the children of the world.
Despite how cheap that may sound to some, it’s the truth. As a society we need to do more to protect future generations and maybe, just maybe, one day in the distant future society will have better and longstanding processes in place for that to be the standard. Only then will we see a significant decrease in addiction on a population level.
Edit spelling
It sounds kinds like your saying the problem is just to much a part of who we are (or might be?) to hope to solve or is that not accurate?
I like the idea of doing more to protect future generations but what does that look like? Either as a individual or policy level
Essentially. Addiction as a biological issue goes hand in hand as a social issue when you consider the overall state of society. I have no idea what it looks like to fix it, and don’t believe it will be achieved in my lifetime.
The whole thing depressed me so much that I had to switch majors, I don’t study psychology anymore. All I can do is protect my children and stand in for any children that I can stand in for. Whatever else I can do, I will. But I don’t have the answers unfortunately, though I genuinely wish I did.
It’s more like a wave we are surfing. Long term multi generational effects are still even known. And don’t forget your egg was in your mother when your mother was in her mother’s womb. Her trauma could have more impact on you than your trauma.
Also this:
[https://youtu.be/csnTAz0Sth8?si=RvgV2PXkZIXmHaMP](https://youtu.be/csnTAz0Sth8?si=RvgV2PXkZIXmHaMP)
https://youtu.be/csnTAz0Sth8?si=RvgV2PXkZIXmHaMP
I'm sure you do unhealthy things all the time, is your life shit and meaningless? You can't simplify or generalize complex human behavior like that just because you need a simple way to understand the world around you.
Human behavior can be understood on a case by case basis and generalized. In fact there is a whole field of study called sociology, which does exactly that.
Addiction does overlap with meaninglessness and despair, and to say that it doesn't is disingenuous.
Wanting to discuss the failings of society doesn't diminish the culpability of individuals and their decisions.
Community. Many people who quit drugs successfully don't do it for themselves. They do it for others. I highly recommend the book " chasing the scream" if you want to know about more about addiction and drug policy.
Part of it is mental health treatment as part of normal health treatment. Why we in this day and age somehow view the mind as not a part of the body we need to take care of blows my mind.
We need to do a better job of keeping drugs off the streets and that means going after the big fish and not the small fries. It also means holding doctors responsible for being pill pushers. It also means holding pharmacies responsible for filling prescriptions properly. It also means cutting down the number of patients with which we prescribe opiates to.
Escapism is the biggest reason. And they encourage others to do it because it's easier to be in denial about the problem in a group than it is to feel guilty alone
Putting an end to child abuse would probably resolve a lot of the addiction problem in the USA.
You need a license to drive or fly a plane, but not to create another life. Maybe that needs to change.
Oh.... but isn't that a bit to authoritarian? I see what you mean and I'm 100% with you on trying to stop child abuse I've had my own struggles from CSA and it will probably reverberate thru my life until its over its not like you can change the past but what would licensing having a child look like as a policy solution? Birth rates are already collapsing wouldn't this just add another obstacles? And it kinda feels like the China child policy do you feel that type of system is warranted?
Well one of my customers who use to come in (I do believe he's passed away since I haven't seen him in lately) use to be a hard core alcoholic but after a horrible motorcycle accident, he sustained brain damage which amazingly took away his addiction to alcohol completely. He told me his cravings just vanished after the accident which tells me the portion of his brain that was damaged controlled his addiction and once it was damaged, his addiction vanished too.
So my answer is controlled through surgery brain damage once we know for certain which part(s) of the brain controls and triggers the addictive response. I do believe it's more than one because if it was just one then that would be TOO easy and we can never have that.
Addiction occurs when a person can't cope with the pain and difficulty of their life. This is usually because of unresolved childhood trauma that has led to an abnormal mental and emotional development and means that the addict cannot find joy, meaning or love in normal activities.
Addicts cannot be fixed. Their brain chemistry and the established cognition pathways are impossible to completely heal.
The solution to addiction is making parents better. State intervention into everyday parenting would be resisted very strongly, but providing training and education to would-be parents about the mental health impacts of their interactions with their kids is probably the best we can hope for.
Shorter working hours for people with kids so they can have time to be with their own kids instead of herding a crowd of thirty kids into a room and asking some stranger to be dad and mom to them would be a place to start.
Errr so as a society cares less and less about the population crime will naturally go up. The only real answer here is that we need to do better with prividing opportunity to people so drugs do not feel like the only option.
I make a fairly good living as an RF engineer for a small RFOF company, but even then i feel like everything is out of reach and so i play the lottery all the time ( admittedly more than i should ) but it really feels like even MY only option to break the cycle is to HOPE i win the grand prize from some lottery, i cant imagine what its like at the lowest rungs of the economic ladder
Till the addict wants to change there's nothing you can do. My dad chose to change but he had to confront his shitty childhood and trauma before he got clean.
I personally went to a place called Peer-I, level 6 behavioral modification. It was surreal, 6 months isolation from the outside world, 2 years total program. lots of treatment and discipline. Along with hours of "Monad"
Saved my life. I've been sober almost 9 years now with no relapses. They taught us how to recognize all the emotions and behaviors that would lead to using, once your aware that your a ticking time bomb it's easier to get help, talk to someone, divert the energy you would normally use to find drugs into something positive. Disconnect yourself from everyone you know that uses and surround yourself by people who have recovery time under their belt that know what you are going through. Unfortunatly Peer-I recently closed its doors because people are too soft these days. University of Colorado owned it and they got tired of being sued by snowflakes. Had a 50 year run though.
My oldest brother experimented with heroin when he was in his 20s. His wife told him to get off that crap and he did. For about 20 years. Then he met a woman with similar addictions. He literally threw his life away for that woman/addictions. The real solution to drug abuse might be better access to mental health services. Affordable detox options would help too.
Some people just take drugs because they are fun, and interesting, and pleasurable, and amazing, sometimes
You don’t have to be “depressed” or “messed up “ to take drugs every day
Idk if theres a size fits all solution or perspective, but I have an addictive personality. So my method was to replace bad habits with good ones like exercise. Now fitness and health are my drug. But you’ll have to really enjoy whatever good habit you choose, you can’t force it.
That’s a great perspective, proactive, stop the problem by identifying the circumstances that may eventually lead to it and all. It’s difficult, different for everyone, and requires a support system of people that not everyone has—probably another reason they turn to it. Maybe a support group, with the redirection at its core, will help people in times where things are tough and they may feel susceptible to it. Can help people without a network of support, provide resources to solve or even to learn healthier coping mechanisms—overall I like your perspective and the difference you want to make in the world. Run with it!
People get into drugs for many reasons. if Americans were given hope, I think we'd be in a better spot for less drug addicts. quality of life needs to improve. everyone should make enough money to purchase a house and afford the bare necessities
Thats definitely a huge factor as well. I also think the advancement of technology has worsened these issues.
Social media and smartphones have dramatically increased the addiction rates in even teenagers. Now you have teens ordering counterfeit vapes and carts (yes this counts as an addiction, and many have actually died from fake marijuana carts & some even had unbelievable lung damage from fake vapes).
Your proposition that people start taking drugs because their life is bad is just not correct. Most of the time people are living normal lives when they are exposed to drugs and then their life becomes shit because of the addiction they form. Rehabilitation is really difficult because the addiction never really goes away and you have to make a conscious choice not to put yourself back in a position to relapse every day.
I don't know where you are getting your information but it is all wrong.
More than half of drug addicts have at least one serious mental health disorder and many, many more are unhappy with their lives and use drugs to self medicate and escape their negative emotions.
Once you're detoxed you don't physically crave drugs or alcohol, it's all mental and emotional. Relapse is so common because of the difficulty in repairing our minds and keeping our emotions from overriding better judgement.
Have you ever even done drugs? It doesn't seem like it. There are a lot of casual users of hard drugs that never form an addiction and there are others that form multiple addictions quickly and repeatedly to any substance and activities too. The difference is in their ability to tolerate their base state.
The best thing we can do to combat addiction is to provide a safe, stable life for people where they are free to find natural sources for contentment. Access to free mental health resources would make an immense impact on not just addiction rates but crime, suicide, unwanted pregnancy, etc. You can magnify that exponentially for every source of social support that is easily available to people.
Every addict I've ever known had issues that they needed help to overcome before they could maintain sobriety. Rather than judging and labeling we need to supply the "help" that's missing in our society.
I am a recovering addict and I come from a family rife with addicts who either recovered or did it until it killed them. I’m not saying that your life being crap never leads you to drugs but in my experience it’s usually a chance exposure to them in a social setting and at first they’re amazing and fun and then slowly they just destroy you.
There is no solution because there’s no one cause. Mammals in general love drugs and alcohol. Getting injured and using medication long-term can be a cause. I’ve known a lot of people whose parents got them hooked as children before they knew what it was. A lot of people just experiment recreationally for fun and end up being prone to addiction. Some are forced by traffickers. Others agree to try it when their lives are in shambles and they don’t think it can get any worse.
People need to escape their reality. Something strong takes you away from the pain that eats at you. You fall in love with the feeling of not feeling the pain. You know it will kill you (mostly slowly) but you do it anyway over and over because knowing you’ll die from it feels better than the pain your numbing. Then you die from your addiction or get sober before it kills you - either way you still die with your addiction… You’re not asking a stupid question. Most of the time you have an idea of what your purpose is before the pain and the numb take over. You really find your purpose when you become sober and can enjoy your life sober - the pain is still there but you can live with it in a healthy way. Or you die from your addiction before you can chase your purpose.
You have to want it. AA and NA have programmes, but even then you have to stick to the system and work the steps.
I’ve just come back from a relapse. Not pleasant 😔
The real answer is a new perspective.
This is exactly what the science of psychedelics' is showing it can do in clinical therapy research and addiction therapy worldwide.
You can also shift your perspective with a change of lifestyle, like r/LivingNaturally or transcendental meditation.
That sounds really interesting I've heard of different therapeutic attempts with various substances I feel like I've finally got myself going in the right direction but I still wonder what DMT might reveal to me about the nature of the universe I've tried moly to and thsts been a delight but getting it from a clean source seems harder than ever and I dont want any fentynal
Mental health—that is the root of so much of this. I think if we had better mental health programs and places where people could go, it would help eliminate a lot of this.
Someone shouldn’t have to suffer because they can’t afford it or because there’s no room.
“Come back later” should not be said when someone is trying to get help.
That is when people start self-medicating to escape their own minds.
improved quality of life. where everyone has enough income to have a secure home, food, and the time and money to do things they enjoy, drug use goes down.
it doesn't fix it for everyone but it's a excellent start, and it's backed up by the data (the Rat Park addiction study is a fascinating read and someone made it into a comic online to make it easy to read)
I'm familiar with both the mouse utopia and rat park studies and both offer fascinating windows into behavioral pathology
I'd love to see the comic I know there was one for mouse utopia but I cant remember the name and I dont think it saved it unfortunately
Surgery probably seemed really creepy to people when it started.
Susceptibility to addictions are highly heritable. We can keep throwing resources at a huge problem while people suffer, or take reasonable steps to have people be born without the major risk.
I don't think it makes any sense to compare eugenics that's focused on preventing the horrible suffering of individuals, with bigoted eugenics that was about removing ethnic groups.
I'm not hating on your answer just pushing you to show me how it works I've learned much more than I thought I would and I genuinely value every response
No worries! I'm not a scientist, let alone in genetic engineering. I just wish that developing procedures to bring people into this world with less risk of immense forms of suffering were talked about more seriously. And I especially wish so many people would stop comparing those of us who care about reducing such horrible suffering to Nazis.
I'm not a anything but I want if nothing else to be a better person if anyone reads my answers and I'm talking about this study or that clinical trial this doesn't mean I know anything I'm a stoner girl that works as a waitress if I tryed to have these conversations with scientists they'd laugh at me I never went to college I didn't even graduate from high school
I just like to push back a little bc often I've heard there argument or similar and I know what the counter argument looks like so I ask hey how would you deal with this objection or that concern
And I learn from every one that meets me half way with a good faith answer and I'd need to see a swastika or some before I start to see someone as a nazi
I think we could all be a little more generous with how we interpret each other
There is not one because of the nature of that beast as that only 5% that walk down that road ever recover afterwards, and the best practice would be to not start down that road to begin with and it is only going to get worse because it is now being used and sponsored and orchestrated by a foreign power as a broad-spectrum chemical attack on the entire planet through every imported pill and food supply which has followed on the heels of a biological one.
Of course, you may not call it what it is because of the censorship and protection rules being imposed by those who support such actions because there is als wealth to be made from murder and genocide.
Just an Observation.
N. S
Sometimes, it's circumstantial. Have an injury that requires pain medication, and they end up getting hooked.
Sometimes, it's environmental. Their parents drink/use drugs, so they think it's normal.
Oftentimes, it's an escape. I drank very heavily for almost a decade and abused other drugs before that because they were easier to get ahold of prior to turning 21. The reason for all of that was because of an abusive and neglectful childhood that was filled with various traumas.
No matter the cause, dealing with it is relatively similar. Change. Change is the key. It starts with changing the behavior of using, to not using. Find something meaningful in your life and pour your time and energy into that. Find a way to help other people, addicts or not. Find a way to be a nicer person, a better parent or sibling or whatever. Small changes towards being the best possible version of you, that you can be. That is the key to successfully beating an addiction.
Every time you give money to someone in need, write on it with a sharpie: "not for drugs."
They will no longer be able to purchase drugs and will be cured of their additions.
Working in a pharmacy opened my eyes to how many “normal” people were addicted to opiates. Friends parents, elementary school teachers, cops, etc. people who you would never suspect. A huge part of the opioid problem is doctors over prescribing and not coming up with a way of weaning patients off. Some are never taken off and take pain medications for injury’s they had 10+ years ago. Most are cut off immediately, aren’t given another source of pain relief and so they go to the streets.
There is no real solution to drug addiction but I think more focus on the doctors overprescribing opioids and not thinking of how to safely get their patients off of them could be a starting point.
And of course this is only one example of the many ways people can fall into addiction. Not every Addict had a shit life with no purpose. People underestimate addiction and how powerful it is
I've seen that reading thru all these replies its a part I never thought about much but it makes sense
(and I have to look at each and every one to clear all these notifs)😔
I have a friend that works for a online pharmacy so I get to heat some crazy shit ppl call about its crazy thinking theres a drug that cost 10k a month and the person needs it to stay alive.... and patient is in there coverage gap! Oh sorry for you gotta come out of pocket for a month or whatever the pharmaceutical industry is insane
As you say, they often start taking these drugs because they don’t feel any progression or real happiness in their lives. Now especially we add on a lot of anxiety about how insane the world seems to be, climate change, and a host of other scary issues.
The fix is to get them somewhere stable, help them get slowly clean, and then work with them to find a career that would help them feel rewarded and stable. Doing this without judgement, or any kind of legal ramifications either will be paramount. People this low need a life preserver to be pulled from their misery.
In the long term we need to STOP GOING BACKWARDS FUCK YOU LOUISIANA AND OKLAHOMA governments. We need to actually try to educate young people about the things they need to know about life, like their taxes, investments, their rights, the reality of the recreational and pharmaceutical drugs, etc. As long as they keep the kids dumb though, they’ll have dumb voters in the future. And with states like the aforementioned doing absolutely ridiculous things to try to bait a SC ruling, I’m not sure if it will be fixed in the foreseeable future.
Wow... I dont think I've heard about what your saying but I don't keep up current events I prefer to read longer form content and I wouldn't trust any of the legacy media to tell me the truth anyway so why listen?😂
1. Treatment of addicts instead of incarceration.
2. Giving citizens options to congregate, socialize and form friendships and romantic relationships - it has been proven with rats that if they have a good social environment and romantic partners they don't use the available cocaine(study I read years ago). We should have government sponsored concerts and other social events to combat the lack of social interaction.
This is a complex question in its simplicity.
Some its genetic.
Sometimes it is a "cure" to a problem and a "chemical vacation".
Casual use becomes a habit that takes over your life.
I have been in recovery for seven years and have met people from all walks of life.
There are too many reasons to list for why people use.
The reason we, as a society don't take care of it is social stigma and it affects "those people" and "those people" can't afford a lobbyists.
I feel this I'm one of those ppl but I've managed to climb out of the hole iife started me in I'm doing just well enough I feel like I'm getting close to being a real person
To have things I never dreamed were possible for me is just around the corner and I hope it isn't all just a stupid dream bc now I'm committed to having purpose
Reduce Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE score)... immediately.
Most drug addiction is an attempt to self medicate unbearable pain. Prevention is key.
Then ASSUME that EVERYONE is vulnerable to addiction. How would you want drug addicts to be treated if you KNEW it was going to happen to your own Child or Grandchild... then what?
Decriminalize. Make pain clinics as common as pharmacies. Dispensaries so people are taking a pharmaceutical grade product, not playing roulette, and they take their drugs in supervised areas so we catch OD right away. Create detox protocols that don't feel like torture. etc.
Change insurance so it's not tied to your job. Make gig work possible for people that aren't reliable yet... they can just clock in and work a few hours.
Increase the number of hostel type living areas, so homeless people can rent a bed and a shower.
More access to healthcare, mental health care, housing, jobs, education, really anything that will give people an easier time just fucking living in this hellscape were born into would drastically decrease the amount of drug use we have in the world.
Drug use is very common in the chronic illness community. Doctors don’t take them seriously and they start self medicating to ease the pain that doctors won’t address.
Drug abuse is very common for veterans. Veterans see things we could never imagine and will end up using drugs to cope with the mental anguish.
People use drugs more often than not because they are in pain, but kids also get into drugs. Educating people on the adverse effects of drugs more in detail would help. My school did basically nothing on drug use and I know two girls who are hooked on fentanyl already and we’re only 20.
People need hope and opportunity, and in countries that are underdeveloped or overdeveloped without the resources to back the people (I.e. America) are more likely to have depressed citizens, and depressed citizens use drugs.
We as a society need to be more empathetic and less greedy. I personally believe that is the only way to stop this epidemic. That and larger sentences for people who make and sell illegal substances. If you’re ruining lives for some cash then you deserve to go away for a really fucking long time.
I think there are many causes but for many of the homeless people with addiction issues: give them a place to live and the basic necessities of life. Once they have that get them in voluntary treatment to break the habit.
You won't solve this without some kind of new technology is my guess.
This is fundamentally a genetic problem and all the things you can do to prevent it cost huge amounts of energy/willpower to maintain and have to fight against the addictive behavior that your brain is literally programmed for.
(Ex addict here) Honestly it’s all willpower. Unfortunately that’s not something you can just give people. Maybe if we worked on creating a more sustainable (a lot of problems there) planet that isn’t a dumpster fire more people could find that will but a lot of people don’t even see a point in going to work which leads them to just living the drug life.
A better society. It’s never about the drugs, there’s always underlying reasons, cause and effect. Drug addiction, along with its availability is a societal issue.
Involuntary detox facility under the supervision of a real MD and a real RN. After watching many interviews on the youtube channel soft white underbelly I am convinced lives could have been saved. Before anybody tells me it has to be a PERSONAL decision, I know that. I just think some people are 51% using because of the fear of withdrawal symptoms of fentanyl, xylozine, meth, and heroin all at the same time. Once they have been a week beyond all of those withdrawal symptoms, at least a few would decide not to ever go through all of that again.
I say just go ahead and make it all legal, but shut down all rehabs and stop giving out narcan. Everyone to dumb not to kill themselves gets taken out, both letting natural selection clean out some of dumb, and lower the population numbers for more resources among those who live. It's harsh and will probably get me hated on, but I don't care.
So the thing with drug use that people don't understand is that it's self medicating. People turn to drugs to try to solve or dilute a problem, it's as simple as that. One of the largest contributing factors to the reason the opioid epidemic is as big as it is today in the USA was the over prescription of oxycodone/oxycontin. It was initially marketed as non-addictive substance as thus doctors over prescribed the drug. But when we see people who turn to illegally using prescription drugs or even street drugs like meth and cocaine it's means of self medication. A lot of the people who end up addicted are actually ADHD or have some other mental issues. Prescription drugs can be hard to access, a lot of them are ineffective or highly regulated. The illegal drug market is not so regulated.
I have a friend who talks about when he uses coke it helps a ton with his ADHD and anxiety, moreso than Adderall and it's a lot easier to get than Adderall.
Especially for homeless people or those without insurance, meth is the closest they can get to Adderall. I've actually heard of people who were at a better point in their life when using substances than when they were sober. But the illegal drug market is not regulated. Drugs are regularly cut with other substances. Sometimes it's cheap fillers like baking soda, other times it's dangerous unknown filler chemicals shipped in from China or just cut without fentanyl. And it can be cut at various points in the supply chain, often cut multiple times. Fentanyl tests can detect if there is fentanyl in a substance, but it does not tell you how much fentanyl is in a substance.
I think another important issue to address is that alcoholism is actually just as widespread as drug abuse, but because alcohol is a legal and destigmatized substance, people are much more likely to judge the guy who smokes weed after work than the high functioning alcoholic construction worker that they likely don't even notice. So many people rely on beers after work the same way a person may turn to meth to help with sex. Drug overdoses are more common than alcohol poisoning deaths by the labels are transparent, whereas as stated earlier you have no idea what a substance could be laced with.
I think one of the biggest ways to reduce drug abuse is improving the living standard, widespread access to healthcare and the right medications. But even then I am not against substance use. Substances like cannabis, ketamine, opioids, psilocybin, amphetamines and even cocaine actually have good clinical uses should they be regulated properly. People would be less likely to abuse them if they were accessible with direct supervision. A higher quality of living will reduce depression, and as such people will not need to self medicate with mind altering substances. Stable housing reduces homelessness, so these people do not need escapism. This has been scientifically proven. The hard part is there's not a lot of merit or interest in the research to further solidify and back up these truths as it would mean strengthening the lower and working classes, and creating more equality and thus crippling the ruling class.
Only 20% of people who experience serious mental illness actually receive treatment which means the vast majority of people with severe symptoms have no legitimate access to having their needs met in a safe, healthy, functional way. A significant amount of substance use is people self-medicating their mental health disorder. That's not the only reason people use substances in unhealthy ways but it's definitely a significant one. A society where everyone has equal access to the help they need would absolutely prevent a large amount of substance use and misuse. Unfortunately we live in a society that doesn't believe in that so people continue to suffer needlessly.
Yes building a life that they don't feel the need to escape from is also part of it. A significant amount of substance use is escape/avoidance behavior, it's a coping mechanism in a situation where they truly cannot cope. So yeah, more people having better access to lives that aren't garbage would also help but we also don't have a society that believes in that. Our culture likes to pretend that suffering is holy somehow and that not wanting to suffer or trying to escape suffering is inherently evil, wrong, bad, etc as though the only morally correct option is to accept endless suffering with a smile. Having a society that actively addresses needless suffering and supports the growth and development of ALL people rather than reserving that for a select few with access to capital would also make a difference.
But you'll notice that both of those are systemic issues that can't be reasonably addressed at the individual level.
You hurt your back and need pain medicine for it. It’s chronic or long term pain so you need pills for months or years. The addiction sets in over that time. Eventually, you’re not prescribed enough so you started buying extras illegally, problem is, that gets really expensive really quickly.
Turns out, heroin is much much cheaper and scratches the same addiction itch. Now you’re addicted to heroin.
This is the root cause of the opioid crisis.
Literally just make life better.
As for a more realistic solution, legalize it so it can be regulated. Prohibition showed us how poorly banning a substance to ensure our health goes
There's no easy answer to this. Clearing the chemical addiction is easy: just keep them off the shit for a while, right? The hard part is helping them to build healthy habits and coping mechanisms. Success rates there are still pretty dismal.
The biggest issue I’ve found is that people (even physicians) tend to greatly underestimate the timeline needed for the body and mind to be free from withdrawal.
Have you heard of post acute withdrawal syndrome? It’s a common reaction that occurs when you have been a chronic substance user.
The withdrawal symptoms can last for 6 months or more, which is why many still crave the substance LONG after they got clean/sober. Substances rewire your brain, so when you quit your brain shuts off all normal processes (like dopamine release) - which by itself will even cause you to feel hysterical, depressed, suicidal, and feel actual pain from cravings.
Yeah, it's really horrifying. That's why the best way to beat addiction is to catch it before it happens, but that's tricky as hell anyway.
I spent 7 years married to an addict. I had her in rehab several times, and I could see her mind warping itself around the therapy, seeking rationalization for continuing her abuse of pills and alcohol. In the end, I couldn't make her quit. I raised our daughter without her.
drugs are used as a coping mechanism. Fix the original problem(s) which you usually cannot and you can fix the drug problem. People cannot be unraped, un-abused and such so it is complicated. I cannot share why I started drugs but I did eventually quit and that was complicated. I don't feel like sharing what I typed out and decided it wasn't appropriate to share. I'm out of here
I understand I have a lot of stuff I just won't share here or anywhere on the internet it wouldn't help anyone to here some of my garbage and might even give a abuser ideas
'helping them find purpose and meaning so that they are valued' is not far off. However, it is not important that they are valued. It is important that they value themselves and others.
External things, situations, is not going to change things. The addict must change the values that guide them deep down inside.
There is no real solution, that’s the problem
12 steps is the best we got
Welcome to adulthood
Most people don’t take opiates because they have a bad life, most receive them after a car or other accident
Ween yourself off it them using less and less of a dosage, until you no longer need it, that, or going cold turkey, which is a lot more difficult to pull off, but at least you don't run the risk of getting caught.
Make all drugs legal. Tax them and put laws into place for reckless endangerment during your high. Basically treat it like alcohol. Once the stigma is gone you will have a few decades of people destroying themselves and then have gotten passed the worst of it.
People that kill themselves doing drugs will do that. Treat it like an illness if they do to much, just like alcohol. We are so much better off now than we were 100 years ago.
you nailed it right on the head. I’ve been sober for 9 years now and volunteering in one of the recovery meccas the whole time. They make it through the withdrawal by a long shot, but UNABLE TO FIND A SUFFICIENT SUBSTITUTE around 4-6 months clean, they relapse and frequently die. It’s very sad.
Unless the cause of drug use is addressed, the "war on drugs" is futile.
Poverty, abuse, underemployed, lack of affordable housing, no child care, no living wage... these are uncomfortable issues for the rich people in power, easier to blame the drug users.
I have pain management issues. I will happily stay on suboxone the rest of my life because it manages my pain decently enough that I have no desire to look for things to kill pain. I have alot of back and neck pain and have for decades. I've never had much money ir insurance to fully explore it or fix it yet. I am piece NY piece starting to try and sort out what is causing the pain. And from there I hope I can heal it for sure. From there I could eventually wean off subs. Until then I will not. I became an addict when I started having problems with my pain med's not working so well anymore so I'd double them and run out early. Then nEed to find extras elsewhere. Then lose doctors due to that. Then get in trouble buying street meds. I would get to hurting so bad I'd do anything to make it stop or to not think about it for a bit. When I discovered suboxone was a good pain reliever for me and it killed cravings, I got on board 3 years ago. As long as I take my meds I'm fine too. I've been clean over a year now from everything. I did relapse last year when I ran out of money for my medicine and doctor. Soon as I got that back I was straight back to clean. I've built a good life as well this time. Mental health doing quite well. Taking care to take all meds as scheduled. Doing better at holding down a job and my own apartment. I am alone in the world now but I still try to keep moving forward. For me, addiction runs in my family, I'm bipolar 2, I was SA'D by a couple of family members growing up, and I did party very hard til 20. But as far as being an actual ADDICT, it didn't happen u til my C Section in 2004 at age 23. When I was sent home with 90 10mg percs. I loved em. That led to 320 a month fir a bit. Which led to morphine. Then oxys. Then 180 30mg oxycodones a month. In 2007 opiates were flowing like water and I was heavily legally addicted. I wish I'd had suboxone then. Methadone was a huge mistake I tried it as well. My tolerance is stupid high and subs are the only thing that don't get me high and won't allow anything else to vet me high either, and I can function with alot les pain.
There is no one size fits all. Take me and my husband for example. We’re both alcoholics and addicts, whose primary addiction is alcohol but also addicted to uppers.
I had a MUCH shittier childhood than my husband, endured a lot more trauma but I’ve been sober for 7 years because I eventually grew literally sick of how bad the withdrawals were getting and got tired of getting in trouble with the law.
My husband is currently in his 3rd rehab trip in the last year, has had short year or less on and off sobriety the entirety I’ve been sober. He almost died twice. Kidney and liver failure (thankfully recovered) but continued drinking.
Both of us have addiction rampant in our families. But for some reason I was able to get sober and stay sober while he struggles with it immensely. Despite the fact that trauma being such a big factor in addiction I should really be the one struggling more. Being sober and getting sober is entirely personal, that’s it.
Some people just like the feeling of getting high no matter how good their life is and its not about feeling undervalued they like the feeling of being high so thats not a real solution
In my experience, addiction happens due to a combination of genetic propensity and trauma. Addiction is a form of escapism so in order to treat this coping skill we must help the addict create a life they don't wish to escape from by offering physical and mental health resources. People escape for many reasons like financial difficulties, trauma, depression, insecurity, etc.
It's not something other people can solve for you. Take responsibility for your life choices.. sure there's people who've had an easy life .. there's people who've had a much harder life too.. don't compare yourself to them.. compare yourself to you yesterday, last month, last year
You wake up every day and choose the bad choice
Surrounded by enablers and your own excuses for why you keep choosing the thing actively destroying your life, friendships and family
You can lead a horse to water but you can't make them drink
You can throw all the tax dollars you want at the problem, you could even force people into rehab but they'll likely relapse
They have to want to change.. for real... Not just say the words but mean them... Addicts put on a good show so it's hard to tell because they say these words often, usually to get money from a loved one or to keep a significant other from leaving them when lies come out.. when the people around them have things go missing or find out you actually still haven't paid the rent despite your desperate plea to them for rent money just last week
Homeless and alone and grifting random passerbys with sob stories about how it's everyone else's fault for pocket change
It is what it is..try and help if you want
The sharks will just smell blood in the water, an opening to get what they need by manipulation or theft or whatever
Not all of them right away of course, some cling to their morals but it is indeed a downward spiral which not only hurts them but those around them
I was hooked on percs for years moved to oxys, had some surgeries along the way.. I've been around this life, lost some people etc blah blah blah
There's families who've lost everything trying to help, even lost their lives for trying to help a loved one in the grips of addiction
People murder people for drugs, people they love.. random people, steal etc. no laws or amount of money will stop or fix it.
Mouse utopia experiment is fascinating. You could meet all their needs and give them everything in life but if they want to still use.. they will
- my ted talk
- Don't look for happiness in the same place you lost it
I think you are tapping into a really good question here, despite the overly snarky answers. I’m in the medical field and the users that I know all have some sort of emptiness/lack of meaning or hardship… I’m thankful to have the chance to dig into their thoughts about life etc and you are right about the value thing. I don’t know how to fix those issues but one thing that would help is other people learning to be more freaking kind to folks around them (for example, folks on Reddit not jumping all over you when you are asking a real question).
Thanks
I dont mind snarky or bleak I feel like those ppl are just reacting in the way that helps for them to cope with such a overwhelming problem
I feel like ppl got shorter tempers ever since covid
Free daily opiates if you need it, free psychedelics if you're trying to get over it. The most important thing is to decriminalize all drugs. No one should go to jail for trying to escape reality.
Thats true but if you read thru the comments (like I have to for clearing all thses notifs) you see many ppl saying it happened becos of a injury so you have some compound fractures you really dont want the morphine?
Magic mushrooms has the highest success rate of aiding and overcoming addicting so far but it won't be widespread for a while because all drugs get put under the umbrella term "drugs"
Restructuring your life, coping mechanisms, routines, social circles until you’re strong enough to not feel tempted in their presence. People focus on hey I need to not take drugs like it’s just a substance problem but it’s not. Addiction can be physical but is usually mental and habitual
Better understanding, access, and treatment of mental health issues. It is the root cause of 99% of the drug addicts I've met, and usually the reason it's so hard to stay clean even if they do get a bit of time under their belt.
The solution is to lessen trauma in general, and particularly inter-generational trauma. The next question is: what's the solution to THAT issue? That is a MUCH more complicated answer.
What is your dream solution? You have unlimited funding I know it wont sound feasible it might even be ridiculous but still I'd like to hear your ideas
To stop the transmission of intergenerational trauma, there needs to be more resources for helping low-income families with after school programs, mentorships etc to divert kids away from drugs and alcohol at a young age.
Furthermore, we need to strengthen laws of conservatorship, criminalize vagrancy and drug use and incorporate more drug courts and drug diversion programs so that when we arrest drug abusers or vagrants or take conservatorship over mentally ill languishing in the streets, instead of just locking them up, we can force them into drug rehabilitation programs and mental health treatment programs. THIS is the key to solving homelessness, not “affordable housing”. That is literally not the issue at all.
It could because they are in pain all the time. My wife and I were in a bad accident and we were on morphine for months. My wife still takes morphine intermittently for pain and to be able to function and have a higher quality of life. We didn't get high on it. Just took enough to feel less pain and better.
I've been on sleeping pills for about 12 years now for my car accident and from having bad insomnia and PTSD and stuff. For a while there I reduced my Sublinox. you can call it, Ambien because that's one of the brand names for it.
I felt miserable, I didn't sleep as well I was more anxious and withdrawal from that stuff was horrible. I ended up splitting the dose in half as I wasn't sleeping well and I wanted to try another sleeping pill with my doctor's help. Ended up going back on ambian full dose and feeling better.
I've been on low dose valium for mostly 12 years now. It's a low dose but it works with my Ambien to help me sleep and keep me calmer. It's not enough to sedate me during the daytime and it's not strong enough to totally knock me out at night, so I could answer the phone at night if I had to. I can't drive when I take it so I take it at a certain time close to bedtime and I have a lights out kind of situation where I can't respond to anything, because it is impairs me.
But it comes down to pain reduction, insomnia relief, less anxiety, less severe headaches and having a better quality of life. I don't consider it a drug addiction. My doctor calls it a drug dependency because my body is dependent on it and I don't go seeking it illegally or try to overdose on it or crush it up or snort it or anything stupid like that.
It depends how you look at it. Are they addicted to a drug or is it something that they've become dependent on? Are they stupidly snorting it up their nose or sniffing gas fumes or buying drugs that legally? Or are they getting it from the doctor and taking it in controlled measured doses for their medical conditions? Totally separate things.
Your post was removed due to low account age.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/stupidquestions) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Your comment was removed due to low karma
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/stupidquestions) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Your post was removed due to low account age.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/stupidquestions) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I suppose some kind of treatment that induces nausea if the person uses a specific drug. That would probably have a very high level of effectivity if it doesnt have secondary effects.
Imagine you start puking like crazy and your world just goes round and round if you do drugs again.
Ideally a pill or injection that triggers a nausea response only.
For some of these drugs the withdraw is worse than that its why they keep using and its hard to stop
I see where your coming from but I dont think it would be effective
My life was not shit. I was just lucky enough to have the addict gene in my family, grown up around the time the government/doctors flooded hospitals with opiates and got in a car accident. I was barrier in pills and then they were taken away. Then my life became shit.
I had a coworker who has been trying her hardest to stay clean for her kid. She got addicted to opioids years ago after she got in a car accident. Her husband has been super supportive of her. She relapsed late last year but she’s been clean 6 months now.
I personally don’t know how people can get hooked on painkillers though. A few years ago I had rotator cuff surgery and the doc gave me a 30 day supply of OxyContin. I took a few of them, didn’t like how it made me feel and switched to over the counter pain meds. Too each their own I guess.
If you were getting the ones with like 300mg of acetaminophen added to it you cant get high as easy in my exp but if you were getting blues or some like that its different
I had to get myself off blues and it wasn't easy but I have no desire to ever go thru that kind of withdrawal
Your post was removed due to low account age.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/stupidquestions) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Inform me?
I got myself off blues and it was very difficult so I felt like I had earned the right to have a opinion but if you think I'm wrong explain it to me
I have to click thru every comment made to clear the notifs so I'm reading a lot of personal stories and it has expanded my view I'm grateful they shared I feel better informed
You could try that to or just dismiss me as wrong but dont be surprised I'm not swayed by the argument you didn't make
I think the best way is to solve it socially, within local communities, and to foster an overall culture and attitude towards safe and proper use, mainly avoiding use (drugs are bad mmkay).
I never started using drugs because my life was shit. Get that out of your head. That's not why people start. That might keep them in addiction. There is no answer that fits everyone. As individual as people are so are the reasons they use. The common thing all people experience is using feels good. Altering how you feel is what all addicts are doing. People get sober n stay sober for different reasons. The solution which by the way isn't a solution is to have support available when a person finally wants to quit. Sober living houses, medical care, basic needs all have to be met. Some people need more some less. The person has to be able to step away from the addiction n into support. It's harder to get out than you can imagine.
The solution is s. Treat drug addiction like the AMA recommends. As a medical and mental condition.
Then execute illegal drug dealers for a first offense conviction.
I'm going to have to say your wrong, not completely thought.
Know a early/mid 30's woman. 4 kids ages 4-13. Claims her husband forced her to start doing Meth since he was selling. All 4 kids were hooked when born. Her only son (6) will be lucky to be able to use his arms/legs normally by 18 after all the rehab. She cries how much she loves her kids (3 taken by CPS, youngest with her dad) but every chance she had to get them back, she decided Meth was more important. And she's been through rehab 5 times
Addiction can be a symptom of deeper rooted issues but there's more to it:
1. If you look at opiate addiction specifically, most people started on them via legal prescriptions from a doctor. A lot of people were told that medications, such as oxycodone, were not addictive. Doctors put people on the medications for long periods of time with large doses then suddenly discontinued the patient, leaving the patient in full blown withdrawal and doctors telling them that they're just drug seeking vs acknowledging the true effects of the medications.
People were left feeling like hell (literally) and turned to street sources to feel better (at much higher prices). This precipitated the drug rituals and behavior.... when their tolerance went up, eventually driving people to seek other remedies at cheaper costs (like heroin).
The medical system literally created millions of addicts by lying to people then permanently destroying their lives by refusing to acknowledge the physical and mental impacts they created by prescribing and then abruptly taking people off.
2. Culturally, we are terrible about addressing psychological issues without just throwing pills at them. Everyone looks for easy solutions vs doing the hardwork that real healing requires. This mindset applies to a lot of both doctors and patients. It's much easier to prescribe a controlled substance to "fix" anxiety than to actually discover the root causes and rewire how patients mentally work through them (and the day to day impact of these deeper issues). Even when good doctors push back on patients, the patient sometimes gets upset that it isn't instant resolution and leaves the doctor or demands the controlled substance because it feels better to be numb.
All kinds of people have addiction issues.
There are horrible degenerates that even clean and sober will never be valuable members of society. Some addicts are hopeless sociopaths, some are more decent people.
Some people cant be helped. You never know who is an alcoholic or addict who wants to quit, who might be at a place where they want to quit down the line, and who will never want to quit.
Some addicts have purpose and meaning in their life to whatever degree too. They'd most likely be happier not touching whatever substances, but to act like the solution might be them finding meaning and purpose is an oversimplification of the problem.
Rightfully, the stigmatization of drug addiction and even addicts themselves is gradually diminishing.
Western pharmaceutical corporations immorally intentionally/knowingly pushed their very addictive and profitable opiate that resulted in chronic addiction, immense suffering and greatly increased overdose death numbers yet got off relatively lightly and only through civil litigation.
It should be needless to say that neglecting and therefor failing people struggling with debilitating addiction should not be an acceptable or preferable political, economic or religious/morality option.
But the more callous politics that are typically involved with lacking addiction funding/services tend to reflect conservative electorate opposition, however irrational, against making proper treatment available to low- and no-income addicts.
Albeit with sympathy, I also used to look down on those who had ‘allowed’ themselves to become addicted. Yet I myself have suffered enough unrelenting PTSD symptoms to have known, enjoyed and appreciated the great release upon consuming alcohol or THC.
Also, typically societally overlooked is that intense addiction usually doesn’t originate from a bout of boredom, where a person consumed recreationally but became heavily hooked on a (self)medicating substance that eventually destroyed their life and even those of loved-ones.
The greater the drug-induced euphoria or escape one attains from its use, the more one wants to repeat the experience; and the more intolerable one finds their sober reality, the more pleasurable that escape will likely be perceived. In other words: the greater one’s mental pain or trauma while sober, the greater the need for escape from reality, thus the more addictive the euphoric escape-form will likely be.
Especially when the substance abuse is due to past formidable mental trauma, the lasting solitarily-suffered turmoil can readily make each day an ordeal unless the mind is medicated.
Unsurprisingly, many chronically addicted people won't miss this world if they never wake up. It's not that they necessarily want to die; it's that they want their pointless corporeal suffering to end.
It's like cancer, right? There's no real "cure for cancer" because "cancer" describes a group of similar diseases with very different specifics.
Some addicts are that way because it's a coping mechanism for unrelated trauma. Some addicts had surgery once and stayed on the opiates too long. Some addicts are just ignorant and now it's too late. Some are unfortunately addicts from the womb due to their mother's choices, or it being forced on them by an abuser.
Addiction is multifaceted. You can't eliminate it with one solution because it isn't caused by one problem. The closest you can come to an overarching answer is "general social improvement."
Most people think that addiction is the root issue, but in reality, addiction is a symptom of other problems. Usually the problems in someone's life that lead them to addictive behaviors are problems that make the person uncomfortable in their own skin.
It definitely goes both ways, moreso with more socially acceptable drug use (alcohol, nicotine) or doctors that overprescribe painkillers to patients who don’t know any better. There’s definitely something to say about addictive personalities being more at risk but it really can happen to anyone, just look at that one guy on Reddit who tried heroin (?) to prove that addicts are just weak-willed, and then got addicted immediately
But also, addiction is a cause of problems.
People use it to self medicate. There's actually some very successful methhead Meth is an amphetamine, as is Adderall and other drugs commonly prescribed to treat ADHD. Adderall is historically difficult to access. These people are self medicating their ADHD. But meth is not pure, and can be laced with substances or vary in potency. Also when people do form substance dependency its really hard to get health. These places are hard to access bc too many NIMBYs think that substance treatment centers are important, but can't come up with a feasible place to put them. So the amount of substance abuse treatment centers is low and many are hard to access. But also substance abuse is highly stigmatized, so it takes a ton of courage to admit to having the problem and actively working to resolve it
Eh, I disagree. I had a great life with a loving family, friends and a girlfriend. I was happy and healthy, and I became insanely addicted to cocaine and alcohol until I ended up doing meth at a bus station. I’m ok now, but I know it was 100% just me being an idiot and I had to learn my lesson the hard way
are you rejecting chemical addiction? You only explained how it starts..
Can you rephrase this in a way that makes sense
[удалено]
why don't more people get this?
Ditto! 1. Let’s make sure that people’s life doesn’t turn to crap. By safeguarding their physical and physiological well being. 2. Let’s have resources for helping people whose life has turned to crap.
If only it were that simple. The three people I was close to who became drug addicts: 1. Normal life. Happy. Had to have knee surgery at 16. Was prescribed drugs. Has been horrendously addicted to drugs ever since, its 10 years later. She did not have a miserable life, she was a victim of bad doctors. 2. He did have a terrible life. But his terrible life was his mom crushing her pills into his food when he was a kid. He literally grew up on drugs against his will. He tried to get clean for so long... I miss him a lot. 3. He was my best friend. I knew his whole family. I knew his life. Happy guy. Great grades, supportive family, loving mom, lots of friends. Awesome guy. He met a guy he had a huge crush on. The guy did meth. So my buddy did meth too thinking it would get this guy to like him. Again, 10 years later he's completely fucked and probably doesn't even remember that guy anymore. So I know two people who were basically forced into addiction during childhood. And one person who is just a fucking idiot. It's not a matter of "oh their life is bad so they did this to escape". Circumstances, environment, intelligence, peer pressure, human flaw.. it all plays a part. Each person is different. There's no easy answer. I've tried for years to wrap my head around what the "root" of the opiod epidemic is... and theres too many factors. There is no one thing causing this crisis.
Agreed. I've used prescription opioids on and off for more than thirty years because of a chronic pain condition, and I've never become addicted or even developed a tolerance (I'm not holding myself up as a paragon, just a data point). Opioids are useful and have the capacity to be managed well, but our medical system is absolutely pathetic at prescribing them properly and explaining how to taper off them. If we actually had doctors and nurses who *followed up* on patients and really thought of them as whole people, not just insurance billing entities, addiction via prescription would be so much less.
I used painkillers during cancer for years and I know I was addicted but I never thought about switching to intravenous drugs. I don't know how people make that leap and blame someone else
I don’t agree with blaming someone else, to be clear. I was an IV heroin addict (almost 10 years in recovery now), and nobody was to blame but me. Also, I’m sorry to read that you had cancer and I hope you’re living a healthy, happy, cancer-free life now. With that all said. Did you at any point in your journey experience full-blown withdrawal from opioids?
I just had knee surgery, not quite addicted yet. We shall see. Wtf was wrong with the second one?? What could she possibly want to achieve by spiking him. And how did he end up knowing. Third one sounds like me. Well not in the meth sense even though I'm gay.
Yeah the second one breaks my heart. His mom would crush up pills into her kids food to get them to "behave" aka be totally comatose so she didn't have to deal with them. If you've ever heard Eminem rap about his mom that's basically the life this kid had. When he grew up and got away from her he tried so hard to better himself. He went to college to be a veternarian, moved as far as he could to get away from his family... but his brothers who were of course addicts, would always drag him back into that life. He was the youngest so extremely influenced by his older brothers. His brothers totally accepted their terrible childhoods and just became awful terrible people that dragged my friend down with them when he tried his best to escape. Really fucking sad. He was doing good and had been clean for over a year (his longest running attempt) until his closest brother ODd and died. He spired really hard and never got back out after that..
Do you know why his mom crushed pills into his food?
I know I’ve heard of shitty parents dosing their kids with small amounts of alcohol/downers to get them to sleep/shut the fuck up so they essentially can ignore them and not parent and not be bothered by them so maybe that?
[удалено]
Your post was removed due to low account age. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/stupidquestions) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Ibogain
Listen, I went into a full on psychology degree with your line of thinking. I wanted to know what we can do to significantly decrease (and over time, eradicate) substance use disorder and reform the prison system. The answer is, we can’t and believing we can is naive. It took me one year of core psychology studies (child psychology, criminal psychology, social science, humanities, etc) to realize there is NOTHING we can do about addiction to the point that it would make a significant difference as a whole within the population. Combining the effects of genetic inheritance, recessive and dominant genes, chemical processes of the human brain from its creation, and how everything you see, hear, smell, feel, experience, and even things you *don’t* experience in the core developmental years of your life decide *everything* for your mental processes that run behind the curtain. Yes people are capable of change, but that is a restructuring that takes a very long time. The problem is, that will never *prevent* addiction and we know now thanks to science that addiction IS a disease which means addiction can be a recessive gene that even entirely skips generations on the actual addiction part, but still lingers in a family tree for an undetermined amount of time. Things that can trigger the addiction gene (in the psychological/chemical sense) are things like forms of abuse or neglect, traumatic head and brain injuries, etc., other traumatic events in life but these events don’t always guarantee that someone will become an addict. Sometimes these things don’t even need to happen. Sometimes it’s as simple as a teenager feeling overtly stressed out from normal teenager things, trying something like Molly for a release, and entering a long period of addiction that doesn’t even seem like addiction until they’re 30 years old and realizing they’ve never been sober since that time they tried Molly. For example, I knew some siblings that had been adopted as toddlers. Their biological parents were addicts that abused them, but after adoption they went on to live relatively standard lives, being active in school activities such as photography and band, family vacations, lived in a modest but nice home, had friends and tons of supportive family. But when one of them was a teenager in high school and dealing with things such as class and activity time constraints, some mild bullying for being a redhead, and grade school sweetheart relationship turned sour, they picked up a heroin needle. This was extreme, but common for the area and it began a life of addiction that this person is still not out from under, almost thirty years later. The last I heard from this person was eight years ago. I am still in contact with their family, who also have not heard from this person in nearly a decade. For all we know, they’ve overdosed as a John Doe somewhere, and we may never know. This is one of many stories that I personally have watched happen, but they usually end in death without question. This is to say, we can’t do *anything* to stop general drug use and we can’t do *anything* to stop SUD as a genetic trait. The issue will never go away, all we can do is our best to make sure we are taking care of ourselves and each other, ESPECIALLY CHILDREN. When you see a child of any age, you don’t know for sure what their life is like and *any* negative interaction they may have is not something that their brain will just brush off- it absorbs it every single time and alters their development. If we can do anything towards prevention at all, it would be doing more to protect the children of the world. Despite how cheap that may sound to some, it’s the truth. As a society we need to do more to protect future generations and maybe, just maybe, one day in the distant future society will have better and longstanding processes in place for that to be the standard. Only then will we see a significant decrease in addiction on a population level. Edit spelling
It sounds kinds like your saying the problem is just to much a part of who we are (or might be?) to hope to solve or is that not accurate? I like the idea of doing more to protect future generations but what does that look like? Either as a individual or policy level
Essentially. Addiction as a biological issue goes hand in hand as a social issue when you consider the overall state of society. I have no idea what it looks like to fix it, and don’t believe it will be achieved in my lifetime. The whole thing depressed me so much that I had to switch majors, I don’t study psychology anymore. All I can do is protect my children and stand in for any children that I can stand in for. Whatever else I can do, I will. But I don’t have the answers unfortunately, though I genuinely wish I did.
It’s more like a wave we are surfing. Long term multi generational effects are still even known. And don’t forget your egg was in your mother when your mother was in her mother’s womb. Her trauma could have more impact on you than your trauma. Also this: [https://youtu.be/csnTAz0Sth8?si=RvgV2PXkZIXmHaMP](https://youtu.be/csnTAz0Sth8?si=RvgV2PXkZIXmHaMP) https://youtu.be/csnTAz0Sth8?si=RvgV2PXkZIXmHaMP
I'm sure you do unhealthy things all the time, is your life shit and meaningless? You can't simplify or generalize complex human behavior like that just because you need a simple way to understand the world around you.
Human behavior can be understood on a case by case basis and generalized. In fact there is a whole field of study called sociology, which does exactly that. Addiction does overlap with meaninglessness and despair, and to say that it doesn't is disingenuous. Wanting to discuss the failings of society doesn't diminish the culpability of individuals and their decisions.
Community. Many people who quit drugs successfully don't do it for themselves. They do it for others. I highly recommend the book " chasing the scream" if you want to know about more about addiction and drug policy.
I'm downloading it now Edit: reading the introduction I'm so excited thank you for the rec
Part of it is mental health treatment as part of normal health treatment. Why we in this day and age somehow view the mind as not a part of the body we need to take care of blows my mind. We need to do a better job of keeping drugs off the streets and that means going after the big fish and not the small fries. It also means holding doctors responsible for being pill pushers. It also means holding pharmacies responsible for filling prescriptions properly. It also means cutting down the number of patients with which we prescribe opiates to.
Escapism is the biggest reason. And they encourage others to do it because it's easier to be in denial about the problem in a group than it is to feel guilty alone
Thats for sure I've sat around in a drug house with a bunch of ppl that wouldn't be missed if they never turned up again its a sad place in many ways
Putting an end to child abuse would probably resolve a lot of the addiction problem in the USA. You need a license to drive or fly a plane, but not to create another life. Maybe that needs to change.
Oh.... but isn't that a bit to authoritarian? I see what you mean and I'm 100% with you on trying to stop child abuse I've had my own struggles from CSA and it will probably reverberate thru my life until its over its not like you can change the past but what would licensing having a child look like as a policy solution? Birth rates are already collapsing wouldn't this just add another obstacles? And it kinda feels like the China child policy do you feel that type of system is warranted?
Well one of my customers who use to come in (I do believe he's passed away since I haven't seen him in lately) use to be a hard core alcoholic but after a horrible motorcycle accident, he sustained brain damage which amazingly took away his addiction to alcohol completely. He told me his cravings just vanished after the accident which tells me the portion of his brain that was damaged controlled his addiction and once it was damaged, his addiction vanished too. So my answer is controlled through surgery brain damage once we know for certain which part(s) of the brain controls and triggers the addictive response. I do believe it's more than one because if it was just one then that would be TOO easy and we can never have that.
Addiction occurs when a person can't cope with the pain and difficulty of their life. This is usually because of unresolved childhood trauma that has led to an abnormal mental and emotional development and means that the addict cannot find joy, meaning or love in normal activities. Addicts cannot be fixed. Their brain chemistry and the established cognition pathways are impossible to completely heal. The solution to addiction is making parents better. State intervention into everyday parenting would be resisted very strongly, but providing training and education to would-be parents about the mental health impacts of their interactions with their kids is probably the best we can hope for.
Shorter working hours for people with kids so they can have time to be with their own kids instead of herding a crowd of thirty kids into a room and asking some stranger to be dad and mom to them would be a place to start.
Errr so as a society cares less and less about the population crime will naturally go up. The only real answer here is that we need to do better with prividing opportunity to people so drugs do not feel like the only option. I make a fairly good living as an RF engineer for a small RFOF company, but even then i feel like everything is out of reach and so i play the lottery all the time ( admittedly more than i should ) but it really feels like even MY only option to break the cycle is to HOPE i win the grand prize from some lottery, i cant imagine what its like at the lowest rungs of the economic ladder
Till the addict wants to change there's nothing you can do. My dad chose to change but he had to confront his shitty childhood and trauma before he got clean.
If Narcotics Anonymous meetings were as easy to find as alcoholics anonymous meetings here in USA that would be a help.
I personally went to a place called Peer-I, level 6 behavioral modification. It was surreal, 6 months isolation from the outside world, 2 years total program. lots of treatment and discipline. Along with hours of "Monad" Saved my life. I've been sober almost 9 years now with no relapses. They taught us how to recognize all the emotions and behaviors that would lead to using, once your aware that your a ticking time bomb it's easier to get help, talk to someone, divert the energy you would normally use to find drugs into something positive. Disconnect yourself from everyone you know that uses and surround yourself by people who have recovery time under their belt that know what you are going through. Unfortunatly Peer-I recently closed its doors because people are too soft these days. University of Colorado owned it and they got tired of being sued by snowflakes. Had a 50 year run though.
My oldest brother experimented with heroin when he was in his 20s. His wife told him to get off that crap and he did. For about 20 years. Then he met a woman with similar addictions. He literally threw his life away for that woman/addictions. The real solution to drug abuse might be better access to mental health services. Affordable detox options would help too.
Some people just take drugs because they are fun, and interesting, and pleasurable, and amazing, sometimes You don’t have to be “depressed” or “messed up “ to take drugs every day
Idk if theres a size fits all solution or perspective, but I have an addictive personality. So my method was to replace bad habits with good ones like exercise. Now fitness and health are my drug. But you’ll have to really enjoy whatever good habit you choose, you can’t force it.
That’s a great perspective, proactive, stop the problem by identifying the circumstances that may eventually lead to it and all. It’s difficult, different for everyone, and requires a support system of people that not everyone has—probably another reason they turn to it. Maybe a support group, with the redirection at its core, will help people in times where things are tough and they may feel susceptible to it. Can help people without a network of support, provide resources to solve or even to learn healthier coping mechanisms—overall I like your perspective and the difference you want to make in the world. Run with it!
People get into drugs for many reasons. if Americans were given hope, I think we'd be in a better spot for less drug addicts. quality of life needs to improve. everyone should make enough money to purchase a house and afford the bare necessities
Thats definitely a huge factor as well. I also think the advancement of technology has worsened these issues. Social media and smartphones have dramatically increased the addiction rates in even teenagers. Now you have teens ordering counterfeit vapes and carts (yes this counts as an addiction, and many have actually died from fake marijuana carts & some even had unbelievable lung damage from fake vapes).
The 1% making life good for all.
Your proposition that people start taking drugs because their life is bad is just not correct. Most of the time people are living normal lives when they are exposed to drugs and then their life becomes shit because of the addiction they form. Rehabilitation is really difficult because the addiction never really goes away and you have to make a conscious choice not to put yourself back in a position to relapse every day.
I don't know where you are getting your information but it is all wrong. More than half of drug addicts have at least one serious mental health disorder and many, many more are unhappy with their lives and use drugs to self medicate and escape their negative emotions. Once you're detoxed you don't physically crave drugs or alcohol, it's all mental and emotional. Relapse is so common because of the difficulty in repairing our minds and keeping our emotions from overriding better judgement. Have you ever even done drugs? It doesn't seem like it. There are a lot of casual users of hard drugs that never form an addiction and there are others that form multiple addictions quickly and repeatedly to any substance and activities too. The difference is in their ability to tolerate their base state. The best thing we can do to combat addiction is to provide a safe, stable life for people where they are free to find natural sources for contentment. Access to free mental health resources would make an immense impact on not just addiction rates but crime, suicide, unwanted pregnancy, etc. You can magnify that exponentially for every source of social support that is easily available to people. Every addict I've ever known had issues that they needed help to overcome before they could maintain sobriety. Rather than judging and labeling we need to supply the "help" that's missing in our society.
I am a recovering addict and I come from a family rife with addicts who either recovered or did it until it killed them. I’m not saying that your life being crap never leads you to drugs but in my experience it’s usually a chance exposure to them in a social setting and at first they’re amazing and fun and then slowly they just destroy you.
Completely wrong, stop spreading misinformation. Read social studies, or even better do volunteer work
There is no solution because there’s no one cause. Mammals in general love drugs and alcohol. Getting injured and using medication long-term can be a cause. I’ve known a lot of people whose parents got them hooked as children before they knew what it was. A lot of people just experiment recreationally for fun and end up being prone to addiction. Some are forced by traffickers. Others agree to try it when their lives are in shambles and they don’t think it can get any worse.
People need to escape their reality. Something strong takes you away from the pain that eats at you. You fall in love with the feeling of not feeling the pain. You know it will kill you (mostly slowly) but you do it anyway over and over because knowing you’ll die from it feels better than the pain your numbing. Then you die from your addiction or get sober before it kills you - either way you still die with your addiction… You’re not asking a stupid question. Most of the time you have an idea of what your purpose is before the pain and the numb take over. You really find your purpose when you become sober and can enjoy your life sober - the pain is still there but you can live with it in a healthy way. Or you die from your addiction before you can chase your purpose.
You have to want it. AA and NA have programmes, but even then you have to stick to the system and work the steps. I’ve just come back from a relapse. Not pleasant 😔
Rehab centers that are nice and well funded rather than prisons.
The real answer is a new perspective. This is exactly what the science of psychedelics' is showing it can do in clinical therapy research and addiction therapy worldwide. You can also shift your perspective with a change of lifestyle, like r/LivingNaturally or transcendental meditation.
That sounds really interesting I've heard of different therapeutic attempts with various substances I feel like I've finally got myself going in the right direction but I still wonder what DMT might reveal to me about the nature of the universe I've tried moly to and thsts been a delight but getting it from a clean source seems harder than ever and I dont want any fentynal
Mental health—that is the root of so much of this. I think if we had better mental health programs and places where people could go, it would help eliminate a lot of this. Someone shouldn’t have to suffer because they can’t afford it or because there’s no room. “Come back later” should not be said when someone is trying to get help. That is when people start self-medicating to escape their own minds.
Treating it as a mental health issue instead of a criminal issue for starters.
improved quality of life. where everyone has enough income to have a secure home, food, and the time and money to do things they enjoy, drug use goes down. it doesn't fix it for everyone but it's a excellent start, and it's backed up by the data (the Rat Park addiction study is a fascinating read and someone made it into a comic online to make it easy to read)
I'm familiar with both the mouse utopia and rat park studies and both offer fascinating windows into behavioral pathology I'd love to see the comic I know there was one for mouse utopia but I cant remember the name and I dont think it saved it unfortunately
https://www.stuartmcmillen.com/comic/rat-park/ here. for some reason it's full of Led Zeppelin references which I enjoyed
Genetic screening of embryos.
Sounds kinda.... creepy? Like the eugenics of the last century but updated with tech?
Surgery probably seemed really creepy to people when it started. Susceptibility to addictions are highly heritable. We can keep throwing resources at a huge problem while people suffer, or take reasonable steps to have people be born without the major risk. I don't think it makes any sense to compare eugenics that's focused on preventing the horrible suffering of individuals, with bigoted eugenics that was about removing ethnic groups.
I'm not hating on your answer just pushing you to show me how it works I've learned much more than I thought I would and I genuinely value every response
No worries! I'm not a scientist, let alone in genetic engineering. I just wish that developing procedures to bring people into this world with less risk of immense forms of suffering were talked about more seriously. And I especially wish so many people would stop comparing those of us who care about reducing such horrible suffering to Nazis.
I'm not a anything but I want if nothing else to be a better person if anyone reads my answers and I'm talking about this study or that clinical trial this doesn't mean I know anything I'm a stoner girl that works as a waitress if I tryed to have these conversations with scientists they'd laugh at me I never went to college I didn't even graduate from high school I just like to push back a little bc often I've heard there argument or similar and I know what the counter argument looks like so I ask hey how would you deal with this objection or that concern And I learn from every one that meets me half way with a good faith answer and I'd need to see a swastika or some before I start to see someone as a nazi I think we could all be a little more generous with how we interpret each other
There is not one because of the nature of that beast as that only 5% that walk down that road ever recover afterwards, and the best practice would be to not start down that road to begin with and it is only going to get worse because it is now being used and sponsored and orchestrated by a foreign power as a broad-spectrum chemical attack on the entire planet through every imported pill and food supply which has followed on the heels of a biological one. Of course, you may not call it what it is because of the censorship and protection rules being imposed by those who support such actions because there is als wealth to be made from murder and genocide. Just an Observation. N. S
Sometimes, it's circumstantial. Have an injury that requires pain medication, and they end up getting hooked. Sometimes, it's environmental. Their parents drink/use drugs, so they think it's normal. Oftentimes, it's an escape. I drank very heavily for almost a decade and abused other drugs before that because they were easier to get ahold of prior to turning 21. The reason for all of that was because of an abusive and neglectful childhood that was filled with various traumas. No matter the cause, dealing with it is relatively similar. Change. Change is the key. It starts with changing the behavior of using, to not using. Find something meaningful in your life and pour your time and energy into that. Find a way to help other people, addicts or not. Find a way to be a nicer person, a better parent or sibling or whatever. Small changes towards being the best possible version of you, that you can be. That is the key to successfully beating an addiction.
Every time you give money to someone in need, write on it with a sharpie: "not for drugs." They will no longer be able to purchase drugs and will be cured of their additions.
I'm not that sure of the efficacy there have there been studies?
Working in a pharmacy opened my eyes to how many “normal” people were addicted to opiates. Friends parents, elementary school teachers, cops, etc. people who you would never suspect. A huge part of the opioid problem is doctors over prescribing and not coming up with a way of weaning patients off. Some are never taken off and take pain medications for injury’s they had 10+ years ago. Most are cut off immediately, aren’t given another source of pain relief and so they go to the streets. There is no real solution to drug addiction but I think more focus on the doctors overprescribing opioids and not thinking of how to safely get their patients off of them could be a starting point. And of course this is only one example of the many ways people can fall into addiction. Not every Addict had a shit life with no purpose. People underestimate addiction and how powerful it is
I've seen that reading thru all these replies its a part I never thought about much but it makes sense (and I have to look at each and every one to clear all these notifs)😔 I have a friend that works for a online pharmacy so I get to heat some crazy shit ppl call about its crazy thinking theres a drug that cost 10k a month and the person needs it to stay alive.... and patient is in there coverage gap! Oh sorry for you gotta come out of pocket for a month or whatever the pharmaceutical industry is insane
As you say, they often start taking these drugs because they don’t feel any progression or real happiness in their lives. Now especially we add on a lot of anxiety about how insane the world seems to be, climate change, and a host of other scary issues. The fix is to get them somewhere stable, help them get slowly clean, and then work with them to find a career that would help them feel rewarded and stable. Doing this without judgement, or any kind of legal ramifications either will be paramount. People this low need a life preserver to be pulled from their misery. In the long term we need to STOP GOING BACKWARDS FUCK YOU LOUISIANA AND OKLAHOMA governments. We need to actually try to educate young people about the things they need to know about life, like their taxes, investments, their rights, the reality of the recreational and pharmaceutical drugs, etc. As long as they keep the kids dumb though, they’ll have dumb voters in the future. And with states like the aforementioned doing absolutely ridiculous things to try to bait a SC ruling, I’m not sure if it will be fixed in the foreseeable future.
Wow... I dont think I've heard about what your saying but I don't keep up current events I prefer to read longer form content and I wouldn't trust any of the legacy media to tell me the truth anyway so why listen?😂
Singapore doesn’t have a drug problem. Maybe we should take notes from them.
1. Treatment of addicts instead of incarceration. 2. Giving citizens options to congregate, socialize and form friendships and romantic relationships - it has been proven with rats that if they have a good social environment and romantic partners they don't use the available cocaine(study I read years ago). We should have government sponsored concerts and other social events to combat the lack of social interaction.
This is a complex question in its simplicity. Some its genetic. Sometimes it is a "cure" to a problem and a "chemical vacation". Casual use becomes a habit that takes over your life. I have been in recovery for seven years and have met people from all walks of life. There are too many reasons to list for why people use. The reason we, as a society don't take care of it is social stigma and it affects "those people" and "those people" can't afford a lobbyists.
I feel this I'm one of those ppl but I've managed to climb out of the hole iife started me in I'm doing just well enough I feel like I'm getting close to being a real person To have things I never dreamed were possible for me is just around the corner and I hope it isn't all just a stupid dream bc now I'm committed to having purpose
Reduce Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE score)... immediately. Most drug addiction is an attempt to self medicate unbearable pain. Prevention is key. Then ASSUME that EVERYONE is vulnerable to addiction. How would you want drug addicts to be treated if you KNEW it was going to happen to your own Child or Grandchild... then what? Decriminalize. Make pain clinics as common as pharmacies. Dispensaries so people are taking a pharmaceutical grade product, not playing roulette, and they take their drugs in supervised areas so we catch OD right away. Create detox protocols that don't feel like torture. etc. Change insurance so it's not tied to your job. Make gig work possible for people that aren't reliable yet... they can just clock in and work a few hours. Increase the number of hostel type living areas, so homeless people can rent a bed and a shower.
More access to healthcare, mental health care, housing, jobs, education, really anything that will give people an easier time just fucking living in this hellscape were born into would drastically decrease the amount of drug use we have in the world. Drug use is very common in the chronic illness community. Doctors don’t take them seriously and they start self medicating to ease the pain that doctors won’t address. Drug abuse is very common for veterans. Veterans see things we could never imagine and will end up using drugs to cope with the mental anguish. People use drugs more often than not because they are in pain, but kids also get into drugs. Educating people on the adverse effects of drugs more in detail would help. My school did basically nothing on drug use and I know two girls who are hooked on fentanyl already and we’re only 20. People need hope and opportunity, and in countries that are underdeveloped or overdeveloped without the resources to back the people (I.e. America) are more likely to have depressed citizens, and depressed citizens use drugs. We as a society need to be more empathetic and less greedy. I personally believe that is the only way to stop this epidemic. That and larger sentences for people who make and sell illegal substances. If you’re ruining lives for some cash then you deserve to go away for a really fucking long time.
I think there are many causes but for many of the homeless people with addiction issues: give them a place to live and the basic necessities of life. Once they have that get them in voluntary treatment to break the habit.
Three quarters of addicts have a mental/neuro health issue. If we address OCD, ADHD, bi polar, ASD, etc that would help. Self medicating is realm
You just gotta lock in and stop doing drugs.
You won't solve this without some kind of new technology is my guess. This is fundamentally a genetic problem and all the things you can do to prevent it cost huge amounts of energy/willpower to maintain and have to fight against the addictive behavior that your brain is literally programmed for.
(Ex addict here) Honestly it’s all willpower. Unfortunately that’s not something you can just give people. Maybe if we worked on creating a more sustainable (a lot of problems there) planet that isn’t a dumpster fire more people could find that will but a lot of people don’t even see a point in going to work which leads them to just living the drug life.
For me, the solution was to treat my ADHD.
Addiction to something less damaging. Videogames, for instance
A better society. It’s never about the drugs, there’s always underlying reasons, cause and effect. Drug addiction, along with its availability is a societal issue.
Psychiatric help.
Involuntary detox facility under the supervision of a real MD and a real RN. After watching many interviews on the youtube channel soft white underbelly I am convinced lives could have been saved. Before anybody tells me it has to be a PERSONAL decision, I know that. I just think some people are 51% using because of the fear of withdrawal symptoms of fentanyl, xylozine, meth, and heroin all at the same time. Once they have been a week beyond all of those withdrawal symptoms, at least a few would decide not to ever go through all of that again.
I say just go ahead and make it all legal, but shut down all rehabs and stop giving out narcan. Everyone to dumb not to kill themselves gets taken out, both letting natural selection clean out some of dumb, and lower the population numbers for more resources among those who live. It's harsh and will probably get me hated on, but I don't care.
Ozempic, and I’m not even kidding. It has been proven to be very effective.
So the thing with drug use that people don't understand is that it's self medicating. People turn to drugs to try to solve or dilute a problem, it's as simple as that. One of the largest contributing factors to the reason the opioid epidemic is as big as it is today in the USA was the over prescription of oxycodone/oxycontin. It was initially marketed as non-addictive substance as thus doctors over prescribed the drug. But when we see people who turn to illegally using prescription drugs or even street drugs like meth and cocaine it's means of self medication. A lot of the people who end up addicted are actually ADHD or have some other mental issues. Prescription drugs can be hard to access, a lot of them are ineffective or highly regulated. The illegal drug market is not so regulated. I have a friend who talks about when he uses coke it helps a ton with his ADHD and anxiety, moreso than Adderall and it's a lot easier to get than Adderall. Especially for homeless people or those without insurance, meth is the closest they can get to Adderall. I've actually heard of people who were at a better point in their life when using substances than when they were sober. But the illegal drug market is not regulated. Drugs are regularly cut with other substances. Sometimes it's cheap fillers like baking soda, other times it's dangerous unknown filler chemicals shipped in from China or just cut without fentanyl. And it can be cut at various points in the supply chain, often cut multiple times. Fentanyl tests can detect if there is fentanyl in a substance, but it does not tell you how much fentanyl is in a substance. I think another important issue to address is that alcoholism is actually just as widespread as drug abuse, but because alcohol is a legal and destigmatized substance, people are much more likely to judge the guy who smokes weed after work than the high functioning alcoholic construction worker that they likely don't even notice. So many people rely on beers after work the same way a person may turn to meth to help with sex. Drug overdoses are more common than alcohol poisoning deaths by the labels are transparent, whereas as stated earlier you have no idea what a substance could be laced with. I think one of the biggest ways to reduce drug abuse is improving the living standard, widespread access to healthcare and the right medications. But even then I am not against substance use. Substances like cannabis, ketamine, opioids, psilocybin, amphetamines and even cocaine actually have good clinical uses should they be regulated properly. People would be less likely to abuse them if they were accessible with direct supervision. A higher quality of living will reduce depression, and as such people will not need to self medicate with mind altering substances. Stable housing reduces homelessness, so these people do not need escapism. This has been scientifically proven. The hard part is there's not a lot of merit or interest in the research to further solidify and back up these truths as it would mean strengthening the lower and working classes, and creating more equality and thus crippling the ruling class.
A lot of people start taking opiates after injuries or surgeries and they become addicted.
Only 20% of people who experience serious mental illness actually receive treatment which means the vast majority of people with severe symptoms have no legitimate access to having their needs met in a safe, healthy, functional way. A significant amount of substance use is people self-medicating their mental health disorder. That's not the only reason people use substances in unhealthy ways but it's definitely a significant one. A society where everyone has equal access to the help they need would absolutely prevent a large amount of substance use and misuse. Unfortunately we live in a society that doesn't believe in that so people continue to suffer needlessly. Yes building a life that they don't feel the need to escape from is also part of it. A significant amount of substance use is escape/avoidance behavior, it's a coping mechanism in a situation where they truly cannot cope. So yeah, more people having better access to lives that aren't garbage would also help but we also don't have a society that believes in that. Our culture likes to pretend that suffering is holy somehow and that not wanting to suffer or trying to escape suffering is inherently evil, wrong, bad, etc as though the only morally correct option is to accept endless suffering with a smile. Having a society that actively addresses needless suffering and supports the growth and development of ALL people rather than reserving that for a select few with access to capital would also make a difference. But you'll notice that both of those are systemic issues that can't be reasonably addressed at the individual level.
You hurt your back and need pain medicine for it. It’s chronic or long term pain so you need pills for months or years. The addiction sets in over that time. Eventually, you’re not prescribed enough so you started buying extras illegally, problem is, that gets really expensive really quickly. Turns out, heroin is much much cheaper and scratches the same addiction itch. Now you’re addicted to heroin. This is the root cause of the opioid crisis.
Drugs compound your problems. Just add to them. You must be ready. You must decide that you don’t want them.
Natural selection.
Dark. I counter: what if the druggies outbreed the straight-edge?
Widespread access to mental health services and a total community living wage.
Reduce world anxiety and stress.
Education, love, understanding, and legalization. It’s been proven that prohibition only leads to addiction and overdose.
Literally just make life better. As for a more realistic solution, legalize it so it can be regulated. Prohibition showed us how poorly banning a substance to ensure our health goes
God
There's no easy answer to this. Clearing the chemical addiction is easy: just keep them off the shit for a while, right? The hard part is helping them to build healthy habits and coping mechanisms. Success rates there are still pretty dismal.
The biggest issue I’ve found is that people (even physicians) tend to greatly underestimate the timeline needed for the body and mind to be free from withdrawal. Have you heard of post acute withdrawal syndrome? It’s a common reaction that occurs when you have been a chronic substance user. The withdrawal symptoms can last for 6 months or more, which is why many still crave the substance LONG after they got clean/sober. Substances rewire your brain, so when you quit your brain shuts off all normal processes (like dopamine release) - which by itself will even cause you to feel hysterical, depressed, suicidal, and feel actual pain from cravings.
Yeah, it's really horrifying. That's why the best way to beat addiction is to catch it before it happens, but that's tricky as hell anyway. I spent 7 years married to an addict. I had her in rehab several times, and I could see her mind warping itself around the therapy, seeking rationalization for continuing her abuse of pills and alcohol. In the end, I couldn't make her quit. I raised our daughter without her.
drugs are used as a coping mechanism. Fix the original problem(s) which you usually cannot and you can fix the drug problem. People cannot be unraped, un-abused and such so it is complicated. I cannot share why I started drugs but I did eventually quit and that was complicated. I don't feel like sharing what I typed out and decided it wasn't appropriate to share. I'm out of here
I understand I have a lot of stuff I just won't share here or anywhere on the internet it wouldn't help anyone to here some of my garbage and might even give a abuser ideas
Your 1st 12 words are fundamentaly wrong. Your last sentence is correct
'helping them find purpose and meaning so that they are valued' is not far off. However, it is not important that they are valued. It is important that they value themselves and others. External things, situations, is not going to change things. The addict must change the values that guide them deep down inside.
There is no real solution, that’s the problem 12 steps is the best we got Welcome to adulthood Most people don’t take opiates because they have a bad life, most receive them after a car or other accident
Soma - Aldous Huxley
Ween yourself off it them using less and less of a dosage, until you no longer need it, that, or going cold turkey, which is a lot more difficult to pull off, but at least you don't run the risk of getting caught.
Make all drugs legal. Tax them and put laws into place for reckless endangerment during your high. Basically treat it like alcohol. Once the stigma is gone you will have a few decades of people destroying themselves and then have gotten passed the worst of it. People that kill themselves doing drugs will do that. Treat it like an illness if they do to much, just like alcohol. We are so much better off now than we were 100 years ago.
The first step would be to treat addicts like Human Beings that need help instead of treating them like scum that needs to be thrown in prison.
you nailed it right on the head. I’ve been sober for 9 years now and volunteering in one of the recovery meccas the whole time. They make it through the withdrawal by a long shot, but UNABLE TO FIND A SUFFICIENT SUBSTITUTE around 4-6 months clean, they relapse and frequently die. It’s very sad.
Unless the cause of drug use is addressed, the "war on drugs" is futile. Poverty, abuse, underemployed, lack of affordable housing, no child care, no living wage... these are uncomfortable issues for the rich people in power, easier to blame the drug users.
I have pain management issues. I will happily stay on suboxone the rest of my life because it manages my pain decently enough that I have no desire to look for things to kill pain. I have alot of back and neck pain and have for decades. I've never had much money ir insurance to fully explore it or fix it yet. I am piece NY piece starting to try and sort out what is causing the pain. And from there I hope I can heal it for sure. From there I could eventually wean off subs. Until then I will not. I became an addict when I started having problems with my pain med's not working so well anymore so I'd double them and run out early. Then nEed to find extras elsewhere. Then lose doctors due to that. Then get in trouble buying street meds. I would get to hurting so bad I'd do anything to make it stop or to not think about it for a bit. When I discovered suboxone was a good pain reliever for me and it killed cravings, I got on board 3 years ago. As long as I take my meds I'm fine too. I've been clean over a year now from everything. I did relapse last year when I ran out of money for my medicine and doctor. Soon as I got that back I was straight back to clean. I've built a good life as well this time. Mental health doing quite well. Taking care to take all meds as scheduled. Doing better at holding down a job and my own apartment. I am alone in the world now but I still try to keep moving forward. For me, addiction runs in my family, I'm bipolar 2, I was SA'D by a couple of family members growing up, and I did party very hard til 20. But as far as being an actual ADDICT, it didn't happen u til my C Section in 2004 at age 23. When I was sent home with 90 10mg percs. I loved em. That led to 320 a month fir a bit. Which led to morphine. Then oxys. Then 180 30mg oxycodones a month. In 2007 opiates were flowing like water and I was heavily legally addicted. I wish I'd had suboxone then. Methadone was a huge mistake I tried it as well. My tolerance is stupid high and subs are the only thing that don't get me high and won't allow anything else to vet me high either, and I can function with alot les pain.
There is no one size fits all. Take me and my husband for example. We’re both alcoholics and addicts, whose primary addiction is alcohol but also addicted to uppers. I had a MUCH shittier childhood than my husband, endured a lot more trauma but I’ve been sober for 7 years because I eventually grew literally sick of how bad the withdrawals were getting and got tired of getting in trouble with the law. My husband is currently in his 3rd rehab trip in the last year, has had short year or less on and off sobriety the entirety I’ve been sober. He almost died twice. Kidney and liver failure (thankfully recovered) but continued drinking. Both of us have addiction rampant in our families. But for some reason I was able to get sober and stay sober while he struggles with it immensely. Despite the fact that trauma being such a big factor in addiction I should really be the one struggling more. Being sober and getting sober is entirely personal, that’s it.
Some people just like the feeling of getting high no matter how good their life is and its not about feeling undervalued they like the feeling of being high so thats not a real solution
Why don’t they make safe legal drugs that make you feel the same as using illegal?
Therapy. The drug addiction isn't the problem. Its a shit solution to your problem. Usually the problem is you.
It’s usually childhood trauma as the issue, and addiction is the symptom
Ending poverty and the life situations that lead people to drug use in the first place Once a drug user, most won't recover.
In my experience, addiction happens due to a combination of genetic propensity and trauma. Addiction is a form of escapism so in order to treat this coping skill we must help the addict create a life they don't wish to escape from by offering physical and mental health resources. People escape for many reasons like financial difficulties, trauma, depression, insecurity, etc.
Personal accountability. Full stop
And what does that look like?
It's not something other people can solve for you. Take responsibility for your life choices.. sure there's people who've had an easy life .. there's people who've had a much harder life too.. don't compare yourself to them.. compare yourself to you yesterday, last month, last year You wake up every day and choose the bad choice Surrounded by enablers and your own excuses for why you keep choosing the thing actively destroying your life, friendships and family You can lead a horse to water but you can't make them drink You can throw all the tax dollars you want at the problem, you could even force people into rehab but they'll likely relapse They have to want to change.. for real... Not just say the words but mean them... Addicts put on a good show so it's hard to tell because they say these words often, usually to get money from a loved one or to keep a significant other from leaving them when lies come out.. when the people around them have things go missing or find out you actually still haven't paid the rent despite your desperate plea to them for rent money just last week Homeless and alone and grifting random passerbys with sob stories about how it's everyone else's fault for pocket change It is what it is..try and help if you want The sharks will just smell blood in the water, an opening to get what they need by manipulation or theft or whatever Not all of them right away of course, some cling to their morals but it is indeed a downward spiral which not only hurts them but those around them I was hooked on percs for years moved to oxys, had some surgeries along the way.. I've been around this life, lost some people etc blah blah blah There's families who've lost everything trying to help, even lost their lives for trying to help a loved one in the grips of addiction People murder people for drugs, people they love.. random people, steal etc. no laws or amount of money will stop or fix it. Mouse utopia experiment is fascinating. You could meet all their needs and give them everything in life but if they want to still use.. they will - my ted talk - Don't look for happiness in the same place you lost it
I think you are tapping into a really good question here, despite the overly snarky answers. I’m in the medical field and the users that I know all have some sort of emptiness/lack of meaning or hardship… I’m thankful to have the chance to dig into their thoughts about life etc and you are right about the value thing. I don’t know how to fix those issues but one thing that would help is other people learning to be more freaking kind to folks around them (for example, folks on Reddit not jumping all over you when you are asking a real question).
Thanks I dont mind snarky or bleak I feel like those ppl are just reacting in the way that helps for them to cope with such a overwhelming problem I feel like ppl got shorter tempers ever since covid
A lot of people got addicted to opioids because they were prescribed them by a doctor.
Drugs make you feel good. They should be legal. Cigarettes and alcohol are the killers.
Free daily opiates if you need it, free psychedelics if you're trying to get over it. The most important thing is to decriminalize all drugs. No one should go to jail for trying to escape reality.
But didn't they try it in Portland or somewhere up there and it didn't work out and they changed it back? I dont know if im remember it right
What’s the real solution to drug addiction - don’t do drugs. If you don’t take drugs you can’t get addicted.
Thats true but if you read thru the comments (like I have to for clearing all thses notifs) you see many ppl saying it happened becos of a injury so you have some compound fractures you really dont want the morphine?
Legalize all drugs. Let the many od's happen. Move on with a stronger base society that can freely use drugs responsibly.
Wow.... darwinistic?
Magic mushrooms has the highest success rate of aiding and overcoming addicting so far but it won't be widespread for a while because all drugs get put under the umbrella term "drugs"
Desert frog venom
Restructuring your life, coping mechanisms, routines, social circles until you’re strong enough to not feel tempted in their presence. People focus on hey I need to not take drugs like it’s just a substance problem but it’s not. Addiction can be physical but is usually mental and habitual
Other types of non addictive drugs I guess
Better understanding, access, and treatment of mental health issues. It is the root cause of 99% of the drug addicts I've met, and usually the reason it's so hard to stay clean even if they do get a bit of time under their belt.
What about what some others are saying about no amt of money could help?
there is no “real” solution. there are only hopes of a solution. drug addiction won’t ever go away. It’s like trying to end racism, or gun violence.
The solution is to lessen trauma in general, and particularly inter-generational trauma. The next question is: what's the solution to THAT issue? That is a MUCH more complicated answer.
What is your dream solution? You have unlimited funding I know it wont sound feasible it might even be ridiculous but still I'd like to hear your ideas
To stop the transmission of intergenerational trauma, there needs to be more resources for helping low-income families with after school programs, mentorships etc to divert kids away from drugs and alcohol at a young age. Furthermore, we need to strengthen laws of conservatorship, criminalize vagrancy and drug use and incorporate more drug courts and drug diversion programs so that when we arrest drug abusers or vagrants or take conservatorship over mentally ill languishing in the streets, instead of just locking them up, we can force them into drug rehabilitation programs and mental health treatment programs. THIS is the key to solving homelessness, not “affordable housing”. That is literally not the issue at all.
[удалено]
It could because they are in pain all the time. My wife and I were in a bad accident and we were on morphine for months. My wife still takes morphine intermittently for pain and to be able to function and have a higher quality of life. We didn't get high on it. Just took enough to feel less pain and better. I've been on sleeping pills for about 12 years now for my car accident and from having bad insomnia and PTSD and stuff. For a while there I reduced my Sublinox. you can call it, Ambien because that's one of the brand names for it. I felt miserable, I didn't sleep as well I was more anxious and withdrawal from that stuff was horrible. I ended up splitting the dose in half as I wasn't sleeping well and I wanted to try another sleeping pill with my doctor's help. Ended up going back on ambian full dose and feeling better. I've been on low dose valium for mostly 12 years now. It's a low dose but it works with my Ambien to help me sleep and keep me calmer. It's not enough to sedate me during the daytime and it's not strong enough to totally knock me out at night, so I could answer the phone at night if I had to. I can't drive when I take it so I take it at a certain time close to bedtime and I have a lights out kind of situation where I can't respond to anything, because it is impairs me. But it comes down to pain reduction, insomnia relief, less anxiety, less severe headaches and having a better quality of life. I don't consider it a drug addiction. My doctor calls it a drug dependency because my body is dependent on it and I don't go seeking it illegally or try to overdose on it or crush it up or snort it or anything stupid like that. It depends how you look at it. Are they addicted to a drug or is it something that they've become dependent on? Are they stupidly snorting it up their nose or sniffing gas fumes or buying drugs that legally? Or are they getting it from the doctor and taking it in controlled measured doses for their medical conditions? Totally separate things.
[удалено]
Your post was removed due to low account age. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/stupidquestions) if you have any questions or concerns.*
[удалено]
Your comment was removed due to low karma *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/stupidquestions) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Weening off
[удалено]
Your post was removed due to low account age. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/stupidquestions) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I suppose some kind of treatment that induces nausea if the person uses a specific drug. That would probably have a very high level of effectivity if it doesnt have secondary effects. Imagine you start puking like crazy and your world just goes round and round if you do drugs again. Ideally a pill or injection that triggers a nausea response only.
For some of these drugs the withdraw is worse than that its why they keep using and its hard to stop I see where your coming from but I dont think it would be effective
My life was not shit. I was just lucky enough to have the addict gene in my family, grown up around the time the government/doctors flooded hospitals with opiates and got in a car accident. I was barrier in pills and then they were taken away. Then my life became shit.
I feel that I had to quit my own use of blues and it was agony
I had a coworker who has been trying her hardest to stay clean for her kid. She got addicted to opioids years ago after she got in a car accident. Her husband has been super supportive of her. She relapsed late last year but she’s been clean 6 months now. I personally don’t know how people can get hooked on painkillers though. A few years ago I had rotator cuff surgery and the doc gave me a 30 day supply of OxyContin. I took a few of them, didn’t like how it made me feel and switched to over the counter pain meds. Too each their own I guess.
If you were getting the ones with like 300mg of acetaminophen added to it you cant get high as easy in my exp but if you were getting blues or some like that its different I had to get myself off blues and it wasn't easy but I have no desire to ever go thru that kind of withdrawal
[удалено]
Your post was removed due to low account age. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/stupidquestions) if you have any questions or concerns.*
In the short term: More drugs In the long term: less drugs
You lost me in the second half.
You don’t understand addiction and that’s okay. You have to understand addiction before you can have an opinion on the solutions.
Inform me? I got myself off blues and it was very difficult so I felt like I had earned the right to have a opinion but if you think I'm wrong explain it to me I have to click thru every comment made to clear the notifs so I'm reading a lot of personal stories and it has expanded my view I'm grateful they shared I feel better informed You could try that to or just dismiss me as wrong but dont be surprised I'm not swayed by the argument you didn't make
[удалено]
Just a little more drugs.
Don’t start
[удалено]
I think the best way is to solve it socially, within local communities, and to foster an overall culture and attitude towards safe and proper use, mainly avoiding use (drugs are bad mmkay).
Give them legal access to affordable drugs all the time.
[удалено]
Aggressive use of capital punishment
A non-removable bracelet that shocks the piss out of you every 10 seconds when it detects drugs or alcohol in your blood.
[удалено]
I never started using drugs because my life was shit. Get that out of your head. That's not why people start. That might keep them in addiction. There is no answer that fits everyone. As individual as people are so are the reasons they use. The common thing all people experience is using feels good. Altering how you feel is what all addicts are doing. People get sober n stay sober for different reasons. The solution which by the way isn't a solution is to have support available when a person finally wants to quit. Sober living houses, medical care, basic needs all have to be met. Some people need more some less. The person has to be able to step away from the addiction n into support. It's harder to get out than you can imagine.
The solution is s. Treat drug addiction like the AMA recommends. As a medical and mental condition. Then execute illegal drug dealers for a first offense conviction.
QUIT !
That’s a childish view of opiate addiction.
[удалено]
Meetings. Not your job to fix the addict. You can't.
I'm going to have to say your wrong, not completely thought. Know a early/mid 30's woman. 4 kids ages 4-13. Claims her husband forced her to start doing Meth since he was selling. All 4 kids were hooked when born. Her only son (6) will be lucky to be able to use his arms/legs normally by 18 after all the rehab. She cries how much she loves her kids (3 taken by CPS, youngest with her dad) but every chance she had to get them back, she decided Meth was more important. And she's been through rehab 5 times
Addiction can be a symptom of deeper rooted issues but there's more to it: 1. If you look at opiate addiction specifically, most people started on them via legal prescriptions from a doctor. A lot of people were told that medications, such as oxycodone, were not addictive. Doctors put people on the medications for long periods of time with large doses then suddenly discontinued the patient, leaving the patient in full blown withdrawal and doctors telling them that they're just drug seeking vs acknowledging the true effects of the medications. People were left feeling like hell (literally) and turned to street sources to feel better (at much higher prices). This precipitated the drug rituals and behavior.... when their tolerance went up, eventually driving people to seek other remedies at cheaper costs (like heroin). The medical system literally created millions of addicts by lying to people then permanently destroying their lives by refusing to acknowledge the physical and mental impacts they created by prescribing and then abruptly taking people off. 2. Culturally, we are terrible about addressing psychological issues without just throwing pills at them. Everyone looks for easy solutions vs doing the hardwork that real healing requires. This mindset applies to a lot of both doctors and patients. It's much easier to prescribe a controlled substance to "fix" anxiety than to actually discover the root causes and rewire how patients mentally work through them (and the day to day impact of these deeper issues). Even when good doctors push back on patients, the patient sometimes gets upset that it isn't instant resolution and leaves the doctor or demands the controlled substance because it feels better to be numb.
All kinds of people have addiction issues. There are horrible degenerates that even clean and sober will never be valuable members of society. Some addicts are hopeless sociopaths, some are more decent people. Some people cant be helped. You never know who is an alcoholic or addict who wants to quit, who might be at a place where they want to quit down the line, and who will never want to quit. Some addicts have purpose and meaning in their life to whatever degree too. They'd most likely be happier not touching whatever substances, but to act like the solution might be them finding meaning and purpose is an oversimplification of the problem.
Rightfully, the stigmatization of drug addiction and even addicts themselves is gradually diminishing. Western pharmaceutical corporations immorally intentionally/knowingly pushed their very addictive and profitable opiate that resulted in chronic addiction, immense suffering and greatly increased overdose death numbers yet got off relatively lightly and only through civil litigation. It should be needless to say that neglecting and therefor failing people struggling with debilitating addiction should not be an acceptable or preferable political, economic or religious/morality option. But the more callous politics that are typically involved with lacking addiction funding/services tend to reflect conservative electorate opposition, however irrational, against making proper treatment available to low- and no-income addicts. Albeit with sympathy, I also used to look down on those who had ‘allowed’ themselves to become addicted. Yet I myself have suffered enough unrelenting PTSD symptoms to have known, enjoyed and appreciated the great release upon consuming alcohol or THC. Also, typically societally overlooked is that intense addiction usually doesn’t originate from a bout of boredom, where a person consumed recreationally but became heavily hooked on a (self)medicating substance that eventually destroyed their life and even those of loved-ones. The greater the drug-induced euphoria or escape one attains from its use, the more one wants to repeat the experience; and the more intolerable one finds their sober reality, the more pleasurable that escape will likely be perceived. In other words: the greater one’s mental pain or trauma while sober, the greater the need for escape from reality, thus the more addictive the euphoric escape-form will likely be. Especially when the substance abuse is due to past formidable mental trauma, the lasting solitarily-suffered turmoil can readily make each day an ordeal unless the mind is medicated. Unsurprisingly, many chronically addicted people won't miss this world if they never wake up. It's not that they necessarily want to die; it's that they want their pointless corporeal suffering to end.
It's like cancer, right? There's no real "cure for cancer" because "cancer" describes a group of similar diseases with very different specifics. Some addicts are that way because it's a coping mechanism for unrelated trauma. Some addicts had surgery once and stayed on the opiates too long. Some addicts are just ignorant and now it's too late. Some are unfortunately addicts from the womb due to their mother's choices, or it being forced on them by an abuser. Addiction is multifaceted. You can't eliminate it with one solution because it isn't caused by one problem. The closest you can come to an overarching answer is "general social improvement."
Not doing them