Anyone read this??

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Old 08-24-2015, 09:01 AM
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Anyone read this??

The heroin epidemic?s toll: One county, 70 minutes, eight overdoses

The heroin epidemic’s toll: One county, 70 minutes, eight overdoses

This is on MSN today. If there was any doubt how scary this drug is, and what it is doing to our country, this is a very powerful illustration of what is going on.
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Old 08-24-2015, 09:18 AM
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“She doesn’t need jail,” Sonny said outside the home where the two lived with Sonny’s wife, who suffers from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), until last week. “She wasn’t out stealing or doing crimes. What she needs is help. She needs to be in rehab. And after rehab, she needs to be in a halfway house.”

Nationally, there are only a small fraction of the inpatient drug rehab beds needed for addicts, but Hickton, in an increasingly common stance for prosecutors, has agreed that users need help more than they deserve incarceration. Even as he has stepped up prosecution of dealers, he is taking a multifaceted approach to the current problem.

YUP
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Old 08-24-2015, 09:27 AM
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What is never reported is that the increase in heroin OD's and deaths is a direct result of the control and regulation that has been put on pain pills in the past couple of years.

With pills, at least users are abusing an FDA approved medication where they know the exact strength, and they are not cut with whatever the "chemist" wants to add.

With heroin, it's a roll of the dice of what you're going to get, but overall the purity has greatly increased over the years.

It can be said that it's a victory because the amount of pain medication being manufactured, prescribed, and abused has gone down...but at what cost?

One thing some states are doing right, is giving the public access to the proper training, use, and possession of Narcan (Naloxone), this IS saving lives.
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Old 08-24-2015, 10:27 AM
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In the Merrimack Valley of Massachusetts (where I live), we had 11 heroin overdoses two weeks ago, 3 of which that were fatal. In fact, one of our cities has had 29 fatal overdoses to date this year, and that's only the 6th most in the state.

It's horrible...just horrible.

But, I admit, there is a big, big part of me that wonders why, given what we know about heroin in 2015, anyone dares to dance with The White Lady. What is the X factor that differentiates between someone who wants nothing to do with hard drugs and someone who goes, "Sure, I'll try it."

Anecdotally speaking, as a Jimmy Page fan and a guitarist, I can hear the difference in Page's playing from 1973 (when he wasn't on heroin) and 1977 (when he was in the throes of addiction). That was enough to scare me off when I was a kid. And yet some people's brains are wired differently.

So sad, and so senseless.
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Old 08-24-2015, 11:26 AM
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I think it’s a combination of the direct results of the control and regulations on pain pills but it is also cheap. Many pain pill people who abuse their meds often seek out heroin when the pills run out before the next subscription can be filled.

In my area it’s sad that the police now carry not only guns, pepper spray, Billy clubs, Tasers but Narcon for all the OD’s.

Zoso77, years ago I had a friend who was a nurse and a heroin addict the circle of people she started to hang with were nurses and doctors all doing H. Educated medical professionals who certainly new better made that choice, its mind boggling.
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Old 08-24-2015, 11:58 AM
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Originally Posted by atalose View Post
Zoso77, years ago I had a friend who was a nurse and a heroin addict the circle of people she started to hang with were nurses and doctors all doing H. Educated medical professionals who certainly new better made that choice, its mind boggling.
Pharmacists, lawyers, judges, cops, etc. all do too. We only know of the "low hanging fruit" who get caught.
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Old 08-24-2015, 12:14 PM
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It's an epidemic that knows no social boundaries, that if for sure. And of course, you have to take into account not only is it more powerful and less expensive, people are always "owing" their dealer, and lets face it, they don't always pay up in the nicest of ways. There is a girl in the high school here in Juvie for prostuting herself to get it. It's awful.

No one is going to try to barter with the pharmacist or offer them sex for payment, just saying.......

My sister is in the police/swat team force and they are all required to carry Narcon also. Sad thing is, they end up using it on the same people, over and over again.

I wish I had the answers, that is for sure.
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Old 08-24-2015, 12:50 PM
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When I talked with my fiance over the weekend, he said he was offered oxy from the person who delivers his weed. Said he tried it and then once he had been using it a little was told a few times oxy wasnt available but was offered heroin in its place. He said hes afraid of the heroin but yet he took it anyway. I think he couldnt resist the urge when it was all that was offered.
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Old 08-25-2015, 01:28 AM
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Completely rhetorical questions, to no one in particular-
----but particularly directed from an old person to younger persons.....

What is missing in their lives that they needed this nihilistic horror?


Was it prior abuse? A greedy generation before you (mine) that took
every decent thing in life (good job/interesting work/ a future)
for themselves and left you to fend for yourselves ......caught
between Isis and plutocrats? Was it FOMO ( fear of missing out) YOLO (you only live once)or merely the unraveling of a social
system that preaches great things only to have you buried in student debt for an MS degree that gained you only bedpan emptying work ( save for EEs........there are NEVER enough of those!)

Forget the rhetorical. I saw it happen. Anyone with a brain
could have predicted it (I know I did). People love life and they live their lives when their lives are worth living. Yank out all the supports-----make them compete like cockroaches in the gutter/ rats in the sewer........and even highly accomplished persons ( like the aforementioned medical professionals) ......lose hope. It is a worldwide phenomenon. It happens when we gut one another of every bit of dignity that we can get away with...........forgetting that there are 7 billion of THEM and one of YOU.

Nothing I can post on any website will make any damn bit of difference.We used to call it civilization. The simple act of not actively trying to cut the neighbors throat (or bed his wife)


........in the off hope he (might) return the favor.

I know how out of fashion and out of touch this all sounds, trust me. And I have zero qualms about how MY life, the life of my wife of 30 years, as well as the lives of my children have turned out.

But I feel deep enduring generational shame for the world my generation has left behind......less a world of possibility than a bleak cockfighting ring.

Spare me the Horatio Alger stories. Every generation has them, just as every generation has had addicts. But not like this. Not this epidemic of hopelessness.

Addiction, the entire subject of this website....... is but a symptom.It's great the first responders now carry Narcan. The bigger question is why they need to.
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Old 08-25-2015, 02:54 AM
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I am with you in agreement Vale.

My town is economically depressed. The heroin epidemic is bad here. We have od's in our public restrooms at work. There are organized walks uptown by the courthouse, with people wearing messages on their shirts about someone they have lost to heroin. trying to awaken everyone to the enormity of the problem, hoping to save others .

When people cannot get the pills they are addicted to, some of them will take anything to ease their pain. our cops and firemen all carry narcon and use it daily. When will someone in power address this epidemic?
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Old 08-25-2015, 08:52 AM
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I think it also has to do with young people just feeling like they are invincible. Like it's not going to happen to them.

I live in a nice town, economy is healthy, schools are good. That just makes it a HIDDEN epidemic.
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Old 08-25-2015, 10:36 AM
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The one lecture my poor kids had to listen to ad infinitum
went like this. Forget every last thing Dad told you. Let it
go in one ear and out the other. It is a tradition that goes
back to the first hominid.

But please remember this one thing. You are not
special ( except to us, your parents). The statistics DO
apply to you-----be it seatbelts or drugs. Every life
story of those who have fallen in the battle of life
thought it would never happen to them.

We pay those who have fallen, are homeless, or
hopelessly addicted a disrespect when we smugly
assume we are better than they. We are most certainly
not. Their very lives were sacrificed (unwillingly, no
doubt) to creat a red data point for the rest of us......"go
here not, for this evil plays for keeps".

No soldier would go into battle knowing it would
be their last day. The only way to do it is to assume it
will be the OTHER guy/gal who will get a round through
the chest today. So enters bravado. But it is such a false
master. Wearing your kevlar everywhere (and time) you
are supposed to is hot, boring, and UNCOOL. Doing so
properly offers no guarantees whatsoever.It just ups your
odds a few points.

To the fallen, you have paid your life to create this
red data point. The very least we can do is pay respect to
your unwitting & unwilling sacrifice.
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