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  • EADD Moderators: Pissed_and_messed | Shinji Ikari

Everything we thought we knew about addiction is wrong-apparently......New Animation

My initial reaction was to get up in arms about subjective, semantic, or technical inaccuracies and the hyperbolic title being twenty or so years behind neurobiology but in actuality this is perhaps the best piece of work I've ever seen on the matter. I usually can't stand "pop science", mainly because the population is filled with the dregs of the intellectual barrel, but this is well-written enough to be highly informative while simple enough to be understood by the vast majority.
I likeyz, I duz.
 
Heh Johann Hari.

He was nice enough to a reply to all my mdpv fuelled emails to him when he was a columnist for the independent and I was much more idealistic than today.

He got sacked a few years ago over some plagiarism brouhaha, iirc. Good to see he's still fighting the good fight.
 
If you read the William S. Burroughs book, Junky, published in 1953, he says the same thing - 'some people ask 'why DID you become a junkie?'.' Well, nobody sets out to become a junky, they have no particular direction in life so junk wins by default'.

Another true statement NA hate being voiced 'All pleasure is relief'. So that you NEED to have a habit to give your life a purpose - to regain that relief multiple times a day.

So, for addiction of all types - it's for pleasure if relief that is the ACTUAL high'. Work at it and you can develop agoraphobia and then forcing yourself to go out once or twice a day - the relief you get on returning home releases endorphins; you get high, for free, for a LONG time.
 
Its based on nothing more than rats and speculation...I answered this on the mdma thrtead ....

The animation is bullshit many people come out of hospital addicted to pain pills afer being on diamorphine in the states when the insurence runs out they end up on smack as its cheaper - same as the thousands that came back from vietnam many ended up homless and addicted - thats when heroin became big business 60's/70's with the cia bringing in kilos in body bags

Edit / Delete
 
blondin said:
Its based on nothing more than rats and speculation...
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Well previous studies to do with addiction were also based on rats, the rat park test showed clearly different results. They weren't speculating. They were trying to show that there are far more variables that will determine a rat or (person's) propensity to continue with their DOC, rather than just having the one option to do so in a tiny cage or otherwise miserable existence.

blondin said:
The animation is bullshit many people come out of hospital addicted to pain pills afer being on diamorphine in the states when the insurence runs out they end up on smack as its cheaper
Click to expand...

Think about how many people get painkillers in hospital on a regular basis and I'd bet a very few minority turn to smack. Maybe it's a different story in the US seeing how liberal they are with providing their patients with seemingly unlimited strong opioids.

same as the thousands that came back from vietnam many ended up homless and addicted
Click to expand...

To be fair, if i'd just been seeing traumatic shit in a jungle, I would've used heroin, and probably would've found it fucking hard to re-integrate back into society, probably having PTSD etc.

It would be interesting to see some figures of how many who had a habit in vietnam, managed to carry on without when they returned.

So what's your opinion then? Is it a disease? A choice? Coping mechanism? Why do we do it?

/rant over. :o

a lot of drugs were consumed tonight. i'm sure i didn't express what i wanted to properly...help me blondi won kanobi.
 
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I went and saw Johann Hari talk when he came to Brisbane. he's amazing. I wish policy makers would pay more attention to the likes of him.
 
Addiction more often than not leads you in to a lonely exisitence with little contact with family and few friends Now Mr Hari (a snake oil salesman - read up about him) is partially correct if you managed to get someone off drugs and in its place gave them a fantasic place to live, lots of mates, no money worries etc etc in other words a 'perfect society' for you live in then yes some people would not turn back to drugs how many people? yet to be determined as no valid trials have been undertaken and probably never will as its a nonsense.
 
blondin said:
Addiction more often than not leads you in to a lonely exisitence with little contact with family and few friends Now Mr Hari (a snake oil salesman - read up about him) is partially correct if you managed to get someone off drugs and in its place gave them a fantasic place to live, lots of mates, no money worries etc etc in other words a 'perfect society' for you live in then yes some people would not turn back to drugs how many people? yet to be determined as no valid trials have been undertaken and probably never will as its a nonsense.
Click to expand...

Taking a 5 minute pop sci animation at face value is a bad idea.
Take a second to consider that the psychological portion of addiction that we addicts know is a million times more important than the physical side does not exist in the eyes of wider society. This was a beautifully delivered way to educate the layperson, the people whom vote based on the misinformation the political class use as leverage against science and evidence based medicine, that archaic and inhumane punishment is cognitively destructive and will never help.
The subtext means far more than the overt and simplistic narration.
That subtext being "address the pain that is being escaped, do not punish escape with more pain".
 
To simplify - treat addiction as a medical 'condition, not a criminal one ,as has happened in portugal, and the statisitics are remarkable - i wont post as they are easily googlyable BUT tere is no denying that that approach works a hell of a lot better in terms of treatment and sustained abstinance as well as take up by young people.
 
Sorry, this a reply to an offtopic post near the start of the thread, please ignore if looking for pill info.

. Most people given opiate-based painkillers in hospital don't become heroin addicts.
2. Most heroin addicts haven't been given opiate-based painkillers in hospital (unless for withdrawal, or because they demand them.)
3. Of the US soldiers who came back from Vietnam addicted to heroin (a lot), almost all were permanently clean 12 months later.

People take drugs because they like taking them. There ain't no addiction (and I've been "addicted" to half a dozen things. Benzos and booze are the only ones with serious withdrawal problems, the others are trivial (heroin), shortlived (GBL, worst one IMO) or just in your head (coke, whizz, pretty much anything). You know it, I know it, we all know it, but it's in everybody's interests to pretend that compulsive drug users are victims who need help rather than moral agents with choices.

I'll get me coat.
 
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Addiction is neither a criminal problem (unless we make it so) nor a medical one (although withdrawal can be, eg booze, benzos). It's a moral problem. To deny this is to deny addicts moral agency, and treat them as less than human beings
 
Solicitah, there was no need for the delete.
I was simply letting you know it was being moved by the ">>>", didn't want you to think it'd just disappeared. :)

Would you like me to restore the original post? :)
 
Particularly in circumstances like this, the separation of mind and body breaks down as a useful understanding of people. Addiction lies in a smear across whatever boundaries of pharmacology, psychology and society we draw, and that is a lot of why it is such a thorny issue, and trying to ignore parts of the whole to push a simple line just distorts the issue more than it already is.
 
I don't think it helps that addiction is viewed as an absolute wrong.
All we have to do to fulfill our role is pass on genetic material and in a society such as ours where we don't even have to have sex to procreate, let alone fight off a sabretooth every time you feel a lil' frisky, why should we not spend every second in sheer ecstasy?

Puritanical ideology and a capitalistic economy have a lot to answer for.
 
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