The Opioid Epidemic - A.K.A The Crisis of Addiction

What was the gist?

I know a guy who used ibogaine to kick heroin addiction many years ago, swears by it now and even wrote his doctoral dissertation on the subject. I've heard similar things about psilocybin mushrooms and ayahuasca.

 

Psychedelics can overcome depression, was the gist.

 

Cool, thanks, that's my experience as well. Use them in the right situation with good-hearted people you trust and they can be life-changing. But use them in the wrong situation with the wrong people and they can also be life-changing, and not in a good way.

 

The interview was on microdosing, to be particular. 10 micrograms a day or something.

 

Yeah, I've heard that's become quite popular, particularly with people in the tech industry who do that while working to boost creativity. I didn't know that specifically was being used for depression, though that makes sense too.

 

Listening to Joe Rogan talking to Dennis McKenna (brother of Terrance). Talk about fascinating.

 

If I remember correctly, Terence had a ... well, rather irritating voice.

Hey, it's not NPR, but it is on youtube:



and it's only 2 hours and 51 minutes.

And Dennis doesn't have the same vocal ticks as Terence....

 

Uhhh...that guy is drawing some weird conclusions about the connection between doctors overprescribing and libertarian ideas of legalization. I have my doubts that the guy really holds or held actual libertarian ideas about drugs if he's noting the increase in overdose deaths but not also then noting that opioids are still highly-controlled and highly-illegal to have without a government permission slip (the issuance of which has been devolved on a very, very limited basis to doctors). It reads as an attempted synthesis of libertarians ideas in an effort to create something to argue against, i.e. a more well-crafted caricature.

 

Listening to #946 now.

 

Have to head out, but I'll pick this up at the 40 minute mark.

 

@Timon19 thanks for the Rogan tip. His talks with Jordan Peterson are pretty good, too.

But onto the thread topic. An article about Portsmouth, Ohio...

The American Consevative has a good tl;dr summary...

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/portsmouth-ohio-trump/

Full length article here...

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/may/17/drugs-opiod-addiction-epidemic-portsmouth-ohio

It isn't pretty.

Portsmouth, Ohio, once known for making things (steel, shoes, bricks), is now known for drugs, and labeled by some as the “pill mill of America”. The city peaked at 40,000 people in 1940, and as it emptied of factories and jobs – some made obsolete, some moved away – it also emptied of people and hope.

Now it is a town half the size, filled with despair and filling with drugs.

On my first night in town, a beat-up car parks next to me, positioned in the darkness cast by my van. The passenger, a middle-aged woman, injects the driver in the neck. He stays still, head tilted to expose a vein, as she works the needle in, while two young boys play in the back seat.

Done, they pull away as I try to fool myself into thinking I didn’t see what I saw.

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Rogan's a super-interesting guy. He's good at...talking to people.

I think he called the Peterson episode one of his favorites all-time. It certainly was thought-provoking.

 

NJ Heroin Deaths Since 2004

This article is dated Dec 2015. I'm pretty sure I posted it in the NJ News thread.

 

http://samquinones.com/reporters-blog/category/the-heroin-heartland/

Interesting blog from the author of Dreamland. Worth a look, new update about heroin and music.

 

It can happen anywhere but still primarily the scourge of the Opioid Belt.

Then there's this part from the article:

Ares-Romero, the doctor, said most of the overdose victims who arrive by ambulance from Overtown actually live somewhere else. She said people come from as far as West Palm Beach, 70 miles to the north, to find a quick fix on Overtown’s struggling street corners.

 

Nor is he recognizing that a lot of the overdose deaths are because of the rampant use of fentanyl to cut heroin.

 

Now elephant tranquilizers? Whitelandia - y'all need some new hobbies.

While fentanyl is tightly regulated in the US, Baer said Chinese labs have begun tweaking the molecular formula to create similar drugs that aren't yet illegal in either country, some even more potent than fentanyl. One variation, which is already regulated in the US, is Carfentanil, a tranquilizer that veterinarians use to sedate elephants and other large animals. Itturned up recently in heroin seized in Cincinnati, and it has also been linked to overdoses in Kentucky, Florida, and Akron, Ohio, which saw 230 drug poisonings — 20 of them fatal — in July.

"We're trying to get a better handle on how widespread it is and where it is," said Gladden, the CDC researcher.

https://news.vice.com/article/americas-new-deadliest-drug-fentanyl

 

Whenever you read reports of multiple ODs in communities over a short period of time, it usually means their smack was polluted with fentanyl or something like it.

 

Or better reporting of a crisis.

 

This is the sort of situation I'm talking about. It's not about better reporting of the opioid crisis, it's about anomalies in the typical number of ODs in a community.

In this case, a town went from 18-20 ODs a week - already a huge crisis in a town of 50K -- to having 27 in 4 hours.

 

Oh, shit. My bad. Gotcha.