Opiate deaths

[vorlon13]

Damn.

Recalled a name (fondly) of someone I worked with around 1980.  Did the old google thing, and up pops an obit.

Fuck, the guy has a weird name, how many people can have the same one??

Then look closer;

town is right

age is right

kids, yep

no mention of divorced wife



and a picture.




Well Jesus Fucking Christ, it's him.  Younger than me too.  And he just passed a couple months ago.  And that picture?  Looks gaunt, and not being snarky, he looks older than he should. Way older than I do.

Much older.

And where do I see that look all the fucking time?

Goddamn 12 Steppers.


So, I don't know if it was liquor or fentanyl or meth or heroin, it doesn't really matter.  I'm just seeing way way way too much of that.  "Joe" last fall, and now what I'll call a handful this year and shit, what the hell people??


It was NEVER this bad during the AIDS crisis.  As it was I could barely handle that rate, and I'm seeing double that now for addiction deaths.  And not all are surprises of course, K I'm looking at you, but this one?  Damn.  He was a good enough worker, easy on the eyes and didn't mind me coming on to him.  And LOL, not an outright immediate rejection either, had to think it over.  Told his eventual fiancé about it too.  She hated me for it, but I knew he shaded what he told her, he had to or she wouldn't have married him.

He was a sweety, he was, damn I feel bad about him passing. 


So what's the score at that place now?

CS dead

MY dead

VT dead

PM dead

ML dead

JA dead

JK dead

RB dead

and I'm fucking terrified to google Tony now.  Shit, he was so smart, saved the fucking company (from itself!).  And yeah, real easy on the eyes.  Damn Ton, you better fucking still be around . . .


FWIW, and weirdly I might add, dear old fuddy duddy Dave is alive.  Shit, he had cancer and beat it!!  30+ year cancer survivor, and good for you.  I had you pegged as first to go, and you're in the running for last.


Never know, do we ??

[Minimalist]

We do know.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk...overdoses/

“With approximately 142 Americans dying every day,” the report notes, “America is enduring a death toll equal to September 11th every three weeks.”

In 2015, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention figures, heroin deaths alone surpassed gun homicides for the first time. More than 33,000 people died of opioid overdose, with another 20,000 dying from other drugs. A recent federal study found that prescription painkillers are now more widely used than tobacco.

I recall Bill Maher discussing the pharmaceutical problem one time.  In essence he wondered, "why are we so sick?"  Do you suppose it is all a plot by big pharma to peddle their poison?

[The Grand Nudger]

Some amount of us seeming sicker and sicker has to be attributable to better screening and tools to identify illness.  Chances are, we've been plodding along with various illnesses for a long time..none the wiser, and we're just getting better at detecting them....and while we don't seem to be interested in preventing them, so much, there's a hell of a market in pills.  

"Well, whadda ya know, I've got x - the pill commercial just said so!"

Opiates rose on the back of (purportedly) treating chronic pain...not necessarily an identifiable illness. Maybe we should have been doling out weed instead, would have costed the taxpayer less, and as far as I'm aware...nobody od's on green. Pharma could have made their nut there too, with super strains and novel dosing. Just my 2cents.

[vorlon13]

and a 'big picture' moment;

received a summons of sort, looks like my pissy attitude about such things as the topic of this thread might be grating some other 12 Stepper nerves perhaps.

I get this periodically, and it usually comes down to an admonition to get my ass to Al Anon.  I am coming around to the idea, there is getting to be quite a pile of crap occurring it is not 'appropriate' to be venting about at 12 Steppers.  So the impetus to attend Al Anon is building.

I think most of my CIJS posts fall into that category too.

I'm headed to Omaha for errands and a possible . . .

{cue dramatic chord from Law & Order}

INTERVENTION

[vorlon13]

Some amount of us seeming sicker and sicker has to be attributable to better screening and tools to identify illness.  Chances are, we've been plodding along with various illnesses for a long time..none the wiser, and we're just getting better at detecting them....and while we don't seem to be interested in preventing them, so much, there's a hell of a market in pills.  

"Well, whadda ya know, I've got x - the pill commercial just said so!"

Opiates rose on the back of (purportedly) treating chronic pain...not necessarily an identifiable illness.  Maybe we should have been doling out weed instead, would have costed the taxpayer less, and as far as I'm aware...nobody od's on green.  Pharma could have made their nut there too, with super strains and novel dosing.  Just my 2cents.

I have to weigh in, as a frequent and regular reader of John Rosemond for MANY years, sadly, there isn't much cause to think anything recent as causing the surge in opiate/addiction deaths.

The roots of this go way back.  With that damn 20/20 hindsight, I realize all the eye rolling and head shaking I've tried to suppress at meetings for 20+ years was a strong indicator of a future playing out now . . . 


And it won't be fixed any faster than it was caused.


IOW, decades . . . . .

[The Grand Nudger]

What are you talking about?  The area I live in is being utterly destroyed, and the people it's destroying uniformly point to prescription opiates as their initial foray. We were handing them out like pez....entire clinics sprung up to service the market, and they were legal because of the patently absurd claims made by pharma about their products - but by the time anyone realized they were rank bullshitters it was too late. Now the "pain management clinics" are shuttered...and the addicts have to get their fix with heroin. Big pharma was the best thing to happen to heroin since rock.

[The Industrial Atheist]

The wife of a guy I knew from High School died of heroin overdose last year. He was an addict too. Thankfully I heard about him getting clean a few weeks ago.

[Wyrd of Gawd]

The question: "If America is supposed to be such a great place why do so many people have to use mind-altering drugs to cope with living here"?

[Brian37]

You know what is disturbing about all this. There have been a flood of third party addiction referral services adds on TV in recent years, catch is you have to have private insurance. So basically it is pay to play, if you are middle class or poor and strapped for cash fuck you.

[Wyrd of Gawd]

The insurance companies aid and abet street drug use by paying for treatment. That basically says that you can use them and if they don't kill you and you keep your insurance policy in effect we will pay for your treatment. The insurance companies aren't doing it because they are nice guys; they are doing it because they use it as a profit center, So they are contributing to the problem.