My heart goes out to Rachel as well.
I do a lot of work with heroin addicts.
A joyless world most of the time.
The only answer is education and to raise peoples expectations of themselves and their communities.
Ralph
I don't think there's anything that I'm going to learn from you daz. The problem with people like you is you think you've discovered something that no one has ever thought about before. There is nothing new under the sun, and I've not read a single thing that you've said that I haven't heard a thousand times before. It ain't no use getting older if you don't get wiser.
If the same girl had been killed by a drunken driver how many people would be calling for a war on alcohol or cars - or saying that people that used them were fools? Or perhaps a better meaphor might be if she had been drunk and crashed her car - although I conceed it would fuel the don't drink and drive campaign. Having almost recovered from a 2 day hangover I can say that people who abuse drugs are fools.
I count alcohol as a drug, Liana, and I was using myself as an example - but I must say that I'd rather be a drunken fool than a corpse. I don't want to give the impression that I support the use of Heroin - I've seen what it can do to people.
It destroys lives in most cases and can turn your body into a pin-cushion full of sores and even lead to amputation of infected limbs. There is a vast difference between experimenting with drugs and being addicted - but there is only a fine line between the two. Better to look stupid occasionally than to be DEAD stupid.
Posting to these threads has become a recent addiction of mine and I'm sure that a lot of people will be relieved to hear I intend to do a lot less posting from now on. I thank Stormy for helping me to see that I was taking it all a bit too seriously.
The bottle of vitamin c tablets on top of the tv.
The framed picture of her dog in front of the tv.
WHy is she all red like that?
I don't want to look at that picture but it's impossible not to...
i just had this conv with my mum... told her that unless *newspapers* like the daily mail stop trying to flog the notion that cannabis is a gateway drug, this will continue to happen.... i will be happier for my kids to use cannabis than alcohol, and hope to hell that i can educate them enough to know that cannabis and heroin are two way way different roads...
mum says that if you have an addictive personality thats when you are in trouble... i asked her "do i have an addictive personality?" "very much so" she said. "then as i have smoked cannabis regularly for over 20 years, why am i not a heroin addict?"
she looked confused..hurt....
you can never protect your kids enough, i guess.
mississippi - ..and I've heard your replies plenty of times before spouted from other people - but no one actually shows me a flip side to my arguements. People like you just tell me that I have no new ideas and that I should grow up, but never give me any reasonable arguements that might make me think in a different light. All I hear are the same lines trotted out by the newspapers verbatim. Convince me otherwise.
There is a public hysteria about illegal drugs when on a larger scale they kill very few people but not hysteria about other killers like heart disease, cigarettes, liver disease etc
Do you have sympathy for family and friends of people who die of cancer due to smoking? Or who die from alcohol abuse or who are killed in road accidents or rail accidents?
>>I get a bit sick of drug advocates saying things such as 'It is my life, I'm entitled to do what I want'. If that's the case then the rest of us should say 'Ok, but when you OD we will step over you in the street. There is no money to save the lives of people who do what they please'.
Your above comment is not just used by drug advocates but by smokers and alcoholics and people who eat lots of junk food and suicides and people who are pro-abortion. It's the arguement for anyone - 'It's my body, I shall do what I want with it' - following your logic do you complain about people who waste money for cancer treatment due to smoking or obesity due to bad diet or liver failure due to alcoholism. Everyone does as they please - does that mean there should be no money for anyone?
If the government tries to tell us what to eat there is public outcry - like when they banned beef on the bone. But its OK to tell us not to take illegal drugs. Hypocrisy and ignorance is the real issue.
So refute my arguments, show me the flip side - and don't trot out the arguments of 'drugs are dangerous', because lots of things are dangerous but people still do them, or that 'drugs destroy lives', because lots of things destroy lives but people still do them, or 'because its against the law', becuase lots of things are against the law but people still do them, law is a punishment not a deterrent.
Or are you going to tell me how immature and unoriginal I am again?
Dazzle, please explain..
Here is something new.
You have described at lenght in your postings what 'escapism' is.
Can you now do the same for the opposing term 'reality' that you have used on more than one occasion.
Reality is what you see around you.
On one level it is how your brain interprets the information coming in through your eyes, most of that information is 'filtered' out so we only see what is important to our survival but is not neccessarily what is actually there.
On the other hand reality can be seen as our normal every day lives. The 'reality' of most people's lives in our society is monday-friday 9to5 work. To relax / escape from this people live for the weekend - wether you call it relaxing or escaping from the 'reality' of work is just a matter of terminology. Some people may argue that the weekend is not escaping but just a continuation of their reality - there is no escape it just is. But most people spend the majority of their time at work. And most people need to be doing things at the weekend. Boredom is the modern disease. Which is why there is such a boom in business for relaxation courses / classes etc
Taking drugs is just another form of relaxing / escaping from the reality of modern life. And if you take hallucinogenic drugs it can also be seen as a form of trying to 'unfilter' the brain and actually see what is around us.
Reality is whatever you make of it and escaping is whatever you do so as not to think about your reality.
Spent the day getting ratted so I haven't seen the news.
Was it an overdose, or was it something added to the heroin?
Don't know much about it but I saw a TV prog that said Heroin was fairly non toxic of it's self - but it was often cut with toxic agents. It seems that Heroin and other opiates mimics certain natural substances in the brain - Jude will know more - and is fairly safe in small doses. They just don't bother showing all the people that die from too much alchol as it is far too common. i expect that I will be pill-o-rid for this post but what's new. Why is it they strike the messenger instead of striking for the truth?
The problem is not the drugs but the drug dealers. Pure heroin in small doses is not lethal and does not screw up your body - its the stuff the drug dealers cut into heroin which is dangerous and causes the problems.
Heroin is not evil or bad - it is an inanimate object which can be neither.
More people die from smoking / alcohol related diseases each year than heroin overdoses. Cigarettes and alcohol are both legal killers.
I'll probably get hammered over this as well but until everyone is educated about drugs and do not demonise them so much then there will always be a problem.
Its like blaming violent films for all of societies ills. Blame drugs for all the problems. Put the blame onto something else and don't look for the real causes of the problems. Ban a violent film, criminalise drugs.
Footbal matches can be violent - football isn't banned
People can get addicted to alcohol and become violent after drinking it - alcohol isn't banned.
There is no logic here. If its socially acceptable its fine, if not then its bad.
Rant over....
It's nice to see someone else who is brave enough to stand up and be counted Dazzle - more power to your elbow!
The same is true for Ecstacy, LSD and many other drugs that are dangerous - but no more so than the legal ones that have huge lobbies and even bigger tax pounds (sounds strange if you don't say tax dollars- wierd). There are some interesting web sites that will shine a bit of light on these subjects and point out that many more people die from asprin than from Ecstacy or heroin - and I don't mean as a whole but of the people who take them. Confused - you are!
I have to say that the only drug that I use now-a-days is alcohol - because it's the easiest to obtain - and I have never tried Heroin. I remember the things they used to say about Canabis before the whole of the Tory shadow cabinet owned up to smoking it after Anne Widacomes disastrous speech at the Tory conference.
Sorry chap (and chapesses) - I realised that the last post was not clear on the point of how many people die from alergic reaction to drugs. It seems that for every few million people that take asprin or ecstacy (yes ecstacy is that popular) - more people on average will die from Asprin.
Although Asprin is said to help prevent heart attacks and Ecstacy positively encourages them ;-)
I have never been able to understand how Mrs Thatch managed to ban raves where everyone drank soft drinks in favour of all night boozing sessions at the local night club - it couldn't be anything to do with Dennis's free lifetime supply of Glen Morangue ;-)
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