Drug overdoses suck

I could have put this in "protest" because I do. Or I could have put it in "boycott" because it's high time that people did. Maybe It could have gone into "mental health" because it's damn sick.

But I put it here because I figure the most people will see it. This IS, after all, the most popular forum on the hip...

So, someone from our small community died yesterday of a drug overdose. Morphine patches, stolen from someone's granny, and smoked. The guy who died had given CPR to his buddy JUST LAST WEEK for the same thing! This time it was the other way around and dude just freaked out and called his wife and the neighbors instead of 911. Long gone buy the time they ever got him to the hospital.

This makes something like 6 or 7 casualties so far. Mostly it's morphine patches. But a couple were methadone overdoses. And the people who supply the drugs get murder charges. (NOT the doctors or the pharmacists!)

One guy was chewing the patches (a quadaplegic in a wheelchair), passed out and choked to death. The FIRE MARSHAL covered it up - threw away the evidence. One guy was shooting up methadone on top of a bunch of pills and alcohol and drowned in the hot tub. His girlfriend got first degree murder for shooting him up while he was already out of it....

Not to mention the several people who have died of liver failure from living on pills and alcohol.

WTF??? Why do people keep on contributing to this???
"Oh, I agree it's bad and I won't SELL any pills, but I do them occasionally"... I hear this hypocritical crap all the time.
Or even worse, "I don't actually DO it myself, I'm just trying to make some money"...

What ever happened to things like self esteem, honor, intelligence? What happened to caring about what happens to yourself or others?
Have all these people simply given up? Is it really so great it's worth dying over???

I'm really pissed.
Doctors are prescribing this stuff without any follow-up and with too few questions. And people are gobbling it up like maggots on rotten meat.

I sat in a guy's living room one day, the local "pharmacy", and watched as a dozen or more young folks lined up excitedly for some new and unknown drug that nobody there even knew what it was or what it was supposed to do. Friggin' apalling.

It's just plain sick. I really don't get it.

So, c'mon random people, let's get some insight going. What makes people so stupid? Are we just gonna sit and watch and cry or are we gonna do something about it?

 

Well...sometimes drug overdoses are murder. So...I guess they have a hard time drawing the line. I've been there, quite recently, and can sort of understand the families of the overdose victims wanting some sort of justice. It's a hard thing. And every now and then, there's justice to be found. I can definitely understand wanting to put the supplier of the medication in jail, even if it is irrational and doesn't help anything in the end. I don't know...I guess it's just hard to explain until you've been there. I don't think it's right, I don't think it's fair, but I do understand it.

 

Drug dealers and doctors shouldn't be blamed for people overdosing. They don't force people to use drugs.

I've overdosed before, but it was my own stupid fault. lol I think I survived though, so it's alright. haha

 

I don't think dealers or doctors should be charged, either, but I do think that if someone gives them to you, they should be charged. Maybe not with murder, but with negligence or something. I know when I'm messed up, I tend to be in no condition to judge whether or not I should have more or not. I don't know, I'm still trying to make sense of a lot of shit myself.

 

No one forces people to do drugs. (Okay, not entirely true, but it's a fair generalization)
Free will. We all have it. If people want to do drugs, let them - what I think is important, is that they be educated on possible consequences, both legal and medical.

 

You may not be in any condition to judge whether or not you should have more when you're already messed up, but it was your decision to get messed up, in the first place.

 

Doctors have a responsibility. Doctors kill more people every year than car accidents and guns combined. Most of them are little more than lackeys for big pharma. I have little respect for most doctors.

 

That's probably true, but doctors have nothing to do with someone who accidentally or purposely overdoses. Some of them may wrecklessly prescribe some drugs with negative contraindications, but this thread is about overdosing; not dangerous combinations or misinformation.

 

What happened to people being responsible for their own actions? Don't take the freaking drugs if you don't want to die.

People who are addicted are fully aware that they are addicted. You have to want to get clean, and these people obviously wanted their drugs more.

No, I don't think anyone should be charged, unless they dosed someone against their will.

 

LOL, this is just stupid!

 

Well Said.

 

as long as people need an escape, they will take drugs. i agree that people should be able to judge on their own, but i honestly dont understand how some doctors can give people so much medication when its obvious they are too fucked up. i know someone who is on about 150 mg of methadone a day, and on top of that is prescribed klonopin, ativan, and tramadol for "pain" that she has. the only reason she gets prescribed all this stuff is she used to be a heroin addict. no chronic pain, no history of anxiety. i took 1 of her klonopins and it fucked me up, now i know she has a higher tolerance obviously but she takes 3 a day on top of everything else, and drinks alcohol almost daily. everyone around her knows she is too fucked up, i dont know how her doctors cant see it. everyone in her life has told her she is too medicated and needs to stop, but its always excuses. she wants to be fucked up and she literally doesnt have the self control to stop. her doctor is the only one who can control it.

 

That is dangerous, is so many ways. Not only is 150mg of methadone per day an extreme amount of methadone, but it's even worse when combined with benzos(ativan and lonopin). Methadone and benzos is one of the most dangerous drug combinations in the world. That's some fukt up shit, but again, it's nobody's fault but her's for becoming an addict in the first place.

More bad news.....methadone is harder to kick than heroin, according to most addicts.

 

My point is sometimes overdoses are NOT accidents and not the victim's fault. Especially when the victim is dying and the person who gave them the pills is too chicken shit to take them to the goddamned hospital, so they fucking die and end up with their body in a ditch.

 

That's true, in some cases, but I'm talking about when someone deliberately ingests some drugs to become intoxicated, it's nobody's fault but their own if they overdose.

 

Yeah, I agree with you. And you already know my story and situation, so I know you understand where I'm coming from.

 

Yeah, and I'm definitely not talking about situations like that. I hope you know that. lol

 

yea i know methadone is a bitch to kick, thats one of the reasons she says shes still on it. she used to be on almost 180 mg a day but shes starting to wean off 1 or 2 a week or something. i didnt know that it was such a dangerous combination, and now that i think about it she goes to 1 place to get the methadone (a clinic) and a doctor to get the pills, so maybe he doesnt know she is on it? i would imagine that would have to go on her medical records or something though. and yes i definitely know its her fault for becoming an addict, i blame no one but her for that, but the sad part is she has a kid (her getting pregnant is the only reason she stopped heroin and got on methadone) and i know shes just killing herself because she drinks on all that shit too. i'm not defending her drug use at all, but she thinks its ok because this is all prescribed to her. i'm sure she makes up lies to get her pills but its pretty obvious to anyone that talks to her for 5 minutes that shes fucked up.

 

That sounds like a sad situation. I feel sorry for her kid

But yeah.....opiates supress the respiratory system and so do benzodiazepines and alcohol, so when they are combined it can be pretty deadly.

Benzos are pretty safe by themself, as far as toxicity goes, and it's pretty hard to kill yourself with just benzos, because you'll probably pass out before you can take enough to kill yourself. Most deaths that involve benzos also involve alcohol and/or opiates.

 

I got a little lost here... so because drugs can kill you if you use them incorrectly or abuse them regularly, then no one should do recreational drugs ever? I'm sorry, I'm going to have to disagree. I will agree so far as to say that people who do not know the meaning of the word moderation make this a problem, but I am not going to go so far as to say that all drugs are bad and everyone associated with them should be throw in the hoosegow.

Agree. In school, we have health classes on how to drink alcohol safely so as not to die of alcohol poisoning. They let us know what the long-term consequences are of drinking and smoking excessively. I took all of these things to heart, coupled with my own experiences, and today I am a very careful drinker and I am vehemently against cigarettes, but you don't see me running around trying to ban either of them because people abuse them.
I think extensive research should be done on short-term and long-term effects and legality should be based on that. It gets a little blurry when things like addictiveness come into play, because if you can get hooked on heroin in less than a day, I don't know how comfortable I am with it being readily available. The point is, though, if there was information readily available to instruct people on how to do this safely and in moderation, I don't see how it would be any different from alcohol consumption.

I agree with this up to the point where you say that no one should be charged for prescribing drugs, but with the limitation that they were not aware of an addiction. If someone is a known addict, I think a negligence charge wouldn't be out of the question. Now it's just a question of proving it, which would be difficult, but probably not impossible.