Crystal Meth -- Is it really surprising?- Page 4

[Rathnait62]

Posted: 6/21/05 at 10:47pm

First one's free, Plum...

[papalovesmambo]

Posted: 6/21/05 at 10:50pm

yep, all ya have to do is open your mouth and put your lips on it, plumsy...

Posted: 6/21/05 at 11:16pm

I guess I'm confused as to what message is being sent these youth. As far as I have seen there are many ways in which people - and yes, that includes young people - are being shown the effects of drug use.

And papa, the fact is we were ALL adolescents at one point or another - so it's not like we don't have awareness on that score. And no one seems to be addressing the very REAL fact that not all kids are doing this. In fact, I'd be interested in why you think (or at least that's how it seems) that the majority of kids devolve into this idiocy. And YES, I DO think it's idiocy.

I'm just NOT willing to throw my hands up and say that Desmond Morris was right, and that we're nothing but naked apes. There CAN be more than the response to impulse. Of COURSE peer pressure exists! I'm more intrigued by the fact that MANY seem to find a way to resist it rather than coddling those who succomb. Yes, they need help - and I'm all for giving it to them. But that help does NOT, at least in my mind, involve the removal of their PRIMARY responsibility in their choices.
Updated On: 6/21/05 at 11:16 PM

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 6/21/05 at 11:17pm

First off, TheaterDiva, I'm thinking you didn't read my whole post. If you look at it, I was paraphrasing what was told to me by a scientific researcher who has devoted YEARS AND YEARS of her life to understanding the impact of club drugs specifically on young men who have sex with men.

Second off, I was not criticizing YOU for being a schoolmarm or taking a condescending tone. At the time I wrote it, I was thinking specifically of Ms. Rathnait, 42 year old school librarian (food addiction brought on by unhappy homelife where love was a conditional thing), and Mr. Redhotinnyc, 40 something career counselor (unhappy homelife that he's put behind him, along with a bad job, so as to focus on what is good, among which stands Light in the Piazza, like a beacon of hope).

Let's face it, one person just never understood the appeal of drugs or even drinking, so it should be the same for everybody else right? They were just raised right by badly skilled parents (somehow) and well, that puts them in a different category than those who do.

And when I talked about the folks who didn't experiment sounding like they really have no idea what they're talking about when they advocate that others don't either, I ask you to look no further than Rathnait's never-quite-funny-but-OH-how-she-tries response, "Really? I, and most people I know, missed that memo."

Nobody ever gave you ANY memos, Rath. Take it from me.

Also, TD, absolutely no offense is intended by this, but clearly you are a guy for whom the abstinence-only structure like that of a recovery program has become your life structure. And that's fine. I am very very glad you got out of the grips of crystal addiction. As you can SEE in my post, I wrote that crystal and heroin are the big ones and the BAD ones and that nobody should do them.

Plum, if I could, I would just like to finally say for once and for all that your fence jumping, "she's an adult/she's an adolescent" and your stupid eye rolling icons are working my last nerve. Just pick adolescent and STICK WITH IT.

If you think people can't POSSIBLY have an understanding of adolescence, that somehow they never passed through it themselves on the way to adulthood, that they don't UNDERSTAND human psychology, here's an adolescent word for you: WHATEVER.

What's hilarious to me is that marijuana, which has become prohibitively expensive thanks to the "war on drugs" (HEROIN is a much cheaper drug today), never gets discussed in the same breath as alcohol, which many of you coming down on me, (but especially you, Rath) seem to be able to consume with impunity (except for your poor liver) while pot, a much more benign drug, is now impossible to find, incredibly high priced, and posession of which (if caught and prosecuted) destroys lives. All the while doing nowhere NEAR the damage that alcohol does.

By the way, I'm not a pot smoker, it doesn't agree with me.

My point is that DARE is a fraud and doesn't work, that people try drugs for all sorts of different reasons, that some drugs are MUCH worse than others, and that all or nothing discussions like the one is this fricking thread lack not only nuance (I SO should not be surprised by this considering some of the people who post in this thread) but any roots in the real world and a lack of empathy for how people come to be addicted and how they get out of it.

TD, don't know where you live, but the number of beds in treatment programs is trimmed by huge amounts every year. Glad you know where you can get what you need just for the asking. Would that it were true for everybody.

And finally, I have no idea WHAT you are talking about in the Bruce Vilanch reference, but the way it springs up there in the middle of your disagreement with me about what I posted about drugs, um, I would have to guess that that's been coiled up and waiting to launch for quite some time.

[Rathnait62]

Posted: 6/21/05 at 11:23pm

Namo, you can call me all the names you want, if that makes you feel good, and apparently it does, but where do you get this oft-told (by you) story that I consume alcohol with impunity? Have you met me? Have you been out with me to see that I generally nurse one drink while those around me have three, four, or more, because I really don't like the taste of alcohol? And that even more often, I'll order a soda instead of a cocktail as I get much more enjoyment from it?

No, the truth is, you have not met me, you have never been in my presence along with the presence of alcohol, yet you continue to portray me as a drinker. Why don't you do your research?

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 6/21/05 at 11:28pm

I CONTINUE TO PORTRAY YOU AS A DRINKER?

I don't portray you at all, Rathnait. And that wasn't the POINT of my post. However, your one drink does make you much more superior than drug users. Cuz it's only one. And it's legal. And you don't like the taste. (If you smoked pot, you wouldn't inhale either.) Granted, the effect even one drink has on someone is similar to several drugs, but that's DIFFERENT. Because you never did drugs.

[brdlwyr]

Posted: 6/21/05 at 11:29pm

Namo - even I knew that Rath is not a "drinker."

I do want to focus on one line:

"My advice? Do what you want, kids, ....."

Why did you choose that phrase as your tag line?

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 6/21/05 at 11:31pm

Because they are much less likely to do "bad" drugs if you just don't get all prohibitive on them than if you set them up as forbidden fruit. If you advise them to research and be prepared, they are much more likely to engage in HARM REDUCTION.

This is a prevention strategy which is the only one that works for all kinds of people. Abstinence based recovery programs work for about 5% of the population. That's why.

[Rathnait62]

Posted: 6/21/05 at 11:32pm

Yes, you have used that line more than once, about my supposed drinking problem, including on another board where you claimed to be me in an embarrassingly obvious post.

Why can't you ever make a point without calling other people names, or attacking what you deduce to be their behavior? Why can't you just make a point in a discussion, without all that knife-twisting? That's what I don't get about you. You'd come off as a knowledgable, interesting, educational poster if you didn't have to laden each post with the childish personal crap.

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 6/21/05 at 11:34pm

Oh Rath, dear lonely, lonely Rath. Why couldn't YOU let TheaterDiva make his point to me about my post without piling on?

[brdlwyr]

Posted: 6/21/05 at 11:36pm

Namo - I have not reviewed any data or research on these issues, but from you are posting, I suggest you edit your comment to something along the lines of "make wise choices" but not "Do what you want, kids" I do not like that directive.

[Rathnait62]

Posted: 6/21/05 at 11:36pm

Because I had something to say. This is a message board, and you are not the one who decides when the rest of us get to post.

Posted: 6/21/05 at 11:39pm

Something I'm not quite clear on is how youth can be portrayed as so much more aware in today's times, so much more attuned to nuance, so much more capable of multi-processing and having knowledge of such a greater diversity of things than ever before - and yet, somehow they seem to not know what they need to about this subject?

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 6/21/05 at 11:40pm

Ah yes, your fall back "cuz yer not the boss of me response."

Well, let's fall back to another of your statements. The one the other day where you said you wouldn't engage with me anymore. I'll support you completely in that. Now try to stick with something for once in your life, Rath.

And if possible, can we stop this thread from being another one of your personal backs and forths like you started with Plum a few posts back? The way you always do? I have even less interest in that with you than, well, just about anybody else on this planet.

[Rathnait62]

Posted: 6/21/05 at 11:43pm

No, I said I wouldn't PLAY with you anymore. Meaning, your games. I'm not responding to your baiting anymore.

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 6/21/05 at 11:54pm

The shudder that just went up my spine when reading that Rath made a "PLAY with" me reference rivals anything that has hit California in the past week. Ugggggggh. And now I will move back to chatting with sentient beings.

Dgrant, one thing that young people are often aware of is that people tell them not to do things that feel good. Even though they often know full well that the people telling them not to do something are doing it themselves. I included at the end of the post where I wrote "Do what you want, kids" (and really, I was being colloquial, not chatting with seven year olds) the link to Dance Safe with straight forward information about all sorts of drugs and how to reduce harm IF you choose to do them.

As I said, I had a lot to say and not much time to say it.

There aren't many people willing to GIVE young people the straight dope, if you will. Just edicts. And programs that have been proven to not only do what they say, but to do the opposite of what they say, like the ill-advised DARE. DARE graduates are WAY more likely to experiment with drugs than their non-DARE counterparts. That should really tell people something.

Do I wish people could enjoy recreational drugs without doing themselves or anybody around them any harm (including addiction)? ABSOLUTELY. But how can that happen in a world that does not value pleasure in an uprfront way, that places anti-drug ads between beer and coffee commercials and ads for sleep medicine, and that thinks NOT giving young people information "protects them" rather than keeps them ignorant.

Need I point you to the CDC website that has been scrubbed of condom references during W's tenure? That will LIE about the long term effects of drugs in spite of scientific research that proves otherwise? That our culture has a figurehead who was a cokehead who now favors Draconian drug laws but for him, well, he made his peace with Jesus?

My whole point is to argue for REAL discussion. Not statements. And I think the strongest negative responses to what I wrote have come from The Big Statement Makers, some of whom came about their Statements through experience, (TD), and some of whom are like Rath. []

Posted: 6/22/05 at 12:00am

Namo - all valid points. Which is why I generally favor the discussion of 'values' in our society - I just have different 'values' in mind!

[PalJoey]

Posted: 6/22/05 at 12:06am

Interestingly enough, the studies say the burgeoning use of crystal is not among "kids" but among gay men in their 30s and 40s (and 50s!), weary of the pressures of staying HIV negative or healthy (if HIV positive) and two decades of the "guilt of the survivor."

It's these adults in a second (or third) adolescence who are getting hooked on meth, eschewing the safer-sex guidelines they have clung to for 20 years and seroconverting.

Neither harm reduction nor abstinence seems to reach these men. Another prevention model is needed, one that has not yet been thought of.

In the meanwhile, gross pictures of rotting teeth and stories of my friend Steven's burst boils will have to suffice.

Updated On: 6/22/05 at 12:06 AM

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 6/22/05 at 12:08am

I remember fondly going to see The Simpsons Live and particularly enjoying the Q & A section with the audience. One guy asked Matt Groening, "Do you think drugs should be legal?" He said, "I'd like to say two things: 1) Don't do drugs. And 2) Drugs should be legal. Drugs should be legal. Don't do drugs."

We're not a culture that can hold such contradictions. But there ARE presecription pills that can help eradicate the anxiety caused by contradictions. And prescription drugs are INHERENTLY morally superior to the illegal kind.

[Plum]

Posted: 6/22/05 at 12:21am

Oh, cripes. Namo, I'm 20. I don't consider myself an adult, but I've gotten past my middle school phase of perpetual angst and absolute emotional dependence on my peers. To me, your post sounded like you were lecturing on adolescence when you're far more removed from it than some of the other posters on this thread. I found that a bit strange, but it's a bit extraneous to what you're really arguing anyway.

Is abstinence-only possible? No, of course not. Every person in my age group that I know, myself included, has taken in an illegal substance at some point. I'm not smart enough to come up with any kind of superior solution except the usual abstract "teach kids responsibility," blah blah blah. But I don't think a policy of "just stay away from the hard stuff" is beneficial, either. People get hurt that way.

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 6/22/05 at 12:32am

If you can't talk about a continuum of effects HONESTLY about a continuum of drugs, you're doomed. If you can't point out that you shouldn't drive or shop at the grocery store while high on pot on the one hand, and you really ought not even try heroin because its sneaks up on you and it's really hard to kick on the other, you're sunk.

If you can't point even further down the continuum and show that Crystal turns you into something just this side of incapable of feeling pleasure without the drug, then you're completely doomed.

There is no real harm reduction strategy that seems to work with Crystal Meth, there is no treatment strategy either. SO.... because people will still do it, because people will still get addicted, because people will stay up for four nights have passive anal intercourse (with active being impossible thanks to the accompanying erectile dysfunction) the harm reduction approach is, PLAN AHEAD WITH CONDOMS. DRINK WATER. TRY TO TAKE BREAKS. EAT A LITTLE SOMETHING NOW AND AGAIN. AND for GOD'S SAKE, USE LUBE USE LUBE USE LUBE.

Those steps can prevent seroconversion.

But what do I know? This is obviously stuff I never think about and I don't know what I'm talking about and I am only interested in more people getting addicted or something.

Goodnight, all.


P.S. TheaterDiva, I just re-read this earlier post of yours and I take back what I said. You DO sound like a schoolmarm:

"My Fair Lady,

9th grade is far too young to be smoking or having sex.

I would find a new group of friends."

And I know how important it is for a certain type of person who is in recovery from something to feel he has tantalizing insider knowledge that only a user or former user could have, but there are PLENTY of us who have never touched crystal who know when others are rolling. It's. Really. Not. A. Special. Club. You. Have. To. Have. Belonged. To.

Updated On: 6/22/05 at 12:32 AM

[Elphaba]

Posted: 6/22/05 at 1:34am

Namo....you are just about the most unintelligent and misguided individual I have ever seen on a message board anywhere........

my time is too valuable to waste reading anymore of your nonsense....as they say.....you are ignored

[feinstein9]

Posted: 6/22/05 at 2:58am

i find namo's posts rather interesting, actually. he brings a different approach to conversations. i don't like his insulting other posters, but that's incidental. i would, however, like to add my own two cents, because that's aparently the message of the message board. i thought maybe you'd want to hear what i have to say, because some here are discussing young people, and i'm 19 so i suposse that makes me a young person.
kids start drugs early. really early. my friends did, and because i didn't use, they stopped hanging out with me. so i tried dxm once. it was okay. but then i thought, i don't really want to do these things just to keep these lame kids interested. so i switched schools (drugs were huge at the former school and it's not like i could find another group of friends there). i haven't done anything since. just haven't felt like it. maybe i will sometime, but i doubt it.
why do youngsters do drugs? i'm sure a lot of it is physiological. some of it cultural. but i think *most* of it (at least in my expeirence) is peer pressure driven, and/or an escape from an otherwise lame or depressing life. is that news? not really.
why did i not do drugs? it's funny... but, my mum. my mum! i know, it sounds retarded. but i knew if i did drugs i would be braking her trust in me, and i can never bear to brake my moms heart. part of me really wanted to drag race, or have sex, or drink, or do drugs... but i couldn't, because i knew if she found out she'd be devestated. i also heavily researched drugs online to better understand the effects, and i didn't like what i read. so that's my story. maybe i'm just a more responible person than my peers, i don't know. but i thought i should say something rather than have adults talking about kids and drugs when they haven't liked as a kid in this age. "when you was my age, when my old man was my age, when my brothah was my age! none of you was ever my age, and the sooner you get that the sooner you'll dig us!" (or whatever)
i would also like to thank those who have shared their personal stories of themselves and their friends in their battles with drugs. it was actually really interesting, and because of those stories (and the show "intervention") i will never do hard drugs.
thanks, guys.

Posted: 6/22/05 at 3:12am

I don't let any of my friend use drugs. I had a very close friend who used meth, among other drugs, and alcohol, and she died and it was sad.

And I've also lost another really close friend in a car accident. Her boyfriend was high on coke and crashed the car into a pond.

I don't **** with drugs.

[DayDreamer]

Posted: 6/22/05 at 3:20am

My opinion is that there are enough stimulus for kids to TRY drugs, there has to be a counter as to why they shouldn't. I agree that a blanket statement of "Just Say No" is counterproductive. I often wonder if those tv ads have any real effect on kids; I, for one, have been seeing the anti-smoking ads all my life, and yet I go back and forth between smoking and not. But my reasons for quitting really have nothing to do with the ads. But I sure hope that for someone, somewhere, watching those ads will keep them from smoking.

Different things will work for different people, and for others nothing will work. For me it was enough to see what alcohol abuse did to my dad to teach me how to enjoy it responsibly, and seeing my brother's struggle with illicit drugs that has kept me from trying them at all.