This is exactly it: The best treatment for opioid addiction is tapering them over time (though with the likes of fentanyl you want to downgrade to heroin) flanked by socio-psychological treatment. Crime suddenly plummets, when not having to fear for their dose and life addicts become functional, some of them might be too far gone to get the curve but it’s still going to be cheaper overall to society because pharmaceutical-grade heroin is cheap as fuck and, as said, you’re slashing crime. Heroin is not a drug that, in itself, makes you non-functioning, or would be particularly dangerous to health – gotta monitor respiration while under but that’s it, it doesn’t kill your organs or something.
Meth and crack are quite a bit harder in the sense that tapering doesn’t really work, but it’s still not a good idea having addicts running around looking for copper to sell and dicks to suck. Similar issue as with alcohol, actually: Tapering doesn’t work there, either, but if you can get people stabilised and away from binge drinking things suddenly look way better and possibilities open. That is, instead of getting up, noticing that there’s no alcohol, then hustling for a bottle or two of liqueur to binge come evening, you get them on a regular glass of wine every few hours, enough to stave off withdrawal and suddenly they can actually develop clarity instead of being either restless or completely plastered.
Too bad most people won’t listen to that argument and will stop listening 3-5 sentences in to shout “REEEEEEE FREE DRUGS FOR LAZY PEOPLE REEEEEEE” because they don’t understand the underlying causes of crime and only care about punishing the effects, not preventing them.
I hate how much this country is infected with the protestant work ethic, because it’s destroying us.
It’s not a Protestant thing but individualism and competitiveness taken to American degrees. Ask an OG European Lutheran theologist and they’d say something along the lines of “As you hand a construction worker a shovel, so you hand an addict the necessary tools to do their work”, and to the addict “as you work on yourself, god will see and smile on you”. A work ethics can exist without getting societal atomisation, “fuck you got mine”, and “the result of work is money, if it doesn’t earn money it’s not work” into play.
To give an armchair diagnosis of the American condition from the psychological/theological POV, it’s Calvinist focus on predetermination combined with not understanding the “lazy argument” as the Stoics call it: The universe is deterministic thus things are predetermined, so the Stoics say, and then detractors say “if it is predetermined whether I live or die, it doesn’t matter whether I go to the doctor”. “Bullshit”, say the Stoics, “the proper argument goes like this: If it’s ordained by the fates that you live, you will go to the doctor, if it is ordained that you die, you won’t”. If that argument now convinces you that you can “change” your fate by going to the doctor, then the fates always intended you to be swayed by it. But in any case: Actions matter. The fates won’t bend physics to accommodate you not wanting to go to the doctor, their machinations are weaved into, indeed are, the very laws of the universe.
That is, as far as this kind of doctrine is concerned seeing an addict and saying “this is one who does no work, he’s not one who will reach the heavens, he can be discarded” only means that you, yourself, are not doing the work demanded of a Christian, as you do not know whether even a simple kind word might not change their life for the better, and you were there, and you said nothing, and you will be judged by god for judging without qualification, and the addict will be judged by god, and god will see that the addict has done their part of the work, and they will go to heaven.
(Not Christian btw I just like to preach the real stuff to people who pretend they are)
I think the best solution would be daily free drugs in exchange for maintaining behavior in and around the shelter.
This is exactly it: The best treatment for opioid addiction is tapering them over time (though with the likes of fentanyl you want to downgrade to heroin) flanked by socio-psychological treatment. Crime suddenly plummets, when not having to fear for their dose and life addicts become functional, some of them might be too far gone to get the curve but it’s still going to be cheaper overall to society because pharmaceutical-grade heroin is cheap as fuck and, as said, you’re slashing crime. Heroin is not a drug that, in itself, makes you non-functioning, or would be particularly dangerous to health – gotta monitor respiration while under but that’s it, it doesn’t kill your organs or something.
Meth and crack are quite a bit harder in the sense that tapering doesn’t really work, but it’s still not a good idea having addicts running around looking for copper to sell and dicks to suck. Similar issue as with alcohol, actually: Tapering doesn’t work there, either, but if you can get people stabilised and away from binge drinking things suddenly look way better and possibilities open. That is, instead of getting up, noticing that there’s no alcohol, then hustling for a bottle or two of liqueur to binge come evening, you get them on a regular glass of wine every few hours, enough to stave off withdrawal and suddenly they can actually develop clarity instead of being either restless or completely plastered.
Too bad most people won’t listen to that argument and will stop listening 3-5 sentences in to shout “REEEEEEE FREE DRUGS FOR LAZY PEOPLE REEEEEEE” because they don’t understand the underlying causes of crime and only care about punishing the effects, not preventing them.
I hate how much this country is infected with the protestant work ethic, because it’s destroying us.
It’s not a Protestant thing but individualism and competitiveness taken to American degrees. Ask an OG European Lutheran theologist and they’d say something along the lines of “As you hand a construction worker a shovel, so you hand an addict the necessary tools to do their work”, and to the addict “as you work on yourself, god will see and smile on you”. A work ethics can exist without getting societal atomisation, “fuck you got mine”, and “the result of work is money, if it doesn’t earn money it’s not work” into play.
Sorry, I was referring to the socioeconomic theory about the protestant work ethic, which is part of the basis for taking stuff to “American degrees”.
Which doesn’t really have anything to do with protestantism, though.
To give an armchair diagnosis of the American condition from the psychological/theological POV, it’s Calvinist focus on predetermination combined with not understanding the “lazy argument” as the Stoics call it: The universe is deterministic thus things are predetermined, so the Stoics say, and then detractors say “if it is predetermined whether I live or die, it doesn’t matter whether I go to the doctor”. “Bullshit”, say the Stoics, “the proper argument goes like this: If it’s ordained by the fates that you live, you will go to the doctor, if it is ordained that you die, you won’t”. If that argument now convinces you that you can “change” your fate by going to the doctor, then the fates always intended you to be swayed by it. But in any case: Actions matter. The fates won’t bend physics to accommodate you not wanting to go to the doctor, their machinations are weaved into, indeed are, the very laws of the universe.
That is, as far as this kind of doctrine is concerned seeing an addict and saying “this is one who does no work, he’s not one who will reach the heavens, he can be discarded” only means that you, yourself, are not doing the work demanded of a Christian, as you do not know whether even a simple kind word might not change their life for the better, and you were there, and you said nothing, and you will be judged by god for judging without qualification, and the addict will be judged by god, and god will see that the addict has done their part of the work, and they will go to heaven.
(Not Christian btw I just like to preach the real stuff to people who pretend they are)
Wait’ll you hear about Prosperity Theology…