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The Associated Press newswire reports:
After three defendants fatally overdosed in a single week last year, it became clear that Buffalo's ordinary drug treatment court was no match for the heroin and painkiller crisis.
Now the city is experimenting with the nation's first opioid crisis intervention court, which can get users into treatment within hours of their arrest instead of days, requires them to check in with a judge every day for a month instead of once a week, and puts them on strict curfews. Administering justice takes a back seat to the overarching goal of simply keeping defendants alive.
[...] Buffalo-area health officials blamed 300 deaths on opioid overdoses in 2016, up from 127 two years earlier. That includes a young couple who did not make it to their second drug court appearance last spring. The woman's father arrived instead to tell the judge his daughter and her boyfriend had died the night before.
[...] "This 30-day thing is like being beat up and being asked to get in the ring again, and you're required to," 36-year-old Ron Woods said after one of his daily face-to-face meetings with City Court Judge Craig Hannah, who presides over the program.
Woods said his heroin use started with an addiction to painkillers prescribed after cancer treatments that began when he was 21. He was arrested on drug charges in mid-May and agreed to intervention with the dual hope of kicking the opioids that have killed two dozen friends and seeing the felony charges against him reduced or dismissed.
[...] "I don't want to die in the streets, especially with the fentanyl out there," Sammy Delgado, one of the handcuffed defendants, said.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Gaaark on Monday July 10 2017, @09:57PM (14 children)
Like alcoholics: it's a disease! The disease makes me walk to the liquor store, it MAKES me pick it my favourite or cheapest booze, MAKES me drink it till I piss myself.
No, YOU YOU YOU do that. You don't pace yourself, YOU don't stop yourself, YOU!
Tell yourself, I'll only have 2 drinks AND STICK WITH that AGREEMENT!
Feck!!! There's times I'd love to dink more but I can't really afford it, and I told myself my kids would never see me drunk until they were old.
Just fecking be truthful with yourself.
Yes, I might be an alcoholic, I don't know. But I just pace myself or do without. It's called restraint.
Fecking disease.... Feck off and take responsibility.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 10 2017, @11:48PM (3 children)
No. You clearly aren't.
Leo McGarry (AKA Aaron Sorkin) explained this in an excellent[1] episode of "The West Wing". [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [tripod.com]
[1] With Sorkin, "excellent" is redundant.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Gaaark on Tuesday July 11 2017, @01:58AM (2 children)
Who drank the booze?
Who ordered the booze?
Who walked into the bar?
The person who DECIDED they wanted the drink!
Don't go into the bar! This stops you from ordering the drink, do you won't be able to drink it!
Same at the liquor store: DON'T GO TO the liquor store! If you don't buy it, you can't drink it!
Don't blame a 'disease': blame yourself. Take responsibility. If you don't have it, you can't drink it.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 11 2017, @03:20AM (1 child)
More from the presentation:
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Tuesday July 11 2017, @04:11AM
Except, anorexics think they are too fat.
Alcoholics choose to drink: if you don't CHOOSE to buy it, you can't drink it. If you choose to avoid the bar, you can't drink there.
I HAVE fought that fight. It IS hard. But when I went to the liquor store, it WAS my choice. Now, I just take responsibility for my actions, and I don't go buy it.
If you don't buy it, you can't drink it.
But you have to CHOOSE to not buy it.
TV is not a good mentor:
On South Park, they say it's a choice, not a disease: does this hold as much weight with you?
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 4, Insightful) by RedBear on Tuesday July 11 2017, @03:12AM (9 children)
You really need to just stop talking. Because you know absolutely nothing about how physical addiction actually works. And you are also ignorant of how this massive opioid epidemic originated. It originated with pharmaceutical companies being granted patents on slightly modified opioid molecules which they claimed (with full knowledge that the claims were false) had drastically lower abuse potential than heroin. In other words, these medications were marketed to the public and doctors as being "safe heroin". And they sure as hell were effective against pain. Because they were opioids. And oh boy do opioids work against pain.
Oh, except for one unfortunate flaw. Turns out that opioid pain medications, even when used briefly (for as little as a few days) in "medically appropriate" doses, set up a domino effect of nerve inflammation that lasts for MONTHS. In other words, opioid pain medications give you brief, glorious pain relief that allows you to be a functional human being and go back to work, but then they CAUSE INCREASED PAIN. Which means you need to use it continually and eventually the standard dosage no longer works because the nerve inflammation keeps getting incrementally worse. So opioid pain meds were like a gold mine for the pharma companies, an endless guaranteed multi-billion-dollar revenue stream.
You are not morally superior to people who believed their doctors when the doctor said, "Hey, try this new OxyContin stuff that this huge pharmaceutical company wants me to sell you. It's Perfectly Safe[TM]! No addiction potential whatsoever! Seriously, that's exactly what the lying pharma marketing guy told me! And I totally believed him!"
You are not morally superior to people who have experienced pain levels that cannot even be successfully described using any known human language construct to any human being who hasn't already experienced that level of pain. Unless you've had bone cancer and used your machismo to just laugh it off, shut the hell up.
By the way, every addict thinks they are just like you, morally superior to others and able to "handle their liquor" or "keep it together" or "restrain themselves", right up until the day they die. I'm sorry that you don't like it, but addiction just doesn't work the way you think. It doesn't just happen to people who are "morally inferior".
Do you also go up to people in wheelchairs, throw them out onto the ground, tell them to stop being pussies and stand up and walk on their own two feet? Do you grab people's crutches and throw them across the street? If not, WHY NOT? Because it makes exactly as much sense as standing in moral judgement of opioid addicts.
There is one real pussy here, and it's you. Because you're too weak and cowardly to open your heart and feel some kind of empathy for your fellow human beings who are just as worthy of respect and empathy as you are.
¯\_ʕ◔.◔ʔ_/¯ LOL. I dunno. I'm just a bear.
... Peace out. Got bear stuff to do. 彡ʕ⌐■.■ʔ
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Tuesday July 11 2017, @04:25AM (8 children)
"Do you also go up to people in wheelchairs, throw them out onto the ground, tell them to stop being pussies and stand up and walk on their own two feet?"
Holy fuck! That's your argument?
My wife broke her leg in two spots: her doctor gave her a narc prescription, but she didn't fill it because she knew they could be addictive.
She made a smart choice and goes with non addicting pills.
I think I might be an alcoholic, so I don't go to the liquor store. That is my NEW choice.
I am not morally superior, but I am also not an idiot like you. If your doctor told you to kill yourself, would you?
Feck off. It's a choice... Choose correctly and don't go the narc way. Don't choose to possibly become addicted! Take the pain a bit instead of sitting in blissfulness and joy.
FECK!!!!!!!
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 3, Insightful) by RedBear on Tuesday July 11 2017, @05:32AM (4 children)
You are refusing to grasp the established fact that ten, fifteen, twenty years ago or more when this opioid epidemic started people had no knowledge that doctor-prescribed commercial medications like Percocet or OxyContin were narcotics with extremely high abuse potential. Americans were knowingly lied to by pharmaceutical companies and doctors for decades about these medications, while self-righteous people like you sat back and blamed the ever increasing addiction epidemic on individual moral failure. It's only recently that the full knowledge of how dangerously addictive these drugs are started going mainstream. People never expected their own doctors to be prescribing them legalized heroin.
You can sit atop your high horse and crow about how "smart" you and your wife are, but the truth is that you were lucky. Lucky enough to have access to the knowledge that opioid meds should be avoided. Lucky enough that she wasn't experiencing the kind of pain that can make a person take the risk of addiction for the ability to exist in the world as a functioning human being for brief periods of time. For the chance to go to work so that your children don't go hungry or become homeless. You offer no understanding that life is actually much harsher for some folks than what you've personally experienced.
No matter how angry and self-righteous you are about it, you're still wrong, and you're still a coward, unable to risk the pain of feeling empathy for others. Even if addiction were a choice, good people all across America are losing parents and children and friends every day, and you couldn't care less because you think they don't meet some personal moral standard. Jesus would be so proud, I'm sure. I know you are certainly proud of yourself. You say you aren't morally superior but every word of your posts screams that that's exactly what you think you are.
But I don't even know why I'm writing this since my words will no doubt have no measurable effect on you.
¯\_ʕ◔.◔ʔ_/¯ LOL. I dunno. I'm just a bear.
... Peace out. Got bear stuff to do. 彡ʕ⌐■.■ʔ
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Tuesday July 11 2017, @12:40PM (3 children)
You are also refusing to acknowledge that addictions are also choices: many people beat addictions on their own just by choosing to avoid what they are 'addicted' to, but you have to want to beat it.
Yes, as I said in another post, for some people the addiction came honestly (Woods with cancer) and yes, pharmaceutical companies execs are assholes as are many CEO's, but morals have nothing to do with being self informed: don't just take something because someone else tells you to.
You have to keep yourself safe, and you don't just sit there and take drugs to feel good: you take them when you NEED them and at minimal dose.
YOU are the one on the high horse, and deluding yourself: addiction is a choice. You choose to maintain the high.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 3, Touché) by RedBear on Tuesday July 11 2017, @01:29PM (2 children)
You win. Every opioid addict "chooses" to die on a bathroom floor with a needle in their arm. You're doing an excellent job solving the opioid epidemic crisis. All we have to do is let ten million Americans die of drug overdoses. Feck 'em, right? They're just losers who chose to become addicts. Oh, except the ones who "came by it honestly" (huh?) But they can all just man up and shake it off if they really want to. If they can't shake it they didn't really want to, did they? Perfectly consistent circular, self-supporting Catch-22 logic. Addiction is a choice. Problem solved.
This attitude is what created the opioid epidemic and helps it grow and persist. But you'll never see that, even if it happens to your own family and friends. Anyone that succumbs is an immoral, weak loser to be spat upon and rolled into a ditch to rot. Makes life so simple.
I really hope that no one ever treats you with such disdain when you need help.
¯\_ʕ◔.◔ʔ_/¯ LOL. I dunno. I'm just a bear.
... Peace out. Got bear stuff to do. 彡ʕ⌐■.■ʔ
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Tuesday July 11 2017, @05:25PM
"If they can't shake it they didn't really want to, did they?"
Now you've got it!
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by epitaxial on Tuesday July 11 2017, @09:40PM
Since none of them sought treatment no I don't feel bad. You can't force someone to stop being an addict. Its up to the individual.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Wednesday July 12 2017, @10:18PM (2 children)
The pharmaceutical companies and medical industry have been claiming as a fact that these drugs aren't addictive for many, many years. Based not on scientific studies, not on some reasonable theories on how the drugs work, but based on a single letter to the editor in one medical journal. It's hard to blame people for making bad decisions when the "experts" were knowingly feeding them false information. Congratulations on the fact that you chose not to trust your doctor the one time that was actually a good move. But be careful about blaming people too much for trusting expert opinions, because that's also fueling crap like the anti-vaccination trend.
At some point, "I was trusting the medical opinion of the guy with a medical degree rather than some crap I found on the internet" IS actually a good excuse. Unless you plan to roll back the entire concept of specialization/division of labor and all the technological progress that is has brought, we need people to trust the experts, and for that to happen we also need to take care of people who get bad advice. The people we need to punish are the experts who chose to mislead the public.
http://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/did-letter-help-fuel-opioid-crisis-n767011 [nbcnews.com]
(Score: 1, Troll) by Gaaark on Wednesday July 12 2017, @11:44PM (1 child)
Yes, i do get that.
But, even if you DO become addicted, you have a choice to make: stop being addicted or continue being addicted.
Kicking the addiction IS hard and can be fecking hard, truly truly fecking incredibly hard... continuing to be addicted is easy (or easier?).
You have to want to kick the addiction and until you do, probably not much can be done. Some people basically are saying "It's not their fault": no, it may not be at first. But if it continues for years until they overdose or whatever, then YES it is their fault.
They just didn't want to kick it as much as they wanted to continue feeling the high, or feeling no pain.
Like an alcoholic, nothing can be done until the person themself wants to quit.
And, like a drug addict, the alcoholic makes a choice: kick the addiction or continue with it.
It all comes down to the choice they make: Quit (or seek help to quit) or don't. Choose.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Friday July 14 2017, @12:44AM
Wow... mod me as Troll all you want: just remember that I'm right.
Addicts DO have a choice: quit (or seek help in quitting) or continue with the pleasure seeking.
Mod me Troll and i will only rise up stronger.
Gaaark The White.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---