Michael Pollan’s All-Natural Highs | Hacker News Reader

Michael Pollan’s All-Natural Highs

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35 pointsbenbreen17 comments

I live in Oregon, near Portland. I voted to legalize all personal possession of substances. But, given the houseless situation here, and seeing people who look to be in the throes of drug addiction on the streets, I'm still confused by the idea of opiates having a good role in a healthy society. I was hopeful that legalization would allow us to treat addiction as a medical problem instead of a criminal problem, but as crime increases, it almost seems like the dealers move faster than the health professionals. Is this naive? Are there new more potent drugs in the market? I'm trying to balance the ideas of Pollan who I love with the realities I see on the ground.

There are definitely more potent drugs floating around afaik, fentanyl being a real bad one.

I imagine it would be tough to get the kind of recovery programs and health professionals in place Quickly, purely because of how much time and effort it takes to set up these programs and source the people who can help. Especially since it takes med school or some other specialized training.

I think an effective program would rely on incentivizing people to go through the relevant schooling, maybe providing some sort of expedited program too? As well as a wholehearted and comprehensive drug recovery program endorsed at all levels of the local government.

I don’t think it’s realistic to place responsibility for the current situation on the decriminalization vote. Whether or not that law passed, Portland is still facing a plethora of issues around the rapid growth in its homeless population and lack of law enforcement response/resources. Even if we kept drugs illegal it’s not like anyone would be around to enforce the law.

Note that drug sales are still illegal. So the sense that “dealers are moving faster than mental health professionals” isn’t really true, there’s really just a gap in government services on both ends right now.

Addiction is often a response to life circumstance.

Everyone points to the famous experiment in which rats were given access to a button they could push to release happy drugs in their brains. The rats hit the button until they withered away and died.

There was, however, another experiment done, in which the rats were given access to the drug button, but also an expansive "rat park" in which they could play and interact with other rats. In this case, most rats tried the button, but did not abuse it.

This makes perfect sense: if you were trapped in a cage with no future, no friends, and nothing to do but hit the pleasure button, wouldn't you? The parallels to human behavior are left as an exercise to the reader.

Pollan is the naive one. The legalization message is a great one, and IMO pretty reasonable for almost every drug... except modern pharmaceutical opioids.

A journalist relaxing with poppy tea and writing about the experience is nice and cute, but when it comes to destroying lives, oxycodone and fentanyl are in a class of their own.

The legalization issue cannot be disentangled from the problem of big pharma and powerful opioids. Every year they manufacture and market billions of dollars worth of the most addictive drugs that humanity has ever known. These drugs are already effectively legal in the US.

I've been thinking about your comment on and off for a few days. It's nice to hear some sympathy for criminalization from a legalizer, with genuine empathy for the addicted.

Is there a natural tension between a healthy society where most citizens find fulfillment in normal life and therefore there's scant need/little consequence to legalization (of whatever variety); and an unhealthy society where far too many citizens are already addicted, the problems of drug abuse are evident for all, and legalization solves none of this?

A little open-ended because it requires an honest interrogation of what a healthy society looks like, and USA by and large is not an example of this. How long does it take for the high of a change of President to wear off to realize that the most significant electoral event will effect little improvement in the life of the far majority of citizens?

Hard to read beyond the subtitle "Both coffee and opium come from plants. Why embrace one and not the other?" with a straight face.

LOL. I mean, small difference but I don't think anyone has ever prostituted themselves or sold their mothers jewelry & TV to buy some espresso, but hard to say!

I mean we have had billions of dollars of settlements off the opioid epidemic and the resulting thousands of "deaths of despair" right?

I agree with you that the notion is absurd. But the article isn't making that argument and neither (according to the article) is Pollan, it's just reporting that the argument has been made by decriminalization activists.

I get the impression Pollan is a reasonable guy. I am skeptical of the idea that drugs (alcohol, caffeine, psychedelics, etc) are at the root of human culture and civilization. Based on what I've read of Pollan, he thinks caffeine is responsible for capitalism, which I find unlikely.

Have you heard of the stoned ape theory?

Terence McKenna believed that psilocybin mushrooms were the "evolutionary catalyst" from which language, projective imagination, the arts, religion, philosophy, science, and all of human culture sprang. McKenna's hypothesis concerning the influence of psilocybin mushrooms on human evolution is known as "the 'stoned ape' theory."

People typically don't turn to caffeine as a way to cope with a traumatic life.

Plus, a couple hundred years ago, we worked literal countries of slaves to death just to have simple spices. Your arguments aren't very intriguing.

Coffee is legal and therefore cheap. Opioids are illegal and therefore expensive. Maybe this has something to do with it?

Imagine a world where opioids were as cheap as a cup of coffee. Do you envision people stealing and prostituting themselves to buy them?

yes, because addiction will trash people’s lives

> Do you envision people stealing and prostituting themselves to buy them?

I'm pretty sure you'd suck a strangers dick to end the pains of opioid withdrawal regardless of cost if it was the only immediately available option. I'm pretty sure fentanyl is fairly cheap too fwiw.

Lamborghinis are expensive too, but you don’t hear about people doing those things to afford them. I wonder if cost isn’t the only factor.

Indeed. Poppies are easy to grow and one could have large fields of them with little effort or expense.

I believe that all drugs should be legal but along with the regulation/taxation of same, society needs to have "grown up" conversations about addiction and abuse.

Do you understand how physical dependence works and how opioids are some of the most addictive substances known to man?

Most anyone can go a day, week or month without coffee and not end up sweating or vomiting, nor attempting to rob a Starbucks to get a fix.

There are not special drugs, medical treatments, clinics and counseling to help people quit coffee, right? I wonder what the difference in dependence is?

Not even imaginary - just read up on opium dens, which operated very similarly to coffee shops.

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