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Comment by stichers | Hacker News Reader

I lost a friend to meth and GHB at the beginning of this year, and although details are different, the trajectory is similar.

He suffered anxiety and was fearful about his life for years. Meth was what gave him fleeting confidence and euphoria, but also what finished that life. He was terrified to live, and he was terrified of death, so he self-medicated to manage, and ultimately that killed him.

As one of the people that cared about him who is left behind, I've struggled for answers, but I don't think there are any.

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> I've struggled for answers, but I don't think there are any.

It took me a long time to learn this: there are problems for which there is no answer.

I got this from Buddhism (I have renounced Buddhism, but I've retained some of the insights). The world is intrinsically fucked-up, and not fixable. You can sometimes fix some things, but in the end the world is an incorrigible mess (samsara).

It's quite a relief once you take that on board. You can go on raging against injustice, war, and political cynicism, and so you should; but there's no need to feel inadequate because you don't know how to fix it.

Thank you. I think I'm getting to that same insight by bashing my brain repeatedly around the same loop. It's good to hear it put more succinctly.

> I've struggled for answers, but I don't think there are any.

I've also experienced drug-related loss and I think one can still find some lessons. Life is terrifying for some and they feel incredibly overwhelmed. We lack Compassion and Respect for those who don't really make it. We glorify individualism and grow up with the expectation that we can also be just like them, but some just can't. The gig-economy is incredibly harsh and brutal, no wonder the weekend with its drug fueled escapades is the only thing keeping them going. For some there is just no way out of loneliness, anxiety, soul-crushing work for minimum wage or without a job. Nobody tells them that everything's okay and giving them hope for the future.

I think selfish international politics just increases economic competition which brutalises our society. We hype up Elon Musk but in the end there's a lot of randomness in life and the super-star entrepreneur could just as well die of a heroin OD in the streets.

Sorry you're trying to make this fit your political worldview. The addicts in my family are privileged lazy, spoiled, selfish people. They literally had every economic and educational advantage, in the top 1% of all people globally. It is a cultural rot and nihilism and indulgence.

Maybe we just learned different lessons ;) People can become addicts under different circumstances and we can't predict individual behaviour. Just because someone exists that violates a principle does not mean the principle is wrong.

Those advantages are not any kind of protection against addiction; if anything, they're a risk factor.

I have no idea what "cultural rot" means. I do know what nihilism is; I don't think it is a philosophy that predisposes people to addiction (could be wrong about that).

"Indulgence" would be when you do what you feel like doing, even if you think you shouldn't? OK, so your relatives indulge themselves. Almost everyone who can indulge themselves goes ahead and indulges themselves. Privilege comes with costs.

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