[1]: https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/publications/mountain...
> It is notable that by many measures, policing did not decline with the advent of the four-pillars policy. As Figure 2 shows, policing continued to be very active well after the drug policy changes occurred, though the bulk of arrests since the early 1990s have been related to cannabis use by young persons (Reuter and Schnoz 2009). Relatively few of these arrests, however, led to incarceration and many resulted in administrative fines not registered on a person’s criminal record (Ibid.; Killias 2009).
In short, substance use disorder is treated as a primary condition here, there’s a massive high-profit industry built around it and specifically treating it using faith-based 12 step methodology so a lot of mentally ill people who use drugs never receive proper treatment
I remember telling my mother in the 90s that my 'substance abuse' was a symptom, not the problem itself. I was self medicating. No one wanted to hear it.
In the time since, it often feels like we've gotten worse at recognizing this. Meanwhile, proper treatment for mental health issues continues to be difficult to find (many if not the majority of so-called professionals are anything but), as well as increasingly expensive and inconvenient. To say nothing of how much of psychiatry has devolved into pinning you to a DSM category and throwing drugs at you in as short of a session as possible-- "come back in 2 months and we'll just as quickly throw some different drugs at you if those aren't working"... rinse and repeat ad infinitum. Anyone struggling to get through each day is not going to be well served by this.
We need at least 10x more therapists willing to spend time with patients and address their many intertwined issues, using logical, rational, evidence based methods. Right now, I don't see how we even start to get there from here.
12 step can be a lifeline for people at the end of their rope who have no other options, but it also inevitably fails anyone who doesn't buy into the narrative about a higher power. [I would argue it fails even those who do, as it teaches powerlessness.] Some may benefit from such an extreme approach, but it is deeply, deeply flawed. The main strength it does have is connecting you with other people and being very accessible. But we can & should do better.
oh indeed. I found myself in the rooms of AA/NA at the age of 19, still very foolish in my youth, confused, pretty desperate. Even in that state I had such a hard time buying into just the first few steps. it all seemed so utterly nonsensical to me and I realized believing in god was a prerequisite I could never meet. for those unfamiliar with the 12 steps of alcoholic anonymous this is how they begin...
1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
It doesn’t have to mean “God”, and it certainly doesn’t have to be the Judeo-Christian definition of God. It just has to mean “something other than yourself”. It can be the meetings themselves, the cute dog you saw in the dog park the other day who let you rub his belly, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, or whatever.
The idea behind it is that, if your best thinking brought you to rock bottom, and you’ve tried everything you could think of to stop drinking without success, then maybe it’s time to let something else take the wheel.
Again, let me stress that I don’t have an opinion on this one way or the other, I am simply correcting the record here. It wasn’t for me, and I certainly don’t think AA/NA has a monopoly on sobriety. But I had 5 good years of being clean and sober before going back out, and when I finally did start drinking again, it was in a MUCH healthier way. It also helped a lot of good friends, and I’m grateful for that.
This is true. It's also true that AA broke off from the Oxford Group ("kicked out", according to Lois W, the wife of founder Bill W) for being too agnostic. Apparently it was pretty dramatic- see "AA Started In Riots" by Roger C. for more. [1]
> The word god is constantly thrown around in meetings and throughout the literature and, make no mistake, that is a Christian god they are talking about.
The meetings I went to were quite secular. I'm vehemently agnostic, and I never once felt like the people there were proselytizing to me. If they had, I would have left real quickly and not gone back.
Most of the meetings I went to were in SF, LA, NYC, Shanghai, etc.), making it easier to find secular meetings that were run by people like me. Someone living in small-town America might have a different experience from mine. Hopefully with the advent of Zoom meetings, this is now less of an issue, but I can’t say since I left AA before Zoom became a thing.
Each meeting is meant to be independent from the others, and each has its own bent. You'll find meetings for Christians but also meetings for atheists, just like you'll find mens' meetings, womens' meetings, young peoples' meetings, etc.
> 12-step meetings are typically held in churches.
I've been to meetings in church basements and Sunday school rooms, but I've also been to meetings at American Legion halls, recreation fields, City Halls, even the basement of a donut shop.
Consider the cost of running a meeting. Literally their only revenue source is donations from attendees. Giving a donation might be hard for someone who has just hit rock bottom, and it can be expensive to rent a room for use as an Alano Club. Churches might be more likely to cut AA groups a break on the rent.
I don't want to be accused of promotion by either HN or AA, so I won't link to them, but secular AA meetings are plentiful and pretty easy to Google. Secularism is part of AA’s "12 Traditions", as well. [2]
All that said, if AA still feels too religious for someone, there are other groups out there which don’t make use of the “higher power” concept in any capacity. Again, I maintain that AA doesn’t have a monopoly on sobriety.
That’s great you were able to access secular meetings in SF/LA/NYC, but the reality for most Americans is that those meetings you attended might as well not exist, they are elusive, infrequent, and make up a tiny percentage of the total meetings online or otherwise
Having said all that. and while we are nitpicking- it’s probably worth mentioning that “secular” meetings still have 12 steps and still involve handing your will and life over to a higher power of some more palatable flavor (such as “the program”)- so definitionally we are still talking about faith-based treatment. This will never work out well for atheists and that’s the point me and others are making.
It really is taking advantage of people who are vulnerable. Sickening that that's what is on offer in a "developed" nation.
That's not even getting to the fact that the leading cause of death in children and teenagers is guns[1]
I can't really understand it.
[1]: https://eu.statesman.com/story/news/politics/politifact/2022...
The programs are faith based and widely supported by medical professionals. Plenty of folks have problems with anything being faith based, but unfortunately there aren’t better alternatives for alcoholics and addicts.
[1]: https://eu.statesman.com/story/news/politics/politifact/2022..."<
No surprise, because the URL contradicts what you say. If omitting certain age ranges is your idea of the truth, please say so up front.
Yes OK, excluding those under a year old. So guns are the leading cause of death in America for those between 1 and 18 years old.
Is that OK now? Defensible now? Did that undermine my entire point? Or are you nit picking to detract from the toxic state of the country?
Personally I think the non-faith-based centers only exist as a result of severe religious trauma. I’ve met plenty of 12-step alcoholics who make jokes about how bad things like SMART recovery are. It’s a trope on recovery meme sites.
It's a cultural/religious problem if you ask me.
It’s a cultural problem.
Religion and civic groups are basically gone, with no replacement. We're in these weird atomized suburban bubbles. Seems bad.
People are self-medicating due to not getting the pain medication they need because they lack healthcare. Or they have untreated mental issues. or, if they do have healthcare, they might very well get prescribed super addictive drugs over a long period of time.
I'm convinced the "crackdown" on pills is what led to where we are today. Many doctors won't prescribe pain medication because they're afraid to lose their license or have a DEA raid. People find what they want in heroin and now fentanyl. Why we keep fighting the drug war this way is beyond me.
>if they do have healthcare, they might very well get prescribed super addictive drugs over a long period of time.
I think this is also why we are here today.
* physical health resources are tied to work-provided health insurance, and are often not great
* lack of the above two lead to easy fixes, like prescribing opioids aggressively
* aggressive anti-drug laws that put more people away than attempting to treat them
* no real safety net if any of the above screw up, driving many to poverty, jail, addiction, etc. $30 of pills might be the only joy or relief from their shitty situation, so pop em if you got em.
These pills are MUCH cheaper/widely available than the non-"counterfeit" opioids. And much more likely to spontaneously kill you vs how people more traditionally overdosed. Addicts aren't the only ones ODing.
The "war on drugs" is probably a good thing as far as this goes because making opioids more widely available is not really what we should want in society. I think greater availability of other "party" drugs like ketamine in Europe could maybe help some, but I'm not sure how much.
A culture of widely available test strips + narcan + fentanyl education should be the minimum we should be doing. We definitely shouldn't be trying delusional attempts at limiting narcan availability. Ex:
https://idahocapitalsun.com/2023/03/28/idaho-lawmakers-vote-...
West Virginia: 41.5 per 100,000 people
New Hampshire: 34.3 per 100,000 people
Kentucky: 29.9 per 100,000 people
Ohio: 29.9 per 100,000 people
Rhode Island: 28.2 per 100,000 people
Pennsylvania: 26.3 per 100,000 people
Massachusetts: 25.7 per 100,000 people
New Mexico: 25.3 per 100,000 people
Utah: 23.4 per 100,000 people
No, San Francisco is at number 11 on the top 10 in 2020. The rest are below that.Why didn't he mention any of the top 10? Why does foxnews discuss crime in San Francisco and NY so much?
https://www.foxnews.com/search-results/search?q=Baltimore
Same with every other city on that list:
https://www.foxnews.com/search-results/search?q=Philadelphia
etc
Opiod overdoses have devastated rural areas. https://www.usda.gov/topics/opioids
What was your point if not propoganda? Just to let us know drug abuse is bad? Is this new information? Your comment doesn't offer interesting information, a solution, not even a personal experience. That's why I think it's right wing propaganda.
Just like foxnews you repeat something over and over in order to imprint it on the ding dongs who base their knowledge off hearsay instead of facts.
"Oh look a post about something bad that happens everywhere but I can increase the association level with cities run by democrats in order to justify my political support. Because if the opposition is suffering worse than me then I'm not wrong in who I support...even if it's not true"
But I will concede your point. The whole West is circling the toilet bowl but as you point out some areas a little faster than others.
Compared to what?
My point was that you were spewing republican propoganda either willingly or unintellionally