How a former addict uses Reddit to save drug users’ lives | Hacker News Reader

How a former addict uses Reddit to save drug users’ lives

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52 pointssteven57 comments

> A person can’t get clean if they’re dead.

That line stood out the most to me and is something I think people regularly forget or choose to ignore. It really is a shame that due to the stigma most people don't bother sharing their story of recovery or more often don't even try to get better.

For all of Reddit's warts things like this and subs like /r/leaves (weed), /r/stopdrinking (alcohol), and I'm sure many more that I've never heard of are awesome resources where someone can ask for help without judgement or shame. Really it's just part of the internet as a whole allowing people to ask questions or read up on topics that normally would be taboo for them in their communities and is why I love the internet so much.

I was an active member on /r/opiates for ~2 years and it is a great place that talks extensively about harm reduction the pifalls of being an addict and operating safety in a high-friction low reputation seedy underworld of drug culture.

If you have never done heroin, it is dangerous as hell. Not just the drug, but the people you have to deal with to get it. Obviously, there were people on the subreddit tellng first time vicodin users to "bang that shit"[0] but there were people giving safe advice and counseling as well.

It is a strange place where people post a bundle of heroin and some cocaine and title the post "my breakfast (:", but also when a long time member says that they quit, there are dozens of congratulatory posts. This community is the biggest thing I miss about reddit. I still try to go to tripsit IRC to chat with people even after being clean.

[0]a slang term for IV injection of a substance.

I'm reasonably active on /r/stopdrinking and it's one of the most positive corners of my life. I've taken a few cats that I've met on there to their first meeting. I find /r/opiates very interesting: recovery mixed with active usage mixed with harm reduction. A very interesting scene that can definitely appeal to the active user way more than a sub with "stop" right in the title.

I'm pretty sure there is an /r/opiaterecovery or similar forum. Overall I think opiates is a good subreddit, because obviously with an addiction that strong there are going to be many people who refuse/aren't ready to quit.

I've hung out there for a few weeks, and I will say when someone posts "about to try Heroin the first time, any tips?" many of them will try to dissuade them from ever starting. And the people who post who are going through withdrawals and posting the lurid details of what life is really like as a heroin addict also serve as an indirect influence on others.

It seems insane to me that naloxone isn't over the counter everywhere. It's a drug with (as far as my limited reading goes) literally no potential for abuse. To be fair, it has no purpose unless you are taking opiates, but it seems the worst kind of paternalism to say that you can't have something because it makes it less dangerous to do drugs.

I suspect that the thought behind not making it available is the same line of reasoning that leads to various prohibitions on contraceptives: "if they use it, then the 'bad' behavior will increase."

You forgot to fully finish the line of reasoning: "if they use it, then the 'bad' behavior will increase, so let them die."

I'm not sure that assisting people to treat drug overdoses themselves without medical supervision is unambiguously saving lives; many of those people would have been saved if they had sought medical treatment instead of self-aid, and I don't see any data about how many died attempting self-aid that could have been saved if they had sought medical attention.

Lots of users don't seek medical treatment because they're afraid they'll be arrested.

I know this sounds unbelievable, but it's true... I found and called in the heroin overdose of two of my friends, and not only were the paramedics very leisurely in their response (walking slowly up the stairs to get to the bedroom where my friends were unconscious), but the cops threatened to charge me with selling the heroin to my friends. I believe they were bluffing in an attempt to get me to snitch on the person who really did sell it to them, but it's apparently not unprecedented for overdose victims to be charged with possession and the people who called it in to be charged with distribution.

Thinking about that night still makes me angry. It's one of maybe three really terrible experiences I've had with police in the US. My friends both lived, though one had his heart stop completely for 1.5 minutes and had to be revived via a Naloxone shot to the chest.

Considering that children forced into prostitution are sometimes charged with the crime of being a prostitute when the police 'save' them, I'm not surprised about this.

What you interpreted as "leisurely" was likely "caution". Overdoses can be very dynamic and dangerous scenes, and EMS will approach carefully. Did the extra 5 seconds have any impact on your friend's outcome?

I don't know what actually happened, but your description is not correct. "A Naloxone shot to the chest" is not something that is done.

I didn't witness the Naloxone shot so I don't doubt that you're right about that, but I know he got one because the cops told us and we found the empty syringe afterward.

I really don't feel like it was caution. The cops were already at the scene. I talked to the paramedics as they entered the house. The whole thing was conducted with a total lack of urgency -- I got the impression from the cops and the paramedics that they were just pissed off to be there, tired of dealing with stupid junkie kids.

So, how do you know his heart stopped?

He got Naloxone because he overdosed on an opiate... That is not the least bit surprising...

Because the police told us! And I'm also pretty sure my friend was told the same when he was at the hospital.

I should have left the part about the paramedics out because it's not really central to what I feel is important about that story -- that our laws exist in a way that makes drug users afraid to seek medical attention. I don't mean to malign the paramedics, and perhaps my perception of their behaviour was off since it was a really traumatic night for me.

You're free to believe me or not. With regard to the Naloxone thing, I told it that way because that's just how I thought Naloxone had to be administered... I guess I've seen too many stupid movies (Pulp Fiction in this case, perhaps). If you knew the full context of what happened it might make more sense. My friends had never done heroin before and I've never around people who do it either, so I don't know anybody who carries around Naloxone.

> I know this sounds unbelievable

It doesn't sound unbelievable at all.

I just wish the article had asked more questions and provided more information, rather than presenting the subject uncritically.

> many of those people would have been saved if they had sought medical treatment instead of self-aid

The problem is that unlike here in Germany, where the state is required to be able to send help in 10-15 minutes at your house (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilfsfrist), there is no such requirement in the US. Overdoses are time critical, especially as not every overdosed guy gets noticed in time.

I'm not sure that assisting people to treat bleeding themselves without medical supervision is unambiguously saving lives; many of those people would have been saved if they had sought medical treatment instead of self-aid, and I don't see any data about how many died attempting self-aid that could have been saved if they had sought medical attention.

Very droll. But band-aids don't have side effects. Naloxone does. For instance:[1]

> a reversal of opiate effects achieved too rapidly may induce nausea, vomiting, sweating, tremor, tachycardia, increased BP, seizures, ventricular tachycardia and fibrillation, pulmonary edema, and cardiac arrest, which may result in death.

http://www.drugs.com/monograph/naloxone-hydrochloride.html

Those are not really side-effects of Naloxone, they are side-effects of reversing the effect of opiates. So if an addict were to quit an opiate addiction cold turkey, they would experience some (or very rarely, all) of the effects you listed. If you give Naloxone to someone without opiates in their system, they wouldn't experience those effects. What Naloxone does is kick opiates off of opiate receptors in the body, which instantly puts the addict into a state of opiate withdrawal.

Not having Naloxone on hand also has a guaranteed side-effect: death. That makes its side effects irrelevant.

link to the reddit thread regarding the article: https://www.reddit.com/r/opiates/comments/3e2ord/the_article...

Saving drug user's lives? I don't believe it. The press has clearly told me multiple times that reddit is just for despicable people to be be sexist and racist.

I don't think anyone is saying that Reddit is just for despicable people, but you can't deny that they're all over it.

Look at the front page right now.

> Look at the front page right now.

Not a single racist or otherwise scummy content on mine, I stick with the defaults - and I doubt /r/CoonTown etc. end up on your frontpage by accident

Try reading literally any comment thread next time

I should have clarified - the logged-out homepage. The one Reddit exposes to the internet at large.

There is currently a post with several thousand points: a picture of two women on the back of a garbage truck with the caption "Actual feminism." I'm not sure what that has to do with feminism, but I guess Reddit thinks women need to work seemingly "dirty" jobs before they're allowed to complain about work conditions.

But you're right, if you customize your subreddits you can avoid a lot of the scum.

> There is currently a post with several thousand points: a picture of two women on the back of a garbage truck with the caption "Actual feminism."

I don't see any problem with the picture itself or its description. Isn't feminism after all also that women can work in previously male-dominated jobs? Challenge accomplished for these two, I dare say.

As for "dirty" jobs, well I highly respect garbage men/women, even more so when they strike in Italy again and pictures of trash-filled streets make headlines.

Women can and have been able to work those jobs for many decades.

There's a certain undertone with the word "actual" - as if other depictions of feminism are not valid. It's just strange that it's there at all.

But whatever, words are hard.

So, just so you know, your guess is dead wrong. The user who posted that picture had this to say about it: "When I think of people working behind a garbage truck I think of men, that is my own prejudice but I think many people share that (look at this thread). So when I saw this picture the first thing I thought was oh nice they don't give a fuck about other peoples prejudices and just do what they want, more importantly CAN do what they want. This could very well be a bad example to you, but it speaks to me."

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/3e1q3j/actual_feminis...

Nice detective work, roninb. Did you happen to catch this gem that they also posted?

> women working a 'typical' male job is actual (not true) feminism when you compare it to bitching on tumblr or bitching about a shirt of a scientist. in my opinion.

[0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/3e1q3j/actual_feminis...

Some context: tumblr feminism includes shining examples of humanity that fight the patriarchy by doing things like doxxing trans women. The quoted post is defending feminism by pointing out that the ridiculous tumblr wing of it doesn't represent the whole movement.

What's wrong with that?

Ah, the common belief that criticizing feminism, be it well or poorly done, is sexism.

Blank pieces of paper are horrible, bad people can write horrible bigoted things on it! /s

What's the hacker angle on this story? It seems like a common human-interest story about someone donating their time to help others.

Is it supposed to be intellectually fascinating because it happens on an internet forum? Is that all it takes to get upvotes on HN?

It's a person who, through technology, has done something risky and enterprising to change peoples' lives. And it has interesting policy and societal facets as well. Why doesn't it "belong here", again?

Is it supposed to be intellectually fascinating because it happens on an internet forum? Is that all it takes to get upvotes on HN?

The answer to your question now is the same whenever it has come up before: it is on the front page because HN readers voted it up and are discussing it.

How do we know that HN readers upvoted it, and not an upvote-bot-ring or other upvoting group? This really doesn't seem like the kind of article that should be on HN.

Reddit isn't just "an Internet forum," it's a company that's received investment from Y Combinator (or at least people like sama who are heavily involved in Y Combinator). This site is hosted at news.ycombinator.com. Shockingly, people here are interested in articles about such things.

In addition, technology does not exist in a vacuum. It's very, very possible to be interested in how people are actually using that technology, and the effect that the technology is having on people, both individually and in the larger context of community and society. This article definitely talks about those issues.

Right, reddit is an internet forum with massive funding and leadership backing from some of the most connected people in existence. And so anything related to reddit is automatically interesting?

Technology doesn't exist in a vacuum, and apparently anything even remotely tangentially connected to anything technological is HN front-page material.

It's certainly more intellectually fascinating than this tired criticism. Its being upvoted people find it interesting. There are many stories on the front page. If this doesn't interest you, read the next one.

We've detached this subthread and marked it off-topic.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

What part of this story gratifies your intellectual curiosity?

Communities working on safe solutions to societies problems. I shouldnt have to justify why I find something interesting, nor should you have to justify why it isn't. There are many stories on the front page and the gravity algo wil make sure they turn over if they aren't useful to the community.

If we're quoting the guidelines:

> Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site. If you think a story is spam or off-topic, flag it by clicking on its "flag" link. (Not all users will see this; there is a karma threshold.)

I just put a script on my openwrt router to get all A dns records for reddit and iptables block them.

reddit has become the lowest common denominator of procrastination and my human side cant reasonably control itself.

I dont care anymore about all these fabricated stories and the hivemind filterbubble.

This wouldn't actually block this article or stop reddit from appearing in google searches, no? You just basically edited your host file to resolve these to 0.0.0.0 making the links dead when you follow them. If you have a way to make these links not appear in google, I would be interested to apply this to other sites, but how does this help? Legitimately interested, please expand.

It is almost eqivalent to the hostfile trick. But since switching DNS is too easy and some of my devices default to 8.8.8.8 it is not a sufficient solution.

Nope, still shows up, but cant open any reddit website.

right, but the links still show up right? They are just dead when you click them?

There's an extension for blocking W3Schools from your search results. I bet that could be modified to block reddit or whatever you like as well. Someone else may have even done it already.

Just found this[0], a chrome extension by google that lets you block sites and import a massive blocklist. Pretty handy. I had previously just used the self control app and edited my host file, but this would be good to remove temptation.

[0]https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/personal-blocklist...

At its core, this article isn't so much about reddit, rather it's reflecting on the benefits of harm reduction via an altruistic, personal narrative of recovery from opiate dependence. Reddit is just the communications medium.

I know. But suddenly everybody cares whats going on on reddit and its just lame.

Even the headline here on HN reads like some buzzfed upliftingNews regurgle.

LOL. Is this for real or are you trying to be funny?

How do you know they are fabricated?

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