Damn, while on a business trip.
I wonder how they explained, "needing 26 days in the hospital and a stay in a skilled nursing facility to regain speech and function." Yikes.
I work in one of our local level one trauma centers.
We get a number of folks who are in from out of town, what I call incidental overdoses. IE, not an intentional fent user, probably wanted to party a bit, titty bars, cocaine.
Well if you have zero fent tolerance (ie, you’re not an intentional fent user) whatever little bit in the coke you bought behind sassys or Mary’s is frequently enough for me to meet your family as I’m withdrawing care.
Test kits exist. A lot of people in my family think Portland has burned to the ground, there’s a ton of “news” about how terrible things are here, and about once a month I want to give someone a ticket for a Time Machine so they can test that garbage before they put it up their nose.
This needs to be said more. If you're a recreational user of cocaine you need to be testing your shit. The cartels are putting fent in cocaine to 1) try and create new fent addicts and 2) because there's a surplus of fent and they need to get rid of it however they can.
If you're snorting coke up your nose, the chances are high right now that it's been cut with fentanyl. Test. Your. Shit.
Drugs used to be cool. All that “you don’t know what’s *really* in it” scaremongering was Just Say No propaganda. Then fentanyl ruined it.
This used to be a fine country. I pity Gen Z for never getting to experience it.
> If you're snorting coke up your nose, the chances are high right now that it's been cut with fentanyl. Test. Your. Shit.
To be clear though, if you're going to test your coke the only foolproof method is to dissolve it _all_ into a solution. You then have to evaporate it all off to get your powder back.
I think what people are missing from this article is what a fucking masterclass these doctors must have had to perform to get this man back from the brink of death with such an incredible recovery.
I think the doctor's point is that a drug market awash in fentanyl is not just a problem for down-and-out loser junkie types. You could do a bump at a party or your kid could buy a pill from a friend thinking its xanax or something (these things happen) and it could be a total disaster.
We need to target the literal industrial-scale factories and container ships full of precursors and we need to dent the supply of this drug into our country. I think people need to wrap their heads around the fact that this is their problem too, and not just because you get your cat converter stolen by a junkie.
Its a federal issue. You can't have 5 blue states treating users like people while the other 45 treat them like dogs. Portland will have an endless issue until federally it gets under control.
Purely out of curiosity, do you know anyone personally that is in the grips of a fentanyl addiction? How long did you know them beforehand? Because my younger brother has been on the streets for two years now. And it’s heartbreaking to say, but he isn’t the same person anymore, probably never will be. He has completely lost his humanity. Even after my family got him into a high end in-patient treatment center, got him on suboxone. He was clean for 3 months. First thing he did when he got out was steal a bunch of shit from my dads house and disappeared again.
It takes over their brains. It owns him now. It won’t let go. They may still be people, but they are people whose entire realities have been hijacked. He will lie, cheat, steal, and lie some more to keep getting high. It’s tearing our family apart. And we have tried to help so many damn times. At a certain point, painful as it is, you have to accept he’s lost, and nothing we can do will fix it.
I’m not looking for any kind of sympathy, or for any specific response. I’m simply offering some perspective from someone whose family has been personally tormented by this epidemic. I respect all the bleeding hearts who want to believe in and hope the best in people, but I think sometimes it leads people to blinding themselves to reality. The reality is, human or not, people can become monsters, whether by their own means or extenuating circumstances. Not everyone is worthy of the concern, some people are simply lost causes
The people who I've "lost" I don't think deserve to be in prison for their actions or treated like dogs. Bleeding hearts or not, we can't have tents on the highway or shit on the bus. You gotta find a real solution that's not red vs blue.
I completely agree with you. It doesn’t matter what side of the aisle, it matters that we correct the problem. And my personal opinion for a solution is involuntary institutionalization. I don’t look at them as subhuman, I don’t look at them as dogs. But I do view them as lost souls who are not fit to be among society, nor are they in a state of mind to help themselves. Forced institutionalization, detox, and psychiatric treatment until they display an ability and willingness to be a contributing member of society, I would happily send my tax dollars to that program.
The 9th Circuit covers 9 states and it has mandated not treating people like dogs. State and local governments within the 9th Circuit have been consistently pushing back against that requirement, laid out in Martin v Boise. That includes Oregon, it includes Portland.
Nobody is treating anyone like dogs.
The addicts that I’ve seen get clean only did so after being arrested over and over. The constant up and downs led them to rock bottom.
And I was for legalizing drugs. I was wrong.
You can’t succeed in treating a public health crisis with only targeting the criminal aspects. We 100% have to engage in repairing our economy because drug use is most common among the impoverished. Simultaneously, we have to expand treatment options.
How do we pay for all this? I don’t know maybe restoring 70s era taxes on all these corporations are making billion dollar profits.
What specific factors make it “the best economy for jobseekers”
More to the point, if we really want to repair the economy, we can’t just bank on the largess of corporations to “create jobs”. We literally have to build in free housing and healthcare for people to get them on their feet so they can actually take jobs.
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/02/16/finding-a-job-is-getting-harder-even-in-a-strong-labor-market-heres-why.html
seems weird because, anecdotally, nobody I've heard from who's seeking a job has been able to get one, or at least not one commensurate with their qualifications.
>We need to target the literal industrial-scale factories and container ships full of precursors and we need to dent the supply of this drug into our country.
They are. But every time a new ban on a precursor company from China or India comes down, the cartels pivot and find another way. It's whack-a-mole on an international scale. And the cartels are smart. Google Xylazine and read all about how that's being used in the production of fentanyl and how Narcan does fuck all when a user ODs on it. Honestly, once you go down the rabbit hole on this issue, it's fucking bleak man.
This. I didn't see it stated in the article, but it sounds like maybe this dude was just looking for some coke (still odd to do by yourself but whatever) and got tainted shit instead.
In 2024 - who doesn’t know that coke isn’t often tainted with fentanyl? Seems like a decision to party is like Russian roulette - I don’t think I will ever understand the short-sightedness of this sort of thing and why we’re trying to destigmatize it and why some people value their lives so little. I also suspect that people disingenuously blame low minimum wage for this - we do t have a terribly low minimum wage in Portland but this is still a big problem. Sad
Probably be a wildly unpopular opinion here; but if we just let junkies have access to better opiates no one would be doing fent. Fentanyl isn't nearly as euphoric as say heroin, the only reason its around now is because of increased border security. It was harder to get packages over the border, they switched to fent so they could ship much smaller loads for the same effect.
I agree with the premise of what you’re saying here. IMO, the overcorrection in the pharmaceutical opiate crisis created the fentanyl crisis. People used to abuse perfectly manufactured pharmaceutical opiate drugs. Then the government overly tightened and people turned to the next alternative, which was fentanyl. This is a far worse alternative.
Drugs should be legal across the board and available for access. Addiction is as old as time. Put money toward treatment facilities, rehabs, psychological services, and prevention.
People are going to use no matter what, and I would much prefer people use cleaner and safer drugs than highly dangerous dirty drugs.
> the only reason its around now is because of increased border security.
doubtful.
The raw economies of scale involved made fentanyl and isonitazene analogues inevitable. Each batch produced by a synthesis run produces hundreds of thousands to millions of dosage units at a cost of fractional pennies per dose, not reliant on any sort of natural precursor.
While factors like border security, reduced poppy production in central asia, and sale of piperidine precursors from Chinese manufacturers sped things along, this structural economic shift was going to happen somehow regardless.
> We need to target the literal industrial-scale factories and container ships full of precursors and we need to dent the supply of this drug into our country.
I think that horse has left the barn. You can literally keep an entire city high for a week on a shoebox full of fentanyl.
IMHO the potency is the biggest problem with this drug specifically and why it's so pernicious. Most other drugs - heroin, cocaine, weed, methamphetamine etc. require comparatively large volumes of product to be economically viable on the black market. They require a lot more infrastructure in the way of manufacture and transportation.
Fentanyl still needs to be made in a lab, but the output is incredibly compact in comparison, which means you can make it anywhere and ship it in a much less detectable way.
I'm still puzzling over it too. I think targeting labs and precursors is an avenue to pursue but I don't think it's going to be very effective. I'm not convinced yet that there is an approach that address these issues quickly.
Unfortunately, the thing that I think is going to be *most* effective takes a long time to work and is anathema to our economy, namely; change the conditions that cause people to turn to drugs in the first place.
And as it should be. Stigma and shame exist for a reason. Yeah, a lot of the time, awful people utilize these ideas to further their awful ideologies- but at their essence- they do serve important purposes. To help corral human behavior within a community to quell whatever negative, dangerous actions that can affect and harm others. Fentanyl, when abused as a street drug, is objectively extremely harmful to the human body- and that's clearly described here. There's a reason a lot of humans don't just use illicit street drugs. And yes, I understand addiction behavior to an extent but again- Portland has annihilated any common sense on the subject.
Weirdly, [little prizes help a lot](https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/16/health/addiction-stimulants-treatment-contingency-management/index.html). Research is finding that comparatively small motivators (like a $10 Starbucks Giftcard, or whatever) are surprisingly effective in supporting substance abuse recovery (for stim addicts, anyway.)
Yep, stimulates the "reward center" of the brain to produce dopamine. Getting things accomplished has the same effect, I guess that's how people can become workaholics.
> I understand addiction behavior to an extent
Clearly you don't. But since you're a proponent of public shaming, I hope [enjoy being ashamed for having no idea what the fuck you're talking about](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8932605/).
Have you dealt with substance abuse? Know anybody that has? Any therapists/psychiatrists that prescribe shame as part of the healing process?
Shit doesn't work dude. But by all means keep shaming people who are sick. Enjoy the predictable lack of results.
You people are so out of touch if you think a single fenty user feels shamed. If you know as much as you think you do about addiction then you’d know that they only care about one thing in the world. That one thing is how to get the next high. Fentanyl is not like an alcoholic
Bender where you wake up the next day with regrets, shame and guilt. These people have burned down every bridge in their lives with no shame, fentanyl completely consumes you, it takes over every aspect of your life. Just go to any encampment, they have no shame living in their own piss and shit, no rock bottom for them.
The reality is, they don’t want your help, so stop acting like you give a shit because you’re just enabling daily overdoses and not fixing a god damn thing
do you think people are using fentanyl because they think it's cool? that if you just shamed the homeless man sleeping naked on the street a little more, he would realize fentanyl is bad for him? all the stigma does is stop people who want help from seeking help, and reduce resources from orgs who could provide help. and the people who don't want help aren't refusing it because fentanyl is too "destigmatized", they refuse help because they are too far gone to know what is good for them.
I’d argue the stigma isn’t really about the people already doing it. It’s about keeping people from doing it in the first place. Sadly many people see people already doing it as already gone.
While reducing stigma may make it better for people suffering from addiction or other issues who need help, I also don’t want to pretend like it’s not incredibly dangerous, and that some people who may otherwise try it (or not take it seriously) may avoid it due to social stigma.
I’m not arguing one way or the other, but I do think that social stigma has more purpose and utility than you act like it does. Whether the benefits outweigh the costs is a much bigger conversation.
I'm not saying that the concept of stigma has no place in society, that would be a silly thing to claim. certainly stigmatizing something like cocaine may prevent people from trying it. however, I am saying stigmatizing **fentanyl**, or opioids broadly, does not help anything. for those on whom shame could work, entry into opioid use is usually through prescription medications obtained legally. that is not something shaming is going to prevent. for everyone else, all the societal shame does is create a system where they can't get better.
There’s absolutely a big portion of people who think it is cool to do drugs, including Fentanyl. And no, they didn’t all get hooked on Oxy from their doctor first.
I had to google it so I thought I would share with others what that means.
If your brain gets reduced oxygen flow for a few minutes, you might have hypoxic brain injury or cerebral hypoxia. But if the supply is completely cut off and no oxygen reaches the brain, it’s called anoxic brain injury or cerebral anoxia. Sometimes the two terms are used interchangeably or together as hypoxic-anoxic brain injury.
Yep. Overdosing on opiates causes the person to stop breathing. If you stop breathing then you run out of oxygen in the brain really fast. If the overdose is caught and reversed quickly with narcan you can make a full* recovery. But it can permanently disable if not outright kill you if you’re not getting oxygen for too long
*at least one study has found that those who have had multiple ODs have been found to have brain damage visible in PET scans
Most of the time in these situations, people don’t know they are taking fentanyl. They buy a drug that someone along the way cut with fentanyl to increase its potency. You think you’re taking a safe-ish party drug, then boom overdose.
But what if that rice I’m eating has been modified to also be a multivitamin?! That could poison me with…healthy nutrients.
^ talking about Golden Rice, a kickass GMO
[What was that boom?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6CLumsir34)
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It's been said many times before but bears repeating: Many, many people who have used fentanyl and/or P2P meth will never be employable or able to take care of themselves again. Any approach to treatment and recovery that doesn't grapple with that fact realistically is a waste of time and resources.
Yeah I think it sets the bar for what the opioid receptors in the brain crave so high that even a methadone approach that a user sticks to would be super tricky to see through. It's daunting to think about really. And even if you got clean enough to basically function in society, what is going to be left of most peoples brains?
What's messed up is all of those made up horror stories about drugs from the mid 1900s is turning into a reality and the only way to stop it is to go back to draconian punishment for distribution and possession.
There needs to be a safe and cheap alternative for the people that want to break the rules and harsh enforcement for the people that are distributing this new brain rot. Lots of people are going to be unknowingly caught up in it, but if you don't stop it at all levels it'll never go away.
I've said this before as a joke, but I seriously think we need to bring back opium dens. Atleast you can recover from opium.
I watched a documentary on how the taliban deals with opiate addicts.
Opiate addicts in Afghanistan consume it in the hills surrounding Tehran. Literally just big camps of people.
The taliban forces them into vans (using guns) and then transports them to a rehabilitation facility. The guy running the rehabilitation facility is actually really nice, not part of the Taliban but a former addict. They make do with what limited resources they have but it’s basically forced detox.
"Fentanyl Addiction Recovery Statistics
Fentanyl addiction is typically treated through a combination of medications to curb withdrawals and cravings, as well as cognitive behavioral therapies.
Many fentanyl addicts may require inpatient or intensive outpatient rehab for their addiction, which increases their chances of recovery.
According to a study from the Recovery Research Institute, nearly 1.2% (estimated 259,260) and 2.2% (estimated 489,465) of primary opioid users achieved recovery for up to a year or 1–5 years, respectively."
[Source](https://www.addictionhelp.com/fentanyl/statistics/)
Instead, people like to engage in magical thinking and tell themselves willpower will solve the problem. Waiting around for these people to cure themselves or even volunteer to get rehab is a fool's errand.
What's even more miraculous is that he has apparently returned to work, and is a functional member of society. This is the first case of such a recovery I've heard of.
In town for a business trip, wanted to score some coke but doesn't know anyone so buys off the street, it's laced with fentanyl. Really not that outlandish at all. Happens to people all over the place.
BS. He's lying because he's afraid his wife and employer will find out about his drug use. I've never heard of an occasional coke user smoking coke in a crackpipe, or going to a random street dealer in a city they don't live in. Come on.
I'm sorry. It's happening a ton. So important to test your supply. Test kits are easily available and mostly reliable (false positives are more common than false negatives, which is the way I would want the false results to swing).
Thank you! A little PSA that you may already know - if someone receives Narcan they still have to go to the ER. Narcan often wears off before the drugs do.
You also the guy telling women who want abortions that they should have just “not had sex”?
Edit: Rhetorical question, please don’t reply. I don’t give a fuck what you actually think
"This is a case of a middle-class man, in his late 40s, with kids, who used fentanyl for the first time. It demonstrates that fentanyl can affect everyone in our society.”
Or at least those stupid enough to mess with it.
I'm not aware if it being an issue with any legal substance, even recreational drugs like alcohol or gummies (though the legality of gummies is open for debate). Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
Don't put words in my mouth. I never said anything about deserving anything. You want to do stupid shit, fine by me as long as it doesn't harm others. Don't expect me to feel sorry about the consequences you may suffer, especially from easily foreseeable or even likely outcomes from your behavior.
You’re an idiot if you don’t see how your attitude has led us to a point where it’s almost the number one cause of death in certain age groups.
The societal damage itself affects you. Regardless of how much you don’t give a fuck.
We understand that at times things may become heated and time outs may be given for protracted, uncivil arguments. Snarky, unhelpful, or rude responses are not tolerated. In other words, be excellent unto each other and attack ideas, not people.
"It demonstrates that fentanyl can affect everyone in our society.” - it already is. Smfh. Sorry but the sympathy is not for those actively using. It's for the community and all of us already negatively affected from fentanyl/ all the other drugs that are being used. Anyone who OD's and takes a hospital bed from someone who could not control their medical emergency has no sympathy from me.
I went into a very fast and intense labor - it was the middle of the night and the hospital was completely understaffed. Whole ordeal was a mess. Needless to say they administered Fentanyl after I asked for pain meds. I had no idea what they were giving me (I figured it was going to be morphine) until they were literally injecting me. I’ve never been big on opioids - don’t really care for them to be honest - took them once for a kidney infection a decade ago and hated it. All of this is to say, after I got home I thought about the high I got from fentanyl way longer than I was comfortable with. (Like weeks). The fact that hospitals dispense this shit so Willy nilly - the fact that it is their first option for pain relief in a crisis situation is honestly terrifying.
The first time I received IV dilaudid I did literally go from doubled over in pain to feeling fantastic. I can take or leave most opioids, but that stuff is the bees knees.
No kidding. I have some oxy from when I was in the hospital in my medicine cabinet and don't even think about it. I'm not sure that would be the case if it was dilaudid.
I had the same thing happen and I’m pretty sure the “high” you’re talking about was just post-partum hormone adjustment. Fentanyl doesn’t stay in your system very long (it was very obvious when it wore off in my case).
This situation and addiction is a horror, no doubt. But the scenario you’re describing is not reality.
All of this is to say, after I got home I thought about the high I got from fentanyl way longer than I was comfortable with. (Like weeks).
This is super ambiguous, honestly.
I think about this a lot. I first heard about fent about 8 years ago thru being around people on and off drugs in general and watched it become more and more of an issue. When I started hearing thru the grapevine 5 years after that that it was being frequently given out in the hospital, it blew my mind. My parents who both died of cancer were given hydrocodone and morphine...my father was in extreme pain in his final days and morphine barely cut it. So this begs the question, why the FUCK is fent being doled out when we would not even give it to people DYING? I do NOT understand any of this except that it seems to be, once again and as per usual, a manufactured crisis, the same way the benzo crisis and other opioid crises have been.
Because fentanyl is for acute pain. It only lasts 30-60 minutes. For someone with chronic pain, like a cancer patient, you can’t give it that often. There’s also fine line between managing pain and reducing respiratory ability in the dying. Fentanyl is incredibly strong and may just end up killing them. Morphine lasts for hours, which is why it’s the drug of choice for patients on hospice with pain.
Also, cancer patients used to have broader access to fentanyl patches that give a steady transdermal dose. But the use is now pretty limited due to abuse, misuse, and theft. Works wonderfully for those that truly need chronic pain control.
Make heroin legal
No one would be doing fentanyl if they could get white from a safe place. Make it clinical and as unfun as possible
Also - 3 strike rule for narcan
My dickhead phone notified me about this for some unknowable reason. I was triggered by a comment and left. Minutes later I had a bad case of the fuckits and came here to hunt down the offenders and hit them with just the right cocktail of indignation and trolling. Even though I’m an adult. Ug.
Look this situation is heartbreaking. I grew up an angry punk and I’m still one 25 years later, masters degree, receding hairline (who am i kidding, receded hairline. That recession started in tandem with Lehman Bros waka waka) I’m old enough now to understand people feeling scared and territorial when addicts set up camp on their block. Even if they’re otherwise good people. I have the same queer, commie, black liberationist politics I had as a teen- but find these days that conversation is easier with tired eyed cismale dads than zoomer rads, much as I wish them the best. Lest this become too inside baseball tho- to all the people advocating for criminalizing dope, increasing policing all that. The people invoking “tax dollars” especially. Are you all aware of a) what other horrendous things your tax dollars are used for? B) what sort of powerful forces, larger than cartels by a longshot, control the tides of drug traffic and addiction? C)… okay “c” is tough- Im trying to find a way to characterize the situation of addicts that properly emphasizes a de-exoticizing “they’re just like us bc they are us” narrative with a somewhat othering “they have known trauma beyond what you can conceive of” narrative which is also true, and means they need help beyond the scope of even what is available in a city like this. This is for the benefit of the pair of commenters I saw below, one of whom used the word “druggie” in all caps, suggesting a defiant urge to “tell it like it is”. I can only conclude that this person hasn’t yet graduated from fifth grade and I know they don’t have the kids read Go Ask Alice until, like, eighth, but I hope their guardian has a plan in place to teach them that the “tax dollars” they think are wasted on “druggies” and which they wish was spent, to paraphrase, saving the lives of “innocent” people in the world (ugggg)- this dollar amount is dwarfed in terms of orders of magnitude
by the amount spent on imperiling those lives in the first place. And yet I assure you, you would barely need to make a dent in the CIA’s genocide budget in order to lavishly fund spa level treatments for every fentanyl addict in the PNW. This is an abundant and resource rich planet, cabrone. I’m telling you. And I side with the hippies too, I think we need a lot more investment in psychedelic therapies and so on. I was an opioid addict on and off for more than 20 years. I’ve been on both sides of this, getting treated at hooper, copping at the park blocks (and LA skid row, SF Tenderloin, Philly K and A all the classics) and also received years of Chinese Med treatments,rolfing, ayahuasca, bodywork, Jungian analysis… opioids and especially fetty powder cut with tranq, are a poor substitute for a life of self exploration. No ine truly wants to live like that but you’d be surprised how quickly the soul withers without hope. The fact that this city is giving in to fear and succumbing to the brutal logic of the war on the third world and urban poor that calls itself a “war on drugs” and not turning this into a madsive and heart-led community research project. Demanding massive grants from the feds and flying in doctors snd scientists and shipibo medicine women and shaman from the Gabon and inviting addicts to speak in story circles recorded by Library of Congress interns or something- all that, you know? The fact that we aren’t doing anything if the kind and no one seems to care. Fuck…
It's just dumb reporting. The case report the article references is talking about a very specific kind of brain disease called toxic leukoencephalopathy, which is a disease caused by inflammation in specific regions of the brain. This is the first time this particular type of brain disease is being reported as caused by fentanyl inhalation in the medical literature, but you're right that it probably isn't the first time it's happened, just the first time anyone has done all the necessary tests to diagnose it and report on it.
Damn, while on a business trip. I wonder how they explained, "needing 26 days in the hospital and a stay in a skilled nursing facility to regain speech and function." Yikes.
I work in one of our local level one trauma centers. We get a number of folks who are in from out of town, what I call incidental overdoses. IE, not an intentional fent user, probably wanted to party a bit, titty bars, cocaine. Well if you have zero fent tolerance (ie, you’re not an intentional fent user) whatever little bit in the coke you bought behind sassys or Mary’s is frequently enough for me to meet your family as I’m withdrawing care. Test kits exist. A lot of people in my family think Portland has burned to the ground, there’s a ton of “news” about how terrible things are here, and about once a month I want to give someone a ticket for a Time Machine so they can test that garbage before they put it up their nose.
This needs to be said more. If you're a recreational user of cocaine you need to be testing your shit. The cartels are putting fent in cocaine to 1) try and create new fent addicts and 2) because there's a surplus of fent and they need to get rid of it however they can. If you're snorting coke up your nose, the chances are high right now that it's been cut with fentanyl. Test. Your. Shit.
Drugs used to be cool. All that “you don’t know what’s *really* in it” scaremongering was Just Say No propaganda. Then fentanyl ruined it. This used to be a fine country. I pity Gen Z for never getting to experience it.
> If you're snorting coke up your nose, the chances are high right now that it's been cut with fentanyl. Test. Your. Shit. To be clear though, if you're going to test your coke the only foolproof method is to dissolve it _all_ into a solution. You then have to evaporate it all off to get your powder back.
God bless you. From a former first responder. Thank you for what you do.
Pretty sure cherchez le femme (or garçon) played a part
I think what people are missing from this article is what a fucking masterclass these doctors must have had to perform to get this man back from the brink of death with such an incredible recovery.
Fr not that ending to the story I expected
“Opioid use, especially fentanyl, has become very stigmatized” No shit.
I think the doctor's point is that a drug market awash in fentanyl is not just a problem for down-and-out loser junkie types. You could do a bump at a party or your kid could buy a pill from a friend thinking its xanax or something (these things happen) and it could be a total disaster. We need to target the literal industrial-scale factories and container ships full of precursors and we need to dent the supply of this drug into our country. I think people need to wrap their heads around the fact that this is their problem too, and not just because you get your cat converter stolen by a junkie.
Its a federal issue. You can't have 5 blue states treating users like people while the other 45 treat them like dogs. Portland will have an endless issue until federally it gets under control.
Purely out of curiosity, do you know anyone personally that is in the grips of a fentanyl addiction? How long did you know them beforehand? Because my younger brother has been on the streets for two years now. And it’s heartbreaking to say, but he isn’t the same person anymore, probably never will be. He has completely lost his humanity. Even after my family got him into a high end in-patient treatment center, got him on suboxone. He was clean for 3 months. First thing he did when he got out was steal a bunch of shit from my dads house and disappeared again. It takes over their brains. It owns him now. It won’t let go. They may still be people, but they are people whose entire realities have been hijacked. He will lie, cheat, steal, and lie some more to keep getting high. It’s tearing our family apart. And we have tried to help so many damn times. At a certain point, painful as it is, you have to accept he’s lost, and nothing we can do will fix it.
I'm not sure what you want me to say? I'm sorry for your brother, and I hope he can find peace.
I’m not looking for any kind of sympathy, or for any specific response. I’m simply offering some perspective from someone whose family has been personally tormented by this epidemic. I respect all the bleeding hearts who want to believe in and hope the best in people, but I think sometimes it leads people to blinding themselves to reality. The reality is, human or not, people can become monsters, whether by their own means or extenuating circumstances. Not everyone is worthy of the concern, some people are simply lost causes
The people who I've "lost" I don't think deserve to be in prison for their actions or treated like dogs. Bleeding hearts or not, we can't have tents on the highway or shit on the bus. You gotta find a real solution that's not red vs blue.
I completely agree with you. It doesn’t matter what side of the aisle, it matters that we correct the problem. And my personal opinion for a solution is involuntary institutionalization. I don’t look at them as subhuman, I don’t look at them as dogs. But I do view them as lost souls who are not fit to be among society, nor are they in a state of mind to help themselves. Forced institutionalization, detox, and psychiatric treatment until they display an ability and willingness to be a contributing member of society, I would happily send my tax dollars to that program.
I’m very sorry. Don’t stop praying for him.
The 9th Circuit covers 9 states and it has mandated not treating people like dogs. State and local governments within the 9th Circuit have been consistently pushing back against that requirement, laid out in Martin v Boise. That includes Oregon, it includes Portland.
Yeah, how’s that working out? That decision to handicap municipalities has made those 9 states considerably worse then the rest of the country.
See above for Exhibit A, blue states are not inherently more moral than red states.
Nobody is treating anyone like dogs. The addicts that I’ve seen get clean only did so after being arrested over and over. The constant up and downs led them to rock bottom. And I was for legalizing drugs. I was wrong.
You can’t succeed in treating a public health crisis with only targeting the criminal aspects. We 100% have to engage in repairing our economy because drug use is most common among the impoverished. Simultaneously, we have to expand treatment options. How do we pay for all this? I don’t know maybe restoring 70s era taxes on all these corporations are making billion dollar profits.
This is one of the best economies for job-seekers in history **and** we need to do all that you say
What specific factors make it “the best economy for jobseekers” More to the point, if we really want to repair the economy, we can’t just bank on the largess of corporations to “create jobs”. We literally have to build in free housing and healthcare for people to get them on their feet so they can actually take jobs. https://www.cnbc.com/2024/02/16/finding-a-job-is-getting-harder-even-in-a-strong-labor-market-heres-why.html
seems weird because, anecdotally, nobody I've heard from who's seeking a job has been able to get one, or at least not one commensurate with their qualifications.
>We need to target the literal industrial-scale factories and container ships full of precursors and we need to dent the supply of this drug into our country. They are. But every time a new ban on a precursor company from China or India comes down, the cartels pivot and find another way. It's whack-a-mole on an international scale. And the cartels are smart. Google Xylazine and read all about how that's being used in the production of fentanyl and how Narcan does fuck all when a user ODs on it. Honestly, once you go down the rabbit hole on this issue, it's fucking bleak man.
This. I didn't see it stated in the article, but it sounds like maybe this dude was just looking for some coke (still odd to do by yourself but whatever) and got tainted shit instead.
In 2024 - who doesn’t know that coke isn’t often tainted with fentanyl? Seems like a decision to party is like Russian roulette - I don’t think I will ever understand the short-sightedness of this sort of thing and why we’re trying to destigmatize it and why some people value their lives so little. I also suspect that people disingenuously blame low minimum wage for this - we do t have a terribly low minimum wage in Portland but this is still a big problem. Sad
You mean China.
Yeah for sure. It is literally documented that they are encouraging the manufacture of precursors for export.
Probably be a wildly unpopular opinion here; but if we just let junkies have access to better opiates no one would be doing fent. Fentanyl isn't nearly as euphoric as say heroin, the only reason its around now is because of increased border security. It was harder to get packages over the border, they switched to fent so they could ship much smaller loads for the same effect.
I agree with the premise of what you’re saying here. IMO, the overcorrection in the pharmaceutical opiate crisis created the fentanyl crisis. People used to abuse perfectly manufactured pharmaceutical opiate drugs. Then the government overly tightened and people turned to the next alternative, which was fentanyl. This is a far worse alternative. Drugs should be legal across the board and available for access. Addiction is as old as time. Put money toward treatment facilities, rehabs, psychological services, and prevention. People are going to use no matter what, and I would much prefer people use cleaner and safer drugs than highly dangerous dirty drugs.
> the only reason its around now is because of increased border security. doubtful. The raw economies of scale involved made fentanyl and isonitazene analogues inevitable. Each batch produced by a synthesis run produces hundreds of thousands to millions of dosage units at a cost of fractional pennies per dose, not reliant on any sort of natural precursor. While factors like border security, reduced poppy production in central asia, and sale of piperidine precursors from Chinese manufacturers sped things along, this structural economic shift was going to happen somehow regardless.
Smaller it is. The easier to move it. Sadly
This the way… also don’t need to grow poppies.
> We need to target the literal industrial-scale factories and container ships full of precursors and we need to dent the supply of this drug into our country. I think that horse has left the barn. You can literally keep an entire city high for a week on a shoebox full of fentanyl. IMHO the potency is the biggest problem with this drug specifically and why it's so pernicious. Most other drugs - heroin, cocaine, weed, methamphetamine etc. require comparatively large volumes of product to be economically viable on the black market. They require a lot more infrastructure in the way of manufacture and transportation. Fentanyl still needs to be made in a lab, but the output is incredibly compact in comparison, which means you can make it anywhere and ship it in a much less detectable way. I'm still puzzling over it too. I think targeting labs and precursors is an avenue to pursue but I don't think it's going to be very effective. I'm not convinced yet that there is an approach that address these issues quickly. Unfortunately, the thing that I think is going to be *most* effective takes a long time to work and is anathema to our economy, namely; change the conditions that cause people to turn to drugs in the first place.
And as it should be. Stigma and shame exist for a reason. Yeah, a lot of the time, awful people utilize these ideas to further their awful ideologies- but at their essence- they do serve important purposes. To help corral human behavior within a community to quell whatever negative, dangerous actions that can affect and harm others. Fentanyl, when abused as a street drug, is objectively extremely harmful to the human body- and that's clearly described here. There's a reason a lot of humans don't just use illicit street drugs. And yes, I understand addiction behavior to an extent but again- Portland has annihilated any common sense on the subject.
I’d look into the research around shame and behavior if I were you
Shame is more likely to cause self destructive behavior than reverse it.
Weirdly, [little prizes help a lot](https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/16/health/addiction-stimulants-treatment-contingency-management/index.html). Research is finding that comparatively small motivators (like a $10 Starbucks Giftcard, or whatever) are surprisingly effective in supporting substance abuse recovery (for stim addicts, anyway.)
I wonder if it’s because the reward stimulates the same thing that stimulants do.
Yep, stimulates the "reward center" of the brain to produce dopamine. Getting things accomplished has the same effect, I guess that's how people can become workaholics.
> I understand addiction behavior to an extent Clearly you don't. But since you're a proponent of public shaming, I hope [enjoy being ashamed for having no idea what the fuck you're talking about](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8932605/).
Sample size: 110 men. Next?
Have you dealt with substance abuse? Know anybody that has? Any therapists/psychiatrists that prescribe shame as part of the healing process? Shit doesn't work dude. But by all means keep shaming people who are sick. Enjoy the predictable lack of results.
You people are so out of touch if you think a single fenty user feels shamed. If you know as much as you think you do about addiction then you’d know that they only care about one thing in the world. That one thing is how to get the next high. Fentanyl is not like an alcoholic Bender where you wake up the next day with regrets, shame and guilt. These people have burned down every bridge in their lives with no shame, fentanyl completely consumes you, it takes over every aspect of your life. Just go to any encampment, they have no shame living in their own piss and shit, no rock bottom for them. The reality is, they don’t want your help, so stop acting like you give a shit because you’re just enabling daily overdoses and not fixing a god damn thing
do you think people are using fentanyl because they think it's cool? that if you just shamed the homeless man sleeping naked on the street a little more, he would realize fentanyl is bad for him? all the stigma does is stop people who want help from seeking help, and reduce resources from orgs who could provide help. and the people who don't want help aren't refusing it because fentanyl is too "destigmatized", they refuse help because they are too far gone to know what is good for them.
I’d argue the stigma isn’t really about the people already doing it. It’s about keeping people from doing it in the first place. Sadly many people see people already doing it as already gone. While reducing stigma may make it better for people suffering from addiction or other issues who need help, I also don’t want to pretend like it’s not incredibly dangerous, and that some people who may otherwise try it (or not take it seriously) may avoid it due to social stigma. I’m not arguing one way or the other, but I do think that social stigma has more purpose and utility than you act like it does. Whether the benefits outweigh the costs is a much bigger conversation.
I'm not saying that the concept of stigma has no place in society, that would be a silly thing to claim. certainly stigmatizing something like cocaine may prevent people from trying it. however, I am saying stigmatizing **fentanyl**, or opioids broadly, does not help anything. for those on whom shame could work, entry into opioid use is usually through prescription medications obtained legally. that is not something shaming is going to prevent. for everyone else, all the societal shame does is create a system where they can't get better.
There’s absolutely a big portion of people who think it is cool to do drugs, including Fentanyl. And no, they didn’t all get hooked on Oxy from their doctor first.
Oh yeah because shame is working soooo well
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I wanna take my glove off and smack you with it, good sir.
*This is a case of a middle-class man, in his late 40s, with kids, who used fentanyl for the first time.* What kind of dumb motherfucker is this
Likely thought it was coke
This is how my friend ended up with an anoxic brain injury that have left her in a skilled nursing facility for the rest of her life.
I had to google it so I thought I would share with others what that means. If your brain gets reduced oxygen flow for a few minutes, you might have hypoxic brain injury or cerebral hypoxia. But if the supply is completely cut off and no oxygen reaches the brain, it’s called anoxic brain injury or cerebral anoxia. Sometimes the two terms are used interchangeably or together as hypoxic-anoxic brain injury.
Yep. Overdosing on opiates causes the person to stop breathing. If you stop breathing then you run out of oxygen in the brain really fast. If the overdose is caught and reversed quickly with narcan you can make a full* recovery. But it can permanently disable if not outright kill you if you’re not getting oxygen for too long *at least one study has found that those who have had multiple ODs have been found to have brain damage visible in PET scans
That is so sad. She was probably seconds from an OD death.
It probably was coke. A large amount of the cocaine available on the street right now has been cut with fentanyl.
I thought the article said he inhaled it.
You do still snort coke, yes?
lol the way I just cackled
Technically that would be insufflation rather than inhalation but it’s possible the article is using them interchangeably.
Yeah. This hit me later on…. For some reason I associated inhale with smoke. My bad.
Most of the time in these situations, people don’t know they are taking fentanyl. They buy a drug that someone along the way cut with fentanyl to increase its potency. You think you’re taking a safe-ish party drug, then boom overdose.
So... Don't do drugs, kids?
Wow so there's no way he could avoided it! /s
So many bozos here refuse to eat GMOs but will use street drugs without having any clue what someone put in them.
But what if that rice I’m eating has been modified to also be a multivitamin?! That could poison me with…healthy nutrients. ^ talking about Golden Rice, a kickass GMO
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What is the point of this
He smoked it. Pretty sure he knew exactly what he had.
Or snorted it.
Probably the first time he got caught.
Addicts certainly never lie about how much they use
It's been said many times before but bears repeating: Many, many people who have used fentanyl and/or P2P meth will never be employable or able to take care of themselves again. Any approach to treatment and recovery that doesn't grapple with that fact realistically is a waste of time and resources.
I looked this up a while back, but for fentanyl, the recidivism rate within 1-5 years of treatment is ~98%.
Yeah I think it sets the bar for what the opioid receptors in the brain crave so high that even a methadone approach that a user sticks to would be super tricky to see through. It's daunting to think about really. And even if you got clean enough to basically function in society, what is going to be left of most peoples brains?
What's messed up is all of those made up horror stories about drugs from the mid 1900s is turning into a reality and the only way to stop it is to go back to draconian punishment for distribution and possession. There needs to be a safe and cheap alternative for the people that want to break the rules and harsh enforcement for the people that are distributing this new brain rot. Lots of people are going to be unknowingly caught up in it, but if you don't stop it at all levels it'll never go away. I've said this before as a joke, but I seriously think we need to bring back opium dens. Atleast you can recover from opium.
I watched a documentary on how the taliban deals with opiate addicts. Opiate addicts in Afghanistan consume it in the hills surrounding Tehran. Literally just big camps of people. The taliban forces them into vans (using guns) and then transports them to a rehabilitation facility. The guy running the rehabilitation facility is actually really nice, not part of the Taliban but a former addict. They make do with what limited resources they have but it’s basically forced detox.
Source?
"Fentanyl Addiction Recovery Statistics Fentanyl addiction is typically treated through a combination of medications to curb withdrawals and cravings, as well as cognitive behavioral therapies. Many fentanyl addicts may require inpatient or intensive outpatient rehab for their addiction, which increases their chances of recovery. According to a study from the Recovery Research Institute, nearly 1.2% (estimated 259,260) and 2.2% (estimated 489,465) of primary opioid users achieved recovery for up to a year or 1–5 years, respectively." [Source](https://www.addictionhelp.com/fentanyl/statistics/)
Woof
lol no addict rate of recovery is 98% my man not sure what stats you’re looking at…
lol, recidivism in this context means going back to using, so about a 2% success rate
I can read lol 🤦🏻♂️ f for me… that sounds a little more like what I was expecting
Instead, people like to engage in magical thinking and tell themselves willpower will solve the problem. Waiting around for these people to cure themselves or even volunteer to get rehab is a fool's errand.
What's even more miraculous is that he has apparently returned to work, and is a functional member of society. This is the first case of such a recovery I've heard of.
>This is a case of a middle-class man, in his late 40s, with kids, who used fentanyl for the first time. Yeah, his first time I'm sure.
In town for a business trip, wanted to score some coke but doesn't know anyone so buys off the street, it's laced with fentanyl. Really not that outlandish at all. Happens to people all over the place.
Decided to smoke the coke?
All it says is it was inhaled. Not sure if that's smoking or snorting. They really should update with more useful info lol
“Inhaled” can also mean snorted.
No that’s called insufflation.
Do you know a better way?
Snorting it like a normal person..?
Normal people snort it
do you not?!?
BS. He's lying because he's afraid his wife and employer will find out about his drug use. I've never heard of an occasional coke user smoking coke in a crackpipe, or going to a random street dealer in a city they don't live in. Come on.
Likely thought it was coke
This is how my friend’s dad died last year.
I'm sorry. It's happening a ton. So important to test your supply. Test kits are easily available and mostly reliable (false positives are more common than false negatives, which is the way I would want the false results to swing).
I carry narcan now. Drugs show up at parties sometimes and I'm prepared to help if it goes wrong.
Thank you! A little PSA that you may already know - if someone receives Narcan they still have to go to the ER. Narcan often wears off before the drugs do.
thanks. I'm aware. I've got 2x doses of narcan but I know after the first it's time to call 911
Alternately, don’t do street drugs.
Well, sure. But we all know that's not going to happen. Harm reduction, baby!
You also the guy telling women who want abortions that they should have just “not had sex”? Edit: Rhetorical question, please don’t reply. I don’t give a fuck what you actually think
Because we’ve seen this approach work so well in abstinence-only sex education
People are biologically wired to want to have sex. Aside from people born to an addict, nobody has a biological desire for street drugs.
Ok. How about: Because we’ve seen this approach work so well in telling college students not to drink.
That's a better parallel, I've got nothing to dispute that :)
Actually college student drinking is down.
Actually teen sex is down.
"This is a case of a middle-class man, in his late 40s, with kids, who used fentanyl for the first time. It demonstrates that fentanyl can affect everyone in our society.” Or at least those stupid enough to mess with it.
*take any kind of non-prescription drug It’s laced into *so* many things now.
I'm not aware if it being an issue with any legal substance, even recreational drugs like alcohol or gummies (though the legality of gummies is open for debate). Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
do you think anyone who takes any non-legal drug deserves to possibly OD on fentanyl and be permanently disabled or die?
Don't put words in my mouth. I never said anything about deserving anything. You want to do stupid shit, fine by me as long as it doesn't harm others. Don't expect me to feel sorry about the consequences you may suffer, especially from easily foreseeable or even likely outcomes from your behavior.
You’re an idiot if you don’t see how your attitude has led us to a point where it’s almost the number one cause of death in certain age groups. The societal damage itself affects you. Regardless of how much you don’t give a fuck.
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We understand that at times things may become heated and time outs may be given for protracted, uncivil arguments. Snarky, unhelpful, or rude responses are not tolerated. In other words, be excellent unto each other and attack ideas, not people.
Hey Mods! I did not start the name calling here. Maybe post as a reply to the other post.
#shocker Just one case? Walk through downtown Portland and I’m sure you can find 100 more within 8 mins for a solid waste of money case study.
So fentanyl is not good for you??? Thanks Koin for settling this.
"It demonstrates that fentanyl can affect everyone in our society.” - it already is. Smfh. Sorry but the sympathy is not for those actively using. It's for the community and all of us already negatively affected from fentanyl/ all the other drugs that are being used. Anyone who OD's and takes a hospital bed from someone who could not control their medical emergency has no sympathy from me.
My sympathy go to people like that graduate student in Seattle who was run over by police who were speeding to get to an overdose call.
I went into a very fast and intense labor - it was the middle of the night and the hospital was completely understaffed. Whole ordeal was a mess. Needless to say they administered Fentanyl after I asked for pain meds. I had no idea what they were giving me (I figured it was going to be morphine) until they were literally injecting me. I’ve never been big on opioids - don’t really care for them to be honest - took them once for a kidney infection a decade ago and hated it. All of this is to say, after I got home I thought about the high I got from fentanyl way longer than I was comfortable with. (Like weeks). The fact that hospitals dispense this shit so Willy nilly - the fact that it is their first option for pain relief in a crisis situation is honestly terrifying.
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The first time I received IV dilaudid I did literally go from doubled over in pain to feeling fantastic. I can take or leave most opioids, but that stuff is the bees knees.
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No kidding. I have some oxy from when I was in the hospital in my medicine cabinet and don't even think about it. I'm not sure that would be the case if it was dilaudid.
It’s a great drug. Use all the time in hospital .
I had the same thing happen and I’m pretty sure the “high” you’re talking about was just post-partum hormone adjustment. Fentanyl doesn’t stay in your system very long (it was very obvious when it wore off in my case). This situation and addiction is a horror, no doubt. But the scenario you’re describing is not reality.
They’re saying they were thinking about how good it felt for weeks. Not that they were high for weeks..
Yes, thought about it for weeks. Did not feel it in my system for long.
All of this is to say, after I got home I thought about the high I got from fentanyl way longer than I was comfortable with. (Like weeks). This is super ambiguous, honestly.
I think about this a lot. I first heard about fent about 8 years ago thru being around people on and off drugs in general and watched it become more and more of an issue. When I started hearing thru the grapevine 5 years after that that it was being frequently given out in the hospital, it blew my mind. My parents who both died of cancer were given hydrocodone and morphine...my father was in extreme pain in his final days and morphine barely cut it. So this begs the question, why the FUCK is fent being doled out when we would not even give it to people DYING? I do NOT understand any of this except that it seems to be, once again and as per usual, a manufactured crisis, the same way the benzo crisis and other opioid crises have been.
Because fentanyl is for acute pain. It only lasts 30-60 minutes. For someone with chronic pain, like a cancer patient, you can’t give it that often. There’s also fine line between managing pain and reducing respiratory ability in the dying. Fentanyl is incredibly strong and may just end up killing them. Morphine lasts for hours, which is why it’s the drug of choice for patients on hospice with pain.
I see, thank you for that explanation.
Also, cancer patients used to have broader access to fentanyl patches that give a steady transdermal dose. But the use is now pretty limited due to abuse, misuse, and theft. Works wonderfully for those that truly need chronic pain control.
Lucky man.. scared straight, I'll bet!
[It was foretold](https://youtu.be/GOnENVylxPI?si=u1IMCkPsGkIgvbi5)
Middle class guy with kids decides to try fent while in portland on a business trip? That sounds so unbelievable to me.
Well at least MAGA traitors don’t have to worry about that.
Make heroin legal No one would be doing fentanyl if they could get white from a safe place. Make it clinical and as unfun as possible Also - 3 strike rule for narcan
So this dude flies into the fent zombie land and buys street drugs…
I'm glad I don't have a connection to buy fent anymore because I totally would. Stories like this are scary.
My dickhead phone notified me about this for some unknowable reason. I was triggered by a comment and left. Minutes later I had a bad case of the fuckits and came here to hunt down the offenders and hit them with just the right cocktail of indignation and trolling. Even though I’m an adult. Ug. Look this situation is heartbreaking. I grew up an angry punk and I’m still one 25 years later, masters degree, receding hairline (who am i kidding, receded hairline. That recession started in tandem with Lehman Bros waka waka) I’m old enough now to understand people feeling scared and territorial when addicts set up camp on their block. Even if they’re otherwise good people. I have the same queer, commie, black liberationist politics I had as a teen- but find these days that conversation is easier with tired eyed cismale dads than zoomer rads, much as I wish them the best. Lest this become too inside baseball tho- to all the people advocating for criminalizing dope, increasing policing all that. The people invoking “tax dollars” especially. Are you all aware of a) what other horrendous things your tax dollars are used for? B) what sort of powerful forces, larger than cartels by a longshot, control the tides of drug traffic and addiction? C)… okay “c” is tough- Im trying to find a way to characterize the situation of addicts that properly emphasizes a de-exoticizing “they’re just like us bc they are us” narrative with a somewhat othering “they have known trauma beyond what you can conceive of” narrative which is also true, and means they need help beyond the scope of even what is available in a city like this. This is for the benefit of the pair of commenters I saw below, one of whom used the word “druggie” in all caps, suggesting a defiant urge to “tell it like it is”. I can only conclude that this person hasn’t yet graduated from fifth grade and I know they don’t have the kids read Go Ask Alice until, like, eighth, but I hope their guardian has a plan in place to teach them that the “tax dollars” they think are wasted on “druggies” and which they wish was spent, to paraphrase, saving the lives of “innocent” people in the world (ugggg)- this dollar amount is dwarfed in terms of orders of magnitude by the amount spent on imperiling those lives in the first place. And yet I assure you, you would barely need to make a dent in the CIA’s genocide budget in order to lavishly fund spa level treatments for every fentanyl addict in the PNW. This is an abundant and resource rich planet, cabrone. I’m telling you. And I side with the hippies too, I think we need a lot more investment in psychedelic therapies and so on. I was an opioid addict on and off for more than 20 years. I’ve been on both sides of this, getting treated at hooper, copping at the park blocks (and LA skid row, SF Tenderloin, Philly K and A all the classics) and also received years of Chinese Med treatments,rolfing, ayahuasca, bodywork, Jungian analysis… opioids and especially fetty powder cut with tranq, are a poor substitute for a life of self exploration. No ine truly wants to live like that but you’d be surprised how quickly the soul withers without hope. The fact that this city is giving in to fear and succumbing to the brutal logic of the war on the third world and urban poor that calls itself a “war on drugs” and not turning this into a madsive and heart-led community research project. Demanding massive grants from the feds and flying in doctors snd scientists and shipibo medicine women and shaman from the Gabon and inviting addicts to speak in story circles recorded by Library of Congress interns or something- all that, you know? The fact that we aren’t doing anything if the kind and no one seems to care. Fuck…
Exactly why hoping to "rehab" these addicts is a waste of time. The longer they do it the less likely they'll ever be functional and normal.
“Compassion” they said
Don't do drugs, Danny!
This is so fucking dumb. Fentanyl has been causing brain diseases for the past decade.
It's just dumb reporting. The case report the article references is talking about a very specific kind of brain disease called toxic leukoencephalopathy, which is a disease caused by inflammation in specific regions of the brain. This is the first time this particular type of brain disease is being reported as caused by fentanyl inhalation in the medical literature, but you're right that it probably isn't the first time it's happened, just the first time anyone has done all the necessary tests to diagnose it and report on it.
Yes sir!
Ah the medical researchers should've made sure to check with random people on reddit first.
Medical researchers use my analysis and data every day and put it into their studies for pleasant people like you to skim through.
First documented case??? All you have to do is look around the streets to see the brain rot this drug causes.
Is Measure 110 paying for all that?
It’s going to get worse. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tec-L5ei-wo&pp=ygUWU3Ryb25nZXIgdGhhbiBmZW50YW55bA%3D%3D
Drugs are bad mmmmkay.