Physical fitness is not just chemistry. The body is responding to actual physical forces and the response is tightly coupled to how, when and where those forces are applied. Bone density and structure for instance is not just a matter of increasing production of bone cell production. It instead responds to the forces of gravity and other forces on the body as it moves through space. These forces do trigger electrochemical signals in the body, but it wouldn’t be trivial to recreate these signals in such a way that the body is fooled into responding just as it would if the signals were triggered by gravity and other physical forces.

It seems like it could be a more difficult but similar problem to the one experienced by lab-grown meat producers. The meat texture still isn’t right. And these meat “muscles” only require proper taste and texture. They wouldn’t have to actually support a living organism.

Edit: On reread I realize your comment allowed for assisting rather than totally replacing the required physical aspects. I agree with that. Use of chemicals could make it easier to trigger the necessary reactions, lowering thresholds, increasing outputs, etc. This could be applied broadly and the physical forces of everyday life might do the rest.

Alcohol is one of the most boring psychoactive experiences there is, it's the safest, the most predictable and the most repeatable. There's nothing challenging about it - happy drunks are going to be happy drunks, angry/emotional drunks are going to be angry/emotional drunks, people who use the context of alcohol to excuse behaviors that they feel they would otherwise be judged for (promiscuity, "I love you guys! no I really do!", etc. etc.) are doing just that. The only drug with more predictability than alcohol is caffeine, with the common opiates being next in line for being absolutely predictable - do X get Y.

Alcohol is boring. Even pot or tobacco are more interesting, but they lack the social context that provides behavioral permissibility which is really what drives the ritual-lite use - going drinking on the weekend.

The predictability is a FEATURE. And btw, it's not boring at all.

You are conflating boring with predictable.

meanwhile 2-3 beers with friends I haven't seen in a while is a good time, good convo, and we can chill out and sip water for 30 min to make sure we're safe to drive. like, I'm looking to have a pint with the lads and have nice conversation, not undergo ego death.

Setting aside alcohol addiction, the costs of alcohol abuse to your health (e.g., brain damage, liver disease, etc.), and the risk of killing yourself by drinking too much in a sitting, there's also the way it drastically increases the risk of drunk driving and domestic violence.

I'm not saying we should ban it or anything, but we should not be underplaying the very real risks and costs associated with it.

Think of alcohol as ancient painkiller/antidepressant that helped people to get through the challenges of their lifes and make it through the life without walking out of the window

For one, to claim that most developed countries have purged ritual feels more like you are referring to some specific rituals. Or have amusing cuts on what you consider developed countries.

You also sort of undercut yourself by noting that alcohol hits people in different, if repeatable ways; but you seem to think that will not be true for other drugs? From my experience, I would expect the same for pot. Tobacco, I confess I never really saw it impact anyone. Outside of getting them addicted.

Simply stated, why do you think you would not see such variability of how other items impact people?

They most likely mean all kinds of overt rituals societies used to have and some non-western societies still have.

What kind of rituals do we have that you have in mind that we still have, and that are not either very peripheral to everyday life or have not been diminishing in importance and attendance year by year?

Do we still do the same rituals as we did in the past? Of course not. Which is why I would largely agree. I suspect the evidence will be such that there are still more rituals than folks admit to. Graduation ceremonies. Weddings. Etc.

Yeah, no. According to CDC data, more than 150,000 people die from excessive alcohol consumption per year [1], which is about how many people died of heroin overdoses in the past 20 years [2].

By and large, the labels "safe" or "dangerous" are subjective and highly cultural, at least when it comes to substances.

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/facts-stats/index.html

[2] https://www.cdc.gov/overdose-prevention/about/heroin.html

Easy, everyone drinks, almost nobody shoots up. There you go, explained.

My body has a hard time with it. So it’s rare that I seek it out. A small container of sake early in the evening might be my indulgence from now on.

I was also in my early 40s when this happened for what that's worth.

For me it seems to correlate with having had COVID back in 2021, where prior to that I could still have 2-3 drinks and feel okay the next day. My suspicion/intuition is that it has something to do with a shift in my gut microbiome - from what I understand, alcohol can very easily disrupt one’s microbiome, and the state of my microbiome seems to have a significant influence on my mood.

I haven’t missed the alcohol though. It’s actually been a blessing for my general health and wellbeing.

However, I've also heard mention of people drinking less in general which could suggest a link.

[0] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/drastic-molecular...

[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s43587-024-00692-2

Also kept a clear mind and mindful awareness throughout. Just euphoric & more social.

Then at 53, after some extreme stress, that completely changed. One drink slowly is usually fine. 2-3 drinks will upset my sleep. Any more and my next day suffers.

At 4-5 drinks my body feels like it has a slight fever over night. I feel overheated, whether I really am I don’t know. Just can’t process it efficiently.

More than that & I get socially sloppy. Not bad, but not welcome either.

But my very petite daughter in her mid 20’s inherited my relevant genes. Since high school she has to down two hard cocktails within ten minutes to start an evening of (more paced, but still steady) drinking with friends just to feel the effects, like I did most of my life.

She can out drink companions 2x her weight.

Also in common, neither of us is at alcohol addiction risk. Drinking is completely social/situational, no cravings or problems with abstention. We both enjoy the taste of alcohol. Scotch, neat, tastes like candy to me.

Drinking has always been at least as much about the gourmand exploration of flavors and varieties as the psychological effect.

I got my DNA analysis and one chromosome is 68% Caribbean pirate, 32% Viking, the other is split equally Russian/Irish.

Joking - but would be interested if relevant genes could be identified. I would happily sign up for gene or epigenetic therapy to resume my old life of refined epicureanism in excess.

Drinking mixed with lots of sparkling water, diet sodas, and a powder mixture of creatine, minerals, protein & fiber, before & after, reliably helps a bit.

Also, liver health remains excellent.

Genes!

A change that came along with this is some kind of sensitivity to sugar. I love candy and baked goods. A short stack of pancakes with maple syrup and berries is the best, but that kind of carb bomb can leave me feeling almost hungover.

I used to like wine, but the older I got, the more I started noticing having a terrible hangover the next day, even if it wasn't enough to get actually drunk or even buzzed. Type/brand of wine didn't seem to matter. But whiskey or vodka mixed with soda, no problem.

Note that I largely resonate with the idea that aging reduces tolerance to alcohol. Love the Oatmeal's https://theoatmeal.com/comics/hungover. Hasn't quite hit me that hard, yet. Thankfully.

I can’t recall the last time I was asked “why” after telling someone I don’t drink. All in all, I was fortunate that during university a close friend of mine also didn’t drink. Being the “odd one out” seems harder than being the “odd pair out” lol.

edit: culture plays a role as well in how acceptable it is. I’m from a country that is heavy on alcohol usage though (Belgium).

However, in society at large, social influence (excuse the bit of circularity) is an extremely powerful force driving people's lifestyle.

People often don't understand that not everyone experiences a thing the same way. That what it's like for you isn't the same as what it's like for me.

People think you experience alcoholic beverages exactly the same as they do and don't understand why you dislike them as a result.

Personally, no. Statistically, yes, at least enough for the difference to affect a study like this. That's the point of those comments.

That liquor consumption part of the study result.

Stupid (cognitively easy) stereotypes, backed by "everybody's gotta drink!" machismo/insecurity/conformist culture, backed by "all the people I know" (who aren't silenced by stereotypes and peer pressure) experience, backed by decade after decade of massive advertising by the alcohol industry (and adjacent industries).

I grew up in a blue-collar rural area where alcoholism wasn't just common, it was flat-out normal. Anyone who could get away with nursing a beer or 12 the whole day long and not get fired, usually did. My dad drank a lot and it caused a ton of problems with his marriage (leading to divorce) but at least he wasn't abusive.

I am also somewhat lucky in that I never could acquire a taste for beer. Based on my family history and upbringing, I could have very easily slid into alcoholism otherwise. I'll never know for sure, but to keep even the possibility at bay, I have two hard rules: no drinking during the day and no drinking the night before work or having to be somewhere the next day.

Because it does appear to appeal to 90% of the population

- there are tens of thousand drinks on the planet,

- all with their different nuances in how they alter mood and thinking patterns.

Not appealing just can't be true except if you 'score' low in novelty seeking/curiosity ... except if you were only exposed to bad drunks and pathetic alcoholics ...

Something like that. But it might also be because marketers see people like you as a challenge, a trophy to collect, and the non-marketing types just want to 'seduce' you.

They do the same to babies and minors all the time. "Say this or that, do this or that." And BAM, some brain cells practically useless forever.

This is honestly not true unless you are including absinthe. Ethanol is the only active ingredient and it has one of the most well understood dose-response curves and one of the most heavily studied effects. The rest is all in your head.

There just isn't that much to the alcohol, it's very one note, moreso than any psychedelic, moreso than even smoking (where dose control significantly varies the effects) or even cannabis which is also relatively one note.

I am quite certain that if you talked to a variety of people who like to drink, they will tell you that tequila hits different than a single barrel rye whiskey or champagne, for example. And it's more than just the amount of sugar. There are amounts of hints of various aromas in different liquor and these small differences do quite a bit in the brain, which you did propose yourself when you said

> The rest is all in your head.

Brains are incredible. The "sensitivity and specificity" of receptors goes way beyond what we understand for now, both hardware and software-wise, and that is true on the level of synapses as well as within any metabolism anywhere in their chains in the body and in how they work together to achieve their own objectives, as well as the ones they share.

Take any approach within the range of broken - buggy - normal - amplified and apply it to any sphere of single and networked mechanism. Wear and tear and age change all this even further and never forget that we are still evolving, over very long time spans in very small changes.

It's an insane ride from bio-chemistry to character in different states of mind and body/brain and that ride morphs quite a bit based on anything we consume via active and passive channels.

And that's just part of the story as it evolves in my head.

I learned math by blindly following algorithms. Over time i gained intuition from seeing how variations in the input changed the output. The deeper understanding kind've slipped in there...I don't know how. I don't think you can build real understanding without rigorous practiced repetition.

When I applied it to concepts I was learning on my own -- monoids, monads, semi-groups, semi-lattices, partial orders, etc. what I found was that I'm often overthinking the intuition. The intuition for a specific idea is very, very precise. It is exactly as it is, and yet something so precise and clear seems difficult to get.

It helps to approach things from a lot of different angles until you "get it". It's not always about repeitition on manipulating symbols. The Soviet method for teaching math (and remember, the Soviet system was intended to raise enough mathematicians to be able to work with a planned economy) was to let their kids manipulate things with their hands in a concrete way. It was in a way more like Common Core, but you're playing with toys with your hands.

I can tell you that I picked up being able to add and subtract things at an early age, but I didn't really get into the deeper stuff until I was exploring monoids and groups.

I've met people who tell me, subtraction and negative numbers are difficult. They know how to do the operation arithmatically, even fluently, but they don't "get it". No amount of repetition was going to change that. I had a similar block when I came across the idea of instantaneous rate of change. I get the proofs, the idea of limits, and how it defines instantaneous rate of change, but it was the first thing that I came across that I couldn't get over the idea that this is an abstract idea, not concrete. I didn't know how to handle it. It wasn't until I came across Azad's way of explaining the _intuition_ on instantaneous rate of change that I focused on getting the intuition first before trying to develop rigor.

Today's big tech companies might seem invincible, but they’re not. Their edge? It's going to wear thin, especially once everyone else starts jumping in with custom solutions. Instagram with just 13 people gave Facebook a run for its money. That was before the era of LLMs. Imagine now – anyone could potentially build the next big thing in an afternoon.

And don’t get me started on the legal stuff. There are so many laws, no one person can know them all. But LLMs? They can handle it. What happens when the legal system gets flooded with cases about loopholes no one knew existed? Or when everyone can have the world's best lawyer for free? It's wild to think about.

ChatGPT came out of nowhere for most of us, and robotics is going to hit us harder and sooner than we realize. No politician or law can keep up with this tech freight train we're on. We’re talking about more progress in the next 20 years than in the last 20,000. Jobs and whether we can stay employed? That's going to be the least of our worries.

Or AI will hit a plateau and we'll all get a little bit more productive.

Initially my appetite almost completely went away, but then it came back to what felt like normal. There were days where I felt like I was eating too much or binging, but the weight kept coming off at about 2lbs per week. Also, being free from the food noise was incredibly liberating because I'm otherwise always thinking about food.

I ended up stopping because I would get incredibly sleepy at about 10pm to the point where staying up was almost impossible. I tried eating more thinking it was a blood sugar issue, but that didn't help. It just didn't work with my schedule.

I plan to get back on it, or an alternative like Mounjaro.

> “When you first back off enforcement, there are not many people walking over the line that you’ve removed. And the public think it’s working really well,” said Keith Humphreys, former senior drug policy adviser in the Obama administration and a professor of psychiatry at Stanford University. “Then word gets out that there’s an open market, limits to penalties, and you start drawing in more drug users. Then you’ve got a more stable drug culture, and, frankly, it doesn’t look as good anymore.”

> Of two dozen street people who use drugs and were asked by The Post, not one said they’d ever appeared before one of Portugal’s Dissuasion Commissions, envisioned as conduits to funnel people with addiction into rehab.

And in Oregon...

> extremely few people are seeking voluntary rehabilitation. Meanwhile, overdoses this year in Portland, the state’s largest city, have surged 46 percent.

Why fund services that go unused?...Tent cities don't exist solely in places without access to housing, and giving an addict 4 walls and privacy is a death sentence.

This is entirely driven by funding. The article explained its a multi year wait for treatment (funding issue) and so the police aren't making people appear before the commissions because all they can do is release them.

Meanwhile, the article says when it was funded 20 years ago, it effectively reduced the amount of heroin used.

sounds very plausible, where is the fallacy?

I would expect people in SF SROs to OD more for multiple reasons, but I haven’t seen any research on the specifics.

> We enrolled 423 participants (199 intervention; 224 control). Eighty-six percent of those randomized to PSH received housing compared with 36 percent in usual care.

> Seventy (37 treatment; 33 control) participants died.

That’s a very high risk population.

> We found a similar high mortality rate in both treatment and control groups. Individuals experiencing homelessness have a greater age-adjusted mortality rate than housed counterparts.25 Among those who died, 89 percent of those in the intervention group had been housed compared with 28 percent in the control group.

I really want to pattern match, but it’s just not enough data. Worse they may have undercounted deaths in the control group. “Abode provided data on death for all participants who died while living in Abode housing. We queried County death certificate data on all participants who did not appear in any source of study data for 6 or more months.”

> giving an addict 4 walls and privacy is the key that unlocks recovery

I've constructed my argument identically and provided the same amount of evidence for my position.

When you compare both positions side by side, I think you can easily see that neither is valuable. They are both opinions being presented as facts (begging the question / assumption of truth / unwarranted assumption).

Theoretically yes.

In practice, no.

I've dealt with heroin addiction in my family, believe me when I say that privacy is not the solution, the solution is giving people a purpose outside of their constant quest to find ways to shoot up.

As I said, 4 walls can be beneficial, unless it's 4 walls to hide and keep everybody else out, except their dealers.

I'm all for reducing the damage, it works, but it doesn't mean simply giving them a hone, it means giving them a home to go back to, after they did something useful outside of that home.

The 4 walls should represent going back to a normal life.

> If the place is so roach infested and you fight bed bugs others bring in and you constantly lose everything you own to the conditions of the building, then in what mind would that have better outcomes than on the street?

if addicts cared about that, there would be no problem.

So long as the majority just want them out of sight or dead, we need to focus on ensuring that they are seen as members of the community rather than a blight, right?

I don't know how it works in the US, but they are primarily people in need of care, like a person with a disease, they need to be cured before they can go back to the society and be part of it or they will return to segregate themselves and die alone sooner or later.

Putting them behind 4 walls is exactly making them invisible, so that the general population won't be upset.

Not exactly a solution in my eyes.

So long as they are viewed as degenerates unwilling to engage in basic care, there will never be the public will. And for some they wouldn't take the help even if it was available, because for a minority it is in fact a lifestyle choice.

Given both those facts, the first step to getting public will for treatment is to minimize the negative perceptions of the class, which is best achieved in the immediate term by reducing visibility, specifically of the street drug addicts.

Combine with safe supply and direct interventionist supports (room checks, emergency buttons, etc) and there would be both an immediate improvement in QoL, individual outcomes and public sentiment towards further supports.

A key is to not permit use in rooms but only at safe sites within the building. Rule violation would mean switching to a monitored room (camera to ensure no drug abuse).

One issue underlying all of this though so that such systems simply can't work for those who suffered abuse by the system in the past, there's too many of our visible homeless and drug users who are where they are almost exclusively because of abuses in foster care or imprisonment (borne of false conviction). Those people will almost never participate in a gov or NGO program which includes facilities and monitoring.... And I don't really blame them.

The truth is we need to stop the problem before it starts and the only real way is to prevent traumas, treats those we can't prevent and bring justice against those who use the system to abuse others or protect abusers.

Sadly, in many ways most drug addicts are a "lost cause" before they even start using, just as so many alcoholics are.

That's the consequences of systemic willful ignorance of trauma.

Again, that's a different problem entirely.

In my Country healthcare is public and funded by taxation.

We also have publicly funded damage reduction centers where they provide methadone to heroin addicts, problem is most of the time they do not show up voluntarily because of the stigma associated with it, secondly because those willingly participating are already in recover and take it to minimize the effects of abstinence. They are already on the path of healing.

> So long as they are viewed as degenerates unwilling to engage in basic care

They aren't all degenerates, you are putting emphasis on something no one ever said, but they are obviously unwilling or they would not need special treatments.

If they are able to take care of themselves, they don't need external help.

But only a very small minority is.

> A key is to not permit use in rooms but only at safe sites within the building

Which, again, as I've said before, is exactly why they do not need "4 walls with privacy"

Methadone is permitted only in person and they have to assume it in the facility that provides it under medical check, otherwise the first thing most of them would do is trade the methadone with something else.

> Rule violation would mean switching to a monitored room

That's the one thing that makes everything worse: basically it's an house arrest. We do not arrest as many addicts as in the US, but we still have jails full of people that used drugs that would be much better of somewhere else outside a cell (which basically is the 4 walls with privacy minus the drugs plus the suicide opportunity)

> The truth is we need to stop the problem before it starts and the only real way is to prevent traumas

We need to do both.

Holy hell active misrepresentation much? Or is your reading comprehension just that poor?

You even quoted it yet didnt actually read it?

> So long as they are viewed as degenerates unwilling to engage in basic care

VIEWED AS

That's not remotely the same as actually being such.

Your whole diatribe is the same disingenuous, misrepresentative, seemingly deceptive, bs.

I'm not engaging with someone so dishonest, regardless of their intentionality.

Be better.

Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.

> VIEWED AS

Please don't use uppercase for emphasis. If you want to emphasize a word or phrase, put *asterisks* around it and it will get italicized.

I am a non native English speaker, but you are honestly trying to have a fight on something that it's not there.

Never said you called them degenerates, but that not all of them are (implying that some of them are), and that the emphasis on the "viewed as degenerates" is superfluous because no one pointed that out in this conversation.

Moreover, they are not viewed as unwilling, they are unwilling or we would not be talking about it.

I'll explain once again: they are not simply "viewed as degenerates unwilling to" they are obviously unwilling, some of them are clearly degenerates and all of them engage in some kind of anti social behaviour, mostly against their family members, which makes them outcasts.

Or the issue we are discussing would not exist!

> Be better.

Never been better, thanks.

Yea effing exactly. That's what You did not do

> Please don't use uppercase for emphasis. If you want to emphasize a word or phrase, put asterisks around it and it will get italicized.

Italics would have been useless with YOU since you have such poor language comprehension, as evidenced by your attempt to use a rule against me that you initially and then repeatedly violated.

Now for the rest of your bs:

You're a hateful bigot hiding behind low effort shit talk.

I'm not being mean or hyperbolic, that s exactly what you are.

I see no value in continuing to engage with someone who plays games with the truth and refuses to engage in good faith.

May you live in the world as you would have it, so long as you live as the least advantaged.

is uppercase working better?

> since you have such poor language comprehension

so' sicuro che tu invece capisci il romano da paura...

> You're a hateful bigot hiding behind low effort shit talk.

Are you sure you are okay?

Have you tried to talk to a specialist about your rage?

I can help, if you come to Italy, I know many good doctors, my family mostly works in public healthcare here, many of them in psychiatric care, others in infectious diseases, my mom took care of AIDS patients for over 20 years, I grew up playing soccer with addicts in recover, I saw many of them die because they were put behind 4 walls and left alone, please take care of yourself and go to see your friends and family as much as you can.

> May you live in the world as you would have it, so long as you live as the least advantaged.

Fai del male e pensa, fai del bene e scorda.

Male non fare, paura non avere.

Pure troll behavior, as detected prior.

Shame on you.

directed against a person rather than the position they are maintaining.

Like, for example (emphasis is mine, to highlight the relevant bits)

- Italics would have been useless with YOU since you have such poor language comprehension

- Now for the rest of your bs

- You're a hateful bigot hiding behind low effort shit talk

- I'm not being mean or hyperbolic, that s exactly what you are. (I let you, the reader, guess what other biases are present in this sentence)

- May you live in the world as you would have it, so long as you live as the least advantaged. (this is technically a curse, I'll let you decide if you prefer to call it Schadenfreude or malevolence)

Sincerely hoping that you'll be better soon, I send you all my best wishes.

p.s. this is the psychiatric hospital were my aunt worked until it's been shut down.

I used to go visit there when I was a kid, to play with the patients' children, who had not many friends as one can imagine.

I know a thing or two about mental health issues.

If that makes me a hateful bigot, I am proud to be one then.

I'm sure you'll have no problem reading and understanding Italian.

https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ospedale_psichiatrico_Santa_Ma...

A curse? It's technically a blessing on any Decent person ... It's only a curse on those who want inequality and others to suffer....

Which is exactly what you are from everything youve shown, so you deserve exactly that.

You seem to have unintentionally proved my point about your nature and form of engagement.

Bravo, you done played yourself.

Not in my book.

The least advantaged are the people dying in the Mediterranean sea right now or fighting a war or having too little to eat for them and their children.

Maybe it is for those who believe in that book where a person named God kills the people he doesn't like.

But I guess one could read it as "if everyone is the least advantaged, there are no least advantaged" that for me, a socialist, coming from a family with deep roots in the Italian Communist party, is welcome, as long as we work together to improve anyone's condition, not just for some.

I guess that wouldn't fly in places like the United States.

> Which is exactly what you are from everything youve shown, so you deserve exactly that.

So by your logic I deserve it for wanting inequality and others to suffer

Which, BTW, it is only in your mind.

Are you one of those people that still believe in "an eye for an eye"?

Are you stuck to 3 thousands years ago or what?

Haven't you read your book?

It says "thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself" not "thou shalt despise thy neighbor as thyself".

Have you ever spent quality time with an addict, a former one, a person suffering from mental health issues, a person with an infectious disease or terminally hill, a kid from Rwanda with the skull crushed by a bat or part of the scalp removed by a machete that miraculously survived?

What's your contribution to alleviate human suffering in this World?

I'm eager to ear about it.

> You seem to have unintentionally proved my point about your nature and form of engagement.

Nahhh, I simply proved that you can't stop hating on me for some reason and that your condition is called obsession and it's driven by rage.

And you know how I know it?

Because you said there was no point arguing with me 2 days ago, and yet you're still here.

Are you in love, by any chance?

Unfortunately for you I'm taken.

Either you're actively choosing to present as willfully ignorant Or you are a genuine effing moron who can't comprehend simple single sentence statements.

In either case, you should refrain from engaging with any other humans on any issue of substance, ever again.

Given the rest of your pointless diatribe, I'm going with the former and that you're a worthless excuse for a human more aptly labelled a massive trolling pos.

I don't believe in fairy tales.

I am an adult person, sorry, you can try that with your kids if you want.

That option does not exist for many people who are living in hell right now.

> Either you're actively choosing to present as willfully ignorant

Still waiting to ear what you did to help other people in your life to cast a judgement on other people.

Apart from your bla bla bla bla, your self entitled attitude and your self-congratulation syndrome, you seem to be simply an enraged kid full of bullshit.

> Given the rest of your pointless diatribe, I'm going with the former and that you're a worthless excuse for a human more aptly labelled a massive trolling pos.

bla bla bla bla

If you are older than 18, you got a big problem man.

Either that or you are one of those catholic zealots that have ruined this World.

I feel pity for you, honestly.

If you were my son, I would do anything in my power to help you.

Unfortunately your parents are not like me, apparently.

^ that's you

Most use until they die of "old age" or long term damage from use.

Key terms being Old Age and Long Term.

What's wrong with having a "drug culture" exactly?

"Meanwhile, overdoses this year in Portland, the state’s largest city, have surged 46 percent."

First, Portland is not Portugal.

Second, are the overdoses happening in people who use legal drugs?

From what I understand, overdoses usually happen when people don't know the dose they're getting, which is a consequence of them using illegal drugs which have no quality control and no reliable labeling as to dosage. So not only do you not know what you're getting, but may get a dose that's much larger than you anticipated.

Having access to legal, high quality drugs which are clearly labeled should eliminate most of the risks of unintentional overdose.

This feels like it could be a direct result of no funding.

Drug overdoses are a nationwide problem in the USA. Mississippi also had a 49% increase in overdoses in 2020. Shelter is a basic human need and depriving people of it on the grounds that they might overdose doesn't seem like it follows. I know plenty of addicts who take care of their things just fine. They're addicted to coffee and alcohol and cigarettes. It's possible that the problem is not the drug itself but the social stigma attached to the drug.

Although I suspect both you and I know people addicted to other things, and we are simply unaware because we don't see any of the outward signs that we associate with "bad drug" addiction.

I assure you there is a difference between coffee/cigarettes and methamphetamine beyond just stigma.

Coffee and tobacco both improve your mental capabilities without short-term downsides. No one’s been fired for showing up with a coffee or tobacco buzz and being more productive.

Very few people would rob their friends and families for mocha money were Starbucks suddenly illicit.

Alcohol is obviously less defensible as many people do end up on the streets over it.

Back then most people I knew were using it, in the same way they would use an energy drink, and there were nearly no problems aside from the morons who wouldn't stop parting for a week at a time (but those folks would do the same with Any substance).

Really... Where I grew up the literal mayor was doing coke on the regular and also owned many businesses including the baseball team... And so were most of the successful people doing lots of drugs particularly uppers.

What happened was as they pushed enforcement against the drugs the quality decreased and the cost went up, posing a more immediate health risk and inducing crimes respectively.

I know from first hand experience with both the products and the propel that the biggest issue is the mere fact of thier illegality and extreme markups.

A key is to not have the government view the drug as a profit centre, as Canada did with pot, as that only grows the black market and strengthens them rather than destroy them.

I didn't say meth is like an energy drink, I said these people Used it Like an energy drink...

Reading comprehension, it's important.

And btw ephedra laced drinks were the norm at the time, so they were actually far more similar than now.

I think you severely underestimate the importance of coffee to the stability of many people's psychology....

I know I'd be far more prone to violent outbursts during the first half of my day if my brain wasn't jump started by coffee.... Literally, I suffer from sleep drunkenness and without coffee my first four hours I'm little more than a drunken moron who is prone to irrational outbursts of instinctive rage at sensory triggers (loudness, brightness, unexpected touch etc).

For me that definitely part of a disorder resultant from a combo of genetics and multiple brain injuries but given what I've seen of others I highly doubt it's any different for many.

A quickly accessed link kind of supports this https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/usappblog/2014/08/22/neighborhood-in...

Theres a reason tea and coffee shops were the birth places of revolutions: Coffee stimulates the mind and brings clarity and calm many can't find absent it. The absence would be felt in increased consumption of alcohol and the resulting problems.

And really, do you think banning coffee would actually eliminate it? No. It would just become another meth and people would be killed to protect the industry etc, just like with every other substance.

Disbelieve? Look at chinese "medicine" and it's absurd contraband items that are still ridiculously prevalent despite there being literally zero effects from it, no high no health boost just bullshit. And still we have poachers and traffickers murdering thousands of people a year over that shit...

But coffee, it's an exception /s

400,000 US service members died in WW2.

I think the problem has become so large we are basically in a state of denial and can't put the size of the problem in the proper context.

Drug use is correlated to the economy and the happiness of the population. Portugal needs to fix unemployment and get some economic growth going.

It’s not surprising that many addicts of other drugs don’t seek treatment.

It’s like obesity. Just stop eating so much! Just stop drinking! Just stop smoking crack! Just say no!

How well is that going?

Human psychology is nuts. Big is beautiful! Track marks are sexy!

I have no idea how you solve this sort of thing. Does anyone?

Solving drug addiction as a society in the world is possible if the western world had the political capital to do so. But like you said, human psychology is nuts. the thing to look at is Hong Kong back in '97. 1897, that is. It was a British colony in the wake of the Opium wars, for 100 years. The allure of being high on opium was a significant drag on the economy and the Chinese government wasn't putting up with that. While they lost the war, and Hong Kong's current political situation is fraught, a country fighting an enemy, the British, is able to unite in a way that war against concepts like war or poverty can't. (Communism is an exception because there were countries with that system to unite against.

We'll note that opium dens still exist, but not in the same capacity as before, and while China also has its share of drug addicts, they don't have downtown Philly or San Francisco.

So how do we fight it? Well, a war on drugs, but not one fought by men with guns and illegalization and demonization, but one fought by therapists and psychologists, with harm reduction and governmental and societal support. It's a radically different shape of society if the government genuinely cares about its people. You'd have to give everyone housing and feed everybody. and not just a subsistence living but thriving community. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness can't be had without a life worth living, and a life without hope for a better future is not worth living.

The simple fact is that after drug decriminalisation in 1999 the number of (1) new HIV infections and (2) overdose deaths fell to less than half in a couple years.

After cuts in funding, it started performing worse. Who would have think.

Sounds like they've already dying.

Would you suggest we stop all drug treatment and let the fire burn itself out so to speak?

"Access to housing" isn't enough. You might have "access" to health care but unable to afford it. You need housing as a right - even without payment - alongside enough adequate housing for everyone. And allow folks to do things in their own home. If they cannot do it at their home with other people, the person in question does not have adequate housing.

And that last bit - about a death sentence? That is only for a few addicts. A subset of addicts die.

If you have to get clean to get housing, housing is inadequate. I'd probably not go for rehab if I were homeless: I'd just have to be sober for the misery.

And that's what we give people. That's what we are offering. Various forms of misery.

But I have known addicts, they don’t exactly take care of their things. It’s very easy to imagine that much of the state supplied housing would quickly become unsafe and or destroyed.

How do you handle that?

It’s not uncommon for it to be unsafe and destroyed.

But I also wanted to ask the OP (who mentioned housing as a right) how that could be avoided.

And have different sorts of housing. Some folks - not just addicts - could really benefit from a place modeled after a motel or hotel: Cleaning services and so on, private room and private bath. Some folks could do with a kitchen or provided food. Some folks could use these things yet would be better with a seperate bedroom and living room... well, you get the picture.

At no time is everyone - addict or not - going to be able to take care of things. We should help those folks.

the 70's abolition of mental asylums by Regan. We closed the thing with no alternative and expected anything but a disaster?

Not only that, but most drug users aren't addicts.

To the general public, when they hear the words "drug user" they immediately equate that with "addict", and many can't even imagine that people could use drugs and not get addicted.

But that's not true, as addicts are a small minority of drug users.

Drug policy affects far more than just addicts. Lots of non-addicted users are affected too.

Do you have any reliable data to back up that claim? In my experience users who purport to not be addicts are indeed addicts in massive denial about their poor choices.

While some % of those are people who got help and quit in the past year, or people on the start of a downward spiral/addiction, plenty of those seem to just be infrequent users.

Unless the drug kills you so frequently/quickly that you can't sustain use for long or is rapidly gaining users for a new addiction crisis, the level of greater than monthly users should be higher if most of those infrequent users are going to become addicts.

https://www.samhsa.gov/data/sites/default/files/reports/rpt3...

You can further see that the spread of yearly vs monthly use is closer for substances typically considered more addictive and wider for those less thought to be. (not a lot of LSD addicts out there, relatively speaking).

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My experience is that a lot of people are very quiet about their drug use outside the environment where they dabble in it and never mention it at all in company where they're uncertain about how it'll be viewed, so I also suspect that you may not recognize most of those people as people who'd use drugs at all.

I'm a big live music person and being around people using drugs somewhat comes with the territory, especially festival-type environments. But most of the people I've met at those things don't do much of those substances otherwise aside from possibly weed. They've got their once or twice a year time of hitting up the party drugs for their weekend of fun + music, but that's it.

I've known a lot of folks that use hallucinogens: You aren't addicted to those, in general.

I've known a lot of folks with a liking to cocaine, but they can't afford to use more than a couple times a year. Or it just isn't something they want to feel every day. This applies to a lot of drug use.

I've met a lot of folks that only use drugs (or alcohol) when they have a sitter for their children.

You probably don't have reliable data to back up your claim either, and have the added mental block of deciding that all of the folks have poor choices. And unfortunately, you aren't using what you know about, say, alcohol and applying that to other druts. Most folks that drink alcohol aren't addicts or alcoholics. Even if they drink more than you, it doesn't mean they are alcoholics.

Different drugs have wildly different addiction rates. Most people who use drugs are using the non-addictive stuff.

However, the people we traditionally view as addicts are almost certainly addicts even if they pretend they could quit anytime.

Most places can do this. The US can do it. Everything contrary is just excuses.

Most of places on Earth has snow, heat waves, no coasts, biting insects, or a combination of that. They are also not located in the richest country, in a place which historically produces jobs.

So, under this regime specifically San Francisco will get population influx until it is not usable for absolute majority of people (think a bro dormitory the size of SF), and that process will be repeated for many other lucrative locations on Earth (heck, many cities are arguably already going that route).

I don't see how free housing differs from sacrificing every place you like to tragedy of the commons on grand scale, until there is nothing for you to like there anymore and you move on yourself.

Other than that, there are places on Earth with basically free housing. Check out Vorkuta.

Honestly, if a person isn’t up for it, we need to stop trying to convince them to stay around and be miserable. Elective suicide should be a basic right, and drugs are one way out. We only create misery by “helping” people that don’t want hep.

Criminalize public drug use.

Provide basic unregulated housing, not unlike squattable buildings. Set up AI monitored surveillance and prohibit attempts to form any kind of exploitative enterprise. Self registration with biometric access. Provide fentanyl dispensers. Come through once a day and dispose of the dead.

Create an exit ramp where those that wish to can easily climb out through rehab into a viable path forward. Just by walking out they can register for rehab and get on a bus to a facility with an on-ramp to society.

Let them live in the stark misery that they choose so they can confront it head on and decide if that’s what they want. But keep them outside of the general population during their self destruction process.

Provide stepping-stone housing, mental health services, and educational on-ramps for people that need housing and can test clean of the typical death-spiral drugs.

It should be made clear that certain kinds of drug use are part of a suicide process. Make it unattractive to flirt with, and limit it to private spaces.

Social drugs such as alcohol and thc are not so incompatible with society and don’t really need regulatory interference aside from limiting access to minors.

> Honestly, if a person isn’t up for it, we need to stop trying to convince them to stay around and be miserable. Elective suicide should be a basic right, and drugs are one way out. We only create misery by “helping” people that don’t want hep.

What an absolutely miserable outlook on life.

All life is precious and fleeting. We should respect it.

I believe life is wonderful and precious… but it is , by default, misery.

If you do nothing (the default condition) to sustain or improve your existence, you will be miserable. That is the never ending tyranny of imperative action.

That is the fundamental nature of life, and not everyone is up for it. And that’s ok.

I would suggest that the fundamental issue with your assumptions is a blurring of the lines when it comes to the objective and subjective. Specifically, nature and certain realms of human existence ARE objectively "harsh", unforgiving, uncomfortable, etc. However, that does not mean that all who exist or have existed in such realms are miserable.

If you've not seen this before, this show is just one (of a great many materials not so prevalent in modern western intensely consumer / advertising / so-called "achievement"-oriented cultures) reference with some real views of massive differences in (subjective) experience people can have across various "objective" realities:

https://www.themoviedb.org/tv/83990-the-kindness-diaries?lan...

In any case, your policy proposals earlier would, IMO, add up to poor outcomes. Not because they are inherently so bad / worse than what's been tried - more just due to the nature of the problem. Our tools / these sorts of tools are incredibly blunt compared to the complexity of the problem. And, trying to put in place some of what you propose, would definitely harm some people - in part simply in making the changes.

I am not claiming to be able to do any better, though, for sure.

But, I agree with you that my off the cuff policy proposal has many flaws and would harm some people. I think it might do less harm than good, but without a good bit of (probably unethical) a/b testing I’m really not sure.

You're making LOTS of assumptions here.

I would be genuinely greatful if you could provide me with realistic examples of where this statement is incorrect.

The only ones I can think of are ones where someone else does the sustenance and improvement of your existence, like in the case of being a child or a ward of the state, perhaps? Also obviously where you are paying others to do so, but there you have actually caused this to happen and therefore are “doing” it.

Alcohol is very unsociable - calling it social seems odd to me. Anecdotally alcohol seems pretty destructive to me. I am middle-aged so perhaps I have seen more of the deeper long-term destructive effects than you? New Zealanders generally have quite a problem with alcohol abuse.

By your definition ecstasy is a social drug or any drug at a rave is social (Note I have never seen MDMA turn anti-social).

In my experience most drugs are “social” - the heroin users I knew were a tight crowd! Weed is definitely social for those that partake.

Serve cocaine, MDMA and meth at a wedding and everybody will have a social blast too.

I’m genuinely curious how you define sociability of a drug or substance. I know alcohol is detrimental to society at large. On an individual basis, I find it quite attractive for social gatherings.

I have an alcohol free home (I have seen too many friends slowly change from one small drink a night to a problem within a few years.

I have seen too many devastating consequences of “social” drinking to think it is safe. Of course we all mostly do unsafe things regularly!

But we have learned that the social costs of prohibition of those drugs is higher than the benefit to society.

The same may be true of certain classes of hallucinogenic substances, especially since people tragically turn to solvents and extremely toxic substances as substitutes.

And it was alcohol that was worse.

Most people don't care to use it (heroin) at all let alone regularly. Opiates cause nausea and retching in most areas drug abuse levels....

Alcohol was far more popular and consistently harmful...

Just ask the wives of the time what they'd rather thier husbands use....

Point being, like anything, it's complex. Yes, alcohol is a factor in abuse. But it's not the cause.

I say this as the grandchild of an alcoholic. Alcohol is the problem. You're right that there're underlying things, but they lie there, just beneath the surface, mostly untouched and undisturbing without alcohol.

The context was the impacts of X substance vs Y substance, right?

In all cases the actual cause is the underlying problems but it's the substance that (is perceived as) causes the manifestation that otherwise wouldn't occur, right?

So what purpose did your comment actually serve into he thread other than to derail an extant line of discourse?

What I saw, you ended on a very vague set of statements that I assume were supposed to support that you were saying.

"Alcohol was far more popular and consistently harmful..."

Implication of alcohol being more harmful without evidence to support the claim.

History tells us lots of stories. For example, just because the temperance movement existed doesn't mean anything other than a bunch of people got it in their head that alcohol was the devil's drink and caused all of society's ills.

You also ended with an appeal to emotion, "Just ask the wives..." Instead of again supporting your claim that alcohol is more damaging with evidence.

To be clear, I'm not saying alcohol is or isn't more damaging. I'm saying that there isn't any evidence in these comments (yours and others) to support a claim of "X being worse than Y".

That's a line straight out of the temperance era.

I don't know why I needed to be more explicit....

> war on drugs has been so expensive

> we need to try something radically different

You want something different and then advocate for the same?

Basically, that is, do everything you say while NOT punishing the public drug use and you just eating the social cost of that as part of life's natural consequences (or else, if you do criminalize it, make a criminal conviction for it both not affect the availability of rehab at all and make the conviction vanish entirely upon successful completion of the rehab and then eat and endure permanently the social consequences of THAT on the "life is misery by default" logic).

I didn't get the impression that the parent was against help. He explicitly mentioned providing rehab programs to those who wanted them.

They already move out of housing to seek out abandoned buildings because their choices are incompatible with society at large.

My idea is an attempt to align incentives for a better outcome.

And by default, I mean if you take no action. If you don’t believe me, try it some time. Do literally nothing to improve or maintain your living situation and see if that does not lead to misery.

People up inhere acting like I’m locking up addicts in death camps lol, but if you read my comment you can clearly see that what I am advocating is to let people do what they want without screwing up society at large.

Still a better love story than twilight.

Also what really makes people struggle with suicide can be quite different then just drug use.

Suicide thinking is an inflammation of the body that happens to all creatures when put under extreme stress. Their body is starting to control their mind. They aren't imagining pain, their body is literally in pain. Figuring what is causing the stress and how to reduce it is key.

Instead of saying oh they don't want to live, look at what is going on with their body. Overworked people get really suicidal would you want to get an exit ramp for them?

A lot of suicidal people also have been through a lot of unprocessed trauma that plain old consulting won't fix (as someone who went to 10 psychologist I personally find most of it useless as well, few people understand CPTSD and in fact I have had some psychologist blaming me for my problems and really badly mislabeling me. I was smart enough not to believe them but a lot of people might not. Most people don't understand what's like to live in bad circumstances for years they just think it's a personality disorder. This psychologist also never even asked if I grew up with a family history of violence because I seemed too normal in some ways. They were really bad at their job but at the time I thought if I could bully myself into changing myself with this psychologist help, maybe I could improve... It's only after some family died I realized what I was actually going through and found a term for it.)

Also by this logic of addicted users don't want to change it's like saying poor people choose to be poor, it's really hard to get out of systems and thought patterns to improve your circumstances. People spiral for a reason and it can be tough to overcome. Also really smart people can still be poor, being born in the wrong country or at the wrong time, or in the wrong circumstances etc etc can make a lot of difference. Having empathy for people and helping them understand themselves can make a lot of difference. I've helped a lot of suicidal people improve their circumstances (though it's hard), and it can be popular to be suicidal as a cultural thing too especially the more disconnected and trapped people feel. With suicide rates increasing you have to understand we have some systemic issues going on, it's not their fault they feel bad most of the time, it's just a bad system they are in, change the system change the people. Especially the youth. Also almost drug use abuse is because people feel disconnected from others. Which is largely a systemic issue now with loneliness shock rocketing.

I’ve seen it first hand. Really nice guys, had no issues or violent tendencies, then got a hold of alcohol or drugs and it completely changed them. In the worst cases it went to the ultimate extreme and they wound up killing others.

Once you realize this, your perspective on the laissez-faire attitude changes. The reality is that some people are fundamentally incompatible with drugs and alcohol and society needs to put up boundaries to prevent collateral damage, even if we were OK with them killing themselves. I think some drugs are worse than others (For example I’ve never seen someone get violent after smoking Cannabis) but messing with your brain chemistry is not a trivial thing like the pro-legalize-everything camp wants to proclaim.