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The Cause of Our Opioid and Mental Health Crisis Is Obvious, but We Can't Mention It
PJ Media ^ | 12/06/2018 | Avner Zarmi

Posted on 12/06/2018 8:19:17 AM PST by SeekAndFind

It’s an old episode of The Twilight Zone: A woman sits in a hospital with her head heavily bandaged. A surgeon is warning her that this is his last attempt and that if this procedure of plastic surgery doesn’t take, there’s nothing else he can do. So far, we haven’t seen any of the faces of the other people. The surgeon begins to remove the bandages, and when he is done, he expresses shock: No change! The camera shows us a normal, indeed beautiful young woman, then pans to show us that everybody else is grotesquely misshapen. The young woman dissolves into tears as she is told that she’ll be sent to a reservation, where there are others of her kind.

Welcome to the modern world, and what it has made of Western civilization.

Well within my lifetime, the world has been turned upside down and twisted completely out of shape. When I was a teenager and a young adult, it was absolutely the norm that girls had it pounded into their heads to hold out for the marriage certificate, and boys, despite any lies told to their friends, generally respected that. The overwhelming majority did get married before they had any thought of having children, and there were no contraceptives to permit risk-free hanky-panky.

To modern ears in the sex-saturated 21st century, the above sounds at best quaint and old-fashioned. But there are those of us -- Orthodox Jews, seriously observant Christians, Muslims who reject the insane Jihadist cult, as well as adherents to customs of other traditional societies -- for which these are still standards held.

Yet if we express ourselves in public concerning those traditional values, we are met with hostility and ridicule. The deformed people around us who make up contemporary society want to shut us up. All that is missing is the compulsory reservation, where we can be with people just like ourselves.

Indeed, some of us put ourselves voluntarily in such a reservation. For the attempt, we are met with angry lawsuits -- restrictive zoning codes meant to prevent the building of synagogues which are within easy walking distance of people’s homes, or to prevent expansion of educational institutions to accommodate our burgeoning families. It is amazing how many people seem to be afraid of polite young men dressed in hats and jackets, or modestly dressed young women with children clinging to their skirts.

Once upon a time it was enough not to own a television set, because one had better things to do with one’s time. Now, it is increasingly dangerous to permit one’s children to go to a public library, because one never knows what sort of books they may come home with. We simply aren’t interested in having our kids read something like "Debbie Has Two Daddies"; unless there has been a horrible tragedy, most of our children have a mommy and a daddy, one each. In some Western countries, in which there is nothing like the First Amendment’s protection of freedom of religion, they are trying to shut down schools that teach values relying on Biblical morality -- to drive people like us out of their society, or force us to conform.

But for all this, it is increasingly evident that the misshapen, hideous people who are the new “norm” actually recognize, deep down, that there is something terribly wrong. You see, as the political leaders of our topsy-turvy society are now forced to admit, we have a drug problem.

To be sure, there were drug addicts when I was young, too -- but I didn’t know any of them. The incidence was sufficiently rare that when some jazz musician was busted for possession of a controlled substance, it made front page headlines. No longer, as the half-century old yet persistent cultural mantra of “sex, drugs, and rock and roll” makes quite clear. It’s out in the suburbs, and nobody wants to ask: Why? The government spends billions each year trying to reduce the supply of such substances, but there is no discussion about reducing the demand, and the reason is that the obvious answer is too painful to contemplate.

For those ugly, misshapen people -- who would put us in reservations, from where we cannot “offend” them -- are deliberately seeking anaesthesia to spare them the pain of their empty, meaningless, purposeless lives. It seems that sex, drugs, and rock and roll, still less the ever weirder forms and fetishes that some people try, do nothing to fill the aching void that they feel, but will not confront or contemplate. Universities have become centers of binge-drinking to the point of insensate intoxication, and there is an “opioid problem” -- which does not really mean pain killers, in the conventional sense, but substances like heroin and fentanyl -- in the suburbs where people have everything; everything in a materialistic sense, that is.

And more and more states want to legalize marijuana, another anaesthetic, which all of us know is a “gateway drug” to the harder stuff.

The general society wasn’t always this way, and it doesn’t have to be this way now, but dealing with the underlying problem before the general society collapses in on itself requires courage. It requires admitting that the currently common path that distorts people to make them ugly and misshapen is irredeemably wrong, and resolving to return to those core values of traditional, Biblical morality. Those values characterized the civil society that made possible the Constitutional order, the common birthright of every American.


TOPICS: Current Events; Moral Issues; Religion & Culture
KEYWORDS: drugs; opioid; wod
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To: Blue House Sue

Main problem now is it’s pills not junk that needs to be shot up
Fentanyl is main cause of OD


41 posted on 12/06/2018 9:29:38 AM PST by Truthoverpower (The guvmint you get is the Trump winning express !)
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To: SeekAndFind

In short, the opiod epidemic is because it’s US govt policy. CIA makes money on it for black ops, and has been eyeballs deep in every dope wave since the French connection. Then politicians get money from the bankers who launder cartel cash. Last, the government loves a doped up population, and the chaos gives them a great excuse for grabbing more coercive power. Rx opiods result from politicians getting donations from big pharma. There are anecdotal stories like Mena, or like our soldiers ordered not to harm pot and poppy fields in Afghanistan.

Ergo, the addition wave is government policy.


42 posted on 12/06/2018 9:29:45 AM PST by DesertRhino (Dog is man's best friend, and moslems hate dogs. Add that up. ....)
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To: SeekAndFind

It’s two things on pain killers

An aging population....a big part

Poorer whites have lost the dignity and slimness they once had and they don’t marry any more

Barely distinguishable today from poorly functioning minorities

Why do the govt and media hype pain pills....the money in it.

Hell pots almost legal

Gotta find something for folks to do and toys to buy


43 posted on 12/06/2018 9:34:06 AM PST by wardaddy (I don’t care that you’re not a racist......when the shooting starts it won’t matter what yo)
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To: Truthoverpower

A pill junkie is no different than a needle junkie.


44 posted on 12/06/2018 9:37:00 AM PST by Blue House Sue
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To: SeekAndFind

the author makes laughable leaps of logic.


45 posted on 12/06/2018 9:45:16 AM PST by Mariner (War Criminal #18)
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To: fireman15

Given that something like fifty million people in the US smoke pot, if that was at all typical it would be happening a hundred times every day.

If that wild and extreme example is what comes to mind, I must conclude that you are being more emotional than rational in your statements, and I have no interest in emotional distortions. If I wanted that I’d get it from the corporate media.


46 posted on 12/06/2018 9:48:30 AM PST by thoughtomator (Number of arrested coup conspirators to date: 2)
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To: fireman15

Can’t accuse you of having a dirty mind.


47 posted on 12/06/2018 9:57:27 AM PST by rawcatslyentist ("All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing")
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To: thoughtomator

The percentage of people who become addicted to pain meds is between 4 -6 percent. That number has not changed. Mostly its the way the reporting of over dose is structured when reported to the police. Fentanyl is a perception pain killer, it is almost never prescribed outside of a hospital setting or during end of life . The fentanyl coming into this country is killing heroin addicts, looking for a higher high. Sure some addicts started because of pain meds but by and large its still the underbelly of society getting killed by this stuff.

To a typical addict it goes something like this: Dealer:”Got his stuff but its really strong, it killed bobby”. Addict:”Bobby cant handle his drugs anyway, I can, give it to me...” And boom! another dead heroin addict.


48 posted on 12/06/2018 10:00:46 AM PST by phs3 (MAGA - Winning a little more every day!!!)
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To: thoughtomator

My brother-in-law is a doctor and he despises the Hospitals Joint Commission standards that pushes and forces doctors to make sure their patients are not in pain. This started around the 2001 time frame and the results are coming to fruition.

He owns some Urgent Care clinics and will not allow any of his MD’s to write a script for an opioid. He says every day people show up with back pain wanting opioids. It’s not worth the aggravation on the law enforcement side and he won’t be a part of pushing of unnecessary pain medication.

I had hemorrhoid surgery in 2016 and was given a huge prescription for opioid pain meds. I filled one bottle and took as prescribed for one and a half day and then went to Ibuprofen.


49 posted on 12/06/2018 10:06:00 AM PST by sarge83
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To: phs3

“Deplorables” is shorter than “underbelly of society” and means the exact same thing.


50 posted on 12/06/2018 10:08:07 AM PST by thoughtomator (Number of arrested coup conspirators to date: 2)
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To: wardaddy

You pointed it out obliquely with the “slimness” comment.
We have what was once a historical impossibility - fat poor!
Those poor whites (and poor blacks!) suffer from the diseases of obesity not from diseases of want like it was in the past. An issue that contributes to this is the high sugar high calorie fast foods/snacks/breakfast cereals that are peddled to this group, particularly through EBT cards. This contributes heavily to opioid abuse due to the physical conditions that many end up in as adults, e.g. back problems, joint problems, etc. in short pain problems! Now throw in the bed economic conditions for them & the acceptance at least since the 1960s of drugs as a form of recreation and you have the sociologically disastrous stew we now see. Are drug companies to blame, somewhat, doctors overprescribing again somewhat but primarily its the continued application of the “welfare state” by the government that’s the real problem.

We had a 200 year experiment with the Indians on how a “welfare state” degenerates the participants. We applied it to a small Pacific tribal society we moved out of the way for nuclear testing. We promised to take care of them for life, I think the last of them drank themselves to death in the last 10 years. That example was the ideal laboratory to show how to much “government caring” is destructive. Small, almost completely self contained group all gone now, it should have taught us a lot about “welfare”. It didn’t! Now we move from the 1950s to the 1960s applied the same caring to the inner cities (as well as bad environmental, trade, & social polices) look what we have now! Its like the Indian reservations, even though we fail to see the connections (and no it has nothing ultimately to do with racism! Its the failure of “welfarism” i.e.. socialism!). Now we apply it again to middle, rural & semi-rural America and we are seeing it all unfold again! Lets not defocus and shift the blame its the continued application of the welfare state!. Look at Europe where many of our elites got the idea. Did welfare create utopias there? England where Onslow (From the UK TV show “Keeping Up Appearances”!) is the face of UK welfare state/socialism. By following their (Europe) lead we have created Onslows from the Southwest, to the South Pacific to the inner cities to Bugtussle! If you want to see it at fast speed watch Venezuela!

If we blame big pharmaceuticals, medicine or age we take that side step that focuses the blame on the wrong target. Because the consequences we see have all happened before and were happening long before “the biggies” were there for us to blame.


51 posted on 12/06/2018 10:17:59 AM PST by Reily
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To: z3n

You’re thinking of the Opium Wars. Heroin wasn’t synthesized until much later.


52 posted on 12/06/2018 10:53:19 AM PST by Pelham (Secure Voter ID. Mexico has it, because unlike us they take voting seriously)
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To: thoughtomator

My thoughts exactly. What self-serving drivel.


53 posted on 12/06/2018 11:02:47 AM PST by sparklite2 (See more at Sparklite Times)
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To: thoughtomator

No it doesn’t. The majority of heroin addicts hail from Rat run cities.


54 posted on 12/06/2018 11:29:12 AM PST by phs3 (MAGA - Winning a little more every day!!!)
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To: SeekAndFind
It requires admitting that the currently common path that distorts people to make them ugly and misshapen is irredeemably wrong, and resolving to return to those core values of traditional, Biblical morality. Those values characterized the civil society that made possible the Constitutional order, the common birthright of every American.

Political Correctness is deadly.

55 posted on 12/06/2018 11:36:06 AM PST by 1Old Pro
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To: thoughtomator

I disagree,the center of the opioid crisis is cheap heroin brought in through porous borders.

I can see the path that it travels throughout the states and the damage it wreaks. ‘

The small towns between large cities are strewn with drug dealers going between the cities.


56 posted on 12/06/2018 11:45:03 AM PST by Chickensoup (Never count on anyone, ever.)
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To: thoughtomator

You are the one who came up with a completely meaningless metaphor. I responded with a real world experience. I could recite dozens if not hundreds of other equally stupid examples of poor judgement shown by habitual pot smokers although, typically not quite as shocking. But speaking of shocking... how about the two potheads who were trying to steal what they thought were deenergized copper wire from a utility pole??? I wasn’t on that one, but it happened in my district and they were a couple of regulars, may they rest in peace. Most non-potheads know that it is a bad idea to throw a steel cable over energized electrical distribution wires.

Regular pot use has a bad effect on many people’s judgement along with contributing to many other physical and psychological problems. Is it the only substance that causes problems? Of course not, but most people who have friends or family members who have gone to far with marijuana, know who they are and can attest to the negative consequences.

It is amusing that regular pot smokers do not seem to realize that they can be easily identified by their negative traits and problems. Most seem to think that they are able to keep their issues hidden, but there is no group in the world who are easier to identify. Pot seems to give regular users a misguided sense that they are somehow smarter and stealthier than others. This is absolutely laughable to the rest of us.


57 posted on 12/06/2018 12:29:49 PM PST by fireman15
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To: SeekAndFind

58 posted on 12/06/2018 12:34:05 PM PST by Antoninus ("In Washington, swamp drain you.")
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To: z3n

The English people got hooked on it then, also, and have been ever since. Opium (laudanum). Read “Silas Marner.” I believe Edfar Allen Poe was also very hooked, hence his ominous, frightening horror writings.


59 posted on 12/06/2018 1:51:17 PM PST by imardmd1 (Fiat Lux)
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To: rawcatslyentist
Tobacco is the real gateway drug

And alcohol.

60 posted on 12/06/2018 7:56:33 PM PST by NobleFree ("law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual")
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