Posted on 03/08/2014 2:46:05 PM PST by mgist
Stephanie Predel is off heroin. But the Bennington, Vt., area, where she lives, is in the throes of an epidemic. BENNINGTON, Vt. — Stephanie Predel, a stick-thin 23-year-old freshly out of jail, said she was off heroin. But she knows precisely where she could get more drugs if she ever wanted them — at the support meetings for addicts. “I can get most of my drugs right at the meeting,” she said. “Drug dealers go because they know they’re going to get business.” She added, “People are going into the bathroom to get high.” Bennington, a pre-Revolutionary town of 17,000 people, presents another face of the heroin epidemic that has swept through Vermont. In January, Gov. Peter Shumlin devoted his entire State of the State address to what he said was a “full-blown heroin crisis” gripping the state. In an interview later, he said that the state’s localities had managed only a patchwork response. Citing Rutland’s antidrug crusade as a hopeful sign, he said that not all areas had felt the same urgency. “Bennington is where Rutland was four years ago,” he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Part of a larger plan, they let the dogs loose on the American people and it’s youth
“Follow it back further and see how many first got hooked on prescrition opiates.”
I’d be willing to wager that most of them got started on drugs by smoking marijuana.
Sorry, dumb question. Are you saying that abrupt withdrawal from the combination of those (addicted to both) can cause those symptoms and death, or either one alone can do that?
I still remember the wonderful feelings that prescription oxazepam (benzodiazepine) gave me over 30 years ago and have no doubt a person could get addicted in a hurry. Think I had ten tablets total.
Valium is a benzodiazepine like the Serax I took.
“She looks almost feral.”
She has those dead junkie eyes.
In my time most kids tried alcohol before marijuana; maybe you should ban that.
In about 2005 or 06, I started getting six awful panic attacks a day for no good reason at all. Couldn't walk them off or anything, just had to wait until they were over in about 1/2 hour.
Well, before they started giving me xanax, when the worst ones hit around supper time, I would get in my car and start heading for the ER, not intending to actually go in the ER. It worked. They subsided a few blocks from the hospital.
But the xanax was a problem because you are in an out; it doesn't hold. So they put me on clonazepam. It works a lot better for me but none of that stuff makes me really feel any better otherwise.
Our granddaughter’s aunt couldn’t come to her birthday party yesterday because she is in that condition or worse and didn’t want to be seen. She is reliably attending substance abuse counseling, though, and we hope and pray for the best. The aunt’s childhood was rough — worse than I’d say here — so something like this was no surprise. Actually quite sweet and personable when she does see the kids.
"I would get in my car and start heading for the ER, not intending to actually go in the ER. It worked."
That's strikes me as funny because I have done similar things, not for the exact same reason or destination but it's a little reverse psychology played on yourself and can work.
As I recall banning alcohol was already tried once and it didn’t work out too well.
Humans have a built-in drive to alter their senses. The only society in human history that did not have the ability to do that with local substances were inhabitants of the Arctic where nothing grows that can be smoked, fermented, or purified to get high from. Since “modern” intoxicants found their way into that culture the results have been terrible.
I am not advocating bans on intoxicants but I believe that some are a whole lot worse than others. Did you know that cocaine was supposed to be a cure for morphine addiction? That didn’t work out too well either.
Now we are stuck with this War on (some) Drugs and the amount of corruption that is causing is every bit as bad as in the days of Prohibition.
I don’t know if there will ever be a solution to some people getting out of control on intoxicants. Nothing so far has worked or we wouldn’t be having this discussion.
Sometimes I wish I'd never walked into a psychiatrist's office. All those drugs over the years I figured some day I'd pay a price. Very few people get well and are completely free of symptoms or meds but a few do.
My daughter started getting them really bad but she did drugs for years. She quit the things because she knew she was going to kill herself but still gets panic attacks. Xanax seems to work the best for her. But she has gone to the ER; one time they were going to shock her because her heart wouldn't slow down. So she asks her husband for one of her xanax (thank heaven he had some) and that was the end of it. They've also given her nitro.
That's why I don't like going to the ER. If it's something else, it doesn't matter but a panic attack, they will just make it worse. Or it will be over by the time I see somebody. I only went once to the ER for that a long time ago. They gave me some shot. Then they won't let me drive home. So they call my husband and tell him to come get me. He wouldn't. So I had to take a cab home.
I forgot about that. I can't say I got better since we got divorced a long time ago now but at least I wasn't captive to his alcoholism and crazy hours and behavior so I got my biorythms on a better track if I don't abuse it by staying up too late which I used to do.
I wonder what a placebo would do. I'm fed up with all this. There's a lot of things I won't do and it keeps getting worse. I can do elevators and bridges though. But if I get stuck in traffic on a bridge, that would be bad.
I wish I could help people get over this stuff.
Yes, the clonazepam helps immensely and I shouldn't have made this so much about me. It's almost epidemic really, variations of this. Well, heroin is bad and I have grandkids to worry about.
Either one alone. You can in fact substitute one for the other , and in fact alcohol detox usually uses a benzo to wean you off, slowly decreasing the dose.
Don’t forget cigarettes and coffee....
Not surprising, considering it is the 2nd least religious state and about the 2nd most liberal in voting. See http://peacebyjesus.witnesstoday.org/Statistical_Correlations.html
Try taking Vitamin B complex. It can help a lot with anxiety and it’s water soluble. I suffer occasionally from BAD anxiety attacks.
Thank you for the reminder. Calcium, supposed to take that. Horse pills that could choke one to death. Seriously. I was cutting them in half to get them down. Then I quit taking them because I eat so many dairy products but probably not enough (that's vit D and Calcium).
Yes, I take one or two daily and they’re not big, which can be a problem. There is also a liquid form of B complex that is put under the tongue (sublingual).
How China got rid of opium
http://www.sacu.org/opium.html
Opium Wars (1839-42)
http://www.sacu.org/opium2.html
My husband went to,ER thinking he had a heart attack. He had a panic attack. They put some sort of xanax in his IV, and he came home and couldn’t get outnof bed from depression. That never happened before.
Figured out that between the drip and the Rx, he was messed up. Anxiety meds cause horrible depression. Stay away from all that crap. NOthing cures, just makes you dependent. What a great business.
For anxiety excercise is a must. Stay away from processed foods. Take vitamins B complex, D, and stay hydrated. That will do the job.
If not, there is no scourge or epidemic. Burlington is a left-wing hotbed and has been for years. Before he defaced the US Senate, Bernie Sanders was elected mayor of Burlington.
Based only on this knowledge, if there is widespread use of heroin in Burlington, it is the result of decades of living under a dead end philosophy. Communist Russia had and has horrific alcoholism problems.
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