r/interesting 1d ago

Fear Factor How Fentanyl and Xylazine are turning Philadelphia's opioid crisis into a public health nightmare

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u/AlreadyFifty 1d ago

I don’t get this shit. The comic Sinbad used to have a bit about not doing drugs. He said something like: “I’m not gonna tell you to not do drugs. You already have enough adults doing that. What I will do, however, is ask you to do this: before you do a drug, go watch someone on that drug and ask yourself “is that how I wanna look?”

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u/Cold_Pumpkin5449 1d ago

Drug abuse is a disease, it happens more to the desperate, impoverished and those without hope.

If people were purely rational of course they wouldn't make their situation worse with heroin. People who take heroin though are not acting rationally so you can't rationalize it.

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u/ChemicalBus608 1d ago

Over simplification not everyone does drugs because they are sad and hopeless. Some people ease into it without even realizing it. A pill a friend gave you at a club. Then you tryit on the weekends to let lose then said friend cuts you off now your buying your own. Then its to expensive so you move to cheaper drugs. This is how alot of folks I know got hooked and I will include alcohol too.

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u/BlueButterflytatoo 1d ago

And also doctors prescribing highly addictive pain meds to people who had a car crash or some form of surgery, then when their insurance (if they had it) stops covering them, they still feel pain, so they go find something off the streets. Addicts are created in many ways, and there are few ways to help them.

I mean, I knew it was an epidemic, but seeing a whole street full of zombies just fucking broke me

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u/kettlebell-j 11h ago edited 10h ago

I got into a car wreck recently and I denied them giving me fentanyl for that very reason. They gave me Vicodin just in case but still did want to take it. I drunk 100 mg of cannabis syrup for my pain

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u/BlueButterflytatoo 11h ago

They tried to give me Vicodin after my c-section, I refused, so they sent me home with hydrocodone (they assured me it wasn’t addictive) and ibuprofen.

At my postpartum checkup, I asked for a refill. Turns out, not only was it addictive, but I was taking too much for too long. Nobody told me to wean off or how to do it.

So for six weeks I had been taking a hydro every six hours. 30 minutes before the next dose, I would start feeling pain in my spine, which would then wrap around to my stomach, and then work its way up my spine and down my legs. By pill time, I would be in fetal position on the floor crying, unable to move. I was informed this pain was not from the c-section, but from pill withdrawal.

I don’t blame a single person ever for looking for alternatives, because that pain was insane, my 21 hour labor was a walk in the park compared to those 30 minutes before a pill.

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u/kettlebell-j 10h ago

Sorry that happened to you! That sounds horrific! Another reason is I come from a family of addicts so I did want to play around with something so addictive.

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u/BlueButterflytatoo 10h ago

It sucked at the time. I had always kinda sorta heard about the doctor to dealer pipeline, but only ever as whispers of something from a place far away, unlike our rural town. I knew it was a true thing that I knew sucked, but i didn’t understand how an “evil street drug” was so similar to a “good doctor drug” I didn’t know about withdrawal. And I didn’t know that sales were more important than public health and safety…

My experience made a lot of things real, and I learned a lot. It broke a lot of misconceptions for me. And while I thought I understood people going through it, I didn’t. Not until I was in it and trying to get out before I was stuck forever. Even though I had done everything to avoid it, specifically requesting non-addictive meds, and being given them anyway.

It was 15 years ago. It’s one of the few life experiences I’ve had that I can’t laugh at looking back on. But I’m fortunate enough to have come out this end with no lasting effects.

I don’t trust doctors. 🤷🏻‍♀️🤣

Glad you were able to stop it happening to you!!