Meth heads

[TW]

From my Finland Swedish horizon it looks like this:

We Swedes in Österbotten have noticeable less drug and alcohol abuse than the Finnish mayority population. We have a very significantly lower suicide rate and rate of mental illness. The average lifespan is several years longer among us and the average nomber of healthy years is at least 10 years longer. Financially we are statistically as well off as the Finns though on average we have a higher percentage of our money tied up in land and buildings and less in other assets.
What puts us apart from the Finns is that we tend to live in villages where everybody know each other. If you move to another village there will always be a few friends of friends living there. Rich and poor live side by side in our villages and get along with each others in our daily life. The successful businessman may have a best friend next door who is an odd jobs man struggling to make ends meet.
Looking at the highly mobile and highly segregated and highly anonomous sink or swim American society I think that is a clue to the push factor. Pushing lots of people into drug use because they live their rootless uncertain lives in constant fear of not being up to standards and dropping out of their carreer and their class and their neighbourhood and their friends. With drugs and the drug gandgs as one of very few alternatives.

The pull factor I know nothing about but justallan11 makes points that correspond surprisingly well with the story of an aquintance of mine who was a full time drug addict and jailbird in a big city before he made up his mind and sobered up and moved back to his father's home village and got a job and saved money to set up a small business of his own.
Hats of to you two!

[SawyerTed]

justallan1, it takes courage to get out of the cycle you were in AND courage to share that story publicly.  Thank you for sharing and helping put some perspective on it.  Some people can and do change if the addiction doesn't catch up with them first.

As an educator, I was "voluntold" I would be part of a school-based team to work with students with substance problems.  Later I became more enthusiastically involved.  We saw we helped about 10% of the students we engaged with.  Another 10% or so later have told us that we planted the seed of change that later made a difference in their lives.  The other 80% have had varying degrees of success - some are addicts, dealers, habitual felons and sadly some are dead.  One common thread I saw was that those students lacked self discipline in other areas of their lives too.

Allan mentioned something to the effect that addicts won't/can't change unless they WANT to change.  I fully agree.  The change has to come from within.  Learning to manage one's own addictive personality takes time and an inner strength.  It is tragic that some never have the time to find that strength, the substance abuse either puts them in to a vicious cycle that's never broken or they are on a one way street to death.  Often that vicious cycle starts early and permanently shortens the trajectory of a young person's life.

The reason we, myself included, have difficulty understanding an addict is we have different values.  When we measure an addict against our values, we have a hard time understanding why they do what they do.  Doesn't mean their values are valid, misguided as those values are, those values define the reality of an addict.  Those values can put a hardened shell around an addict that is hard to break by someone who doesn't know what's happening.

Put the skewed values, an addictive personality, lack of internal courage and lack of self discipline with the highly addictive synthetic substances and there's a recipe for wide spread addiction.  Layer on a society that is unfortunately more tolerant of behaviors that lead to addiction and we have the mess we are in now.  

[doc henderson]

nearly all the accidental ODs we see are drugs like fentanyl and heroin bought off the street.  I get called names daily for refusing to prescribe narcotics, unless needed.  the person saying, they need them does not count, but then you get a bad review.  oh well.  we give 12 pain pills at a time, and they need to see their own doc for more.  some come to get pain pills to sell on the street.  a norco 5 goes for 5 bucks.  7.5 is $7.50.  ect.  the combination with other sedative drugs potentiates the risk.

[WV Sawmiller]

TW,

   We had several foreign exchange students including a Swede, 2 Finns, A Noggie, 2 Germans and a Serb. All were 16-17 when they came to spend a school year with us. My wife was an area placement rep and we dealt with many more hosting parties and counseling and sometimes moving to new families or home if needed. One thing they noticed and advised us was the different attitude about alcohol in their countries where they had teen bars and were allowed to go have a beer or two. They told us in America the kids drank to get drunk. It was illegal and they were pretty much in as much trouble for one beer as a 6 pack. In Europe they said getting drunk was more socially unacceptable and the kids would not put up with it so they were pretty self-policing. 

   I worked and lived a couple of years in Southern Norway and we had problems with druggies there. Some camped in the woods behind our construction project. There were many organizations that would help them and they would take advantage of them for a while then go rejoin their pals using and abusing again.
  
   I think you make a good point about the closed society and small villages where everybody knows everybody. Very little goes on that is not quickly common knowledge and there is a better or at least more personal support group.

   I have all the respect in the world for reformed addicts of any description like Allen. As he mentioned there were many opportunities and groups available to help but many individuals never took them up on their offers.

   Unfortunately, I am not a hugely tolerant or patient person and if I encounter anyone harming or threatening harm to me, my loved ones  or friends there is a good chance they will not get another chance to turn themselves around. I know there is always a chance for everyone but I don't think it is fair to everyone else to repeatedly continue to suffer abuse from them until that time comes. If I am on the jury called to judge a thief trying to support his habit at others expense I am not likely to be too forgiving of them and if the property owner is charged with defending what he worked for I am probably going to be very tolerant of his rights and actions. 

[kantuckid]

nearly all the accidental ODs we see are drugs like fentanyl and heroin bought off the street.  I get called names daily for refusing to prescribe narcotics, unless needed.  the person saying, they need them does not count, but then you get a bad review.  oh well.  we give 12 pain pills at a time, and they need to see their own doc for more.  some come to get pain pills to sell on the street.  a norco 5 goes for 5 bucks.  7.5 is $7.50.  ect.  the combination with other sedative drugs potentiates the risk.

And this very thing (trying to source drugs via medical visits) was going on in the 1970's when I first began to have contact with drug abusers via my work. I had many inmates who did the FL pill lines way back then.
 Prior to my work in corrections or treatment the only abusers I knew were sitting on a bar stool.
By the time my educator gig ended in 2002, I had a few drug using HS students, not many. Mostly it was weed or weed and Rx pills.  
I will say this, in any contacts I have with my own medical providers, in particular when we are new to each other, I make it very clear I'm not chasing pain meds but a solution, of sorts to my malady. 
With the Finnish example vs. Swedish, I wonder if the Russian occupation of territory realities among Finland's society are at play?
  I just finished a book By a Polish journalist wherein he travels extensively in the eastern far reaches of Russia and the alcohol abuse he talks of often is far beyond anything I've ever seen or read about. That said, I'm trained to work with alcohol abusers and have extensive training.
 

[kantuckid]

justallan1, it takes courage to get out of the cycle you were in AND courage to share that story publicly.  Thank you for sharing and helping put some perspective on it.  Some people can and do change if the addiction doesn't catch up with them first.

As an educator, I was "voluntold" I would be part of a school-based team to work with students with substance problems.  Later I became more enthusiastically involved.  We saw we helped about 10% of the students we engaged with.  Another 10% or so later have told us that we planted the seed of change that later made a difference in their lives.  The other 80% have had varying degrees of success - some are addicts, dealers, habitual felons and sadly some are dead.  One common thread I saw was that those students lacked self discipline in other areas of their lives too.

Allan mentioned something to the effect that addicts won't/can't change unless they WANT to change.  I fully agree.  The change has to come from within.  Learning to manage one's own addictive personality takes time and an inner strength.  It is tragic that some never have the time to find that strength, the substance abuse either puts them in to a vicious cycle that's never broken or they are on a one way street to death.  Often that vicious cycle starts early and permanently shortens the trajectory of a young person's life.

The reason we, myself included, have difficulty understanding an addict is we have different values.  When we measure an addict against our values, we have a hard time understanding why they do what they do.  Doesn't mean their values are valid, misguided as those values are, those values define the reality of an addict.  Those values can put a hardened shell around an addict that is hard to break by someone who doesn't know what's happening.

Put the skewed values, an addictive personality, lack of internal courage and lack of self discipline with the highly addictive synthetic substances and there's a recipe for wide spread addiction.  Layer on a society that is unfortunately more tolerant of behaviors that lead to addiction and we have the mess we are in now.  

Very well put! One seriously true aspect of counselor training (thrown at us often!) is that you never ever impose your own value system upon the client.
Kudos to this post!!!
When I worked in corrections, most of our inmates in a minimum security setting came from what we all call working alcoholics. Once they become "dried out",  they were by far easier to be around than some of our own co-workers to be truthful. They turn back into their nice self. 
 In minimum security, inmates tend to be first offenders and young. In todays world drugs are very likely more commonly seen in that group than my day.  
 In my own e.g. above, you can see that my ortho doc giving me 200 oxy pills has zero chance of becoming an issue as I lack an addictive personality. My doctor has to know that among his patients there are those who are different. I'm giving him that much sense based on who and where he is situated. He has that training and knows people well enough to make the call on Rx issues. 

[kantuckid]

TW,

  We had several foreign exchange students including a Swede, 2 Finns, A Noggie, 2 Germans and a Serb. All were 16-17 when they came to spend a school year with us. My wife was an area placement rep and we dealt with many more hosting parties and counseling and sometimes moving to new families or home if needed. One thing they noticed and advised us was the different attitude about alcohol in their countries where they had teen bars and were allowed to go have a beer or two. They told us in America the kids drank to get drunk. It was illegal and they were pretty much in as much trouble for one beer as a 6 pack. In Europe they said getting drunk was more socially unacceptable and the kids would not put up with it so they were pretty self-policing.

  I worked and lived a couple of years in Southern Norway and we had problems with druggies there. Some camped in the woods behind our construction project. There were many organizations that would help them and they would take advantage of them for a while then go rejoin their pals using and abusing again.
 
  I think you make a good point about the closed society and small villages where everybody knows everybody. Very little goes on that is not quickly common knowledge and there is a better or at least more personal support group.

  I have all the respect in the world for reformed addicts of any description like Allen. As he mentioned there were many opportunities and groups available to help but many individuals never took them up on their offers.

  Unfortunately, I am not a hugely tolerant or patient person and if I encounter anyone harming or threatening harm to me, my loved ones  or friends there is a good chance they will not get another chance to turn themselves around. I know there is always a chance for everyone but I don't think it is fair to everyone else to repeatedly continue to suffer abuse from them until that time comes. If I am on the jury called to judge a thief trying to support his habit at others expense I am not likely to be too forgiving of them and if the property owner is charged with defending what he worked for I am probably going to be very tolerant of his rights and actions.

We ran into that "hard to like" individual all the time when I ran a juvy treatment program. We had tolerance, but it was logical.  Our boys were mostly 14-17 group and typically the first timers. Of course many first timers had many LEO situs long before they were sent to treatment-mostly when social workers were too lazy to do their jobs. It's no accident that among KY state jobs, social work and juvenile treatment lead the way in turnover. it often involves working with kids who've become very unlikeable, irrational and any other negative adjective you can think up.
Physical restraint was a near daily event. More than a few kids will stay imprinted in my mind forever. But we weren't there to like them, of course, which is great cause some had learned long ago to not trust anyone nor be willing to open themselves up to help.
Our program was based on a system of rewards and penalties for behavior. Some who judged our approach would say we were far too strict, but in fact my program was the least restrictive or punitive in the entire state programs by design. One lady told me were too gregarious! Maybe in her eyes but should she have seen a typical lockup program it might have got her really flustered.  Many of our kids attended public school, which was not true mostly in juvy treatment here.