#used heroin needle

[swag-induced-psychosis]

this is shit i've seen lying around on the street and wanna use as weapons but tiered

[o-xytocin]

Jesse's first shot heroin - Breaking Bad

[localenemy]

I was staying in a hotel & there were 0 forks at the gas station so I had to IMPROVISE.

IMPROVISE. ADAPT. OVERCOME.

[ofbakerst]

when i was in my twenties, pretty much everyone i knew was strung out, including my partner, so i saw this sort of thing multiple times a day. it was like people were constantly playing russian roulette in my living room; you never knew when someone was going to nod out and never wake up. (and the health problems- collapsed veins, abcesses, staph, mrsa, pancreatitis, hep c, hiv, etc etc, not to mention the threat of jail time.) & this went on for years, it was very traumatic.

so anyway i have complicated feelings about the drug use of my emotional-support fictional character. & devil's foot is my favorite episode bc it is so upsetting.

[danielleelizabethhh]

3.28.24

8:50am

My dreams are speaking to me again

The drugs are slowly taking over and the needle welcomes me back with open arms

I forgot what it feels like being kissed by the devil.

[batsarebetterthanpeople]

This doesn't apply to me but one of the ways I think that we do immense harm to Addicts when we talk about addiction is that a lot of the times we frame addiction as 100% bad all of the time. What I mean by that is that its always about going to rehab, breaking the habit, the immediate response to learning someone is addicted to something always seems to be "How do we stop you from doing the addictive thing?" But any level of critical thinking about addiction will bring you to the conclusion that stopping is really hard and not every addict is ready to stop and trying to force them to stop before they're ready will only make things worse. Putting so much emphasis on trying to eradicate addiction takes resources away from harm reduction which saves the lives of addicts who aren't ready to quit.

I just think its crazy that when learning someone is going through something like that the response that society finds acceptable is the one that asks "How do I force you to do something that could be beneficial but is ultimately incredibly difficult and potentially deadly if you do it incorrectly?" instead of the one that asks "How do I make your life safer and support you in this difficult time?"

Edit: When I say "this doesn't apply to me" I'm just clarifying that I'm not an addict and I can't speak to the experiences of addicts not that I'm somehow exempt from doing harm here.

[chiefzombiestarfish]

When you stab yourself with n33dl3$ in the bed, or on the floor

Because you're a trash junkie hoe

Ow.

Sometimes they go right through my finger and no I know that is my fault so f*** off I'm still going to b**** about it

[mabelsguidetolife]

I forgot there was a period of time where my sister was super unstable and doing The Bad Drugs because she shook it off surprisingly quickly for somebody who was kinda lost in the sauce….. and the crack….. and other stuff……

but then my parents brought that time period up, thanking their lucky stars that she straightened up and flew right without so much as an intervention, and my dad said “thank you for being stable” to me

[xproblematiquexx]

Yesterday I was fucking ready to go. When I put that needle in to my vein, just a couple of seconds..then it hit: 💥

I remember my heart beating so fast I was scared it would jumped out of my chest! And all that tingling from my feet to my ears!! Breathing was accelerating and then everything got slower and slower, somewhere in my head I realised that I dropped the syringe. Then I was like: wow I’m dying. But I didn’t care much.

I got back to my senses some time after, and I was so confused it took me a while to figure out what the fuck happened!

PS: never use alone

[inmirova]

btw this disability pride month make sure to include addicts in your activism. yeah I get that it's infuriating being dismissed as drug seeking when you yourself are not an addict and you need said medication and going through the fucking ringer on controlled substances every month is exhausting but imagine how it must be for the people these rules were made against. addiction alters how your brain functions, it's as much of a disability in its own right as any other mental disorder with physical symptoms is, and it makes people treat you as subhuman. addicts are seen as undeserving of help because they "got themselves into it" which is unbelievable bullshit. we talk all the time about how overexertion is bad for our disabilities, how using tools and mobility aids earlier is more helpful in the long run, but i don't really see people extend the same "let people and tools help you" grace to addicts.

[a-god-in-ruins-rises]

free public transportation is a goal. but more important than free is /good/. in order to justify public transportation we need people to use it.

but right now a lot of public transport is plagued by the homeless, drug addicts, and thugs.

public transport should require a small fee and be /heavily/ policed. the fare should be subsidized by the state. we want the fare to be small enough to entice passengers but we want it to be non-zero so as to keep out the homeless. fare dodging should be punished harshly and swiftly. if fare is just a couple bucks and the fine for dodging is $50 people are going to be incentivized to just pay the fare.

also would love to see more citizen volunteer organizations like the “guardian angels” to help with the policing.

[decadebattle]

Reblog for a bigger sample size.

Say in the tags what you voted for and if you live in or outside of the US

[dovedrangeas]

being an old timey doctor must have been wild bc u could just prescribe anyone anything pretty much and they would listen to u. u could prescribe someone chloroform and cigarettes for asthma. u could prescribe leeches. u didn’t even have to prescribe people radium bc they took it themselves

[doberbutts]

Curious about something you mentioned in your post last week, you said that in your opinion all drugs should be legal and I’m curious about how that would be a positive at all? Like I get weed bc it’s pretty harmless but when I think of drugs I think of cocaine and heroin, which have destroyed so many lives. If it was widely available wouldn’t that end up hurting more people than helping? That’s just my opinion but I’m curious on the other side

I do think all drugs should be legal. This is said knowing that addiction runs in my family and that the only reason my older sister is my *sister* is due to drug use and addiction. Otherwise she'd be my cousin.

Making drugs illegal does not stop people from getting high. It does not stop drug related crime. And it certainly does not stop drugs from tearing families apart.

Addiction is a symptom of a larger problem. Solve the problem and the addict problem goes away. Solve the addict problem and drugs stop ruining lives and destroying families and creating massive amounts of drug related violence. Places that have roled out decriminalization strategies effectively have seen an overall reduction in crime rates across the board, a reduction in recreational drug use, and a reduction in bloodborne illness like HIV. Creating safe needle exchanges as well as safe places to get high with medical staff onhand has also created a locale where very few people die from overdose.

Most people hear "decriminalize all drugs" and think I mean a free-for-all. I don't. I think the drug market should be regulated. I don't think you should be able to get ketamine or heroin over the counter at a walmart like you can get asprin. But I think it's time to stop putting people in jail for getting high.

My aunt tore her life and her family and her health apart for years while she was addicted to heroin. My sister, her daughter, needed to be removed from her care due to the amazingly bad choices she made as a mother due to her addiction and her prioritizing drugs over the health and safety of her daughter. My aunt has had multiple heart attacks from the damage the constant drug use did to her body.

My aunt is more than a decade sober and do you know why? It's not because she got a wakeup call when her daughter was taken away, because at the time she willingly and freely signed her over to my parents because that got her "out of [her] hair". It's not because she had a heart attack, because she went right back to it the moment she was out of the hospital. It's not even because she spent time in rehab and prison, because the moment she was out she was using again.

No, my aunt got sober because her life changed. She was put on a better pain management plan. She got out of her shitty marriage to her shitty husband. She completed some education to make her more hireable so she didn't have to rely on less than safe means of paying her bills. She reconnected with my sister and reforged their relationship once she was 18. She bought her own house. She found love with someone who didn't give a shit about her past and brought out the best in her.

My aunt was a deeply unhappy person. Heroin made life more tolerable for her. Until she couldn't tolerate life without it. Until she'd do anything, anything, to get her next high.

A lot of addicts are addicts because they are self-medicating for something else and their drug of choice has chemical properties that makes their brains crave it more. If you fix the "deeply unhappy" part, you create a healthier environment for that addict to take control over their life again. Without it, they are far more likely to continue to relapse.

Knowing this, why would I then want to add the threat of prison and jailtime- life-ruining things themselves- to an addict's list of concerns?

Look up rat park sometime. In the rat paradise, drugged water was freely offered, and occasional a rat here or there would take a hit or two, but rarely enough to even get high and almost never habitually. Addiction literally didn't exist even though the rats were taking addictive substances. But the rats in cages, seperated from each other, with no enrichment, crammed into small spaces and stressed to hell? Those rats took hit after hit after hit until they overdosed and died. The addict rats were deeply unhappy. The drugs were their only escape. The paradise rats had to be lured in with sweetened drugs to even consider and even then they rejected them. The caged rats did not need sweetner, even though the drugs made the water bitter.

If we can see such a stark difference in rats having their needs met vs rats experiencing isolation and stress, what would happen if we showed human addicts the same consideration?

I think a lot better results than continuing to jail deeply unhappy and desperate people for doing the only thing they can think of to cope.