[acb-hsp] Thinking in Moderation

[Linda Porelle]

Yes, except for the working too hard part. Perhaps some would regret
never having had the chance to earn their own living?
Other than that, I agree with you about having similar regrets.
<L>


On 2/19/13, Peter Altschul <paltschul at centurytel.net> wrote:
> Hi:
>
> Thanks for the kind words.  Most of the articles come from Alternet.org and
> Townhall.com.
>
> I would imagine that the end-of-life regrets of blind people would mirror
> those of everyone else.
>
> Best, Peter
>
>
>
> I'm impressed by your prolific output. What are your main sources for
> these articles?
> This one is an excellent exposition of the drug problem. The articleind
>
> on end of life regrets is thought-provoking as well. I wonder what
> blind folks regret at the end of our lives.
> Best,
> Linda
>
>
> On 2/18/13, peter altschul <paltschul at centurytel.net> wrote:
>> Will We Ever Learn to Think in Moderation?
>>   Maia Szalavitz February 17, 2013
>>   The media seems to have three modes of action when it comes to
>> psychoactive drugs: intense promotion of advances and benefits;
>> general disregard; and full-on panic about negative effects,
>> including potential for misuse and addiction.  During both the
>> benefits and the risks periods, many myths and misinformation are
>> disseminated.  But between these bouts of euphoria and panic,
>> there is little coverage at all, especially of addiction.  This
>> up/downstoff pattern does a disservice not only to people
>> suffering from addiction, but to those with other diseases as
>> well.
>>   Right now, we seem to be moving from a period characterized
>> mainly by disinterest into one of attention and fear.  Though
>> we've never returned to the peak freak-out of the late '80's and
>> early '90's-in 1989, a Gallup poll found that Americans viewed
>> drugs as the number one problem threatening the nation, eclipsing
>> even the economy during a recession-we have seen brief but
>> blinding spotlights on Oxycontin, methamphetamine and now
>> prescription drugs more generally.
>>   A recent front-page New York Times story on Adderall addiction
>> is suggestive of the new turn.  After years of focusing on these
>> drugs primarily to ask whether they enhance cognition, or allow
>> people to cheat in school by faking ADHD, the article puts them
>> front and center; it tells story of a college student who faked
>> the disorder and the physicians who enabled him to continue
>> getting the drug, despite desperate warnings from his parents
>> about his addiction.  Over the course of several years, he became
>> psychotic and ultimately committed suicide.
>>   That Adderall, an amphetamine drug, can be addictive and can
>> sometimes cause mental illness and suicidality is no surprise.
>> If the Times searched its own archives, it would see several
>> earlier periods of promotion of speed as a cognitive enhancer and
>> study aid, followed by hysteria over psychosis and addictions.
>> (Indeed, way back in 1937, the paper of record called it bhigh
>> octane brain fuelb.  And anyone old enough to remember the '60's
>> probably recalls the admonition "Speed Kills."
>>   Why can't we recognize that a drug can simultaneously benefit
>> some people and harm others? Why do we swing from seeing
>> particular drugs as panaceas to viewing them as the devil's own
>> poison?
>>   Part of it stems from bgenerational forgetting-"a
>> well-documented condition that prevails when the addicts of one
>> era have aged out or died and those who saw the damage done are
>> also past their youth.  When America was still in a frenzy that
>> the '80's crack epidemic would continue escalating until every
>> last youth was a glassy-eyed zombie, the younger siblings of
>> crack addicts were already observing the devastations of the drug
>> and choosing a different, less demonized highboften marijuana,
>> sometimes opioids.  Crack use fell rapidly.
>>   That was far from the first time that an epidemic had burned
>> itself out.  Epidemics are inherently self-limiting because once
>> the use of a particular drug is widespread, its dangers become
>> obvious to everyone-and because when a culture becomes familiar
>> with a drug, it develops ways to minimize harm.  For example, our
>> long-term relationship with alcohol has produced bans on drunk
>> driving; price, sales, and advertising restrictions; and advice
>> on moderation, like alternating alcoholic drinks with water or
>> soft drink-not to mention AA.
>>   Unfortunately, this can also create the impression that panic
>> is productive as a way of changing behavior, when it actually
>> contains the seeds of the next epidemic.  Since the new
>> generation is not using the previous one's "demon drug," it
>> thinks its own drug use is not going to become a problem.
>> Indeed, the newly popular drug appears to be safe, beneficial,
>> fun-at least, that's generally how the media tends to portray
>> legal drugs when first on the market.  Of course, during the
>> early stages of addiction, it does seem like everything's under
>> control.
>>   And so, the early '70's fears that heroin was the worst drug
>> imaginable made cocaine, by comparison, seem benign to those who
>> used it in the '80's.  But while the coke generation tended to
>> avoid heroin, it had also missed the nation's '60's bout with
>> stimulants, which had informed the succeeding heroin-preferring
>> group.
>>   Every 10 years, the nation shifts from a "stimulant" decade to
>> a "depressant" one: the speed-loving '60's, the '70's heroin
>> wave, the coke-snorting '80's, the Kurt Cobain junky '90's, the
>> methamphetamine '00's.
>>   Although a crude metric, this pattern suggests that every 10
>> years, the nation shifts from a stimulant-dominated decade to a
>> depressant drug-of-choice one: the speed-loving '60's, the b70's
>> heroin wave, the coke-snorting '80's, the Kurt Cobain junky
>> '90's, with some prescription opioids on the side.  By the '00's,
>> it was on to methamphetamine.
>>   Because our attention span seems limited to one demon drug at a
>> time, we create easy rationalizations for new generations of
>> addicts who are not, after all, using the evil substance
>> highlighted by the media during their childhood.  We start by
>> focusing on the fashionable drug's benefits-an emphasis often
>> encouraged by the drug company's marketing-and then turn on it,
>> seeing only the risks.  (When first marketed in 1895, heroin was
>> advertised by Bayer as less addictive than morphine.) As a
>> result, we are unable to break out of these cycles.
>>   Through all of this, we miss the realities of addiction, which
>> depend less on particular drugs than on people's need for relief,
>> and the particular relief available when they are young and most
>> prone to start using.  Addicts do follow trends, but they also
>> find the drugs that most suit them: Use of multiple substances is
>> more the rule than the exception.
>>   In the end, we damage both the addicts, when we are promoting
>> the drugs and ignoring the risks, and the people who benefit-ADHD
>> patients using stimulants, say, and pain patients using
>> opioids-when we focus on the harms.  We continually speak past
>> each other: the people who see addiction as the worst fate while
>> ignoring the suffering of those who benefit from medications vs.
>> those who value the benefits dismissing the risks of addiction.
>>   None of this is helped, either, by the demonization of
>> addiction and addicts.  Panic promotes harsh treatment of drug
>> addiction; in fact, it is often sowed and spread by people with a
>> political agenda that is implicitly or explicitly racist and
>> involves fears of "contamination" of mainstream (read: white)
>> America by minorities or "aliens" who use drugs.
>>   The nation's history of drug criminalization illustrates this
>> point: Cocaine was made illegal due to fears related to black men
>> using it; opium was banned because of its association with
>> Chinese railroad workers; reefer madness was spurred by its
>> connection to Mexicans and blacks.  We continue to lock up black
>> and brown people for their involvement with drugs, while whites
>> are more likely to get "treatment, not punishment."
>>   Moreover, the vast majority of scare stories also involve the
>> spread of the drug into the middle class.  So, for example, in
>> the Times piece we get a doctor saying, "Drug addicts don't look
>> like they used to," as an explanation for why a nice white
>> college kid can successfully lie about ADHD to feed his
>> addiction.  Addicts are never "people who look like us."
>>   If we're ever to break out of these cycles and deal effectively
>> with addiction as a health issue, we have to learn to live with
>> complexity and contradiction.  The same drug that is a lifesaver
>> for me can kill you-and addiction is a perennial problem, not
>> just one that surfaces with the popularity of specific drugs.  To
>> appropriately treat addiction, we need to recognize the racism
>> that has marred our drug policy-and also see that while addiction
>> does hit the poor the hardest, the middle class isnbt exactly
>> immune.
>>   It may make a sexier story to pretend that a drug trend is
>> unprecedented and to disregard the phases of love and hate we go
>> through with psychoactive drugs.  But it does a disservice both
>> to those who struggle with addiction and to those who need
>> potentially addictive drugs as medical treatment when we focus
>> only on risk or only on benefit and ignore the Janus-faced,
>> double-edged sword of the substances we love to hate or hate to
>> love.
>> _______________________________________________
>> acb-hsp mailing list
>> acb-hsp at acb.org
>> http://www.acb.org/mailman/listinfo/acb-hsp
>>
> _______________________________________________
> acb-hsp mailing list
> acb-hsp at acb.org
> http://www.acb.org/mailman/listinfo/acb-hsp
>
> _______________________________________________
> acb-hsp mailing list
> acb-hsp at acb.org
> http://www.acb.org/mailman/listinfo/acb-hsp
>