Public shaming of drug addicts - Do you think its a deterant to drug use?

[Crucible]

This thread crosses the line.

Promoting an idea that emergency units should say 'too bad' to anyone calling because of a drug overdose is ridiculous.

You don't actually know what you are talking about
And

You all should be ashamed of yourselves :wave2:

 

[rexlunae]

This thread crosses the line.

Promoting an idea that emergency units should say 'too bad' to anyone calling because of a drug overdose is ridiculous.

You don't actually know what you are talking about
And

You all should be ashamed of yourselves :wave2:

That's the cruelty of modern conservatism. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps, whether your able or not, or they'll dump you in a shallow pit. There's no compassion, no sympathy, they're quick to judge and suspect.

Why do you associate with them?

Well, you weren't banned when I started writing my post. Maybe something for you to think about when you get back.

 

[JudgeRightly]

Judge to addict: No more babies until fit to care for them



Agree or disagree with what the judge ruled?

I am composing a reply that breaks down this article. It'll probably be a day or two before it's ready.

Sent from my Pixel XL using TheologyOnline mobile app

 

[Angel4Truth]

That's the cruelty of modern conservatism. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps, whether your able or not, or they'll dump you in a shallow pit. There's no compassion, no sympathy, they're quick to judge and suspect.

Why do you associate with them?

Well, you weren't banned when I started writing my post. Maybe something for you to think about when you get back.

Its so cruel to kids and infants to have their parents lose their rights when they stay stoned and cause their deaths or car crashes and neglect injuries.

Why are those things ok with you?

 

[Angel4Truth]

 

[jgarden]

Public shaming of drug addicts - Do you think its a deterant to drug use?

Given that addiction is now considered a disease, would we shame those with suffering from cancer, heart disease, etc.

"Shaming" reverts back to the middle ages where individuals were placed in the stocks in the town square where "passers-by" would hurl insults at them!

 

[Angel4Truth]

Public shaming of drug addicts - Do you think its a deterant to drug use?

Given that addiction is now considered a disease, would we shame those with suffering from cancer, heart disease, etc.

"Shaming" reverts back to the middle ages where individuals were placed in the stocks in the town square where "passers-by" would hurl insults at them!

yes, liberals want to redefine all sin, so blame can go somewhere else but them.

Addiction is not a disease — and we’re treating addicts incorrectly

We all know addiction is a disease. It has been so classified by all the authoritative sources. The American Medical Association labeled alcoholism an “illness” back in 1967.

The Centers for Disease Control, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and Alcoholics Anonymous urge us to think of alcohol and drug addiction as diseases.

Great minds such as Oprah Winfrey, Russell Brand and Joe Biden agree: the then-senator even introduced a bill in 2007 called the “Recognizing Addiction as a Disease Act.” (It never came up for a vote.)

The disease theory has powerful forces behind it, has money behind it. Perhaps most important, it has a comforting thought behind it. Hey, it could happen to anyone. You’re not a morally flawed individual if you catch the flu, are you? We don’t think of people with autism, “They could beat it if they tried.”

Addiction-as-disease is in some ways a thoroughly American idea. It ties together how we approach medicine (with a precisely defined target and a definitive program to fight it) and our proudly tolerant spirit in which being judgmental is seen as a kind of vice. Plus it opens up profit opportunities from sea to shining sea.

If addiction is a disease, though, why do most addictions end spontaneously, without treatment? Why did some 75% of heroin-addicted Vietnam vets kick the drug when they returned home?

It’s hard to picture a brain disease such as schizophrenia simply going away because someone decided not be schizophrenic anymore.

Addiction is not a disease. It’s simply a nasty habit, says neuroscientist Dr. Marc Lewis, himself a longtime addict and professor of developmental psychology, in his new book, “The Biology of Desire.”
‘Exercise of the will’

Framing addiction as a disease seems like a concept perfectly suited to our times, and yet it reaches back to Aristotle. In 1913, during an era of heavy use of opiates, a book on narcotics urged doctors not to use the word “habit” because “habit implies something that can be corrected by exercise of the will…This is not true of narcotic disease, therefore it is not a mere habit and should not be spoken of as such.

“The man who is addicted to a narcotic drug is as truly a diseased man as one who has typhoid fever or pneumonia.”

In the 1950s, Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous helped advance this line of thinking by calling addiction a “malady” and physical sensitivity to alcohol an “allergy.” Twelve-step groups who are rigid about the disease theory require members to adhere equally rigidly to the prescribed treatment at the risk of expulsion from the group. At times this means intolerance for individual difference and turning a blind eye to epidemiological data.

For instance, AA teaches that any use of alcohol is likely to lead to a relapse into problem drinking, but in fact there are many recovered alcoholics who return to controlled, moderate social drinking. AA’s approach isn’t right for everyone, Lewis points out.

Modal Trigger

Even worse, AA is especially fervent about instilling in members the idea that they are powerless over alcohol. This is the opposite of teaching addicts to seize control of the future. “Most former addicts,” notes Lewis, “claim that empowerment, not powerlessness, was essential to them, especially in the latter stages of their recovery.”

He adds that people with excellent reasons to feel generally powerless in life, including minorities, women, the poor and those with especially dismal family histories, are the ones most in need of reconceiving themselves as empowered individuals.

“It’s an open question,” Lewis says, “whether the disease nomenclature, partially absorbed into the AA mainstream, has alienated more members than it’s helped.”

It may be that “exercise of the will” sounds unsatisfying simple, a too-easy solution to what can be a monstrous problem. It also causes friction with a culture that extols technical knowledge — the expert-ocracy.

Reliance on experts is supported by both supply and demand sides: As customers, we love to think that if we have a particularly nasty problem, there is someone out there who knows exactly what to do. And the $35 billion addiction-treatment industry is happy to take your money to help.
Very bad habits

Proponents of the disease theory have one talking point that they love to repeat before they hurry to change the subject: Addiction changes the structure of the brain.

This may be enough to convince non-specialists, but to experts in the field the claim that altered brain structure proves the presence of disease sounds ludicrous. The brain is a plastic organ. It changes when you age. It changes when you learn a new language or a musical instrument. It changes when you fall in love. It changes when you have children. It even changes the third time you hear your boss make a dismissive comment and you start to conclude, “This guy’s a jerk.”

The brain is continuously reshaping its neural networks. It’s like the Manhattan streetscape: Some are always under construction.

“To say that addiction changes the brain is really just saying that some powerful experience, probably occurring over and over, forges new synaptic configurations that settle into habits,” writes Lewis, who was a drug addict through most of his 20s. “Addiction may be a frightful, devastating and insidious process of change in our habits and our synaptic patterning. But that doesn’t make it a disease.”
Modal Trigger
Shutterstock

Are we quibbling over mere word choice, though — synaptic semantics?

No, because how we see addiction is critical to how we treat it. Lewis isn’t suggesting telling addicts, “It’s all in your head. Get over it.” But he views the mushrooming of rehab centers with unease: If these businesses actually succeeded in “curing” everybody, they’d have to shut down. Calling addiction a disease is meant in part to emphasize the seriousness of being in thrall to drugs or alcohol, to elevate it to the level of a noble battle with cancer.

To reject the disease label is not to demote addiction, nor is it to diminish sympathy for the addict’s plight.

“The severe consequences of addiction,” writes Lewis, “don’t make it a disease, any more than the severe consequences of violence make violence a disease, or the severe consequences of racism make racism a disease, or the folly of loving thy neighbor’s wife makes infidelity a disease. What they make it is a very bad habit.”
Rewriting your brain

Lewis delves into case studies of addicts to illustrate different strategies people use to free themselves. “Natalie,” for instance, was a nice, middle-class student at a liberal-arts college who gradually sank into a swamp of heroin.

She started on typical college drugs — pot, magic mushrooms, ecstasy. But she found opiates like OxyContin to be a big step up in satisfaction: “They didn’t pitch you into a colorful fairyland, the way mushrooms and acid did. Instead they wrapped you in a stocking of inner peace, utter relaxation. Not the kind of sedation you’d get from a tranquilizer, but something subtler and yet more potent . . . Some misty layer of anxiety was always floating above the surface of things. Until opiates took it away.”

“Natalie” turned to heroin because it was cheaper than pills, first snorting and smoking the drug. But when she saw someone shoot up, she was transfixed. She wanted to join in that ritual herself — the heating of the brown powder in the spoon, the tourniquet, the needle.

Natalie was rerouting her brain with a feedback loop, creating more and more associations with the heroin craving. Soon it became difficult to focus on anything else — job, school, family. Her connections with people outside her drug circle frayed and disintegrated. After a mishap involving a borrowed car and a failed stint in rehab, she found herself spending nine months in a maximum-security prison.

So she taught herself to meditate. It was not as simple as “deciding to get clean.” Rewiring her thinking was work. She was building new neural paths for herself and breaking up the old ones.

“We could say that Natalie chose to stop using drugs, but it’s not that simple either,” Lewis writes. “Instead, desire was rerouted. It was now in league with other goals: self-preservation, self-control, a respite from her weariness.” Natalie was educating herself as surely as someone who learns Japanese is doing so.

Natalie had to learn to overcome what Lewis calls “now appeal” — putting short-term gratification ahead of long-term thriving. When we crave something, our brains are awash in dopamine, which brings pleasure in itself. Addiction is less about enjoyment than it is about anticipation, about desire. But resisting temptation requires a lot of brain energy. At some point fatigue sets in and it becomes too exhausting not to give in.

Addicts are told again and again to resist, by counselors, therapists, friends and relatives. Just say no!

“Yet the research tells us unambiguously,” writes Lewis, “that suppression is the wrong way to go, because it accelerates ego fatigue.’

Achieving mastery over yourself requires instead a shift of perspective and a reinterpretation of your emotional state. “Instead of tying yourself to the mast in order to resist the Sirens’ song, you must recognize the Sirens as harbingers of death and reframe their songs as background noise,” Lewis says.

The ability to resist “now appeal” is thought to be centered in the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, which is more developed in mature adults. That’s why addiction is so often associated with youth. There is some evidence that people who learn to beat addiction are developing that area of the brain, as you might work on building up your triceps.
Embracing a future

Drugs can help by suppressing cravings or easing withdrawal symptoms, but getting free of addiction is fundamentally a process of internal development, Lewis argues. In case studies he presents in the book, he explains how honest personal reflection, reconnecting how past behavior led to current predicaments and imagining a different and better future were instrumental to successful outcomes for addicts.

Addiction isn’t a direct result of a stress-filled childhood, but there is close correlation between the two, and a survey that explored high youth suicide rates in some Native American areas of Western Canada found that in such communities young people were “incapable of talking about their lives in any coherent, organized way,” Lewis says. “They had no clear sense of their past, their childhood, and the generations preceding them. And their attempts to outlines possible futures were empty of form and meaning. They simply could not consider their lives as narratives, or stories.”

To Lewis, there’s a clear lesson here.

“Humans need to be able to see their own lives progressing, moving from a meaningful past to a viable future. They need to see themselves as going somewhere, as characters in a narrative.”

Life’s a book; write the next chapter yourself.

Addiction as a disease, keeps people down, and enables victim mentality.

 

[Angel4Truth]

In 2016, the U.S. lost more than 52,000 -- enough to fill a major league baseball stadium -- to drug overdose, 33,000 of which were from opioids.

About 10 years ago, gun-related deaths outnumbered opioid-related death by more than 5-to-1. Today, more people die from opioid-related deaths than from gun homicides and traffic accidents combined.

On on average day, 144 people in the U.S. die from a drug overdose, the majority are from pharmaceutical opioids or heroin or fentanyl.

Every day, nearly 600 people try heroin for the first time.

Source: U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration

 

[rexlunae]

Its so cruel to kids and infants to have their parents lose their rights when they stay stoned and cause their deaths or car crashes and neglect injuries.

Why are those things ok with you?

You're just assuming a context that's narrower than the discussion because you think it helps make your case. Of course, parents who put their children in danger need to be stopped. But that's a different thing. And taking kids away from their parents does serious long-term harm to the children, so it has to be balanced against their interests.

 

[Crucible]

Addiction is a disease, stop trying to find a source to tell you otherwise to reinforce your disparaging of people who suffer with it

Reminds me of this time I came across a book called 'The Great Cholesterol Myth'- there's always something or somebody that will fuel a falsehood.
Referencing a former drug addict who simply doesn't want to admit he has a disease isn't the best source anyway- I've seen plenty of them, sometimes they manage to clean up and move on without admitting that the substance they used is always in the back of their mind.

That is why alcoholics continue to go to meetings even after 20 years sober.

But I'm not going to have a friendly conversation here- I think you're all a bunch of self righteous, puffed up hypocrites :wave2:

 

[JudgeRightly]

Let's look at this from a Biblical worldview, with the knowledge that God only authorizes 3 forms of punishment: restitution, corporal punishment, and death, and that prison should only be used to hold criminals until judgment can be passed.

Judge to addict: No more babies until fit to care for them

ROCHESTER, NY (Democrat and Chronicle) -- Disheartened by the parade of heroin-addicted parents

A symptom of a larger issue...

who appeared in her courtroom, a Family Court judge in late December ordered an addict-prostitute

Also a symptom, not a root issue...

to not get pregnant again

Ok, not the best ruling, considering God gave the command to "be fruitful and multiply," but ok...

until she was able to regain custody of her newborn son

Woah woah woah! HOLD UP HERE! Why was custody taken away in the first place? You're telling me that the newborn boy is being punished because the mother committed what should be a crime? Punishing the child for the sin of the parent? The system has already failed in multiple places at this point in the article, but this is one of the more serious mistakes.

the fourth child to be taken from her care because of neglect.

Wait... fourth? Punishing the woman's children because of her crimes is the absolute worst thing someone could do to these inoocent children. Whoever ordered that the children should be taken away should be flogged up to 10 times per child taken away, and be stripped of his judge status.

"The testimony in this case clearly established that the mother had little or no prenatal care, that the baby was born prematurely with a positive toxicology for illegal drugs, and that the mother admitted use of illegal drugs during her pregnancy." Family Court Judge Patricia Gallaher wrote in the decision.

All drug dealers should be rounded up, tried, and if found guilty, executed.

The woman should be flogged 5 times for each of her children whom she has neglected.

Gallaher retired at the end of December, and the 27-page decision reads like a salvo from a judge disturbed and dispirited by what she witnessed as a judge and previously a legal assistant in Family Court. And, she wrote, the epidemic of heroin in the community has led to more severe and frequent cases of parental neglect than in years past.

Which is a clear indication that the current system does not work.

"This court has seen about a half dozen seemingly 'nice couples' show up as respondents in neglect cases where both are addicted to heroin and literally throwing their lives away and the lives of their children in just this year," Gallaher wrote.

When you have bad law, crime increases.

The Dec. 27 decision is now over a month old, but is making ripples in legal circles where possible appeals are being weighed. The Monroe County Public Defender's Office represented the mother in the case, identified as Brandy F. in court documents, and may appeal.

If we had a good justice system, the only ones who could appeal a case would be the judges themselves.

The New York Civil Liberties Union, or NYCLU, is also considering assisting with an appeal.

Same as above. Also, lawyers are not needed in a good justice system, as good law can be understood easily even by children

"I understand why the judge may have had good intentions here,"

Good intentions do not make for good decisions.

said KaeLyn Rich, director of the Genesee Valley chapter of the NYCLU. "When it comes to interpreting here, we don't want to set a precedent

Judges do not have the right to judge the law. it doesn't matter what a judge thinks of the law (unless it's immoral, in which case he should disobey it.

that the court has the authority to tell a woman not to get pregnant or a man not to procreate.

God says "Be fruitful and multiply." No man can say not to.

Gallaher was a legal clerk to retired Monroe County Family Court Judge Marilyn O'Connor, who issued a similar ruling in 2004 that made national news and led many to applaud O'Connor for the decision. (Conservative Fox talk show host Bill O'Reilly said O'Connor would be secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in his "dream cabinet."

Gallaher mentions O'Connor's decision, calling it "courageous and cutting-edge," but also notes that an appellate court overturned the ruling,

Rulings should not be overturned, because to do so would be to go against the Law. A good Law will never have a case where the ruling is overturned.

deciding that a Family Court judge did not have the authority to order parents to have no more children.

Again, no man has the authority to go against God's command to have children.

That legal dynamic has not changed since 2004, though Gallaher in her ruling implores appellate judges to reconsider the earlier decision.

Four children neglected

In July 2016, Brandy F. gave birth to her son Steven, born at 29 weeks and displaying immediate signs of drug withdrawal. He was in the hospital for 33 days before being released. During the pregnancy, Brandy ingested crack cocaine, methadone and alcohol, according to court testimony.

Brandy should have been flogged for harming her child.

She said she did not know who the father was.

So she's a slut.

Testimony showed that she "admitted using illegal drugs prior to the actual delivery of this child, resulting in her and the newborn having positive toxicology screens at the hospital for both cocaine and opiates," Gallaher wrote.

Again, she should have been flogged.

Gallaher ordered the baby removed from Brandy's care. Court records also show that another son was born prematurely to Brandy in 2014; the boy was addicted to drugs

A tragedy caused by the woman's actions, but even so, you don't punish the child for the mother's (or father's) crimes.

and "had no identified father."

So the mother is a slut. I think we've established that now.

A daughter was taken from her custody in 2011; the girl was also born an addict and "went through medically monitored withdrawal."

A tragedy caused by her mother.

Another son was taken from Brandy's care in 2007 and has been living with his maternal grandmother since that time.

The boy should have been living with his mother, who should have been flogged for harming her children and losing control of her faculties.

While in Brandy's care, the boy "was not protected from access to (a) hypodermic needle."

Drug dealers should be executed for the amount of harm they do, then things like this wouldn't happen.

In the ruling, Gallaher said her goal was to allow Brandy to stabilize her life so she could one day have custody of her children.

Brandy's children should never have been taken away from her. She should be the one punished, not her children. Flogging is the only punishment that will not hurt the children.

The children "would most probably rejoice in having (a) mother who was clean, sober and competent, and hopefully even would love them as a mother should love her children," she wrote.

As they rightly should. But they can't if they're not with their mother.

The ruling makes clear that the onus of responsibility is not solely on Brandy.

It is the responsibility of the parents to take care of their children. The responsibility rests solely on them.

The state's Social Services Law requires that caseworkers "advise eligible needy persons periodically of the availability at public expense of family planning services for the prevention of pregnancy and inquire whether such persons desire to have such services furnished to them."

For better or for worse, the parents are the only ones who are responsible for raising their children, not some socialist program.

Gallaher's ruling directs the county caseworkers to offer family planning and contraception to Brandy, as the law allows.

So the solution is to make it easier for the woman to be a slut without consequences? Why not encourage her to marry a man who will provide for her and her family?

Caseworkers can not require family planning or the use of contraception for a client. The services and contraception are provided at no cost.

Again, the focus should be on building a family, not on making it easier to destroy it.

Gallaher declined to discuss the ruling. Brandy could not be located to discuss the decision.

Retired Judge O'Connor said that the decision from Gallaher, who helped draft the 2004 ruling, shows that many of the same troubling issues she and Gallaher saw in 2004 still exist, and that heroin may be exacerbating the societal problems.

Because the current laws and system are completely broken. If the system was not inherently broken, these issues would not be prevalent at all.

O'Connor said she often encouraged county caseworkers to direct men and women to family planning services, which the county funded, but the county staff seemed loath to do so.

"The law requires it," she said. " ... And they just don't do it."

Instead of that, why don't they tell her that what she's doing is wrong and is destroying her life and the lives of her children?

"The (county social services department) deals with the children coming into their care," she said. "They do not deal with preventing the children coming into their care."

They should be focused on deterrence, not prevention. Also, the Government does not have the right to take away children from their parents. It's one of the reasons our country is so broken, that children grow upwithout one or both parents. Children need a solid foundation for growth, they cannot get that from a socialist program.

O'Connor said that caseworkers do not have to discuss contraception or family planning with someone who is religiously averse to it, but that too often the county staff seemed disinclined to offer to discuss it with anyone.

"They're not dealing with the reality," she said. "They're simply handling the numbers."

Which is exactly what happens when the system is broken. It becomes a numbers game, instead of one person caring for another out of love.

" ... The court is not ordering somebody to get an abortion, to go against their religion, to go against privacy and not have sex, O'Connor said.

God did not give governments the authority to legislate morality, meaning that NO ONE has the authority to allow or command murder.

However, God DID give the government the authority and obligation from God to punish those who are sexually immoral, meaning that if someone is committing a crime, then there is no privacy to be had. Crime is an offence to the public, and is therefore a public matter.

But opponents of the ruling claim the 2004 and current decision do just that, dictate to a woman what she can do with her body.

"It really violates the constitutional right (to privacy) and could set a bad precedent," said Rich, of the NYCLU.

Again, when a crime is being committed, it harms the public, and it becomes a public matter.

Appellate fight

First of all, the only people who have the right to appeal a judges decision is the judge himself, and only in certain circumstances.

The NYCLU, Planned Parenthood and others opposed O'Connor's 2004 ruling, and the privacy issue was often the crux of their arguments.

Of course PP would be involved somehow. Planned Parenthood needs to be dismantled for killing millions of children in the womb.

"The implications of this condition are far-reaching," the organizations and others wrote in a 2004 brief appealing O'Connor's ruling. "It would permit unprecedented state intrusion into private decisions concerning reproductive health."

There's nothing wrong with the government dealing with crime. Criminals do not have the right to privacy.

While the appellate arguments focused in part on sweeping issues of privacy, the regional appellate court reversed the ruling on much more narrow grounds, basically saying that a Family Court judge did not have the legal autonomy to issue such an order.

Criminals do not have the right to privacy.

The legal obstacles do not appear to have changed in the past 13 years, though the judges on the appellate court have. Gallaher in her decision encourages the appellate judges to take a fresh look at the decision.

"Abandoning your child is endangering the welfare of a child and it is a crime, not a constitutional right," Gallaher wrote.

Abandoning

Gallaher acknowledges that a violation of her order could present a quandary: Just what would a judge do should Brandy get pregnant again?

If that happens, Brandy and the man who is the child's father should be forced to marry, and never allowed to divorce. Currently, she should be forced to marry whoever her most recent child's father is.

Obviously, a judge would not order an abortion, so jail could be a response, though Gallaher wrote that jail also "is not the intent of this decision."

Jail should never be used as a form of punishment. It is only to be used to hold criminals until they can be judged.

Instead, she said, she hoped the ruling would force both Brandy and the county to look at the best way to ensure Brandy had no more children until she is fit to care for them.

She would be better equipped to be a mother if social services would stop taking her children away. Putting your child in a bubble to protect them from the actions of the parents, what happens? Do the parents generally get better? No, they get worse, because the consequences of their actions have been removed.

"Family planning advice a day after a pregnancy has occurred means the advice is only good to prevent the next pregnancy," she wrote.

Pregnancy should only occur in a committed marriage relationship between a man and a woman. Any other time and it is harmful to both the mother and especially the child.

Agree or disagree with what the judge

Obviously I disagree. If America had a justice system that actually worked, instead of one that is broken, there wouldn't be crimes like this occurring.

Sent from my Pixel XL using TheologyOnline mobile app

 

[rexlunae]

Addiction is a disease, stop trying to find a source to tell you otherwise to reinforce your disparaging of people who suffer with it

Reminds me of this time I came across a book called 'The Great Cholesterol Myth'- there's always something or somebody that will fuel a falsehood.
Referencing a former drug addict who simply doesn't want to admit he has a disease isn't the best source anyway- I've seen plenty of them, sometimes they manage to clean up and move on without admitting that the substance they used is always in the back of their mind.

That is why alcoholics continue to go to meetings even after 20 years sober.

But I'm not going to have a friendly conversation here- I think you're all a bunch of self righteous, puffed up hypocrites :wave2:

I mostly agree with what you've said about addiction. We could have a friendly conversation about it if you like, but what frustrates me about you is that the same compassion you have found for people who have suffered from the one affliction doesn't seem like something you've figured out how to apply more broadly. 90% of the time, you come across as the same vicious, self-righteous "Christian" as forms the larger body of the people who post here. But when it comes to drug addiction, you're different, because of your lived experience. And that is very frustrating.

 

[ok doser]

... the same vicious, self-righteous "Christian" as forms the larger body of the people who post here.

oh rex :doh:


that's what you've taken from the ten years you've been posting here? :nono:

 

[rexlunae]

oh rex :doh:


that's what you've taken from the ten years you've been posting here? :nono:

No, that's what I arrived here with. The experience of reading a lot of posts here has reinforced that impression. What I've actually taken from here are the few, but notable exceptions.

 

[ok doser]

like me? :banana:

 

[rexlunae]

like me? :banana:

Na, I don't really lump you into either group. I mostly process you as a troll. You like to provoke, so I don't take it too seriously. There are exceptions.

 

[annabenedetti]

I mostly agree with what you've said about addiction. We could have a friendly conversation about it if you like, but what frustrates me about you is that the same compassion you have found for people who have suffered from the one affliction doesn't seem like something you've figured out how to apply more broadly. 90% of the time, you come across as the same vicious, self-righteous "Christian" as forms the larger body of the people who post here. But when it comes to drug addiction, you're different, because of your lived experience. And that is very frustrating.

I agree with you. I've seen his compassion for the homeless, and I've appreciated that. When people have lived a certain difficult reality, sometimes they come away from that experience with an understanding and an empathy for those in similar circumstances.

 

[ok doser]

I mostly process you as a troll.

mmmmmm


processed troll :chew:


better than spam! :thumb:

 

[musterion]

mmmmmm


processed troll :chew:


better than spam! :thumb:

And if we took the bones out it wouldn't be crunchy now would it.

 

[CabinetMaker]

No, I don't think this would be effective for the vast majority of drug users. It does not address why they use drugs. I think that many use drugs because they feel completely hopeless and hapless. Their lives are empty and drugs allow them to feel something. Unless we can address that which leaves them hopeless, public shaming would likely only drive them deeper into drugs.