No, I am not I am basically making a truthful statement!
Hey Adam "shit for brains Sciff! Is that you?
LOL. You are so out of your league. You are embarrassing yourself.
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Apparently he has a hard time distinguishing facts from opinions! His stupidity can’t be fixed!
He is a lib. And he is going to place the blame everywhere he can but upon the individual where the ultimate decision lies.
I’m out. Almost midnight here and another day tomorrow of choices filled with repercussions that I and I alone are and will accept responsibility for.
That is called freedom. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Back to the OP - I’ve read about 30 posts and the most serious questions I noticed was:
- Why do people allow themselves to fall into addiction?
There is the obvious reason of people prescribed opioids to deal with severe pain (post surgery, chronic migraines) and then found themselves ‘hooked’, yet why do a few end up hooked while most stop the medication after a short period with no ill effects. I posit that there is an addictive personality, likely related to an error (perhaps even a genetic adaptation) in how the brain handles different stimuli.
We are often quick to label an addict of any sort as having weak character. It may well be that the weakness is in brain chemistry. If we step back from drug addiction to other forms of addiction like alcohol, food (starches), pornography, obsessive phone time, etc. they tend to fester and take even more hold because they are directly or indirectly exclusive. They are not anti - social - no one wants to be isolated from society. Yet these are activities one does alone, because of societal disapproval.
This isolation is an odd biproduct that increases the focus of the addicted individual on the addiction. There is of course a reward, pain, and reward cycle that all of these share. The activity is pleasurable while the addict is doing it; it is painful (emotionally more than physically) in remorse, regret, embarrassment etc. But the brain then craves that pleasure again, and the world seems less vibrant, less interesting because the world is not inherently pleasurable.
Obesity is starch addiction, plain and simple. I stay slim, and have two brothers and a sister who are all obese. My older sister once told me that she can sit and eat an entire quart of ice cream and gets a ‘high’ off it. By the way, all three were smokers for decades (they’ve all quit). My older brother ballooned right after he quit smoking- eating replaced the pleasure of the nicotine.
Pornography allows the viewer to live a fantasy in his mind (it’s really a male thing you know). It is viewed in private - very socially unacceptable to be looking at porn in a Starbucks and playing vigorous pocket pool - well, maybe not now… The fantasy world of you as super stud with an endless array of airbrushed models is far more exciting than your kid’s ballgame, let alone cleaning the gutters. Just as with food, brain chemistry changes during this activity, dopamine levels rise, and if feels good physically.
The introduction of the iPhone has been a disaster for humanity. Kids have their faces buried in them when they could be playing, socializing–developing. Social media (on phones mostly) has both the pleasure of pseudo popularity, the chance to ‘win’ with a comment that gets a lot of positive feedback, yet cruelly, it has the additional horror of intermittent reinforcement1.
Each of these represent an artificial, operator dependent boost in dopanmine - the brain’s ‘happy juice’ to levels associated with a lucky turn of events, or sex. with *repeated use, the brain actually **shuts off receptors to decrease the ‘high’; this may be evolutionary protection.2
Opioids take this to a whole new level. With the first use dopamine levels far exceed those experienced during orgasm, the brain goes about cutting back the receptors for dopamine immediately. Over time more is needed just to feel ‘ok’ because there are so few receptors left. This is also why former addicts have an affect that is usually pretty flat, and why so many re-lapse.
Perhaps finding a way to force addicts into ‘positive addiction’ like running, cycling, etc. where dopamine is released in response to both the exercise and the joy of the experience. Forced exercise sounds medaeval, yet it might be the answer.
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Experiments with rats exposed to intermittent reinforcement schedules showed that once established, the rats would die of exhaustion pressing the food pellet bar for a pellet that never comes. You could extrapolate this to abusive relationships as well.
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While there is no way to prove this, it stands to reason that prehistoric man running around stoned out of his mind would be an easy dinner for a predator, and therefore would be unlikely to reproduce.
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With all due respect, Big Pharma did not rescribe OxyContin to your cousin for minor pain, the doctor did.
But Big Pharma misled the doctors regarding how addictive it is.
Bingo!
…
I agree. Some years ago I had a very painful condition called costochondris, a inflammation of the rib cage cartilage. Every breath I took felt as if someone had rammed a spear through my chest. Once diagnosed and the doctor knew I wasn’t dying, he prescribed an anti-inflammatory and Tylenol3 for the pain. I am not one to even take aspirin for headaches or aches, but I practically begged him for percoset because I knew the T3 would not do much for the intense pain I was experiencing. He refused, saying it was not warranted.
Furthermore, when I have been prescribed strong pain medication I have never been given more than 10 pills. I read about doctors prescribing 30 OxyContins with a refill. That is completely irresponsible. If your pain is that bad, you should not be self medicating.
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Here:
…
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That’s why people who don’t make the “right choices” should have their choice in the matter eliminated.
Freedom is not in the interests of the collective.
Is there a “puke” emote somewhere?
If he’s ever been to med school I’m a Cedar Post.
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When I was on Oxycodone and Fentenyl my insurance required I buy a 3 moth supply at a time.
The pharmacist once remarked that she hoped I had armed security to get me through the parking lot. I just smiled and cracked my vest a bit and said, “Yes, Yes Ma’am I do”.
So what? I’ve lost family to alchohol addiction. You don’t see me calling for the local breweries and distillery to be shut down. Next you’ll be telling us you had a relative who was hit by a bus so we should end mass transit. 
“Buses Kill”!
Don’t blame the distracted pedestrian, drunk driver, or incompetent bus driver, it’s the bus’ fault!
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Can you be specific about that?
So what? They have tried (and succeeded to some extent) to influence every election since 1948. Influencing elections is SOP for the major powers. Heck, in the ‘50s and ‘60s interfering (not just influencing) in elections in South America and Asia was practically a Doctrine. And even in this century, Obama tried to influence the elections in France and Israel. Russia tried to influence our election … what else is new?
How did we get to discussing this? Did you change the thread topic again? Do we need to get @asaratis to start you yet another thread?
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Good post.
I used to work with a guy who was an avid distance runner. He would run 100 miles a week at least and felt like shit if he could not run. One day I pointed out to him that I had just read an article in Discover Magazine that the dopamine that produces the “runner’s high” (and low, when he did not run) was caused by the jarring of the brain on each step. That, I concluded, means that runners like him were brain damaged drug addicts. He had nothing in defense. 
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@asaratis will be starting no more threads for @Dave.
@Dave has been here for about 2 weeks, made 276 posts, viewed 30 topics, but started NONE. If he doesn’t have enough sense to read the tutorials and start a thread on his own, I’ll just leave him to his tendency to derail threads and eventually receive a thousand year suspension.
I just wanted the Pelosi thread left open. She’ll be running her mouth and being quoted for the next 20 months.
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