My sisters a mental health nurse you better tell lots of doctors, nurses and other medical professionals given that they treat them for it all the time. People who can take and leave drugs to them it’s a choice to addicts it’s not.
Surely though its a choice to take it in the first place isn't it? If you didn't choose to take something then you wouldn't get addicted...
Beware of worse to come with the prescription pain killer problem. Anyone who has had any serious injury knows how its difficult to manage without them at first but ten times more difficult NOT to use them when the injury is healed. Crushing opioid pills and snorting them, cutting squares of pain patches and putting them under the tongue like a tobacco hit, needing more and more all the time. This is a way of life for many in America and like I say it will happen here eventually. It's weird when the top authors of fiction have got new books out and it covers this subject . Michael Connolly Lee Child and others they paint a sad picture, I know someone will point out that it is fiction after all but much good fiction is based on fact.
I was on prescription painkillers for a broken knee/cruciate injury and I didn't find them addictive at all. I completed the course and stopped taking them. Easy as that. When I came round from the operation I was in a lot of pain. I had one shot of morphine and didn't want any more.
What you're saying (wrongly) is that a drug addict has no choice but to take his/her drugs. If they say to the addict that he/she cannot stop taking drugs because of addiction then the medics/case workers are wasting their time.
No I didn’t say that. You said drug addiction is not an illness. I said you better contact medical professionals world wide and share your wisdom with them given your knowledge clearly outweighs theirs.
JC - you're ducking the central question - Does a drug taker have the choice between taking a drug or not taking a drug -- yes or no?
I have a cousin who's a druggie. He's 30, has never worked and been in and out of prison. He does drugs most days. He knows the support is there if he wants to get off them but is happy being a druggie or as happy as you can be with that lifestyle. He has autism, a personality disorder, depression, anxiety and chuff knows what else. His mental health problems don't allow him to see the world as it is. He has no sense of right and wrong. He could choose not to do drugs but he'd have to be locked away in a cell for a year as he wouldn't last two days before running off to find his dealer. What I mean is that you're ignoring the mental health problems of a lot of these people. Many can't make rational decisions because they don't have the mental capacity to do so. To say that these people can choose to take drugs or not is like saying a blind person can choose whether to see or not.
It's a difficult one this. This is my point of view as a mental health nurse with 20 years experience working firstly in detox for 3 years then inpatient services thereafter. In detox our remit was to provide a medically supported withdrawal: it was the duty of the counselling team ( many in recovery themselves) to provide the necessary psychological input. Over the last 17 years in psychiatric inpatient services i have never nursed anyone in hospital solely for drug/alcohol addiction. Indeed it is the case that individuals cannot be admitted to inpatient services if their primary diagnosis is substance abuse/misuse. However i have nursed many with dual-diagnosis, say bi-polar and substance abuse but the primary diagnosis is bi-polar. Many people with mental illness 'self-medicate' with alcohol, illicit drugs etc. We do also see many people who are psychotic as a consequence of drug abuse, most likely the misuse of amphetamines, cannabis, spice, ketamine (rarely if ever alcohol, cocaine, heroin) Not all these individuals will be addicted to the substances. Most of these individuals are unlikely to have another psychotic episode if they stop using the drug. So illicit drugs and alcohol do have a significant impact within the mental health system. But as i have pointed out people who are addicts are not admitted to inpatient services on that basis alone.
Do you mean someone addicted to drugs? The clue is in the title. Or someone experimenting occasionally? The two are completely different beasts so would require completely different answers. So if you define the parameters of your question better I will answer it correctly.
Be great if their their problems didn't affect normal families through burglaries, bag thefts, their day to day life in town unfortunately it does.
Don't know about it being like the Bronx mate, but that area around stokes croft and Easton is Dodgy , car doors have to be locked driving through their at night
More worrying thing for the town centre in the past few weeks..... http://www.barnsleychronicle.com/article/break-in-at-new-pizza-shop http://www.barnsleychronicle.com/article/town-centre-landlords-hit-by-fresh-crime-wave http://www.barnsleychronicle.com/article/landlords-we-ve-had-enough maybe it’s related but these thieves seem more clued up than a bunch of crack heads.
I'll put it another way. In both cases did the druggie make the choice to start taking drugs? I accept that an addiction to drugs is a mental illness but it is a self caused mental illness caused by taking a dangerous mind altering substance which you bizarrely want to legalise.