Heroin Addicts In San Francisco (NSFW)

The utterly brutal portrayal of suffering in this series has kept me spellbound. A fantastic document of denial, guilt and pain. This is a really good watch, but not for the faint of heart. It’s patently obvious, but rules require that I add a disclaimer: This is REALLY
NSFW
.

I’ve only posted the first part. The rest are available on yoochewb. Watch at your peril!

But for the grace, compassion, patience and love of family and friends, be I there.

Wow. I just saw the whole thing. Such pain.

Right around when this movie was made, I actually worked in SF for a short time working with an Israeli company that was working to improve Wells Fargo’s electronic customer service. For a month and a half, I walked down Geary street from just above Union Square to around Folsom and 3rd every morning, and then back again late at night.

I saw so many broken and hurting people during that time. So many destroyed lives.

I just don’t have enough words to really describe it all.

I’m sure this is going to be harrowing viewing - will save it for Spring break when I have time to process it.

Many starting the road to recovery often try time and time again on their own before deciding to ask for help. Realizing that they cannot do it alone is a major key to success and attending a drug rehab program San Francisco California is a good way to start.

I saw this a while back. Scary stuff and the director thought that the city government was doing a disservice to them by having needle exchanges. Really awful stuff. :s

I just can’t watch this. I tried. A few seconds, skip foward, a few seconds. I just can’t.

[quote=“jimipresley”]The utterly brutal portrayal of suffering in this series has kept me spellbound. A fantastic document of denial, guilt and pain. This is a really good watch, but not for the faint of heart. It’s patently obvious, but rules require that I add a disclaimer: This is REALLY
NSFW
.

I’ve only posted the first part. The rest are available on yoochewb. Watch at your peril!

But for the grace, compassion, patience and love of family and friends, be I there.[/quote]
I saw all the five parts and the 2004 update.

I can’t understand how people prick themselves like that. It hurts, no??
What surprised me was:
A. How cognizant all of them were about their situations. They not only had insights into their own situation, they knew exactly who was enabling them. None of them came across as idiots. I know it sounds patronising, but what I mean is despite the drugs, their clarity of thought was astounding. I was under the impression that addicts are kind of you know in a daze. But these were all smart kids.

B. Where the hell are the parents?? Okay one or two didn’t have any. But the girls, all had mums. I don’t get it. Why would you pay for your daughters to lead that kind of a life? Why not go get them and make them stay at home?? I mean where is the family? How can you love someone and not reel them in?? I don’t gettit. :doh:

Interesting! I’d much rather sit next to someone shooting up heroin than someone smoking. I remember when I dated a former heroin adddict my friends all rejected me, while they sat blowing smoke in my face for years. Weird.

Watched some of this until it just annoyed me too much. It reminded me again of what I realised years ago when working in drug rehab, and that is just how the classic heroin addict as portrayed here has more often than not made a lifestyle decision as much as one to start on horse. The majority of addicts aren’t sitting around in squalid doss houses in shabby clothes reading William S. Burroughs. Nice cliché for the media, but far from the reality for most users. Likewise, and I certainly wouldn’t suggest trying it, the vast majority of users are recreational, and simply don’t end up hooked.

Over the years I’ve had several friends that have used H, all to varying degrees. None of them were in anyway like these people. Most maintained jobs and as long as they had income, lived relatively drama free lives and unless you were fine-tuned to notice, you wouldn’t have been any wiser. One friend in particular, who had a raging ten year habit while in SE Asia returned to Australia and got off the H because he simply couldn’t stand the then relatively low quality of the stuff compared to what he was getting previously. There were overdoses and deaths in that group, but these were invariably a result of mixing other drugs, particularly benzodiazepines (such as valium) and alcohol, or as a result of variable strength due to fluctuations in the quality of supply. When the Vietnamese started selling top grade smack in Australia, many unfortunately dropped.

A state government in Australia desperately tried to get a legal heroin programme off the ground several years back, but it was unfortunately thwarted by the risk of trade embargoes by the US and the bizarre possibility of the country joining the likes of Columbia in global rankings for supplying heroin to users. A real pity, as it would have reduced the number of accidental overdoses, and allowed more serious users to get on with their lives free of the burden of pursuing the illicit drug.

Unfortunately, the drug of choice for heroin replacement is methadone, which is a synthetic opiate, and far, far more damaging to the body, and indeed more addictive, with potentially fatal withdrawals. It also increases the risk of overdose, as it blocks the uptake of heroin, meaning people that score while on methadone tend to hit up what would normally be borderline to fatal doses to get the high. Judging how long the methadone is in your system is therefore nothing short of a game of Russian roulette. Supplying heroin is a far better, cheaper and safer option than methadone. Unfortunately, while it works for those that really want to get off, some are more ‘addicted’ or ensnared by the lifestyle choice than the drug. Typically, if given the opportunity, most addicts will “grow out of” both the lifestyle and the drug.

HG

I thought as much but assumed that they were making on ‘street kids’ so…and the ‘normal’ people you mention, how do they keep their puncture wounds under wraps or explain them??

The other thing when you watch sth. like this as in lifestyle decision, is what is our drug of choice??? All of us have one, as in not ALL of us but a lot of us. That keeps us away from reality and leading our lives to our full potential. I can see the same escapism in me, where I know sth. is wrong and I know I shouldn’t do it but doing it is easier than bringing about change.

Plus, what is a needle exchange programme? People coming and giving you new needles?? I am not googling it coz I don’t want to know more than I can digest. :blush: Why should you get new needles in exchange of old ones? Isn’t that enabling? Okay I get, its coz you want to reduce infection, but they still get infected from multiple needle uses or sharing. NO? :ponder:

Needle exchange has saved many lives. Yes, it entails swapping used needles and handing out new ones for free, often with alcohol swabs and sterile saline for injecting. The idea of exchanging old for new is to prevent the olkd one;s being left about for others to cop a needle stick injury. A cheap investment in reducing the number of people in a given society with cross-infected blood borne diseases. Unfortunately, some zealous police forces have been known to use these to track users. In Australia there were at least, perhaps still are safe injection rooms, where usually a nurse is on hand to monitor people after they’ve hit up. The idea being to reduce infections and over doses. Not so much enabling as being simply pragmatic.

As for track marks, while no doubt common in those that use black tar heroin - a vile, crude process from opium to crap heroin - are not so common with other regular users of better processed heroin doing it cleanly. Those that are afraid of revealing their injection sites can do it somewhere left under clothes. All you need is a decent vein. And there’s plenty of those about.

HG

[quote=“divea”]

Plus, what is a needle exchange programme? People coming and giving you new needles?? I am not googling it because I don’t want to know more than I can digest. :blush: Why should you get new needles in exchange of old ones? Isn’t that enabling? Okay I get, its because you want to reduce infection, but they still get infected from multiple needle uses or sharing. NO? :ponder:[/quote]

Needle exchange and medically supervised injection sites aren’t enabling. They save lives. Not only that, they actually end up saving the governments that fund them considerable amounts of money because people get clean needles and get supervision, immediate assistance, and advice from health professionals while or after injecting.

In other words, because these services are offered, users aren’t on the street using dirty needles, getting terminal diseases, or OD’ing. This inevitably costs the system much more in the long run.

It’s great preventative medicine.

Unless you’ve been an addict or have worked with them, you simply cannot ever possibly even begin to get more than a mere inkling. I was never more than a recreational smack user and never ever felt addicted. The crystal, though, stabbed me through the ball-bag and back out the other side for many years, but seldom to the extent of street living. But I DO know very well indeed how it can happen, even to the sweetest girl-next-door with the most supportive parents you could hope for.

Thank you HG. Informative. Never thought about getting a needle stick injury. Darn! I’m going to be careful where I tread now. I’ve seen street people in India smoking stuff but never injections. I’m sure there is a big drug scene here. Just that I haven’t seen it.

Thanks Cornpone.

I don’t want to be rude,
But if you agree this to happen in your country…
Please leave Taiwanese people alone.

[quote=“keroliver”]I don’t want to be rude,
But if you agree this to happen in your country…
Please leave Taiwanese people alone.[/quote]
Insightful and full of wisdom indeed! Because of COURSE there are no drug users in Taiwan! And Tainan (not many dirty bastard foreigners there, are there, keroliver!) DOESN’T have a needle exchange program for TAIWANESE smackheads. And of course EVERYONE knows how ice and ketamine are NOT USED by fine pure Taiwanese people but only by dirty foreigner junkies!
You would be funny if you weren’t such a pathetic excuse. :unamused:

[quote=“sandman”][quote=“keroliver”]I don’t want to be rude,
But if you agree this to happen in your country…
Please leave Taiwanese people alone.[/quote]
Insightful and full of wisdom indeed! Because of COURSE there are no drug users in Taiwan! And Tainan (not many dirty bastard foreigners there, are there, keroliver!) DOESN’T have a needle exchange program for TAIWANESE smackheads. And of course EVERYONE knows how ice and ketamine are NOT USED by fine pure Taiwanese people but only by dirty foreigner junkies!
You would be funny if you weren’t such a pathetic excuse. :unamused:[/quote]

Thank you for the reminder. I was expecting a quick reply.
My message is to every foreigner coming to Taiwan to teach the western way of life.
As a foreigner here in TW, I find that TW law is strong enough to protect the people from drugs.
Let me finish this bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon before I complete my post…

:roflmao: :roflmao:

Bingo.

youtube.com/watch?v=Cco4BT-KDK8

The war on drugs is maintained because influential people (politicians, police, crimminals) profit from it, especially if the war is always about to be lost. A drug addict is a person with real medical/psychological conditions and should be seeing doctors, nurses and councilers, not drug dealers and police.

Remove the illegality of drugs and you remove the profit to be made from their sale. Remove the profit and you remove the dealers. Remove the dealers and you go a long way towards removing the problem. The governments of countries that have this problem should get the real addicts into treatment programs as quickly as possible, and, as many of the policing problems associated with drug use begin to disappear the remaining resources could be used to ensure that people continuing to operate outside the system are caught and incarcerated.

That’s about it. Some day accomodations could be made to people who are actually capable of using these drugs safely (with the exception of meth probably) but I doubt societies anywhere are even remotely close to accepting that possibility just yet.

Wow! You all sound very expert in drugs, crime and war. Cool! Very nice!
And even hidden agendas from politicians, police and criminals.

So now, please show me the proof that ice and ketamine come from Taiwan. (MIT?)
And also please show me that TW law don’t protect TW people from drugs.

Thanks in advance