weird how I became a much more compassionate and accepting person when I realised that drug addiction is the symptom of a problem and not the problem in itself
you also start to realise just how much the War On Drugs was actually a war against the poor, against survivors, against trans people, against sex workers, against the mentally ill and the disabled, against PoC, against queers, against the homeless. how much of it was a government manufactured ploy to sell violence against the marginalized as violence against addiction, as if addiction was not a symptom of systemic abuse.
Blogging this tweet because this explains SO MUCH about the mindset of pretty much all the folks I’ve known who’re against single-payer, it’s not even funny…
This….
This never occurred to me. Not once. That Americans are against Health Care because they think it actually costs tens of thousands of dollars for a broken arm, hundreds of thousands for a complicated birth, millions for cancer treatment.
Because they’ve never known anything different. The idea that a broken arm is only a couple hundred bucks; a complicated birth a couple thousand; cancer treatment only tens of thousands; all easily covered by existing tax structures.
This explains a lot. And it’s a good example of what I was talking about in my post on scarcity being used to prop up ableism – always question the idea that a resource is genuinely scarce. Even if it seems obvious that it is, quite often that’s the result of careful manipulation and misconceptions that you’re not even aware of.
And never think you’re too smart to be fooled by that kind of thing, it doesn’t work like that. Similarly, don’t think people who are fooled by something are stupid. Nobody can have all the information about everything, and nobody has the time and energy to investigate and put together conscious conclusions about every piece of information they’re given. It doesn’t take being stupid, or even just gullible, to believe something like this.
I currently live in a country without free medical care and still, it’s enormously cheap compared to the USA. An American expat wrote a piece for our English language paper about how she paid more for parking at the hospital than giving birth to her baby that’s pretty interesting:
Yesterday I had to go to the hospital cause I injured my eye, I’m frankly dreading what the bill is going to be, but what made me balk was being told in the pharmacy that my insurance was denied for the antibiotic eye drops and it’d be over $100 out of pocket. So I didn’t get my eyedrops.
I’ve had these same drops before living in the UK. They cost me seven GBP.
It’s the exact same drug, same steroid, same strain of antibiotic. But somehow the US gets away with charging $100 for a generic non brand version of a drug which is easy to create and widely used. It’s downright robbery, but also a form of eugenics through poverty and class warfare. You keep the poor poor by making sure basic necessities remain unattainable and then you make it seem like the norm so no one fights it.
I’d honestly rather millions of drug addicts get safe opiates from doctors, than a single person with chronic pain go without because of the drug addiction fear mongering in the medical community.
It also decreases the spread of STDs, and so on. There’s endless benefits to it. But uh I guess keep fucking punishing disabled people and addicts because it makes yall feel morally superior or some shit–getting people killed for ideological purity.
Portugal legalized everything, with a couple caveats. If you’re found with (large amounts of, IIRC) drugs multiple times, you get a panel. The panel consists of a lawyer, a judge, and a doctor. Their job is to help you deal with addiction–not PUNISH YOU for having drugs, but help you overcome addiction.
The results? Oh baby, the results are fantastic. Portugal has far less addiction and fewer overdoses than basically anyone else. They’re treating drug problems as medical problems instead of crimes, and it’s absolutely working!
Oh, and America’s opiod crisis? Basically entirely the fault of drug corporations pushing high power painkillers on doctors/patients, including selling oxycontin with a 12 hour dose regimen when studies showed it really didn’t work that long, and refusing to adjust to the science.
And since, oops, it’s highly addictive, people end up getting cut off and then going for street opiods to deal. Instead of, y’know, being properly aided by medical professionals.
America insists on treating drug addiction as a moral failing instead of a medical condition, and it’s killing people.
And now a lot of doctors won’t prescribe them, which fucks over people like me who can’t function without the pain control they provide. And since the pharmacy companies charge an assbutt for oxycontin and for abuse-resistant things like Xtampza, insurance companies won’t pay for them.
aid crisis: happens exactly because of reagans administration
donald trump: *becomes president*
the usa:
to all the “we survived reagan we can survive this” folks … a lot of people didnt fucking survive reagan and donald trumps administration is currently on a murder rampage heres a modicum of proof
This week’s current issue in mental health: the price of medication. With numerous people sharing stories about how medication was the first step when they were getting help, we wanted to point out how the cost of these treatments is prohibitive especially for people without insurance.
Wait , over 500 dollars for propananolol?! I got that for free? What is wrong with your country?!
The generic Adrenaclick will cost $109.99 for two doses, compared with $649.99 for the same amount of drug in an EpiPen. That’s good news, both for financial and safety reasons: STAT reported last year that some parents and institutions had begun filling up syringes with epinephrine as a cost-cutting measure, a DIY solution that could pose great risk to the children who may have eventually needed injections. A more affordable alternative will help ensure safer epinephrine injections.
That’s assuming, though, that the people who need these devices know exactly what to ask for when they’re sitting in their doctors’ offices. Otherwise, they’ll still be stuck with the overpriced product. Here’s why: The mechanism by which Adrenaclick injects the drug is slightly different from EpiPen’s mechanism, so the Food and Drug Administration has ruled that the two are not therapeutically equivalent. That distinction is important because it means a prescription for an EpiPen cannot be filled with Adrenaclick. If you want the cheaper option, you have to have an Adrenaclick prescription.
You must ask your doctor for an Adrenaclick prescription!
I also found a coupon from Impax on 0.15mg and 0.3mg epinephrine injection, USP auto-injectors, which appear to be the generic version of Adrenaclick; these coupons cover up to $100 per pack for 3 packs of these injectors (6 total injectors).
honestly this will probably be a Controversial Post so Don’t @ Me but
you absolutely should be pro animal testing.
against cosmetic animal testing is one thing. to be honest, if we were in 1955, i’d say it’s still necessary, but we’ve kinda sussed out our options. we have a good database. only the weird experimental bullshit is worth animal testing in the field of cosmetics.
medical animal testing, though? if you come for medical animal testing, i will fight you.
yes i know the pictures look gory, and mean, and creepy. but this is still the primary way we learn.
only a fucking fool says that we know enough about biology to model it all on a computer. biology is one of those subjects where it can look like we know what we’re doing in that big picture high school view, but SURPRISE ASSHOLE! WE KNOW JACK FUCKING SHIT. we just discovered a new organ, like, a couple years ago. there are layers of immune system so involved that we know humans probably have them but we just don’t fucking know how to spot it. and if you can’t spot it, if you can’t describe its behavior – how the fuck do you computer model it?
so what do you do? you use test animals as analogues. a lot of test animals are used because we want to study something, but we need it simpler, and more easy to spot. shoutout to fruit flies and zebrafish! and then there are some test animals where we want to see what it might look like in a complex critter with a lot of moving parts similar to ours – like mice.
in a perfect world, we wouldn’t have to do any animal testing. let me get this straight: i know that animals suffer and die so we can test on them. i know that. but even as i mourn them, i thank them.
we still need animal testing in medical science the same way a general needs foot soldiers. in a perfect world, there would be no war. but there is war yet to fight.
be grateful. be compassionate. fight for strict ethical standards. (for one fucking thing, bad ethics means bad fucking science, because you’re introducing additional variables into the mix and not being honest about balancing for them!) remember every single animal from chimpanzee down to fruitfly as a brave soul who gave their life for a greater cause.
but the cause is still great.
honor the sacrifice of these animals by supporting research, not seeking to make their deaths be in vain by saying you do not want the foundation of knowledge they gave us to be built upon any longer. they gave us a precious gift of knowledge for their lives already. it is not kind nor ethical to spurn that gift, because the war isn’t over, and the battles are not yet won.
remember these animals as brave soldiers. honor them. be proud of them. seek that those still in the fight are treated humanely. hell, make memorials! there is a lovely memorial in poland iirc dedicated to all the knockout mice that have helped us understand genetics, and it’s one of my favourite monuments in the entire world.
…but don’t disrespect their sacrifice.
(and if you need to care, on a more practical level, about the medical animal testing that looks ickiest to you because it’s cute doggies and kitties? ….where the fuck do you think new veterinary medicines come from, shat out by cherubim upon our heads? knowing that a medicine works for x illness in dogs isn’t just a stepping stone to human test trials, WE NOW HAVE A MEDICINE FOR DOGS TOO.)
it was unveiled in 2013, and is in Novosibirsk at their institute of genetics (same people that still are running the SibFox experiment)
i think we need more monuments like this. i would like to see one in every college that has a genetics department. thanking not only mice, but all laboratory animals.
seriously though whenever i’ve brought it up to people who are against medical testing on animals, there’s about 95% odds that they go “oh we can just test people who are in jail and on death row instead!!!”.
and then i always have a moment of being quietly exhausted at them. i feel like it’s a bad sign when my white as wonderbread ass has a moment of “oh god help you, i dunno if i have the strength to explain to you right now about racial problems”. it’s so above and beyond that when i think somebody is being too white, like when they complain about salt being too spicy and mayonnaise being exotic, like, they’re deep in the shit indeed
Imma toot my own horn and post a link to the poem I wrote about this.
I really love the OP, I really appreciate their reflections on the nuances of the issue. I really admire @vmohlere ‘s poem, it’s a really nice piece of craft. I really love @honoriaw‘s addition.
this is giving me so many good feelings about a nuanced, heavy, difficult topic. I’m so glad we could share them. This is such a hopeful and thoughtful approach.
I, hmmmm, look, I’m not one of those people who think we can have medicine and biological research without animal testing. Hell, I’m not even a vegetarian. I accept that by virtue of the life that I and all other people live, animals are killed often in gruesome or creepy ways. I’m acknowledge the necessity of it but framing it as a sacrifice animals make for us is in my opinion profoundly dishonest.
A sacrifice is something that is chosen. It is done willingly and knowingly. Animals do not know why they are being tested. They do not understand what we are doing to them. And if they did, I somehow doubt they would willingly choose it. I think they would probably choose survival in most cases.
We don’t call the victims of Nazi and Japanese human experimentation during WWII sacrificial heroes even though some of those experiments ended up being a basis for a lot of our knowledge around treating hypothermia and other conditions. We don’t say the African American men who were experimented on in the Tuskegee study sacrificed themselves so we could better understand syphilis. We do this because we understand that there is a difference between consenting to something and having it inflicted upon us. We understand that it would be obscene to rewrite what happened and imply that anything about those incidents was a choice.
By all means, celebrate the animals that gave us the knowledge to treat illnesses. But don’t call them soldiers, soldiers (hopefully) sign up and don’t call what they did a sacrifice.
Please reblog if you know anyone who might take party drugs.
this is so important
Also important information: A cop cannot arrest you for something you already took. You can tell a cop to his face that you just injected black tar heroin in your veins and as long as you don’t currently have any on you (including things like syringes or residue in a pipe), there’s fuck all he can do about it.
I take police reports for a living. The number of people who will happily tell someone “Well officer, this fight started because I smoked crack cocaine earlier,” is astounding and also not at all illegal. The criminal charge is for Possession of a Controlled Substance. If you don’t possess any at the time, there’s no crime. The only thing you can get dinged for is if you’re actively on a drug and driving, in which case – DUI.
Please, please, please tell EMTs what you took. They’re not going to rat you out to the cops and even if they did, you will still be okay.
Spreading the word, being honest with paramedics and doctors can save your life
doctors: GOOD NEWS EVERYONE we have found a treatment for diabetes it’s called insulin! people won’t die from this illness anymore if we just give them insulin isn’t this great news?
united states of america: how about we make it so poor people have either limited to zero access to this insulin?
doctors: but don’t we have enough resources to provide for everyone in need of such a medication?
the united states of america: yes!
doctors: isn’t that genocide
united states of america: YES
united states of america fist pumping and chanting ‘U’ ‘S’ ‘A’:
capitalism is genocide
i usually don’t add to posts i reblog but as a type 1 diabetic this makes me so fucking angry.
i have an insulin pump. each time i change the port (basically what connects it to my body, similar to an iv) i use about a third of a bottle refilling the cartridge. i change it every three days, so one single, 10ml bottle of insulin lasts me around nine days.
i had to look this up because my parents don’t like to tell me how much my supplies cost. (for reasons like this. i feel guilty for my t1d. i shouldn’t have to feel guilty about an autoimmune disorder i was born with.)
you know how much it is for that one, single 10ml bottle of insulin, for those without any insurance?
$328.
for nine days.
$328 for a nine days supply of the medicine that i literally need to survive. the medicine that once i become an adult and have to take care of myself, i will have to pay for. the medicine that unless, by some miracle, they find a cure, i will need to take for the rest of my life. $328 for nine days of my life.
wupacing 