Heroin Helper Blog

A reader has chastised me for neglecting this blog. I think that if I post a couple of articles per week I'm doing pretty well. But I see the problem: I'm a binge poster. It isn't just here; look at FC. But the problem is worse here and I will do my best to change things. Having said that, it may get even worse, because I'm thinking of starting a computer oriented blog—something like MarkZuckerbergIsEvil.com (shockingly still available).

You may have heard about the heroin burrito case. Henry Marin, a courthouse worker, was charged with trying to smuggle 24 grams of heroin in a burrito into the Los Angeles prison. The 27-year-old Marin recently took a plea deal for a 2 year sentence even though he claims to be innocent. In general, I'm willing to believe an innocent person will take such a deal, because it happens all the time. In Marin's case, I am skeptical. He was facing a maximum sentence of only 3 years if he went to court. One year was all he got for the chance to exonerate himself?

What's more important is that the length of the sentence does not matter in the grand scheme of things. The really bad thing is that Marin will now be labeled a felon for the rest of his life. Yes, he may eventually have the felon expunged. But there are many jobs he will never be allowed to take. I think his chances of getting a security clearance are pretty low. Good luck getting elected to the school board. And most of all: good luck having anyone take you seriously, because they will always dismiss your opinions as the ravings of "that heroin smuggler."

When Jack Abramoff got out of prison, he immediately had a big money book deal. He was wanted all over the TV box and the Internet machine. He was credible because he was a known truth teller. No, wait; he was credible because... Let me think. Of yeah! He was credible because he got rich subverting our constitutional democracy! His life ought to be good.

Now that kid smuggling the drugs? The rack!

Afterword

This is the kind of article that will be visited by people who read about the "heroin burrito" case and are so angry they've got to find out more. So don't be surprised if some idiot comments, "Heroin bad! He should get the rack!" Another possibility is, "Abramoff was listened to because he was talking about how what he did before was bad!" This is harder to counter given that it is partly true. However, regardless of what you think about heroin, what Abramoff did was far far far worse than what Marin did. Yet even without the book, there would have been a high paying job for Abramoff when he got out. There will not be for Marin. And there will probably not be for the rest of his life.

I was thinking about Jeffrey Schaler saying in Addiction is a Choice that he has a few drinks each night and perhaps a couple of cups of coffee each morning. In this way, he is like a vast number of very normal people throughout the western world. It made me think of a song I like musically, but of which the lyrics have always struck me as incredibly patronizing: Paul Simon's Everything Put Together Falls Apart. I can't find the original, but here is MayerVW doing a really excellent version:


I suspect that Simon was not referring to coffee and alcohol. Nor was he referring to my own vicious circle of antihistamine (diphenhydramine) and tea (caffeine). But frankly, I don't see this being any different than diet pills (amphetamine) and anxiety meds (benzodiazepine). Of course, anything can get out of hand, even coffee and booze. And it is even more likely when the drugs are illegal.

Having someone like Simon moralizing to what are most likely people in a trap looking for a way out is not helpful. But the jazz chords help.

I just picked up Jeffrey A. Schaler's Addiction is a Choice. It is a small book, but interesting. I am a little skeptical of some of the things he says, even though I largely agree with him. I came upon the book by doing a search for "Alcoholics Anonymous Cult."

My main problem with it is his idea that addiction often masks other psychological problems. This may be true in some cases. But I think it opens the door for more of the same kind of 12 Step ridiculousness, only this time from the field of psychology.

It all seems very simple to me: if your drug use causes problems in your life and you don't think it is worth it, you should stop. It is like the old Henny Youngman joke: "I went to the doctor and told him it hurts when I do this..." He raises his arm. "And the doctor said, 'Don't do that.'" Of course, the only kind of psychology that I think much of is behavioral.

Anyway, this is from the back cover of Addiction is a Choice:

This annoyed me:


This is in reference to DEA Administrator Michele Leonhart's refusal to say whether a variety of drugs were worst for someone's health than cannabis. Leonhart kept restating that all illegal drugs were dangerous. I find this logic far more compelling than that of L. Joy Williams and her panelists.

Williams says, "Heroin is worse than marijuana." My first reaction is, "And you know this because of all your experience with heroin? With all your research of heroin? Isn't it just that when it comes to both drugs you except the prevailing view? Isn't it true that if you were having this conversation in 1955, you'd be claiming that cannabis was very dangerous?" I find Leonhart at least consistent: if it is illegal, it is bad; why else would it be illegal? The common liberal view is ridiculous: "What is used by people I know must not be bad."

I'm not saying that heroin is not more dangerous than cannabis. I truly don't know. I don't know of anyone ever injecting THC. I do know of a friend who took a small dose of THC orally and had various and intense physical and mental discomfort. The problem I have with Williams[1] is that she has had an awakening about one drug but is blind to the limited thinking she still has about other drugs.

Williams continues, "Alcohol, you know, can be worse than marijuana in some instances as well." I think she should come right out with it. I would prefer, "Alcohol, you know, can, if it is shot right into your eyeball, be worse than marijuana in some instances but only when the moon is absolutely full and the sun in eclipsed."[2] Yes, we have to tread very lightly talking about alcohol. Why? Because whether she admits it or not, Williams is fundamentally in agreement with Leonhart: if it is illegal, it must be harmful.

Finally, we get to perhaps the most annoying thing of all. "That's a whole history lesson in terms of why marijuana is illegal in the first place." My first question: if you know this, why do you use the term for cannabis that was invented to vilify it and associate it with Mexicans? But mostly, I am just back to my previous point: can you really be so ignorant to think that cannabis became illegal because of racism, but the other drugs became illegal because they were "bad"?

In case readers aren't aware: cocaine was made illegal because it was associated with blacks, especially in the south. As I recall, in the congressional record of the Harrison Narcotics Act, there is discussion of coked up blacks raping white women. Opium was the first drug to be made illegal in the United States. Because it was harmful? Of course not. It was made illegal to get the Chinese. And again, there were lots of claims that white women were coming to opium dens, and getting high where the evil Chinese men could have their way with them.

If L. Joy Williams doesn't know these things, we are lost. But then you already knew that, didn't you?

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[1] Williams is the co-host on the excellent This Week in Blackness. I have long been a big fan of Elon James White:


[2] Fun Astronomy Fact: a solar eclipse only happens during a new moon.

Yesterday, I wrote a pretty harsh review of Chris Hayes' new book, The Twilight of the Elites. However, there is much to like in the book. I thought the following quote was a good one for people around here to read:


Of course, Hayes says this in the context of, "This is why it will be easy to get the upper middle class [What I call the rich. -FM] to fight the existing order." I fear that Hayes has a few things he could learn from his old man.

The USPS has issued a stamp collection celebrating Miles Davis and Édith Piaf—two junkies, it turns out, but that isn't why they were selected for the stamps. Although it does sound like it would make a great series: lickable junkies. Or stickable. I don't know.

I knew who Miles Davis was, of course. I have many of his records—Kind of Blue is one of my all time favorites. I even know how he stayed on his father's farm to kick dope. But Piaf? I've heard her sing—I think everyone has, even if they don't know it. If you've heard a French female vocalist from the 40s or 50s, it is probably Piaf. What's more, the song is probably La Vie en Rose. But I, like most people, didn't know anything about her life.

But first, a song: Hymne à l'Amour:


Piaf died very young, at 47. But the story that Wikipedia paints of her life is the same story that is told about Charlie Parker and Billie Holiday: drinking and opioid abuse cut the great artist down before their time.

I hate to sound like cannabis smokers who are always pointing out how the world would be better off with their chosen drug than with alcohol. But the truth is that both cannabis and opioids are better addictions than alcohol. All three of these artists have given so much to the world generally and me in particular. But none of them died because of their opioid use. It is hard to say what Parker died of—he was never that healthy. But he would have died soon anyway from cirrhosis. Holiday did die from cirrhosis. And Piaf died from liver cancer.

Each of these three were known to be heavy drinkers. Each of them seemed to die as a result of their drinking. And yet, people focus on their opioid use. What's more, only Holiday is what we would consider a recreational user. Both Parker and Piaf seemed to be treating problems that doctors couldn't or wouldn't.

Despite all they've given us, our society holds them up as object lessons of the evils of drug use. What they are are object lessons of the evils of our ignorant, punitive society.

Billie:


Bird:

Last week I read on Wikipedia about rats and their affinity for morphine. I was going to write something about how people do drugs because they like them. It is a small point, but one that bugs me: many people think that drug seeking behavior is purely dysfunctional. My position is that drug seeking behavior is rational, even if it can become a trap. But as is often the case with Wikipedia, when I went back, the phrase I was looking for was gone.

In searching, I happened about the following discussion of morphine and rats:


The Rat Park experiments are indeed very interesting. And it is a welcome counter to the disease theory of drug addiction. The idea is that environmental deprivation is what causes addition. I accept this to a large extent, but my thoughts are more nuanced. I would say that people will tend to avoid becoming dependent upon a drug if they live in a varied and engaging social environment. Many people become dependent out of boredom. The situation is complicated by the fact that heroin addiction (for example) generally provides a life style that is highly engaging, difficult, and rewarding. I have long felt—with much justification—that providing drug addicts with job training would be far more effective than providing them with "drug treatment." Even though I disagree with the details of the Rat Park experiments, I think we agree about this conclusion.

What is interesting about the Wikipedia quote is that the footnotes are not to articles that directly relate to the material. For example, footnote [17] refers to Weissman and Haddox's "Opioid pseudoaddiction—an iatrogenic syndrome." This paper is about a single human patient who, when under-treated for pain begins acting like a drug addict. The fact that this is considered an important finding is indicative of the poor state of drug addiction research. It implies that scientists thought that drug addicts acted as they did because of some special property of their drug addled minds instead of their rational attempt to relieve pain.

The second footnote [18] is Xu et al.'s "Effects of enriched environment on morphine-induced reward in mice." This article only refers to the second sentence, "More recent research has shown that an enriched environment may decrease morphine addiction in mice." However, its results are interesting. It found that mice placed in better environments "kicked down" their habits voluntarily. Again, this should come as no surprise. Human addicts do this all the time. What's more, drug taking activities are all about controlling a person's environment. No one questions this when it comes to doing more drugs, but it is suddenly a shock that it can also lead to doing less drugs. This comes from the strangle hold of the paradigm of the "irrational drug user."

This is even seen in the abstract for the article itself:


The idea that drug addiction is an "extremely serious problem" is not even questioned. In fact, this is a tautology: drug addiction is a serious problem because it is a serious problem. Because we know it is a serious problem, we make it illegal. This makes it more expensive both economically and socially. Users of banned drugs are pushed to the margins of society. They are arrested and pushed even more to the edge of society. Because of this, it is almost impossible to say what harms come from drug addiction. (We do, however, know that the effects of opiate addiction in the 19th century were minor compared to them today.)

The use of the term "drug abuse" is also a curious term to find in a scientific paper. I'm never quite certain what we are to think is being abuse. Is it the drug? If so, it makes no sense. One would never say we are committing nail abuse when we hit it wrong and bend it. Is it the person? Again, this makes no sense. It reminds me of nothing so much as the old term "self abuse" for "masturbation." But lest we forget: masturbation and homosexuality were psychological diseases not so very long ago.

We will never make any real progress in the science of addiction as long as we assume that drug addicts are irrational. Just as a person is the same after his morning cup of coffee as he was before, so a person is the same after taking heroin as he was before. One might be a little more alert and the other a little more drowsy, but they are still rational human beings. We need to treat them as such.

Update

I found it! It was under Brown Rat:


Rats do morphine for the same reason they do many other things: they enjoy it. This is only a difficult concept for those in the drug treatment industry.

There is more and more reasonable thinking coming out of the south. Watching the United States over the past two decades, I've gotten a really good idea of why empires fall: they get stupid. When you're rich, you can do things that don't make sense. Countries like Mexico can't. Their policies have to work. From the New York Times:


Of course, this doesn't mean that the United States won't use its power to force Mexico to continue their stupid policy. After all, that's why they had the policy in the first place.

America's drug problem—whatever it decides that might be—is just that: America's drug problem. It needs to solve it and stop forcing other countries to destroy themselves in the name of solving it.

Charlie Sheen is crazy, but that doesn't mean he's wrong:


It's not the whole quote, but more would only illustrate further that the man is crazy, and I think we all know that. Not that there's anything wrong with that. We expect our artists to be at least a little crazy. At least he isn't crazy the way Mel Gibson is.

Just a few comments:

1. Twelve Step programs are cults. I'm sure I'll write more about this in the future.
2. I suspect that 5% success rate is an exaggeration. Regardless, the question is: what is the success rate above nothing at all? And the answer is: zero.
3. I'm glad that Sheen is off what seemed to be cocaine. But are we really to believe that he wouldn't be better off on something like Xanax?
4. Sheen is right that he is special. We all are. The only way past any important problem in life is to redefine yourself—not erase yourself.
5. When I hear the disease myth of drugs coming out of Sheen, it takes some of its credibility away. Luckily, it seems that he accepts it. He is simply saying that he is not diseased. This really isn't open to debate: drug use is never a disease.
6. The answers lie within ourselves.

Feed your head!


For the record: I have no recollection of the Dormouse ever saying this.

Update

I was unclear when I wrote, "I suspect that 5% success rate is an exaggeration." I meant it was too high. Figures I've seen in the past put it more in the 3% range. Sorry for the confusion.

There is always much to write about here. Unfortunately for this site, I'm focusing on another project. However, the stop and frisk programs are always on my mind.

To give some idea of how bad things are, statistics released by the New York Police Department in 2007 showed that in the previous year they had stopped over a half million people. These we mostly white businessmen. Just kidding!

There is starting to be some organized push back against these clearly unconstitutional policies. Head of the Black Law Enforcement Alliance and former NYPD detective Marquez Claxton has stated publicly that the New York City Police Department's stop and frisk policy is absolutely applied racially.

What's more important is the NAACP is really stepping up. I've long been disappointed by the group. Although they have given some lip service to crack cocaine sentencing disparities, they've been fairly mute on the drug war generally. And why wouldn't they be? Drug felons make such ugly defendants.

Rosa Parks, for example, was not the first person to be arrested in Montgomery for not yielding her seat on a bus. Civil rights advocates passed on two other women. One, Claudette Colvin, got pregnant after her arrest. We can't have any of that. Another, Mary Louise Smith, had a father who was rumored to be a drunk. Scandalous!

Drug felons are, by definition, not lily white. So all civil rights groups—not just the NAACP—have shied away from them. So it is good to see some of them starting to move in the right direction.

Today, the 55th annual Puerto Rican Day Parade is getting political. According to NY1 News:


What's more, the NAACP has other events scheduled. And perhaps best of all—for reasons that go far beyond drug law—gay and black civil rights groups are working together to fight stop and frisk.

The caffeine must be kicking in, because I'm feeling kind of hopeful.

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Some of the information in the article comes from (Do I have to say this again?) the excellent The New Jim Crow, which you should read. If you're planning to buy it, click over to FC and use an Amazon link there so I make a couple of cents—as much as 40 cents!

The whole line wouldn't fit: "There are complex problems inherent in the bureaucratic institutions of the state but there's no one to blame. It's a vast array of personal interests that undermines the overall system." That line does get to the heart of my problem with The Wire. It was was always way too damned earnest. It also tended to infantilize drug users and focus, of course, on the power brokers of the system. Having said that, it was a lot better than most of what passes for drama. This is very funny:

There is a bit of news regarding New York City's "stop and frisk" violation of the constitution. It seems that lawmakers from minority areas are pressing Governor Cuomo to do something about this:


There are two reasonable things to think about this. The first is that this is good because the program will not be as discriminatory as it has been. The second is to think that this is just a way to justify continuing on with a discriminatory program. Regardless, this is all about keeping black and brown skinned men down.

Mayor Bloomberg, for his part, wants to keep punishing these people. The fact that liberals support him just goes to show the pathetic state of liberalism in the United States. Apart from reproductive and gay rights, there is no such thing as social liberalism in mainstream America.

This is a good discussion of voter suppression:


What I find really interesting about it is all that has to be shown is that the net effect of a law causes a minority group to be disproportionately disenfranchised. That is as it should be, of course. But drug laws disproportionately affect black and brown skinned people. And yet, the courts have found again and again that unless it can be shown that in a particular case that racial bias was the intent of the law enforcement officers involved, there is no foul.

This is relevant because the best way to disenfranchise a voter is to label him a felon. Does this suggest that there might be a way for people who want to end the drug war to make some progress in the courts? I don't know of any group working on this.

Again: read The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander.