Worst state you've been in due to substance abuse

[Commander]

Justification?

Well, tell us, are they?

It really is worrying when 'qualified youth workers' have the view that a girl who was sexually abused and turned to drugs 'made her own choice'. People like this should not be allowed anywhere near this sort of work.

It's just as worrying that there are still people who think that the way to beat the drug problem is to pretend it doesn't exist. Unbelievable.

I guess allowances should be made for these people as they seem to be over 60, and are from a different time when you weren't encouraged to think yourself and make your own decisions rather than just accepting the opinions of authority, but even so, it's still a bit sad.

Drug use is absolutely rife in this country, and people who think it isn't are either completely in denial or totally out of touch with any sector of society other than their own. I'm 32, I know very few people my age or under who haven't touched drugs in some shape or form. Are we all living on the streets giving hand jobs for crack? Er, no.

Most people grow out of it, a small amount don't and go off the rails. If all drugs became extinct, would that save these people? Of course it wouldn't. Some people have a self destruct button, for various reasons. If it wasn't drugs it would be something else (gambling, alcohol, football violence etc). Getting to the root cause of the reason why people go off the rails is the way to help these sorts of people, not making them criminals or blaming it on evil drugs. It's like saying the reason the Holocaust happened is because there was too much gas available. Ridiculous.

I am genuinely trying to think of a single person I know, who is my age or younger, that has never touched drugs. I honestly can't think of one. I assume the Yorkie's and Uncle C's of this world will think I must have been brought up in some kind of down-and-out ghetto, rife with crime, drug lords, black people and prostitution. A kind of East Sussex favela. And that I must be an addict, along with everyone I know, injecting heroin into my eyeballs and burgling houses for my next fix. That's not quite how I remember the Sussex countryside, but hey, they know best, drugs are bad.

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

Well, tell us, are they?

It really is worrying when 'qualified youth workers' have the view that a girl who was sexually abused and turned to drugs 'made her own choice'. People like this should not be allowed anywhere near this sort of work.

It's just as worrying that there are still people who think that the way to beat the drug problem is to pretend it doesn't exist. Unbelievable.

I guess allowances should be made for these people as they seem to be over 60, and are from a different time when you weren't encouraged to think yourself and make your own decisions rather than just accepting the opinions of authority, but even so, it's still a bit sad.

Drug use is absolutely rife in this country, and people who think it isn't are either completely in denial or totally out of touch with any sector of society other than their own. I'm 32, I know very few people my age or under who haven't touched drugs in some shape or form. Are we all living on the streets giving hand jobs for crack? Er, no.

Most people grow out of it, a small amount don't and go off the rails. If all drugs became extinct, would that save these people? Of course it wouldn't. Some people have a self destruct button, for various reasons. If it wasn't drugs it would be something else (gambling, alcohol, football violence etc). Getting to the root cause of the reason why people go off the rails is the way to help these sorts of people, not making them criminals or blaming it on evil drugs. It's like saying the reason the Holocaust happened is because there was too much gas available. Ridiculous.

I am genuinely trying to think of a single person I know, who is my age or younger, that has never touched drugs. I honestly can't think of one. I assume the Yorkie's and Uncle C's of this world will think I must have been brought up in some kind of down-and-out ghetto, rife with crime, drug lords, black people and prostitution. A kind of East Sussex favela. And that I must be an addict, along with everyone I know, injecting heroin into my eyeballs and burgling houses for my next fix. That's not quite how I remember the Sussex countryside, but hey, they know best, drugs are bad.

This this this.

 

[Husty]

Anyone here who is under the age of 50 who's attacking people that take drugs?

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

Thank you for calling me a liar. You have perceived it to be that way. I said there was a choice, which is different.

A poster suggested that drug addicts might be the victim of broken families, society etc. Your direct reply to this was

That sounds like a case of blame shifting to me. A person has a choice to take drugs or not to take drugs. They cannot blame the law or broken society for their choices.

If in your mind they cannot blame outside influences then in your mind the drug addict is to blame. I then raised a case about a young girl and your response was similar. How else am I supposed to 'perceive' your reply other than the victim is to blame? You have said yourself they cannot blame outside influences, so who/what else is there left to blame other than the individual?

 

[Uncle C]

 

[Commander]

View attachment 57671

View attachment 57672

Great response. What's your point?

 

[OzMike]

To be fair, I think the most criticism will come from parents, like myself.
We try to instill some sort of balance in the kids and keep quite about this sort of behaviour in our past.
I experimented like most youngsters, I had good and not so good times.
It was more about smoking and drinking in those days.
It just seems to have taken on a whole new persona now and has become almost obligatory, which is worrying.
I fear for my kids, as dealing with a drunk is one thing, but a meth head is something else.

 

[The Kid Frankie]

Great response. What's your point?

You know what I think he could actually be on a wind up here. No one can be that blind to reality.

 

[Nibble]

Bloody hell the castle, that's a blast from the past! Two friends of mine from Brixton used to dj and mc there around 98 when garage was still refered to as underground! The old landlord Lee? Used to turn a blind eye to everything in there and if I recall he was exposed for it in the local rag shortly after he left.

Yep, that place was my Friday pub for a couple of years in the 90's. I had to knock it on the head, even just a normal night on a few ales would turn into chaos by 10 pm. You ever drink in the Desert Rat? Odd place!

 

[Simster]

To be fair, I think the most criticism will come from parents, like myself.
We try to instill some sort of balance in the kids and keep quite about this sort of behaviour in our past.
I experimented like most youngsters, I had good and not so good times.
It was more about smoking and drinking in those days.
It just seems to have taken on a whole new persona now and has become almost obligatory, which is worrying.
I fear for my kids, as dealing with a drunk is one thing, but a meth head is something else.

I've concluded that the best thing I can do as a parent is ensure that my child is honest with me. If my kids want to try drugs, there really is very little I can do about that - but I'd rather they were able to tell me they had done so.

As for Uncle C, all his posts are exactly the same - angry, sanctimonious, tedious and dull. This subject matter was always going to attract him like a fly around shìt. Why he couldn't just f*ck off and leave us normal people to enjoy it, I really don't know.

 

[Stumpy Tim]

I remember this one surprisingly well. I was 17, and had decided to nip round to my best mate's before we went for a night out on Cleethorpes seafront. Fortunately for me, my mate's house also happened to be a corner shop which his mum and dad owned. As was customary at the time, we slyly helped ourselves to a bottle apiece of booze from behind the counter. Since we were effectively stealing his mum and dad's stock we never took the expensive stuff, so my weapon of choice that night was a bottle of cheap as fúck whiskey. The sort you could clean your toilet with.

From here we walked a few doors down to the house of another mate who had already been joined by several other friends of ours. As I supped my way through a couple of cans of cheap lager, I began to hatch a plan. A plan to look not only cool, but also hard, in front of my pals. Since I was immortal, or at least I assumed I was at the time, why not pour a pint of my cheap as fúck whiskey into a glass and down it? In one. I couldn't think of a good reason not to so, having pitched the idea to the room and having received much encouragement, I began to pour whilst simultaneously attaching a Tesco bag over my ears and under my chin in anticipation of the inevitable chunder that was to follow.

1, 2, 3, and down we go! Shítting hell, that was easy. I hadn't actually considered that I'd be able to do it, but it turned out that this particular brand of cheap as fúck whiskey was smoother than expected and there I was in a room full of astounded teenagers with an empty glass and a belly full of booze. Strong booze. You'd be forgiven for thinking that at this point, I might feel a bit shít, but other than a light sweat I felt fine. I suspect I may have smelled like shit, but I felt as fit as a fiddle.

And so, having all but forgotten about my amazing feat, out on the píss we went. And that was all fine for the first hour or so until things started to kick-in. And boy, did they kick-in. Within the space of about 10 minutes I'd gone from relatively sober to as píssed as I've ever been, either before or since. Speech was out of the question, walking was fast on it's way out and my vision was limited to a vague impersonation of reality, blurred and in slow motion.

With my last remaining ounce of sensibility, I calculated that I probably wasn't going to see this night out and decided that I best attempt to head home. Anyway, it's only about 3 miles back to my mum and dad's house. Piece of píss.

I began to slowly slalom my way home, sometimes on on my hind legs, other on all fours. But one inch at a time, I was going to make it home. What I found odd at this point was that despite the fact I was so incredibly píssed, I didn't actually feel sick. At all. However, that didn't mean that my body's internal chemistry set wasn't hard at work. Something was brewing, and that something was heading south. Fast. Faster than I could walk home anyway.

And there was another problem. It was only about 9:30 in the evening. And it was July. A lovely summer's evening and it was barely even dusky. I'm walking through a residential area and everyone has their curtains and windows open - I can't just pull my keks down and take a shít in the middle of the street. Can I? Ah fúck it, of course I can. Pants round my ankles, I start the job, but I'm clearly not a well boy and have a weapons grade dose of diarrhea. And of course, since I'm in the middle of a densely populated street, I have no toilet paper to hand. Never mind, I've only got about another mile to go, it'll be alright.

And I make it. I don't know how, but I've made it home. Now I may be home, but I'm not in good shape as I crawl onto my mum and dad's porch and headbutt the door in order to get their attention. Naturally, my dad's a little surprised. He was enjoying the final moments of Holby City whilst tucking into to a Chinese takeaway and he's not expecting me home for hours. He's even more surprised to find his incapacitated son lying prone on the floor, pursued by what can only be described as a giant breadcrumb trail of human shít (and, I think, a little bit of píss as well).

It would appear that I didn't do quite as well with my impromptu-poo as I had first thought. Rather than depositing onto the street as I had imagined, I'd instead caught pretty much the whole lot in my underpants. Some of it remained there, but the lions share had slipped and seeped its way through my jeans, down my legs and onto (not to mention into) my shoes. Somehow, somewhat gravity defying, it was also up my back as I lay there like some kind of oversized, drunken baby. I know it's hard to quantify this, but there really was a lot of poo. Ever so much. Think of the most poo you've ever seen in one place before, and it was probably at least three times as much as that.

And there, as my dad looked down on me not knowing whether to beat me senseless (I was pretty much already there, to be fair) or call for an ambulance, my night ended as my whole world slowly faded to black. Possibly for the last time, I really wasn't sure.

I don't really like whiskey any more.

Possibly my favourite NSC post in the 17 years I've been posting. Top top work

 

[Commander]

To be fair, I think the most criticism will come from parents, like myself.
We try to instill some sort of balance in the kids and keep quite about this sort of behaviour in our past.
I experimented like most youngsters, I had good and not so good times.
It was more about smoking and drinking in those days.
It just seems to have taken on a whole new persona now and has become almost obligatory, which is worrying.
I fear for my kids, as dealing with a drunk is one thing, but a meth head is something else.

I'm a parent. You say it was more about smoking and drinking in those days, but that doesn't make it any better. But yes, dealing with a meth head is something else altogether compared to dealing with a drunk. But that's part of the point a lot of people are trying to make on this thread; being a meth head is entirely different to being someone who does a few lines of coke at the weekend or takes a couple of pills in a club. It's this 'drugs are drugs, all drugs are bad' mentality that is the problem. Plenty of them are no better or worse for you than alcohol, which if it was invented today would be illegal, and probably class A. Yet alcohol is one of the cornerstones of this country's make up. You have to admit that's a bit weird.

 

[Simster]

Yep, that place was my Friday pub for a couple of years in the 90's. I had to knock it on the head, even just a normal night on a few ales would turn into chaos by 10 pm. You ever drink in the Desert Rat? Odd place!

It hasn't been the Desert Rat for 9 years. It's the Venture Inn nowadays. Decent THAI food in there but no illegal narcotics, sadly.

 

[The Kid Frankie]

To be fair, I think the most criticism will come from parents, like myself.
We try to instill some sort of balance in the kids and keep quite about this sort of behaviour in our past.
I experimented like most youngsters, I had good and not so good times.
It was more about smoking and drinking in those days.
It just seems to have taken on a whole new persona now and has become almost obligatory, which is worrying.
I fear for my kids, as dealing with a drunk is one thing, but a meth head is something else.

Education without biase is key. My folks came at it from that perspective, and I still experimented myself and came to my own conclusions. After I turned 18 I used to have the occasional joint with my old man. Even once at a football match, but that's another story...

I now have the occasional dab in the white stuff (twice a month tops if it's a special occasion) and maybe a joint every couple of months. My old dear is aware of this and she knows that I know my boundaries After my experience described in the original post I am now not willing to try anything that would take me out of my comfort zone, so no meow, ket, E or MDMA or anything of that ilk.

The only side effects I have is feeling absolute shite for a few days after a heavy session at a gig or something.

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

Great response. What's your point?

I guess it's a "look what drugs do to you". I was thinking of posting a picture of Nigella Lawson. She's completely screwed her life up. Maybe Bill Clinton? But I cannot be arsed.

 

[Uncle C]

Why he couldn't just f*ck off and leave us normal people to enjoy it, I really don't know.

So taking drugs and giving in to the fact your kids will take drugs is normal. Glad my dad wasn't like you.

 

[Nibble]

It hasn't been the Desert Rat for 9 years. It's the Venture Inn nowadays. Decent THAI food in there but no illegal narcotics, sadly.

It couldn't last. I've not been out in Reigate for 18 years! I'm getting old.

 

[Nibble]

So taking drugs and giving in to the fact your kids will take drugs is normal. Glad my dad wasn't like you.

Most kids will try drugs at some point. By far the substance they are likely to get into trouble while under the influence of is alcohol. A 17 year old smoking a joint is not half as annoying as a drunk 17 year old.

It's vital to speak to your kids ad be honest about drugs. If they are angrily told all drugs are bad, when they do them and if they get into trouble the last person they will come to is an aggressively anti drug father. I know because my Mum was just like you, I never told her anything after aged 15.

 

[Simster]

So taking drugs and giving in to the fact your kids will take drugs is normal. Glad my dad wasn't like you.

Yes it is.

I'd imagine your Dad was basically dougdeep. Like father like son and all that.

 

[spring hall convert]

Saw a mate go from casual weed puffer to heroin in the space of a year. We locked him in a room once and he was eating his own shit and trying to bite off the door handle. Not a nice sight. We got him help in the end��

That sounds a horrifying experience for all involved and well done for getting them help.

However, the gateway arguement is flawed beyond belief. All pot smokers likely had a drink first. Does that mean drinking causes pot smoking - no way?

Education about drugs in this country is nearly as bad as sex education. We need to take a long hard look at whether we want to prepare kids for the real world or leave them up s*** creek without a paddle

The David Nutt research, is as close as we've got in my time to having a reasoned debate about this. Unfortunately, it was shouted down by the usual small c conservatives

http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2010/11/drugs_cause_most_harm

The one thing that will change this debate (and has already started to) is the economics. We are spending more money on "The War On Drugs" than ever. It has been a catastrpohic failure. Is there any other policy we have slavishly followed for 40 years, that has failed so comprehensively?

Crimilising responsible recreational drug users is mental. Treating addiction as a crime rather than a disease is mental. We are literally throwing money into a drain.