http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304626804579358943360702878
Sad to hear of his passing
Sad to hear of his passing
I just heard about this. Only 46. Looking forward to the results of the investigationhttp://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304626804579358943360702878
Sad to hear of his passing
Unfortunately, no, an addict will never learn that if you clean up for a while, and then relapse, you cannot go back to shooting what you last shot when you were using without overdosing. That's how they wind up dead.First thought by authorities is a drug over dose. Will they never learn.
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/philip-seymour-hoffman-dead-capote-3106362#.Uu6Y53ddV5k
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...r-winning-actor-dead-Manhattan-apartment.html
Today I've been thinking a lot about the death of Philip Seymour Hoffman, and the resultant media reaction to it, and how so few people comment on what, to me, is the real tragedy. There are no known cultures where psychoactive substances are not consumed. Ours, along with fundamentalist Islamic culture, are the only ones to condemn and criminalize drug use. Except, with ours, alcohol, which is far more dangerous than all the other drugs combined. Deaths from drug overdose are almost unheard of in cultures where drug use is accepted as a normal part of life.
Hoffman didn't die from Heroin, he died from an Overdose of Heroin. He died alone, because he was ashamed of his addictive genetics, and because he could have been arrested if he had been in public. He died, like pretty much every other heroin addict, because he had no way of checking the purity and potency of the drug he wanted to use. He guessed the dosage. He guessed wrong.
He was previously treated for addiction to Oxycontin, which is legal, and virtually the same as Heroin, which used to be not only legal, but popular recreationally amongst the intellectual class in the 19th Century, and was used medically for the same purposes as Oxycontin is used for today. But Oxycontin makes billions of dollars in profits for Purdue Pharma, so it’s legal. And expensive. Heroin is just as safe and effective, but cheaper and easier to get, so people who get addicted to Oxycontin switch to Heroin.
Perhaps 15% of the population has the genetic traits that predispose them for addiction, (which is also why it's so hard to get smoking rates below 15%). So we have all these laws in place to protect us from the genetic disposition of 15% of the population. Which makes as much sense as having laws against homosexuality. And the laws do nothing, except arguably to make the situation worse, because the stats show rising rates of drug use when you criminalize, and dropping rates when you legalize.
The tragedy is our culture is so stupid, that we allow ancient religious moral laws to influence us so gravely. The UN Convention on Narcotics reads like a manual for social and behavioural control, like something a protestant evangelist might preach. Our attitudes towards drugs are so deeply ingrained now we think they’re normal. They’re anything but. They’re ridiculous. Tragically ridiculous.
That was thoughtfully written. I also read he had been sober for over 23 years and had just fallen off the wagon again sometime last year.From a post on my Facebook feed today: