Hey, sorry Carcosa and others if this isn't the right place but I don't have the energy to get myself back on the matrix shit.
I have a very simple proposal which I believe will not stigmatise anyone nor stifle discussion etc, but would benefit a vulnerable segment of the hexbear community. I don't know if this is actually "simple" in practice because I don't know if the codebase supports this.
- confine all in-depth discussion about drugs and drug use to the c/drugs community
- remove c/drugs from the local/all feed
- link, clearly, to c/drugs from the sidebar so it is easy for people to find the community and the information or discussions they are interested in
Speaking as a trans person, this is hands down the best site for my people on the entire internet. We are a statistically vulnerable population, we need safe spaces for our discussions, we can rarely participate in the rest of the internet and/or real life without running into some fuckin bullshit that we shouldn't have to. Hexbear is different. Hexbear provides it all.
Speaking as an active drug addict, multiple-time relapser and veteran fuckup, I believe the recovery community is similarly statistically vulnerable, has to live in a world that normalises alcohol and other types of drug consumption, etc.
Speaking as somebody who was at one time a habitual methamphetamine user, I can attest to the fact that for some of us (and I've heard of this before I ever got that far down the path) the way, for example, news sites / tabloids etc, love to put a meth pipe on the cover or headline article whenever they have an excuse to attract attention- simply seeing those photos can be a relapse trigger.
A photo of a filthy pipe that I did not choose to look at but was right there on the cover of a fucking newspaper while I was in a shop, has in the past triggered me into recurring dreams of getting high, followed by days that feel like lost progress as I found myself fighting intrusive thoughts, impulses and romantic nostalgia trips that would have led nowhere good.
I've lost a lot of people to addiction, a variety of ways. My community, the trans community, notoriously loses a lot of our people to addiction.
I believe it would be wise for us to start posting with consideration about these topics and to be aware that there are users amongst us who are white-knuckling their way through a process of recovery that will take some of them years if not the rest of their lives.
I think it's worth the small burden of effort on the part of the drug using and drug agnostic segment of the community to post with an eye to harm minimisation and that includes protecting our recovering users from relapse triggers.
It should be on us, the posters, and on the site (if it's feasible) to put these discussions in a place which has to be actively sought out to be found.
We can provide the signposts in the sidebar, I don't think acknowledging that drugs exist is the problem here, it's the fact that c/all can throw a curve-ball at you at any time. We shouldn't expect recovering addicts to visit the drugs community and elect to block it, we should hold ourselves accountable and recognise that what might feel like a harmless discussion might be somebody else's trigger point.
I'm thinking very specifically of the ketamine discussion in c/cth yesterday. It's hard to talk about these things without potentially triggering that "romantic" connection some of us have with our drugs of choice. It would be better and more thoughtful to partition these discussions away from the most prominent and accessible feed.
Again, sorry for not visiting on matrix. I hope this post is appropriate. I'm just trying to be informative and I think I've recognised a pretty serious blindspot in our otherwise excellent site culture.
I hope the changes I propose are already supported by the software. I don't think I'm asking for much. I've probably written more on the topic than I needed to. But I don't think this is the sort of change that would or should upset the community.
Please.
Edit: If we have a recovery community it should probably be treated likewise. The post titles alone can be a trigger.
and I don't have a solution for how to treat alcohol in this. It's not a major issue that I've noticed but I just don't know. Alcoholism is one of the most destructive and the most pervasive. But THAT might be a bone of contention for some users so I elect to leave it out of this proposal.
Content warnings for these things outside /c/drugs would probably be beneficial.
What about emojis?
Asking the real questions. Like why are there not more blunt smoking emojis (for me to use responsibly in a CW'd posting environment?)
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tobacco
You know, I misread the part about in-depth discussion, I thought it was about mentioning drugs. I don't think there's ever been much in-depth discussion of the drugs I mentioned, so probably not an issue to resolve in the first place
Yeah, mentioning it in passing isn't a big deal but here's one about cigarettes that I think would be worthy of a content warning as an example. If you recently quit smoking, I wouldn't recommend opening this because it's an intentionally triggering statement to make things clear
CW: Cigarettes
I just fucking love Newports in the winter time, it's the greatest goddamn feeling. The mix of my menthols with the cold air just hits me right, especially with a nice cold cup of water with it. It's even better when there's snow outside and it's a little humid but not too humid. I'll just chainsmoke out on the back porch with some tea sometimes, it just makes the whole thing feel natural to me.
Fill that in with any other drug, and it should either be in /c/drugs or have a content warning imo. Most people who use the drug comm don't even talk about drugs that way, but I've seen some comments like that about alcohol and weed in other comms. Like I said, I'm not personally bothered by it, but some people have already spoken to me about being uncomfortable with the drug conversation on Hexbear.
every time I scroll past this now I want to bum a smoke and I only read it once. I don't even smoke lmao. Excellent example.
Yeah I feel like a casual mention of sucking down cigs while you cope with a situation is not something CW worthy.
The fuzziness of this question (where to draw the line) might indicate we need to think more about just nudging the culture if and when it backslides, requesting mods move threads to the appropriate communities and perhaps make zero changes to the actual function of the site.
Edit: to clarify, I also think casually mentioning a drug use in passing of any kind is possibly low-risk, hence the "in-depth" part of my post. It's when things get focused and upbears and replies draw attention to them that they start to gain more visibility and more likely to expose vulnerable people or draw them into the "collective rationalisation" of normalised substance use.
yes i concur