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.
IMO it should. I've known enough alcoholics to know even hearing brand names is triggering. It's incredibly difficult to stay sober when you're constantly being bombarded with advertisements, stores having it out in the open, etc. I imagine alcoholics on hexbear probably want to come here and not have to worry about it.
As for tobacco, it's not life-ending or anything...until it is. Don't know if people here are struggling with emphysema or cancer or anything, but again, it's one of those things easily triggered by even mentioning a brand name. I'm a former smoker and will sometimes get cravings from weird places, though I can't say I've struggled abstaining from tobacco use. For others, it's incredibly difficult.
I don't know anything about marijuana/THC addiction to have an opinion.
Runs in my family. It's an incredibly disrespected plant. Shit ruins lives just as effectively as anything else if it's done too early, too much, too long or if you just got dealt a shitty hand. I take breaks but I always come back to it, it's impossible for me to know if that's entirely free of addiction factors. It's definitely habit forming which is another aspect of addiction that is sort of under appreciated.
Still don't have a strong opinion on how it should be treated on HB, my personal biases are too strong.
Definitely cooked a couple brains in my family