I’m pretty libertarian in regards to things like drugs and sex, and am an addict myself. How would you guys feel about a harm reduction drug use sub forum?
Good in theory, but it's a fine line to walk between harm reduction and harm enabling
I hear ya opiate addiction runs in my family. My dad overdosed on the stuff and I ended up a pain pill and heroin addict. I don’t even think I’m going to pursue the idea, I don’t want anyone uncomfortable that was my last intention. I do wish we were able to block people though, would make my life a hell of a lot easier.
I was just seeing how others might feel about something like that.
Ah, so you took the same path I did. Shit sucks doesn’t it?
Maybe down the line when the site is a little more developed it’s something that can be looked at again.
Yeah I have some friends with the same background that ended up with none of the baggage that I ended up dealing with mentally. They got lucky and didn’t get the mental illness or addiction gene.
Were opiates your doc as well? Shits incredibly tough to get off of for me. I miss my dad immensely so yeah all that crap sucks. You’re right though things could always be worse for us
The original libertarians were leftists, American libertarians co-opted the shit out of the term.
I lean towards anarchism basically
Nah I'm a shithead but thanks. I think practicing harm reduction is very important and a form of praxis for our comrades.
I like most of your posts, you don’t give yourself enough credit methinks.
Anyways most definitely agree about some sort of harm reduction forum being a good thing.
Take this to commrequest and see what everyone thinks, I can't see why people would object.
Admitting you have politics they'd love to jail you for and then creating a space where people with those politics can admit to local and federal crimes? What could go wrong?
In my opinion unless the admins were very heavy handed any "harm reduction drug use" sub would sooner or later turn into a pro-drug meme sub, full of 420blazeit weedbros, and way too many marijuana memes escaping to other subs. It's one of those spaces you'd have to heavily moderate. (That or it would be so dead as to be useless for the purpose of advice for harm reduction)
I guess my question is do such spaces not exist elsewhere? What's the specific benefit of it being here?
Other points:
The fact is there are also kids here so I hear, is it right to expose them to this stuff?
Consider also people who have struggled to get clean and are browsing this site for solidarity seeing something that's basically triggering to them and their impulses and previous bad habits. Is it right to do that to them?
I’m sure the admins could handle moderating a subforum about drug use. To be frank about the memes and users, who cares? There are plenty of obnoxious memes and users everywhere on the site already. Either way, the admins and more could handle it fine I’m sure.
Spaces exist elsewhere, but a lot of them are pretty reactionary towards drug users and we aren’t exactly treated the best. I just figured a leftist space with these discussions would be less reactionary and more tolerant (though some users in this thread have me questioning that assessment)
They’re teenagers, not children they’ve probably already seen plenty of drugs and most of them probably already smoke marijuana at the very least
The last one I can understand being a concern, but that would fall to the moderation team To keep the posts in check and make sure they’re being made where they’re supposed to be.
I don’t even think I’m going to pursue this idea at this point anymore. Enough people seem weirdly upset by it that I think I’m just going to drop out.
It was just an idea
Rachel was a user who did meth. She ended up permabanned after a long, drawn out process.
https://hexbear.net/post/76878
https://hexbear.net/post/43205
https://hexbear.net/post/42670
She got doxxed and has a history of bad behavior. It didn't go well.
I don’t think one weird person should ruin a potentially life saving aspect of the site for everyone else. Seems like a clusterfuck though and her telling people to ‘kill your self’ is repugnant and foul
What does this have to do with her drug use? Poor opsec and being a jerk isn't a symptom of substance abuse problems.
It has to do with stigma, which is a problem that this thread reveals is WIDESPREAD in left spaces that aren't clearly anti-authoritarian.
Next they will come for the sex workers: the irresponsible fucks are spreading covid, I hear. Whatever tool is at hand to demonize and control the other.
Just give it time. These people will come out of the woodwork in a place like this, especially since downvotes are disabled for better or for worse.
idk, people are going to do whatever anyway, making a forum isn't going to force people to become addicts, and with enough sense i definitely don't think it would enable them either
I like this idea, but we really shouldn't do it until there are keyword filters and the ability to block users. Also it should be setup such that it can't show up on the front page. You should have to intentionally click into the comm in order to enter it. Perhaps have an option buried in the user settings that allows you to enter the comm.
For all those asking what the point is, it is nice for people with substance abuse problems to be able to vent and share their frustrations with each other. For those who dabble and are not addicted, it's nice to be able to share trip reports and experiences. And doubly so to be able to talk about those things with fellow comrades instead of the reactionaries over at reddit.
If you are actively using and aren't yet intending to quit, that rules out posting such things in the recovery comm. It's also not good to have drug related posts on main like we're doing right now, so unless we're going to ban drug posting, we should have a containment comm for it.
It shouldn't be any more of an opsec problem than anything else on this website so long as the moderators remain vigilant and crack down on sourcing attempts with an iron fist.
Agreed 100%. I get people are uncomfortable with the idea right now, the woman further down made some very good points, she also was in agreeable once there are ways to block out certain things on the site it would be a cool thing to revisit
It would be nice to talk to more experienced addicts about what to avoid and mistakes and advice also without the prejudgement of other reactionary shitholes about this stuff.
If you don’t see the point, you must not have ever had an active addiction. Some of this information can be invaluable and talking about with people who won’t judge you is invaluable as well
Right I’m an active heroin/opiate addict and have been for a long time. The reason I find that a subforum would be good especially on a leftist subforum is because as I said, the other places are pretty reactionary in their attitudes towards drug users. Harm reduction is nothing, but a positive, to be frank I don’t even think this should be controversial just like something like insite shouldn’t be controversial.
I don’t know. I don’t care that much, it was just an idea. Again I’m pretty libertarian in my drug use and think it’s something that should be discussed openly if you do it without shame. I understand others don’t particularly agree with that stance.
It was just an idea that I don’t think I’m going to pursue anymore. I don’t want to get anyone upset.
Sure, I don’t even think I’m going to pursue it anymore. Too many people don’t seem comfortable with the idea and I don’t want to step on anyone’s toes or make anyone uncomfortable
It's always going to make people uncomfortable. Should we stop moving toward communism because it offends a large proportion of people right now?
Enough people will come around when they see something functional arising. And for the ones who don't, well, I personally don't give a fuck about their discomfort with change.
I'm a square but yeah this could work. Maybe more knowledgeable comrades could provide resources for those in need and stuff like that. I can imagine every place has different services available to help.
Also maybe more experienced users could provide their experiences on how to avoid over dosing and the like. Also what to do when recovering from a bad trip or something.
Need to clear with mods first to see If they gonna be held liable or not.
I think if done right it could work pretty well, a certain amount of people are gonna do drugs either way so it's always good to have some good advice floating around out there.
This is my line of thinking. However, I also don’t know the legal implications such a subforum might bring.
I think r/opiates has gotten plenty of hate mail from parents who’s 20 something year old son Oded and they blamed the harm reduction forum instead of the fentanyl in the heroin
Yeah, the legal side is a good point too, I guess it's worth the mod/admin team working out the potential ramifications of it
I personally think it's a great idea but it might get us in trouble with the law? IDK how that works.
I'd be interested in that, but there's a couple things to keep in mind. There are some good points raised in here about how such a sub could be harmful to recovering users, so it probably won't be a thing until keyword filters are in place. That's something the mods are already working on for other reasons, though.
Another point is that the drug war has always been used against leftists in the US. It's always been much easier in America to jail somebody over posession of a schedule one substance than to jail somebody over being a leftist. I mean, if the feds are seriously out to get you, they don't need you to post on here about how you just picked up a bag of molly to do that, but it's an additional risk you're exposing yourself to. I'm also assuming that the average user here is not on a list of the ten most wanted antifa extremists in the US, so your risk of getting into trouble hugely depends on how easy it is to pin something on you. But not all of our posters are American, and not all drugs are illegal, and not all talk about drug use equals admitting to a felony. Under my jurisdiction, writing out detailed death wishes for public figures and celebrating arson is a higher legal risk than writing out a trip report or giving information on how to wash your speed. This point is very hard to generalize, but it's something that requires a lot of user discretion regardless and having a dedicated community just for drug topics will nudge some people to incriminate themselves.
There's also a site-wide security concern in that becoming a drug marketplace is a good way to get the site shut down. If you look at existing drug sites, these tend to have strict rules against sourcing in place, even for legal substances or for stuff that's in a legal grey area. This is also a problem for people outside of this place. I was around for the big RC hype of the early 10s and i'd definitely say that too much publicity is the main factor in getting new drugs banned and getting vendors shut down. This also applies to ways to buy drugs irl if you don't have a stable connect. If every "where to buy acid outside of the darknet" request is met with half a dozen people saying "just go to (x) type of party and ask around, look out for people like (y)", you're pointing law enforcement in the direction of that scene and these people. Who gets frisked for drugs is based largely on heuristics. Most of these heuristics are outright racial profiling, but some are also based on visibly belonging to certain subcultures or being in the wrong place (a public square were drugs are sold, a club known for widespread use etc.). Talking about drugs always leads to the "where to get drugs" question and answering that question is usually problematic. If we'd be building a containment comm for this purpose, it may also be a good idea to deactivate DMs there to reduce the amount of people DMing each other to find hookups.
Then there's the point that people on here vary wildly in how they respond to drugs. It's very easy to forget that vulnerabilities vary so much. I've never had a problem with polydrug use, i could always leave it at just experimenting or stuck to taking my favorites two or three times a year. So i'm in a much more privileged situation than many other drug users. Then i run into people who actually need opioids for pain mangement, or people who have fought with addiction for decades, or people with some pre-existing health issues that make taking drugs i handle easily really dangerous for them.
It's a complicated issue. I see a lot of good reason to have a place where we can share ressources on this subject, unbiased and accurate information is absolutely crucial if you want to be reasonably safe about your use. There's a lot of that information out there already, but that info is spread far and wide and it's generally a good thing to be able to point comrades in that direction. I don't view that as enabling in itself, either. But how we deal with this is tricky. Like, when i post about drugs on here, i'm always holding back a bit. I know i can write about drugs in a way that makes people want to take drugs, and i want to avoid that. But i also think that our society needs to build a better culture around drug use, one where people act based on knowledge instead of scaremongering. And that is an issue that is relevant to the left, as both the drug war and other aspects (like how a deeply consumerist culture abuses drugs and how drugs fit into material conditions that are often hard to bear without chemical copes) are issues that can only be properly adressed from a leftist perspective.
