Neuroscientist Dr. Carl Hart: People Are Dying in Opioid Crisis Because of Politicians’ Ignorance

@SteelHands How enlightened.

@Graylight I am. And so will you be after enough of your drug addicted friends go to prison for killing someone while robbing them to get enough money for their fix.

So will you after you spend weeks watching helplessly and doing all you can helping someone kick smack, only to see them OD anyway a year later.

So will you when you are the guy someone calls to walk their husband in circles out in the yard to keep them alive while waiting for the ambulance and the eppy stab to save their life.

So will you when someone starts pulling out a rig and fit in front of your little ones as if it's normal to mainline smack in your living room.

So will you when you go to enough funerals, trials, visit family members living in anguish for decades.

One more thing. Fuck off.

@SteelHands Again, how enlightened. And how presumptuous to think you know my experiences.

@Graylight If you're an addict you're a liar.

If you're an addict you only care about yourself.

If you're an addict you'd steal medicine from a sick baby.

If you're an addict nobody should trust you.

If you're an addict you could be led into doing just about any crime, even of the most horrible kind by anyone that can control the drugs you're addicted to.

If you're an addict you've probably caused many people harm and loss already.

If you're an addict I know all I need to know about you. And I'll be honest with you. Anyone who knows how worthless, hopeless and dangerous you are, if you are an addict, hopes you'll die soon too. They just don't want to hurt ppls feelings.

And one other thing. I don't hate drug addicts. I just hate every single thing that I know they all do, just like I have heard them tell me they themselves do also.

So if you're a drug addict spare me your fake, drug injected temporary pride and remember to remind yourself all you have left when you come back down is the self pity you began with.

You can hate me all you want but that won't fix those cold sweats and shakes. You can feel all the rage you got its not gonna save you from that fire under your skin or that pounding sledge hammer in your gut. You can fly off into whatever crazy tirade you want now but it's not going to heal your liver when it gets tore in two, or make your brain start working again after the drugs kill most of it.

I'm telling you that leather bindings and a jar full of muscle relaxers and mountains of wet towels and crowds of medical help and family love couldn't stop the a dog returning to its vomit. And it was a conquerer among the most mighty of men.

You're an addict?

Type nothin.

Read it.

Now look in a mirror.

I not only don't need to know you I pray to God heaven I never even see another one of your kind.

That's not judgement.

I'm just not into filth and horror.

If you're an addict, you're sick, just as if you had cancer or diabetes.

If you're an addict, your brain manufactures and loses neurotransmitters differently than other brains.

If you're an addict, you actually process and metabolize drugs differently than others.

If you're an addict, you can see everything you love and treasure lost to you and be helpless to stop it.

If you're an addict, you can literally die trying to stop the addiction.

And the other things you mention? All true, too. Addicts are self-interested, reckless, thoughtless, often criminal, certainly to to be trusted. But not because they choose this; because they've got a physical condition they can no longer control.

I've seen hundreds, maybe thousands of addicts. Some are lost casues, some die, and some go on to become better people with greater dignity and character than you or I could hope to attain.

You sound as if you've been hurt and betrayed by addiction. Your point of view is understandable and natural. All I'm saying is there are other perspectives and realities, too.