Here we go again, one individuals actions cause this...

[LemonDiesel]

I feel like this might be a topic that might upset some, I dont mean it in a disrespectful way, but I turn on the news and the whole nonsense story about Matthew Perry the dude from Friends now has a drug Ketamine, that is really the last thing we should be concerned about, in the spotlight.
Its not that Im saying that the guy deserved it, or anything like that but now because of what I truly feel in that particular situation he did make choices that it was on him to not overdue it, this is something that wasnt spiked or fake or synthetic. It was measureable medication that has helped alot of people. Dude abused it. They said i believe he had 3 doses that day, not a lot really. Now the doctors are of course to blame.

It to me is extremely frustrating b/c young people are dying at a sickening rate young people, unknowing individuals looking for relief and because its such a liability for doctors to even give a thing out for pain. So ppl then turn to street products, which are at least in some areas of the country flooding in and are mde to be indistinguishable from acttual pharmaceuticals. Which I actually kind of want to open a seperate thread addressing what we should be doing to combat that issue.

I know we are living in some pretty hyper sensitive but I just feel like suddenly sh*t matters b/c its an actor...That kinda sad, i mean i feel like im more and more just finding myself to be completely not understanding people. I think its always a tragedy when someone loses their life from drugs but that, then literally almost everything else in society feels like...honestly embarassing. I really just am someone who goes off of rationale and logical thought, it seems to be more and more of a thing of the past.

Im curious others thoughts

 

[LemonDiesel]

So Perry paid the one dude 55k for ketamine, I mean well if he spent that mucch on the streete...need I say more? he had only 27 shots. He clearly wasnt exactly a genious in this whole thing. I do apologize if anyone is taking this the wrong way or simply i guess bothered by this thought but I feel like we are all responsible for our own actions. If something happens to me and its not from a fake pill, even if it is...I did make some choices. However most of the time I do feel that its the fake drugs that look like real ones that are straight up undenuable in the fact that they are poison, not meant for anyone who doesnt have an already insane tolerance, that idk why we are just looking the other way... it make oxycontin look like a lite drug. Just saying idk anymore.

 

[khov]

I feel you... I think it's just a matter of time that ketamine is put in a negative light. Though to be fair it is the one substance that seems to have gone in and out of healthcare's good graces.

 

[jaders]

So Perry paid the one dude 55k for ketamine, I mean well if he spent that mucch on the streete...need I say more? he had only 27 shots. He clearly wasnt exactly a genious in this whole thing. I do apologize if anyone is taking this the wrong way or simply i guess bothered by this thought but I feel like we are all responsible for our own actions. If something happens to me and its not from a fake pill, even if it is...I did make some choices. However most of the time I do feel that its the fake drugs that look like real ones that are straight up undenuable in the fact that they are poison, not meant for anyone who doesnt have an already insane tolerance, that idk why we are just looking the other way... it make oxycontin look like a lite drug. Just saying idk anymore.

Totally agree with your thoughts. We always seem to need to blame someone else for our actions. It’s very frustrating especially since if we continue to think this way it means the government has the ok to step in and decide what is good for us and what is not since we’re unwilling to take responsibility for our own actions.

If someone sells something and misrepresents what it is, that’s one thing. But no matter who sells a substance that is what they said it was - that’s on the person who ingests it. Don’t know how it can be seen differently…

 

[alumni]

There is a very old adage that says, "The dose makes the poison."

 

[jaders]

There is a very old adage that says, "The dose makes the poison."

Too bad the powers that be don’t believe that old adage…

 

[notcharlotte]

@LemonDiesel i agree with your points. perry obviously had no control over his addictions, but what killed him was the combo of the med and the hot tub. then he had a heart attack i believe.

ketamine is supposed to be given in small doses in a clinical setting but he decided he liked it and wanted more. that was his decision but of course blame must be attached in this society. i feel sorry for his pa who no doubt felt he had to do what his boss wanted. there's a witch hunt whenever a celebrity overdoses.

look at all the pain patients suffering because of addicts. i hope the same doesn’t happen to ketamine but ketamine poisonings have increased the past couple of years, due to people abusing it. people with treatment-resistent depression will no doubt suffer.

 

[enigma]

@notcharlotte totally agree. As an example, I sometimes fall asleep sitting upright in my bed after taking sleeping meds and browsing the Internet. If I was in a hot tub I'd drown! And addicts overdose every day and there aren't any investigations but because he was a celebrity blame has to be apportioned on others. Don't get me wrong, I have huge sympathy for Matthew Perry, I really do, but he unfortunately succumbed to his addiction.

 

[alumni]

@notcharlotte ... but he unfortunately succumbed to his addiction.

I guess that is one way to assign responsibility for his sad passing.
However, Matthew Perry was, in my opinion, poisoned by those people in his life who continued to supply and inject him with obviously unsafe doses of ketamine until eventually they killed him.
The legal system will ultimately sort it out and we'll see if these characters are found guilty and punished for their contributions to his death.
I personally hope so.

 

[forestry]

I feel you... I think it's just a matter of time that ketamine is put in a negative light. Though to be fair it is the one substance that seems to have gone in and out of healthcare's good graces.

Ketamine definitely has had a convoluted history in the medical industry. It is only recently that it has been reintroduced for a completely new clinical purpose. use in treatment-resistant depression. And it has shown great efficacy. Fortunately, ketamine doesn't really kill people on its own, so I would predict that it is safe for a while. Especially since we have all of these other crazy novel opioids being pressed into pills with god knows what tranq.

To be honest, if we get to a point where ketamine plays the role of one of the big bad boogeymen, I guess that we have made a lot of progress compared to where we are.

 

[jaders]

@notcharlotte ... but he unfortunately succumbed to his addiction.

I guess that is one way to assign responsibility for his sad passing.
However, Matthew Perry was, in my opinion, poisoned by those people in his life who continued to supply and inject him with obviously unsafe doses of ketamine until eventually they killed him.
The legal system will ultimately sort it out and we'll see if these characters are found guilty and punished for their contributions to his death.
I personally hope so.

So if someone dies from alcohol poisoning are the liquor store clerks to blame?

I’m sorry but your belief about who’s responsible exemplifies this whole issue of blaming the suppliers but not the “demanders.” If the substances that Perry sought were all legal we would blame no one but him. But the reason those substances ARE still available despite their illegality is because there is demand for them.

As long as we think the suppliers are the problem we will forever be stuck with an ever increasing and ever more dangerous war on drugs. It’s after all, what keeps the cartels going.

Where is personal responsibility? No one held a gun to this person’s head. He made the choices and he certainly had the funds to make any choice, including treatment, that he wished to.

When will we ever learn this ironclad law of human nature - as long as there is demand, there will always be supply.

Do we think prostitutes are the ones to blame for the “johns?” Of course not. (Well at least I hope not.) And sadly we just haven’t learned that trying to get rid of supply never ever works. Our drug problems just grow ever worse and will continue as long as we approach it from this same mistaken manner…

 

[McFearless]

I worry about what this is going to do to the success people have been having with low dose ketamine, and at home "large dose" ketamine. Earlier this year I tried it out because I know a few people who have had life changing experiences with it. I was fortunate to find a prescriber only 20 minutes from me, and once I met him I found out that he's growing his entire practice around Ketamine therapy, and is one of the largest prescribers in the US via telemedicine, and has staff that are licensed in pretty much every state. Ultimately I chose not to continue on it. I got the prescription in the from of some large tablet that dissolved in my mouth, and I tripped my ass off. It was interesting, and amazing, but the hangover from it the next day was awful, so I discontinued. I may try again with microdosing (small daily doses that don't mess you up). This news about Perry worries me because I've heard several news reports with medical experts saying that the government needs to start investigating these prescribers. What Perry was doing should not destroy all the progress that ketamine has made in other people's lives, and I am worried it's heading in that direction.

 

[jaders]

I worry about what this is going to do to the success people have been having with low dose ketamine, and at home "large dose" ketamine. Earlier this year I tried it out because I know a few people who have had life changing experiences with it. I was fortunate to find a prescriber only 20 minutes from me, and once I met him I found out that he's growing his entire practice around Ketamine therapy, and is one of the largest prescribers in the US via telemedicine, and has staff that are licensed in pretty much every state. Ultimately I chose not to continue on it. I got the prescription in the from of some large tablet that dissolved in my mouth, and I tripped my ass off. It was interesting, and amazing, but the hangover from it the next day was awful, so I discontinued. I may try again with microdosing (small daily doses that don't mess you up). This news about Perry worries me because I've heard several news reports with medical experts saying that the government needs to start investigating these prescribers. What Perry was doing should not destroy all the progress that ketamine has made in other people's lives, and I am worried it's heading in that direction.

This issue with some folks abusing something so no one else should have access is so frustrating. We just don’t have this attitude with alcohol despite its so obvious destruction of so many lives yet we immediately jump to this notion with everything else (well except guns too.)

The arbitrary picking and choosing of what is ok and what’s not based on a few people’s misuse of things just shows again how quick we are to blame everyone else but the person who actually chooses to misuse. And so we have to have our nanny state government decide for us what we can and can’t imbibe. Gawd I get so sick of it all…

 

[alumni]

I don't think this is complicated. If anyone's willful actions result in another person's drug overdose death, that is the definition of manslaughter.
Also, more and more, prosecutors are even treating these kinds of overdose deaths as homicides.
Consider the drug dealer who intentionally juices up tramadol tablets with fentanyl. One pill is ingested and someone's young daughter overdoses and dies. There has to be accountability for bad actors like this regardless of their intent.
There appear to have been a cast of bad actors in Matthey Perrys life and they should be held criminally accountable.

 

[jaders]

I don't think this is complicated. If anyone's willful actions result in another person's drug overdose death, that is the definition of manslaughter.
Also, more and more, prosecutors are even treating these kinds of overdose deaths as homicides.
Consider the drug dealer who intentionally juices up tramadol tablets with fentanyl. One pill is ingested and someone's young daughter overdoses and dies. There has to be accountability for bad actors like this regardless of their intent.
There appear to have been a cast of bad actors in Matthey Perrys life and they should be held criminally accountable.

If someone misrepresents a substance, I agree with you wholeheartedly. And this of course is the danger of making folks seek substances on the street rather than have them legally available, as we do alcohol.

But if someone sells someone else a substance that is exactly what both parties expect it to be, to me the only one who should be held accountable is the person who actually put that substance into their body. Essentially they are the one who killed themself by that lone act.

Again - if we ever expect this drug war to end or even grow smaller, we have to stop approaching the issue from the supply side and address the demand. It is wishful and unrealistic thinking to believe that removing one person (a dealer) along with a small amount of a drug has any impact whatsoever on the larger scale. But we keep hammering away at this approach as we watch the problem grow larger and larger…

 

[McFearless]

@jaders I couldn't agree more with pretty much everything you said, and I don't think it will ever change. Not in the US anyway. They love telling us what we can and cannot eat, what drugs we can and cannot take, and it's by design, and because of money.

 

[alumni]

Personal opinions aside, we will see who is ultimately held accountable for Matthew Perry's death.
In the past, I've been involved in many discussions about this subject. Overall I believe that determining the cause of a specific overdose death can be much more complicated than just holding the deceased accountable.

 

[jaders]

Personal opinions aside, we will see who is ultimately held accountable for Matthew Perry's death.
In the past, I've been involved in many discussions about this subject. Overall I believe that determining the cause of a specific overdose death can be much more complicated than just holding the deceased accountable.

It may be more complicated but I believe it's only because we are so baffled by what drives demand. Why does someone continue to do self destructive behaviors rather than seek treatment? Of course the basic reason is due to the reward in the moment versus the discomfort of delaying gratification, but one wonders why we can delay gratification in any number of areas, but when it comes to this intense chemistry in the brain, we have no idea why a person will take such chances to gain that feeling of reward.

The fact that it IS so complex is why we ignore demand and just keep thinking if we just keep the destructive substances out of reach, our problems will be solved, imho.

I still believe wholeheartedly that if we put in the same or especially more effort into addressing what actually drives demand we might actually see some gains in this area.

 

[jaders]

@jaders I couldn't agree more with pretty much everything you said, and I don't think it will ever change. Not in the US anyway. They love telling us what we can and cannot eat, what drugs we can and cannot take, and it's by design, and because of money.

Personally I think it "could" change if our willingness to take personal responsibility for our own actions were to strengthen. I honestly think we LET and even WANT our government tell us what to do just so that we CAN avoid being responsible for ourselves. It's so much a part of human nature to want to pass off the bad experiences to something or someone else, instead of looking at ourselves and our own decisions with clarity. Whole cults are built upon this tendency in humans to want others to tell us what to do and how to live. To me that's the basis of religions and heavy handed governments. If someone else feeds us the rules and the "answers," we don't have to deal with the anxiety that's involved in figuring it out for ourselves, and we get to piss and moan about how stupid those rules are since we feel like we didn't make them.

Anyway, it's an interesting discussion, but I feel extremely frustrated with how often humans want to abdicate responsibility for their choices. It's certainly at the basis of why we have to go thru this nonsense of buying unsafe drugs over the internet rather than actually working with a healthcare professional who would allow us to make informed choices, while still allowing us to have the ultimate say over what those choices are.

 

[notcharlotte]

@jaders i have a feeling perry would have continued to make poor choices, as he was an addict. he even needed a sobriety coach on the friends set, so many years ago. celebrities use their power and money to force others to their will. i looked up the case and he definitely was involved with some shady characters but to be real he sought them out. i still think the assistant was forced into this, due to his job and the power imbalance. what's missing from the news is perry's culpability. he apparently asked for his assistant to "load him up a big one." maybe it's just the questionable reporting but they make out perry to be a victim. (i don't know much about ketamine, as i thought it came in pills. at least perry had the nous to get regulated prescription drugs)

i just resent that the few real addicts like perry ruin things for everyone else. addiction is a disease and an awful one. yet we do wave off alcoholism because it's legal while drug deaths set off a feeding frenzy. addicts should be removed from the discussion, not used by the government to limit everyone else. plenty of people can have a glass of wine and stop. plenty of people can take their prescribed pks for years with no problem. what's the difference?

i remember a similar witch hunt with anna nicole smith. she used aliases when getting prescribed meds to avoid press and blame was placed on her bf/lawyer. he was finally acquited (he forced her to hide her identity? seriously?) i felt sorry for the guy because no one forced anna to mix chloral hydrate with her cocktail of drugs. the poor guy spent years in court fighting the charges before a judge dismissed the case, saying the guy had suffered enough (and cost the government 500k to boot). who decided to waste public money on such a bizarre charge?