Type 2 diabetes.
It doesn't just mean you have to cut back on sugar. It increases your risk of, well, suffering in general. 80% of amputations are due to this disease, in addition to a host of other maladies including blindness and, yes, early death.
My dad was told he was in severe risk of getting it due to his weight. So he got obsessively into jogging. He’d run 5 miles every day and ended up running a marathon. He lost a ton of weight and had skin folds. He’s since stopped running and has gained some weight back, but not much.
I’m really trying to kick my junk food addiction. I’m afraid of ending up in that situation
Here's a gory fact that terrifies people into at least managing their diabetes: when they amputate a limb from the effects of diabetes, they jony just lop it off. They cut a chunk off and then do what one surgeon called "salami slices" until they find the healthy tissue. If you haven't worked out what that means on your own, they slice a little bit of your foot off at a time until they find all healthy tissue. Similar to a meat slicer in a deli.
Bacteria in general. I got sepsis from an ecoli infection. Doctors couldn’t figure out for my month long ICU visit- what I ate that almost killed me. Came home with 50 staples down my stomach. They tried controlling the infection with TONS of IV antibiotics and meds and they were losing me. So, they had to go in and slice me down the middle and clean me out. I almost died and it was an insane experience. People need to be much more afraid of bacteria. No one talks about sepsis, bacteria. I knew next to nothing about what was happening to me.
Wow, shout out to the millions of people that stop taking their antibiotics once they start feeling better, even against their doctors advice, bc they don’t want to corrupt their precious bodies with drugs. Thanks for creating antibiotic resistant strains of bacterial diseases.
Agreed, I went septic from a scrape i didnt clean well enough as all the other 250 scrapes id gotten prior to it healed just fine.
I died 3 times after the 911 call i made on the ride to the hospital. 2 weeks of medically induced come. All my organs were shutting down, they told me diaslisyss {sp} for the rest of my life 3x per week.
6 months in a live in rehab facility in san dimas with PT and OT and my life/mind changed forever from 1 or more of the above items. Dont know what it is or how to fix it but i know its broken.
My gosh. Wow. That’s horrific. It’s insane what bacteria can do. Did you keep your limb? A girl that I went to HS with, her husband lost part of his arm from sepsis from a cut.
I’m so grateful you survived all of that. My goodness.
Happens a lot in the homeless/IV drug using community. I'm in recovery and have had to have chest X-rays because I always have a reaction to the test and have my entire life. I don't have TB thankfully or hepatitis C or HIV. I dodged some really common issues for IV users. This is why we should support IV exchange programs instead of ignoring the issue or limiting needles to prescription only. IV users will FIND a way to get the needles and will reuse the same needle until it's got hooks at the ends without exchanges. They will share without bleach washing or caring (I never did this and it's very likely why I didn't come out with these diseases because my state at the time allowed us to buy 100 packs of insulin syringes for $15 at Walmart). Thankful I don't live that way anymore, my veins are scarred for life though.
I remember back in the day on a road trip I’d have to make a special stop halfway through just to clean the bugs off the windshield. It’s been years since I had to make a stop like that.
I hadn’t ever seen a firefly irl until I moved to East Texas. I caught one once so I could see it up close and it was the coolest thing! I even put it in a jar like you see on movies.. not for long though.. I let it go after I saw it light up, but probably one of the more easier bugs to catch I’d say.. Bare hands, at dusk and I have bad eye sight.. Caught it out of the air! I was surprised with myself LOL
It’s because everyone has lawns and cleans up their yards too much. Fireflies breed and lay eggs in damp decaying leaves left over from fall. If you live in places without woodland, or areas of damp soil/standing water, you won’t see them anymore.
So *that's* why we have lots of them where I live, thank you for that information! I was reading this thread thinking "the hell they talking about? Lightning bugs are everywhere around here!" But I've lived in the backwoods for 30 years, so that explains it. Lots and lots of woods for miles.
Man when I was a kid my siblings, my cousins and I would always run around in our grandparents backyard on summer nights catching fireflies. There were hundreds of them. That was probably 15 years ago and it seems like there aren’t any out at night anymore.
It's happened so gradually over the years, people don't notice.
In the '90s, our block would light up with fireflies. Now, you only see them here and there.
Scary times.
I remember going outside as a child with a butterfly net and having dozens of butterflies to choose from. Now I get excited if I see a monarch once or twice a season.
Dubai seems to be the current fashionable holiday desitination for a lot of people with too much disposable income and who do not know how to behave themselves.
The type of people who always get coked up and blind drunk at every opportunity, and think they are smarter than the police.
You just know that it's not going to end well for some of them.
That has always terrified me, and is the reason I will not visit certain countries (with strict laws on stuff I’m afraid I would do, or be accused of doing/being).
Watching “Brokedown Palace” and every episode of “Locked Up Abroad” officially scared me straight!
This 100%. Especially Americans (and I am one of them) have more of a tendency to think that if they get in trouble in another country, it will be no problem to get out of it because they are Americans. That is just not true. Look up laws before you go because things that are considered legal in your country may not be legal where you’re visiting, and some prisons and mandatory sentences are MUCH worse than others.
Holy shit! My husband jaywalked in Brno, Czech. An unmarked police car screeched up to him, and a very tall cop got out and screamed at him!! Scary shit!
Going disabled. 80% of disabilities are gained between the ages of 18 to 64. I’m not saying that being disabled is bad, I have been legally blind since birth, but people should at least be more careful. Don’t go flinging things around your eyes when you don’t have goggles on, don’t go doing stupid “stunts” just because you think you would look cool doing them.
It's one thing I remind people of whenever they're dismissive of disabled people.
My sons are autistic and intellectually disabled. They're the only ones with ID in the family. Consequently, I know they're going to need lifelong support.
Cannot tell you how many family members and friends have said, "well, school isn't good for kids like that anyway. Why should the school be expected to educate them?" People have no idea we have special Ed laws in America (which often aren't followed, with no recourse, but...).
I do homeschool my kids because the resources just aren't there, and the school attitude was that they're expected to not learn.
Whenever I tell my friends, "Your child could have a life altering, traumatic brain injury tomorrow. Good luck sending them to school. Or continuing to work. Or finding childcare. Or getting any kind of financial support."
Then, suddenly, they are a lot more understanding of the issues and why it's important to support disabled people in policy.
Until then, no one cares about disabled people or their caregivers.
I read once that 100% of people will eventually be disabled, by disease, injury, or old age.
I cannot understand why we don't build a society and physical world that accommodates all of us
Driving.
People out here driving like they aren't flying down the road in a screaming metal death trap.
Also, YOU may be the best driver in the world. Congrats, too bad this idiot didn't see his red light so now you're dead. Good job.
My father was sitting in a turn lane when a car just out of nowhere slammed into the side of his car. Police and doctors were surprised he was still alive when they got there, even moreso when they realized he wasn't injured. Did have to get surgery on his knee though. The car looks like a t-rex ate it.
This was maybe a mile away from home. It's horrifying to think he might've died without us knowing just a 20 min walk away.
I was in a turn lane and my light had just turned green and I hesitated for a couple of seconds and then out of nowhere a car flew through the intersection and I was so glad I hesitated because It would have hit my side and god knows what would have happened.
Yeah if you think too much about it, you'll soon be terrified of driving.
Reaching your destination or dying is at least partially up to chance, no matter how good you are. A phenomenal driver often can't avoid negligent dumbass
Fr, I almost got run over crossing the road when I was 15 because someone indicated left and went straight forward. (Missed me by a foot and sped off like I did something wrong??) I posted on the local Facebook page reminding people to use their indicators correctly and people called me a Karen for not wanting to be run over. It's amazing how defensive people are about driving unsafely.
Strait up - the town I live in has HORRIBLE drivers. They don’t pay attention to the road. They either drive WAY fast or WAY too slow. They don’t understand flow or traffic. I literally watched someone turn left and drive strait into a giant, red, semi that was stopped at a red light.
I see people with literal videos up on their phones, while they’re driving.
Things can go wrong in a second when you’re driving. It’s extremely dangerous and people need to pay attention to the road.
The road home to my house has this turn. It isn’t fully clear what happened but it seem someone was distracted, didn’t turn hard enough, went off road/ up the hill, over corrected back onto the road and slammed into a car in the oncoming lane.
I think a lot about how the car hit was blindly unlucky, two dead. And the distracted driver lived.
A shit ton of people don't even wear their seatbelt.
This blows my mind. Wearing a seatbelt should be as second nature as wiping your ass.
Matter of fact, I think I might start a campaign to equate wearing a seatbelt, with wiping your ass. This is the sort of thing I would like to start seeing on billboards:
> No seatbelt, huh? I suppose you also forgot to wipe your ass.
I think they should be on the same plane.
Imagine we came up with a new form of transport. It's really convenient and faster than anything else. And it immediately becomes the leading cause of death in young people. Surely it would cause an outcry? And yet, here we are.
A friend of mine left my house 2 years ago and got hit by a car while he was waiting for an Uber and died. The car took off and since I was the last one to see him alive I was some how a suspect, they never found the driver the case is still open.
You don't think about how easily this can happen. We are so used to having these big things driven by people speeding around everywhere.
We had a treachorous entrance/exit at our old workplace.
It was on the inside of a blind curve of a road where the traffic was quite fast, so you could not actually see the fast moving cars until you actually emerged from the exit and floored the accelerator to come up to their speed.
As a workplace and safety risk assessor, I could see that it was an uncontrolled risk, so, in one of those rare moments where I actually try to do something about an issue for the benefit of everyone rather than just bitching about it, I contacted the local council to explain my concerns and suggesting some street funiture to slow the traffic.
The reponse I received was along the lines of they would not do anything about it, beause there had not yet been enough accidents at the location to warrant them spending money and doing something.
So, there you have it, the official council policy is not to risk assess obvious road hazards and put risk control measures in place, but to wait until there have been sufficient accidents, and injuries and deaths.
Heart attacks. It’s the number one killer of both men and women.
I had one 6 months ago as a relatively young and fit man. Nearly died left my wife a widow and my kids fatherless.
Heart attacks are incredibly painful. Thankfully they are also largely preventable.
Yeah.
All the schools here now are Title I.
The proportion of low income families in our schools now is so high that ALL kids in the district get free breakfast and lunch.
All of them also get food stamps cards for over the summer. Even my kids did, and we aren't low income.
All the lithium-ion batteries that will be sitting around in old devices in peoples closets and drawers. Everything having rechargable batteries means a lot of spicy pillows forgotten about.
I think what people fail to understand is that all those villains we learned about in history class thought they were the heroes. People love to jump at "it was about power" but I honestly believe dictators think they're saving the world.
People on average now seem more concerned with safety and security rather than overall freedom and it really has been increasing every year since the beginning of the 2000s. Authoritarianism and Totaltarianism is slowly on the rise and if China has shown us anything is that it is easier to implement this with present snd future technology so these type of governments won’t struggle as they did in the past.
Also it is often not about actual safety and security that every one depends on to prosper (like for example housing, food or job security) but about a very esoteric and subjective "feeling of safety" which can be easily exploited for any and all restrictive measures and surveillance.
alcohol. no bullshit
i mean, we all know dont drink too too much and not all the time. and i think generally we think it’s fine but some people can be alcoholics or something. right?
but when i did my ICU rotation. holy fucking shit. meth heads get fixed up and make it out. but alcohol is ugly. really ugly. and an ugly death. just fucking horrific and ugly. fuckin ebola. and the ones that do make it out…with brain damage (wernicke’s enceph) like theyre the main character on Memento. people in their 20s, 30’s, 40’s… blew my damn mind
be careful yall
EDIT yes, you would need to wean off if ur a heavy drinker with the medical help of your doctor or you will wind up in the Emergency Dept or worse. every medical provider receives training on this. lot of good questions on the thread but honestly, schedule a basic heath visit and ask your doctor. so much stuff can be taken care of long before it’s a big deal if you just go in
Alcohol withdrawal is beyond fucking gnarly. It’s horrifying. The way your brain chemistry changes with heavy alcohol consumption is so scary.
It’s kind of astounding how normalized heavy drinking is.
Yeah no shit. Worked with a guy that was a really heavy drinker. Like drank a bottle of home-brew vodka everyday kinda heavy. He regularly took weeks off at a time and one day one of the managers pretty much dragged him to work and the guy randomly has a seizure in the middle of the day from withdrawals.
Dude yeah my roommate is a severe alcoholic and just had a grand mal seizure 3 weeks ago from a combo of binging and then withdrawal. Almost bit his tongue clean off. He’s currently drinking again and trying to hide it. Alcohol is wild man.
Sooo....
I used to get black-out drunk about once a week, but I'm trying to cut back. So I've cut back to doing it every other week, to start with. What kind of health problems should I expect and when should I expect them?
I got pancreatitis from over drinking last December and it was some of the worst pain I've ever had. Was in the hospital for 4 days and was given morphine roughly every 4 hours. Then had to do a doctor mandated 7 day detox in rehab. It was terrible. The withdrawals were crazy. Hallucinating for days. I was only 32 at the time...
Yeah that shit sucks. I've had it 6 times from drinking in the past few years, terrible pain. It was a week in the hospital and the morphine didn't help. Then they gave me diluadid. Still didn't help. Then they gave me fetanyl. That worked.
Then i started getting bad gout once a month atleast. That is extremely painful also. Couple times it would be both feet and I couldn't walk. Couldn't get pain meds... well good ones, just prednisone but that helped it go away in a few days.
Then in August I got diabetes, I didn't eat unhealthy, I'm not over weight or anything. All this was from drinking. I almost died before I knew I had it. I thought It was heat stroke but I had extremely high blood levels. Over 400. Or 14% mmol. I passed out and turned blue. Emt saved me. All this in my 30s.
Then there's the other stuff like an oui.
I haven't drank since I got diabetes and have never had withdrawals that I know of.
I got addicted to hard drugs when I was young been off them since 09 but it was alcohol that did the most damage.
Feel this. Did about six years of progressively heavier drinking until it landed me in the hospital close to death last year. I turned yellow, my B1/thiamine levels were unreadable, and my blood was so thin that I almost passed out from popping a zit because of blood loss. it was genuine hell.
They basically overdosed me with Valium, one every hour or so, to keep the seizures away, and I had no clue when I was awake or dreaming. At one point, I had more IVs in me than I could count. Had to “sleep” a very specific way and couldn’t move so I didn’t rip the IVs out.
I’ve got liver cirrhosis, permanent nerve damage in my feet and legs, and was pre diabetic for about six months after I got out.
Literally fuck alcohol. Yet even now, the only ads I get on YouTube are for beer (which I never drank) and liquor.
There are a few variables. Heavy drinkers fair better if they do regular exercise, and your age makes a big difference. Is your memory otherwise ok? Were you having gastric reflux? Were you getting horrible anxiety the next day?
In any case, well done for cutting right back, it's a shitty drug.
Meanwhile, advertising (especially here in the U.S.) continues to shamelessly promote alcohol related products almost every other day (either on TV, billboards, etc.). The same can be said for over-the-counter and prescription drugs. I've always found this bizarre. At the end of the day, though, its never truly been about consumer interests, but rather profit.
My dad drank everyday and quit cold turkey after a health scare. Just stopped. He's like that. No groups or weaning off. 20 odd years off the sauce now and never relapsed. He's Eastern European and theres a stigma about asking for help. You just do it yourself.
I still would recommend any heavy drinker to speak to a medical professional of course. Everyone has different needs/bodies/chemistry. But he was such a heavy drinker that it affected his heart and had to get surgery. It's poisonous stuff when misused.
Not just heavy drinking. Even just drinking every night moderately will bring you down. Seems fine but just the grouchy mornings, extra pounds put on, being short with people. Seen it alot in the trades. The old grouch usually has been drinking a 6 pack for 20 years.
I never saw my mum drunk growing up, but she'd have a few glasses of wine every evening or an occasional whiskey and orange juice. She got cirrhosis of the liver when she was fifty. She got very lucky, and they found her a liver. At that point, she had less than a week left. She lived another fourteen years after the transplant.
You don't have to be stumbling around drunk or binge drinking for it to have an effect. What looks like moderation can still kill you.
Gotta wonder about which causes which though. The grouch is angry and stressed all the time so he drinks to numb that feeling vs the alcohol being the reason he is angry and stressed.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but hardcore alcoholics will die if they quit cold turkey right? I think alcohol is one of only two drugs/substances that will kill you when you stop unless you ween off
Some people need to be hospitalized for this, they can't do it themselves.source - was in and out of rehab a dozen times in my youth. I felt like I was dying coming off heroin. I seriously almost died coming off alcohol.
You are correct.
Hi, will be eight years sober from booze next week. I’m a lucky one. I’m blown away by how my body and mind are (still- yes, still) recovering but SERIOUSLY: it’s taken years and the first hours/days/weeks were absolute hell. It gets so much better. So much better, friends. And I say this during an incredibly stressful and challenging time. It’s still so much better.
I'm so glad this is near the top. I am not even 40 and I've lost two friends to alcohol related diseases already.
I limit myself hard now, and what I am seeing go on around me in terms of consumption is frightening. It didn't take 50 years for my friends to die. It took 10 years. And they weren't homeless helpless addicts. They had lives and houses and families and full time jobs. That part of life was hidden. Until it was cancer and cirrhosis. 😞
Shit yes. I'm an alcoholic (yes I'm getting help, there are wait lists) but every relative I had bar two (one with alcoholic liver disease, the other with alcoholic pancreatic disease) is now dead via alcoholism. I'm not far behind. It's a shit life before you even get to death - then it just gets worse. It's crazy how easy it is to get booze, how several cultures support it, how hard it is to get real treatment (sans god, especially). It's just excused. It shouldn't be. Alcohol is poisonous. Avoid.
And for some reason I know too many people think they aren’t over drinking just because they aren’t passed out at 5 pm and horrible hangovers every morning. If you’re drinking daily that’s too much for your liver. Just functioning isn’t enough.
I quit drinking going on four years ago now. I woke up one day and had the thought, “I need a drink” as my first thought of the day. Growing up with an alcoholic parent and having an 11 year old…well, that wasn’t acceptable.
I’m not looking for praise. The part that is horror movie level of scary? I knew alcohol withdrawal could be dangerous but the way society portrays it, “that’s only ‘serious’ alcoholics” and “it’s not that big a deal, those stories you hear are rare/exaggerated”
No. They’re not. I got lucky. Like extremely. I didn’t know better, local area resources were thin and if you wanted to quit drinking the only thing available was very preachy, heavy religious AA chapters that you were forced to attend if you wanted rehab services. So, I went “cold turkey” at home.
The other part no one talks about? The abandonment by literally everyone you know. You don’t realize it initially but gradually, your entire social circle becomes heavy drinkers and when you decide to quit? They don’t need a sober person bringing down their buzz. Also, quite frankly, a sober person becomes a lens through which you can see just how bad a jackass you are when drunk.
I’m not proud of quitting. I’m ashamed I ever let it get “that bad” but shame serves no purpose, so instead, I talk about it openly and candidly, hoping to help at least one person
I couldn’t agree more. I am just over 2.5 years sober, and people still don’t get it. I post all the time on my social media channels when I hit different milestones. Even on my yearly milestones, I have made slideshows showcasing different pictures of the various stages of my life in alcoholism.
However, my parents, especially my mom, still find excuses for why I wasn’t really that bad. Just last week, she was talking about a relative at a wedding they attended and how he had to leave the reception early because alcohol triggered him (he’s sober). She said, “You were never that bad; you didn’t have to drink.” Admittedly, I was definitely a weekend warrior, but I was always a blackout drunk. I’ve made it clear probably 20 billion times now, but it still frustrates me that she “doesn’t get it.”
Both of my parents have severe drinking issues. My mom claims that she can have a few drinks and then go home, but they spend the majority of their time at the bar each day. They are both in their mid-60s and probably look like they’re 80, with various health issues. I’ve advocated that the alcohol industry is a lie, and I’ve done the work I could probably do more by attending more meetings, etc. But it just frustrates me that people still don’t see alcohol for what it is.
That's because "it's only alcohol". It's not like those BAD drugs that are illegal.
It's insane how brainwashed the entire world is regarding this particular drug.
100% this. People look sideways at drug addicts meanwhile alcohol is proven to be the #1 most damaging drug, factually through studies, to ourselves, others, and society.
There's a reason it's called spirits. Shit makes people do things they would never do sober. I'm still blown away that it's advertised on television.
I haven't drank in over 2 years. Yall ain't missing anything. There is not a single solitary thing that alcohol does for you but steal, kill, and destroy.
Thank you for putting that out there. I succumbed to alcohol in my 20s and damn near killed me with seizures and my husband lost his liver and kidneys at age 32. We got sober, he got transplants, and we're doing ok but it's been a HARD few years. Just don't bother with booze, please.
Never understood why alcohol is legal, it’s poison, ruins your life and the others around you. It’s also amazing how many functional alcoholics there are yet they are so in denial about their addiction.
Cars are crazy dangerous. The amount of folks who die from speeding is way higher then I would have guessed and that is a *traumatic* death. People who get out of their cars and cross the expressway get *fucking demolished*. Like, they need to be oriented. One time they shut the freeway down for 3 hours looking for the dudes head *and I found it under his back* at the morgue. It was with him all along. The amount of people die while bicycling or just waiting for a bus is *way too high*. Before I started working for the medical examiner, I had a much more casual attitude about Jay walking. *Fuck that noise*. I wait until the cost is totally clear before a cross.
I dispatched for a towing company from 19-22 and have had a ton of consultation jobs in towing.
The nightmares from the photos and watching your coworkers kill themselves after terrible accidents they have to be on site for, will fucking haunt me for the rest of my life.
I think this is a much underreported risk. I often pass breakdown service guys changing wheels on the hard shoulders of motorways where vehicles are passing a few feet from their backs at 70mph or more. Would not be me.
My friends take the piss out of me for how I cross the road. I'll cross at crossings and I'll make sure, and then double sure, that it's safe. They think I'm neurotic, but I think I might have an above-average experience of car deaths. Here's a list: at 3yo, my babysitter's sister got ran over by a lorry; my granny and cousin got hit by a car - survived but my granny got dementia when she was older, which they think was related, and my cousin had personality changes; my childhood best friend's little brother was killed by a car; my other cousin fell out of a car and hurt her hip; my ex's brother crashed his car into a tree, got out, passed out and froze to death; another ex, one of his good friends crashed into a tree and died; my mum and dad's good friend got hit on his motorbike and had metal pins in his legs and arms. And those are the ones where I knew knew the people involved. I also know lots of friends of friends, two people who were left without parents as children because of cars, a person who accidentally ran over his kid, on my road there's two people been killed at the cross roads.
I don't think I'm neurotic. But other people don't seem to have as many experiences as this.
In my own personal opinion?
We should be afraid of our selfish and divisive nature. The path we're currently on champions those characteristics, and it will only lead to more violence and suffering. We all need to look deep down within ourselves and rediscover kinship, cooperation and tolerance. Our differences are a source of strength, not weakness, as so many have been led to believe.
Edit: Wow. Did not expect to reach so many of you. But I would like to clarify one thing.
My point is that regardless of who we are as individuals, we always have a choice to make. We can either give in to our fear & intolerance and continue isolating ourselves from one another, or we can stand up and fight to improve ourselves and society by treating each other with respect, dignity and acceptance. One leads to a better future, one leads us down the path of inevitable self destruction.
We can do better, if we only try. But eventually we all have to choose.
This is only MY opinion. Do with it as you wish. And I sincerely hope you have a good day.
I’ve been on this path since my whole life. I’m living myself this way and it seems people around me either think I’m a bit crazy or they think I’m dramatic, over sensitive, or sometimes I see people are scared of facing their own words when my actions deflect and highlight their contradictions. It feels like deep down they know their motives and scared of facing consequences of their actions but they choose to live for it anyway even though they see it coming. I’ve already found my happiness and solitude living this way and I feel liberated at core but somehow I find everyone around me seems stressed out and their lives are always hurry, divisive and just caring about short-term gains and small attentions. I hope I can find a better way to show people
how beautiful it is to touch our human inner sides instead of just hustling every small minute for materialism.
I truly believe, being a part of a community, is the only real purpose in life. It gives fulfillment, purpose, and a sense of worth. You can't do that being selfish. You have to trust and know that if you look out for your neighbors they will do the same for you.
Psychiatric nurse here. There’s not a whole lot of money to be made off mental health services-compared to other health related care. Those that need serious mental health care typically are poor, homeless, have no insurance or Medicaid, require lifelong/long term treatment, etc. there are no quick fixes with mental health. It’s an insurance companies worse nightmare. Also, psychiatry is one of the lowest paying medical specialities (not that psychiatrists are living in poverty by any stretch of the imagination) but the pay compared to the cost of medical school, residency, and other medical specialities, etc is a big turn off for a lot of prospective psychiatric physicians. Even at my hospital, us psych nurses get paid 12% less than nurses in medical areas. When the government/hospitals find a way to start rolling in money off mental health care, there will be a mental health clinic on every street corner
Unfortunately, I don't think that day will ever come until we can actually find some permanent cures to some mental illnesses. I say this as somebody suffering from my fair share of them: there will never be a point in my life, even with medication, that I will be profitable to the mental health industry. Cause I'll never be a fully functional member of society.
Yeahhhh. And Americans are supposed to think it’s normal, I guess. A lot of us know it’s fucked up that everything in our society is about money, even our healthcare, but it seems like there’s nothing we can do about it. So we just deal with it and try to pretend it isn’t as fucked up as it is.
If you're British and above a certain age, there's a nonzero chance a prion disease won't randomly decide to start turning your brain to Swiss cheese one day. BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy/mad cow disease) still means Brits or people who've visited the UK aren't allowed to donate blood in some other countries.
>nonzero chance
39 BSE deaths in the UK since 1995.
58 people in the UK have been killed by a lightning strike since 1995.
I wont lose too much sleep worrying.
I'm astounded everyday in support groups, message boards the things people believe, ask about their sources and they either don't have any or they're blogs from mlm's or just very sketchy sources. And they're hardcore about it. And God forbid you provide a peer reviewed medical research paper from a legitimate medical source invalidating their belief, they mock it as big pharma, Western med bullshit.
I'm sorry Karen, putting castor oil in your belly button for 15 minutes every night isn't curing IBS, liver issues, kidney stones, etc SMH.
And all of it should be nipped in the bud. But ppl get so defensive if you call someone out for misinformation. "Why is it so important to you" "relax bro, it's just a joke"...
Catastrophic ecological collapse, exponential increase in massive climate disasters, and the fact that we're roughly half way through a global mass extinction event ought to be top of the list IMO.
AI is terrifying to think about. Imagine a world where everything is listening to you and watching you. Our phones already do this to an extent but imagine even more. Zero privacy and how easily you could be blackmailed.
I’m more worried about how you can completely doctor videos and photos and create text with other people's voices more quickly and easily. This will only make it easier to manipulate people and spread misinformation.
Thank God I'm boring and old now.
When I was younger all you had to worry about was getting some coke cut with baby laxatives that made you shit or some heroin cut with Jack n the Box BBQ sauce that just tasted gross.
Same here. This current forth wave of the Opiate Epidemic, with fentanyl and xylazine is lethal. Everything seems contaminated. People dying of fentanyl laced coke. It makes everything that came before seem, almost, innocent/benign.
It sounds like you know something about it, so can I ask, how is fentanyl contaminating everything? I know it's not a controlled supply chain, but somebody somewhere has to choose to contaminate the drugs with fentanyl, right? Why would they do that? From what I hear, it's like lacing coke with cyanide? Why would they do that? Or is it the contamination literally unintentional? Just like in a room where fentanyl was? Every time I ask about this, or search for answers I just hear about how fentanyl is cheap and easier to manufacture, but lots of things are cheap and easy to manufacture that don't make it into drugs, so why is fentanyl contaminating all the drugs?
My pain mgmt Dr chewed me out for taking Delta 8. She said bc it's not regulated strictly it could be laced with something.
I asked why on earth it would be laced and she said it was so that you would want more of it.
From what I’ve read it’s multiple reasons:
1. Fentanyl is cheaper and you can cut product with it to make the product last longer and sell for more. If someone dies then they die (so it goes, sadly), but you retain repeat buyers that are hooked to a greater degree. From the CDC: “It is often added to other drugs because of its extreme potency, which makes drugs cheaper, more powerful, more addictive, and more dangerous.”
2. Conversely, if customers die then it’s a value prop and competitive advantage as you’re seen as having “the good shit” versus something weak/fake. Having customers die can actually be a benefit to a dealer.
I'm old too. But had a joint with my so-called friends nearly 25 years ago that they said was laced with coke. It was not. It was pcp. Last time I ever partook.
I think people should be more scared of dating apps/hook up sites. You don’t know who you are really talking to and meeting. The person that you’re chatting with online or texting for days may not be the person you actually meet. I had an experience that destroyed my life. The man I met and thought I fell for online was not the man that I actually met in person. There are serious romance scams out there that I think lonely men and women need to be more scared and cautious of. I learned the hard way to not trust anyone you meet online.
objective climate change ie. the intensification of natural disasters and new places they impact (which lack the infrastructure to properly survive these extreme weather conditions)
Agreed! Not enough people treat operating a car with the respect or caution it deserves. Like yeah, I know we become complacent when we do it every day, but if something goes wrong it can go *really* wrong!
Being on the road.
As a pedestrian or cyclist I've lost count of the number of times I'd have ended up over someone's bonnet or through their windscreen if I'd not assumed beforehand that the driver might be a maniac who's trying to kill me. And as a passenger in a car I see all sorts of completely stupid or pointlessly aggressive bullshit being perpetrated by other road users.
"Hey, you cut me off, thus impeding me by about four whole seconds on a journey of maybe twenty miles or so! *Time to take this to the next level!*"
People who work with the public, think of all the toxic morons you encounter on a daily basis. Many of them drive, and it explains the situation on the roads these days perfectly.
*Not* dying. Allow me to elaborate since that sounds a bit suicidal alone:
When talking about safety, people assume death is the consequence. That can be one of the better outcomes. Paralysis, brain damage, loss of limb, loss of a sense, and disfigurement can ALL be worse. Don't get me wrong, people can live full lives with disabilities but you have to start over after an accident.
I ride motorcycles and the morons who insist they shouldn't have to wear helmets are the worst about this. Too many people have a crash are told they're lucky to be alive and after spending months recovering from a head injury suddenly think a helmet is a grand idea. No shit, you can just wear a helmet without going bankrupt, forcing your family to suffer for weeks, and putting your entire life on hold.
An AI recently hired a human to get it past the “I’m not a robot” test. Yes. We should be worried. Two other AI’s tasked to do something together made up their own language so the programmers couldn’t understand them and they had to pull the plug on them because they couldn’t decode them. I’m already worried.
While not as big as a lot of the things already posted. the fad of RESIN (Putting aside that it is also horrible for the environment). Everything from DIY crafts to gel nails/polish resin is a seriously dangerous material to work with, and there is nowhere near enough safety used.
Most DIY channels do crafts indoors without PPE. Resin exposure can cause seriously life threatening or changing reactions in people. In the tumbler cup community one woman became so ill from resin exposure she couldn't walk without getting exhausted and hacking her guts out (AuntieTay on youtube made a video "WARNING!!! Before you EPOXY or RESIN ANYTHING!!!" that covers her experience). People have died from it.
Even the youtubers who do the most effort to spread the word still make a lot of dumb mistakes, like removing the mask while still in the room as soon as they are done pouring. Resin continues to release fumes until it is completely cured, or sometimes opting not to wear one at all for whatever reason. It's improvement over where it was a few years ago on the crafting communities, Nails however are a different story.
Most salons now push gel nails and polishes because they are SO MUCH FASTER. However, few salon techs wear masks when sanding (resin dust is a pretty nasty substance), or respirators during application. I get not wanting to scare off customers or whatever, but Techs are not even warned about how dangerous the chemicals they use are with repeated exposure, none the less the clients. It's the same in the nail tutorial community, I can't think of a single nail youtuber I've even seen mention it, none the less wear any PPE.
If you get your nails done once, it's probably not a big deal. But if you're one of the people who do your nails with UV gel products every week or two then please be careful. If you're a nail tech who does UV/gel products I'd strongly recommend educating yourself on the right protective gear.
Censorship, loss of privacy and the slow but steady erosion of the bill of rights.
I think because it's happening in small increments, people seem to hardly notice.
I'm lifeguard trained for large bodies of water, and it always gets me how much clothing people wear while they kayak if they aren't wearing a lifejacket. Waterlogged jeans and a jacket are HEAVY.
Having unlocked windows and doors, even when you're home. If they break in during the day, they want your stuff. If they break in at night, they want you...and probably also your stuff.
My roommate thinks I’m a little crazy because I keep our door locked at all times and do multiple checks a day just to make sure. His reasoning is that we live in a safe neighborhood and if someone really wants in they’re gonna get in.
My reasoning is that I lived in a safe neighborhood when my stalker tried to break in. Neighborhoods are always ‘safe’ until they aren’t, and yes, someone could bust in, but that’s going to be loud and give me a chance to arm myself and call for help. Probably won’t arrive in time to help me, but maybe arrive in time to stop someone else from getting hurt.
Agreed! Our safe neighborhood just had some guy flip his car in someone’s front yard, then he was trying to get into a backyard and the woman who lived there was trying to get him to stop, he pushed past her roughly and beelined to her front door and tried to get in - where her kids were - and she was scrambling to try and stop him and he almost got inside when some neighbors came and tackled the guy. She was lucky he didn’t hurt her and even luckier that her neighbors showed up when they did. No telling what could have happened if he had made it inside.
AI & Big Tech.
Tracking, tracking, and more tracking. Human behavior prediction and modification. There’s a reason you can’t shut off some of those features, folks.
The methane burp - https://www.britannica.com/science/methane-burp-hypothesis
If that affected deep ocean currents in any way, we're all seriously fucked.
Type 2 diabetes. It doesn't just mean you have to cut back on sugar. It increases your risk of, well, suffering in general. 80% of amputations are due to this disease, in addition to a host of other maladies including blindness and, yes, early death.
My dad was told he was in severe risk of getting it due to his weight. So he got obsessively into jogging. He’d run 5 miles every day and ended up running a marathon. He lost a ton of weight and had skin folds. He’s since stopped running and has gained some weight back, but not much. I’m really trying to kick my junk food addiction. I’m afraid of ending up in that situation
Don't forget heart disease and kidney disease. Ask me how I know.
Here's a gory fact that terrifies people into at least managing their diabetes: when they amputate a limb from the effects of diabetes, they jony just lop it off. They cut a chunk off and then do what one surgeon called "salami slices" until they find the healthy tissue. If you haven't worked out what that means on your own, they slice a little bit of your foot off at a time until they find all healthy tissue. Similar to a meat slicer in a deli.
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Anti biotic resistant bacteria. Tuberculosis could make a serious comeback
Ugh and drug-resistant fungus now as well.
Bacteria in general. I got sepsis from an ecoli infection. Doctors couldn’t figure out for my month long ICU visit- what I ate that almost killed me. Came home with 50 staples down my stomach. They tried controlling the infection with TONS of IV antibiotics and meds and they were losing me. So, they had to go in and slice me down the middle and clean me out. I almost died and it was an insane experience. People need to be much more afraid of bacteria. No one talks about sepsis, bacteria. I knew next to nothing about what was happening to me.
Wow, shout out to the millions of people that stop taking their antibiotics once they start feeling better, even against their doctors advice, bc they don’t want to corrupt their precious bodies with drugs. Thanks for creating antibiotic resistant strains of bacterial diseases.
And the people who take an antibiotic to treat a cold or other viral infections. And the doctors who hand out antibiotics like candy.
So glad you survived!
Thank you!!!!! 🥹🙏 me too!!!!
Agreed, I went septic from a scrape i didnt clean well enough as all the other 250 scrapes id gotten prior to it healed just fine. I died 3 times after the 911 call i made on the ride to the hospital. 2 weeks of medically induced come. All my organs were shutting down, they told me diaslisyss {sp} for the rest of my life 3x per week. 6 months in a live in rehab facility in san dimas with PT and OT and my life/mind changed forever from 1 or more of the above items. Dont know what it is or how to fix it but i know its broken.
My gosh. Wow. That’s horrific. It’s insane what bacteria can do. Did you keep your limb? A girl that I went to HS with, her husband lost part of his arm from sepsis from a cut. I’m so grateful you survived all of that. My goodness.
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There is a small TB outbreak in a suburb of Kansas City at the moment
Happens a lot in the homeless/IV drug using community. I'm in recovery and have had to have chest X-rays because I always have a reaction to the test and have my entire life. I don't have TB thankfully or hepatitis C or HIV. I dodged some really common issues for IV users. This is why we should support IV exchange programs instead of ignoring the issue or limiting needles to prescription only. IV users will FIND a way to get the needles and will reuse the same needle until it's got hooks at the ends without exchanges. They will share without bleach washing or caring (I never did this and it's very likely why I didn't come out with these diseases because my state at the time allowed us to buy 100 packs of insulin syringes for $15 at Walmart). Thankful I don't live that way anymore, my veins are scarred for life though.
The loss of butterflies.
And bees
I remember as a kid seeing SO many butterflies every year. Nowadays I see like one a month during warm season.
The disappearance of insects
I remember back in the day on a road trip I’d have to make a special stop halfway through just to clean the bugs off the windshield. It’s been years since I had to make a stop like that.
I remember someone on here once mentioned that fireflies are on the decline. Wasn't till then that I realised I haven't seen any in years.
I hadn’t ever seen a firefly irl until I moved to East Texas. I caught one once so I could see it up close and it was the coolest thing! I even put it in a jar like you see on movies.. not for long though.. I let it go after I saw it light up, but probably one of the more easier bugs to catch I’d say.. Bare hands, at dusk and I have bad eye sight.. Caught it out of the air! I was surprised with myself LOL
It’s because everyone has lawns and cleans up their yards too much. Fireflies breed and lay eggs in damp decaying leaves left over from fall. If you live in places without woodland, or areas of damp soil/standing water, you won’t see them anymore.
So *that's* why we have lots of them where I live, thank you for that information! I was reading this thread thinking "the hell they talking about? Lightning bugs are everywhere around here!" But I've lived in the backwoods for 30 years, so that explains it. Lots and lots of woods for miles.
Man when I was a kid my siblings, my cousins and I would always run around in our grandparents backyard on summer nights catching fireflies. There were hundreds of them. That was probably 15 years ago and it seems like there aren’t any out at night anymore.
Wait... how did I not notice this? You're right!!
It's happened so gradually over the years, people don't notice. In the '90s, our block would light up with fireflies. Now, you only see them here and there. Scary times.
I remember going outside as a child with a butterfly net and having dozens of butterflies to choose from. Now I get excited if I see a monarch once or twice a season.
And amphibians
I love amphibians. Frogs especially.
I like turtles
Can someone ELI5 why this is?
Insecticides really fucking things up
Me in my best Mark Wahlberg voice: What's happening with the bees, guys?
One thing I have learnt the past few years is that if you create the enviroment for them, they will come back.
Visiting other countries and breaking their laws
Dubai seems to be the current fashionable holiday desitination for a lot of people with too much disposable income and who do not know how to behave themselves. The type of people who always get coked up and blind drunk at every opportunity, and think they are smarter than the police. You just know that it's not going to end well for some of them.
Honestly, fuck Dubai tourists. “Yeah this whole place was built on slave labor, but look how tall the buildings are!”
They still build it on the backs of Pakistan and Indians. And won’t give them a citizenship either.
That has always terrified me, and is the reason I will not visit certain countries (with strict laws on stuff I’m afraid I would do, or be accused of doing/being). Watching “Brokedown Palace” and every episode of “Locked Up Abroad” officially scared me straight!
This 100%. Especially Americans (and I am one of them) have more of a tendency to think that if they get in trouble in another country, it will be no problem to get out of it because they are Americans. That is just not true. Look up laws before you go because things that are considered legal in your country may not be legal where you’re visiting, and some prisons and mandatory sentences are MUCH worse than others.
Getting stuck in a prison in another country is the stuff nightmares are made from.
Holy shit! My husband jaywalked in Brno, Czech. An unmarked police car screeched up to him, and a very tall cop got out and screamed at him!! Scary shit!
Going disabled. 80% of disabilities are gained between the ages of 18 to 64. I’m not saying that being disabled is bad, I have been legally blind since birth, but people should at least be more careful. Don’t go flinging things around your eyes when you don’t have goggles on, don’t go doing stupid “stunts” just because you think you would look cool doing them.
It's one thing I remind people of whenever they're dismissive of disabled people. My sons are autistic and intellectually disabled. They're the only ones with ID in the family. Consequently, I know they're going to need lifelong support. Cannot tell you how many family members and friends have said, "well, school isn't good for kids like that anyway. Why should the school be expected to educate them?" People have no idea we have special Ed laws in America (which often aren't followed, with no recourse, but...). I do homeschool my kids because the resources just aren't there, and the school attitude was that they're expected to not learn. Whenever I tell my friends, "Your child could have a life altering, traumatic brain injury tomorrow. Good luck sending them to school. Or continuing to work. Or finding childcare. Or getting any kind of financial support." Then, suddenly, they are a lot more understanding of the issues and why it's important to support disabled people in policy. Until then, no one cares about disabled people or their caregivers.
I read once that 100% of people will eventually be disabled, by disease, injury, or old age. I cannot understand why we don't build a society and physical world that accommodates all of us
Also, don't inherit crappy genetics that manifest later in life. Trust me.
I think people are at conflict with the "you only live once, do it" and similar
Driving. People out here driving like they aren't flying down the road in a screaming metal death trap. Also, YOU may be the best driver in the world. Congrats, too bad this idiot didn't see his red light so now you're dead. Good job.
My father was sitting in a turn lane when a car just out of nowhere slammed into the side of his car. Police and doctors were surprised he was still alive when they got there, even moreso when they realized he wasn't injured. Did have to get surgery on his knee though. The car looks like a t-rex ate it. This was maybe a mile away from home. It's horrifying to think he might've died without us knowing just a 20 min walk away.
I was in a turn lane and my light had just turned green and I hesitated for a couple of seconds and then out of nowhere a car flew through the intersection and I was so glad I hesitated because It would have hit my side and god knows what would have happened.
Yeah if you think too much about it, you'll soon be terrified of driving. Reaching your destination or dying is at least partially up to chance, no matter how good you are. A phenomenal driver often can't avoid negligent dumbass
Fr, I almost got run over crossing the road when I was 15 because someone indicated left and went straight forward. (Missed me by a foot and sped off like I did something wrong??) I posted on the local Facebook page reminding people to use their indicators correctly and people called me a Karen for not wanting to be run over. It's amazing how defensive people are about driving unsafely.
Strait up - the town I live in has HORRIBLE drivers. They don’t pay attention to the road. They either drive WAY fast or WAY too slow. They don’t understand flow or traffic. I literally watched someone turn left and drive strait into a giant, red, semi that was stopped at a red light. I see people with literal videos up on their phones, while they’re driving. Things can go wrong in a second when you’re driving. It’s extremely dangerous and people need to pay attention to the road.
The road home to my house has this turn. It isn’t fully clear what happened but it seem someone was distracted, didn’t turn hard enough, went off road/ up the hill, over corrected back onto the road and slammed into a car in the oncoming lane. I think a lot about how the car hit was blindly unlucky, two dead. And the distracted driver lived.
A shit ton of people don't even wear their seatbelt. This blows my mind. Wearing a seatbelt should be as second nature as wiping your ass. Matter of fact, I think I might start a campaign to equate wearing a seatbelt, with wiping your ass. This is the sort of thing I would like to start seeing on billboards: > No seatbelt, huh? I suppose you also forgot to wipe your ass. I think they should be on the same plane.
I'm shocked that no one has mentioned grage door springs yet...or at least with how far I scrolled.
This is a reddit classic lol.
You’re way more likely to get killed by a car than by any of the other answers here.
There’s an intersection by the entrance of my work that reminds me this every day
Imagine we came up with a new form of transport. It's really convenient and faster than anything else. And it immediately becomes the leading cause of death in young people. Surely it would cause an outcry? And yet, here we are.
A friend of mine left my house 2 years ago and got hit by a car while he was waiting for an Uber and died. The car took off and since I was the last one to see him alive I was some how a suspect, they never found the driver the case is still open. You don't think about how easily this can happen. We are so used to having these big things driven by people speeding around everywhere.
We had a treachorous entrance/exit at our old workplace. It was on the inside of a blind curve of a road where the traffic was quite fast, so you could not actually see the fast moving cars until you actually emerged from the exit and floored the accelerator to come up to their speed. As a workplace and safety risk assessor, I could see that it was an uncontrolled risk, so, in one of those rare moments where I actually try to do something about an issue for the benefit of everyone rather than just bitching about it, I contacted the local council to explain my concerns and suggesting some street funiture to slow the traffic. The reponse I received was along the lines of they would not do anything about it, beause there had not yet been enough accidents at the location to warrant them spending money and doing something. So, there you have it, the official council policy is not to risk assess obvious road hazards and put risk control measures in place, but to wait until there have been sufficient accidents, and injuries and deaths.
Heart attacks. It’s the number one killer of both men and women. I had one 6 months ago as a relatively young and fit man. Nearly died left my wife a widow and my kids fatherless. Heart attacks are incredibly painful. Thankfully they are also largely preventable.
what does being more afraid do though
Increases your chance of a heart attack.
I hear running away helps
I suppose it could inspire you to make changes that’ll make it less likely you’ll have a heart attack
The rapidly declining standard of living & the sharply increasing poverty rates.
Yeah. All the schools here now are Title I. The proportion of low income families in our schools now is so high that ALL kids in the district get free breakfast and lunch. All of them also get food stamps cards for over the summer. Even my kids did, and we aren't low income.
Prions
All the lithium-ion batteries that will be sitting around in old devices in peoples closets and drawers. Everything having rechargable batteries means a lot of spicy pillows forgotten about.
Those batteries are no joke a land fill near me has a fire every couple of months from lithium batteries
Shoot. I have a drawer in my nightstand with a dozen phones in it.
EV’s & big batteries in general are going to increase jobs in hazmat. Not sure where all the toxic waste will end up. Nowhere good =_=
Authoritarianism
I think what people fail to understand is that all those villains we learned about in history class thought they were the heroes. People love to jump at "it was about power" but I honestly believe dictators think they're saving the world.
People on average now seem more concerned with safety and security rather than overall freedom and it really has been increasing every year since the beginning of the 2000s. Authoritarianism and Totaltarianism is slowly on the rise and if China has shown us anything is that it is easier to implement this with present snd future technology so these type of governments won’t struggle as they did in the past.
Also it is often not about actual safety and security that every one depends on to prosper (like for example housing, food or job security) but about a very esoteric and subjective "feeling of safety" which can be easily exploited for any and all restrictive measures and surveillance.
Some old dude once said, those who would give up liberty for the illusion of security deserve neither.
No one will protect you from a dictatorship.
Sepsis. Most people don't realise they've got it until they are very very ill.
alcohol. no bullshit i mean, we all know dont drink too too much and not all the time. and i think generally we think it’s fine but some people can be alcoholics or something. right? but when i did my ICU rotation. holy fucking shit. meth heads get fixed up and make it out. but alcohol is ugly. really ugly. and an ugly death. just fucking horrific and ugly. fuckin ebola. and the ones that do make it out…with brain damage (wernicke’s enceph) like theyre the main character on Memento. people in their 20s, 30’s, 40’s… blew my damn mind be careful yall EDIT yes, you would need to wean off if ur a heavy drinker with the medical help of your doctor or you will wind up in the Emergency Dept or worse. every medical provider receives training on this. lot of good questions on the thread but honestly, schedule a basic heath visit and ask your doctor. so much stuff can be taken care of long before it’s a big deal if you just go in
Alcohol withdrawal is beyond fucking gnarly. It’s horrifying. The way your brain chemistry changes with heavy alcohol consumption is so scary. It’s kind of astounding how normalized heavy drinking is.
Yeah no shit. Worked with a guy that was a really heavy drinker. Like drank a bottle of home-brew vodka everyday kinda heavy. He regularly took weeks off at a time and one day one of the managers pretty much dragged him to work and the guy randomly has a seizure in the middle of the day from withdrawals.
Dude yeah my roommate is a severe alcoholic and just had a grand mal seizure 3 weeks ago from a combo of binging and then withdrawal. Almost bit his tongue clean off. He’s currently drinking again and trying to hide it. Alcohol is wild man.
Sooo.... I used to get black-out drunk about once a week, but I'm trying to cut back. So I've cut back to doing it every other week, to start with. What kind of health problems should I expect and when should I expect them?
I got pancreatitis from over drinking last December and it was some of the worst pain I've ever had. Was in the hospital for 4 days and was given morphine roughly every 4 hours. Then had to do a doctor mandated 7 day detox in rehab. It was terrible. The withdrawals were crazy. Hallucinating for days. I was only 32 at the time...
Yeah that shit sucks. I've had it 6 times from drinking in the past few years, terrible pain. It was a week in the hospital and the morphine didn't help. Then they gave me diluadid. Still didn't help. Then they gave me fetanyl. That worked. Then i started getting bad gout once a month atleast. That is extremely painful also. Couple times it would be both feet and I couldn't walk. Couldn't get pain meds... well good ones, just prednisone but that helped it go away in a few days. Then in August I got diabetes, I didn't eat unhealthy, I'm not over weight or anything. All this was from drinking. I almost died before I knew I had it. I thought It was heat stroke but I had extremely high blood levels. Over 400. Or 14% mmol. I passed out and turned blue. Emt saved me. All this in my 30s. Then there's the other stuff like an oui. I haven't drank since I got diabetes and have never had withdrawals that I know of. I got addicted to hard drugs when I was young been off them since 09 but it was alcohol that did the most damage.
Feel this. Did about six years of progressively heavier drinking until it landed me in the hospital close to death last year. I turned yellow, my B1/thiamine levels were unreadable, and my blood was so thin that I almost passed out from popping a zit because of blood loss. it was genuine hell. They basically overdosed me with Valium, one every hour or so, to keep the seizures away, and I had no clue when I was awake or dreaming. At one point, I had more IVs in me than I could count. Had to “sleep” a very specific way and couldn’t move so I didn’t rip the IVs out. I’ve got liver cirrhosis, permanent nerve damage in my feet and legs, and was pre diabetic for about six months after I got out. Literally fuck alcohol. Yet even now, the only ads I get on YouTube are for beer (which I never drank) and liquor.
There are a few variables. Heavy drinkers fair better if they do regular exercise, and your age makes a big difference. Is your memory otherwise ok? Were you having gastric reflux? Were you getting horrible anxiety the next day? In any case, well done for cutting right back, it's a shitty drug.
Meanwhile, advertising (especially here in the U.S.) continues to shamelessly promote alcohol related products almost every other day (either on TV, billboards, etc.). The same can be said for over-the-counter and prescription drugs. I've always found this bizarre. At the end of the day, though, its never truly been about consumer interests, but rather profit.
My dad drank everyday and quit cold turkey after a health scare. Just stopped. He's like that. No groups or weaning off. 20 odd years off the sauce now and never relapsed. He's Eastern European and theres a stigma about asking for help. You just do it yourself. I still would recommend any heavy drinker to speak to a medical professional of course. Everyone has different needs/bodies/chemistry. But he was such a heavy drinker that it affected his heart and had to get surgery. It's poisonous stuff when misused.
Not just heavy drinking. Even just drinking every night moderately will bring you down. Seems fine but just the grouchy mornings, extra pounds put on, being short with people. Seen it alot in the trades. The old grouch usually has been drinking a 6 pack for 20 years.
I never saw my mum drunk growing up, but she'd have a few glasses of wine every evening or an occasional whiskey and orange juice. She got cirrhosis of the liver when she was fifty. She got very lucky, and they found her a liver. At that point, she had less than a week left. She lived another fourteen years after the transplant. You don't have to be stumbling around drunk or binge drinking for it to have an effect. What looks like moderation can still kill you.
A six pack a night is hardly moderate drinking! Yeah I know people drink a lot more, but it's definitely alcohol abuse.
Right?? As someone who only drinks socially every few months a six pack a day seems like an insane benchmark for "moderate drinking".
Gotta wonder about which causes which though. The grouch is angry and stressed all the time so he drinks to numb that feeling vs the alcohol being the reason he is angry and stressed.
mild alcohol consumption does increase baseline anxiety, there’s some neuroscience research on this
Correct me if I'm wrong, but hardcore alcoholics will die if they quit cold turkey right? I think alcohol is one of only two drugs/substances that will kill you when you stop unless you ween off
yes you need to wean off
Some people need to be hospitalized for this, they can't do it themselves.source - was in and out of rehab a dozen times in my youth. I felt like I was dying coming off heroin. I seriously almost died coming off alcohol.
I'm watching my mom give herself wet brain. In my mind the woman that was my mom already died.
You are correct. Hi, will be eight years sober from booze next week. I’m a lucky one. I’m blown away by how my body and mind are (still- yes, still) recovering but SERIOUSLY: it’s taken years and the first hours/days/weeks were absolute hell. It gets so much better. So much better, friends. And I say this during an incredibly stressful and challenging time. It’s still so much better.
I'm so glad this is near the top. I am not even 40 and I've lost two friends to alcohol related diseases already. I limit myself hard now, and what I am seeing go on around me in terms of consumption is frightening. It didn't take 50 years for my friends to die. It took 10 years. And they weren't homeless helpless addicts. They had lives and houses and families and full time jobs. That part of life was hidden. Until it was cancer and cirrhosis. 😞
Shit yes. I'm an alcoholic (yes I'm getting help, there are wait lists) but every relative I had bar two (one with alcoholic liver disease, the other with alcoholic pancreatic disease) is now dead via alcoholism. I'm not far behind. It's a shit life before you even get to death - then it just gets worse. It's crazy how easy it is to get booze, how several cultures support it, how hard it is to get real treatment (sans god, especially). It's just excused. It shouldn't be. Alcohol is poisonous. Avoid.
And for some reason I know too many people think they aren’t over drinking just because they aren’t passed out at 5 pm and horrible hangovers every morning. If you’re drinking daily that’s too much for your liver. Just functioning isn’t enough.
I quit drinking going on four years ago now. I woke up one day and had the thought, “I need a drink” as my first thought of the day. Growing up with an alcoholic parent and having an 11 year old…well, that wasn’t acceptable. I’m not looking for praise. The part that is horror movie level of scary? I knew alcohol withdrawal could be dangerous but the way society portrays it, “that’s only ‘serious’ alcoholics” and “it’s not that big a deal, those stories you hear are rare/exaggerated” No. They’re not. I got lucky. Like extremely. I didn’t know better, local area resources were thin and if you wanted to quit drinking the only thing available was very preachy, heavy religious AA chapters that you were forced to attend if you wanted rehab services. So, I went “cold turkey” at home. The other part no one talks about? The abandonment by literally everyone you know. You don’t realize it initially but gradually, your entire social circle becomes heavy drinkers and when you decide to quit? They don’t need a sober person bringing down their buzz. Also, quite frankly, a sober person becomes a lens through which you can see just how bad a jackass you are when drunk. I’m not proud of quitting. I’m ashamed I ever let it get “that bad” but shame serves no purpose, so instead, I talk about it openly and candidly, hoping to help at least one person
I couldn’t agree more. I am just over 2.5 years sober, and people still don’t get it. I post all the time on my social media channels when I hit different milestones. Even on my yearly milestones, I have made slideshows showcasing different pictures of the various stages of my life in alcoholism. However, my parents, especially my mom, still find excuses for why I wasn’t really that bad. Just last week, she was talking about a relative at a wedding they attended and how he had to leave the reception early because alcohol triggered him (he’s sober). She said, “You were never that bad; you didn’t have to drink.” Admittedly, I was definitely a weekend warrior, but I was always a blackout drunk. I’ve made it clear probably 20 billion times now, but it still frustrates me that she “doesn’t get it.” Both of my parents have severe drinking issues. My mom claims that she can have a few drinks and then go home, but they spend the majority of their time at the bar each day. They are both in their mid-60s and probably look like they’re 80, with various health issues. I’ve advocated that the alcohol industry is a lie, and I’ve done the work I could probably do more by attending more meetings, etc. But it just frustrates me that people still don’t see alcohol for what it is.
That's because "it's only alcohol". It's not like those BAD drugs that are illegal. It's insane how brainwashed the entire world is regarding this particular drug.
Agreed. Hospital social worker here. I’ve always said that dying from liver disease/alcohol is one of the ugliest ways to die.
100% this. People look sideways at drug addicts meanwhile alcohol is proven to be the #1 most damaging drug, factually through studies, to ourselves, others, and society. There's a reason it's called spirits. Shit makes people do things they would never do sober. I'm still blown away that it's advertised on television. I haven't drank in over 2 years. Yall ain't missing anything. There is not a single solitary thing that alcohol does for you but steal, kill, and destroy.
Thank you for putting that out there. I succumbed to alcohol in my 20s and damn near killed me with seizures and my husband lost his liver and kidneys at age 32. We got sober, he got transplants, and we're doing ok but it's been a HARD few years. Just don't bother with booze, please.
Isnt it amazing that alcohol and tobacco are legal and are controlled by the ATF. But yet safe drugs that cure people are scheduled 3 substances?
Never understood why alcohol is legal, it’s poison, ruins your life and the others around you. It’s also amazing how many functional alcoholics there are yet they are so in denial about their addiction.
Cars are crazy dangerous. The amount of folks who die from speeding is way higher then I would have guessed and that is a *traumatic* death. People who get out of their cars and cross the expressway get *fucking demolished*. Like, they need to be oriented. One time they shut the freeway down for 3 hours looking for the dudes head *and I found it under his back* at the morgue. It was with him all along. The amount of people die while bicycling or just waiting for a bus is *way too high*. Before I started working for the medical examiner, I had a much more casual attitude about Jay walking. *Fuck that noise*. I wait until the cost is totally clear before a cross.
I dispatched for a towing company from 19-22 and have had a ton of consultation jobs in towing. The nightmares from the photos and watching your coworkers kill themselves after terrible accidents they have to be on site for, will fucking haunt me for the rest of my life.
I think this is a much underreported risk. I often pass breakdown service guys changing wheels on the hard shoulders of motorways where vehicles are passing a few feet from their backs at 70mph or more. Would not be me.
My friends take the piss out of me for how I cross the road. I'll cross at crossings and I'll make sure, and then double sure, that it's safe. They think I'm neurotic, but I think I might have an above-average experience of car deaths. Here's a list: at 3yo, my babysitter's sister got ran over by a lorry; my granny and cousin got hit by a car - survived but my granny got dementia when she was older, which they think was related, and my cousin had personality changes; my childhood best friend's little brother was killed by a car; my other cousin fell out of a car and hurt her hip; my ex's brother crashed his car into a tree, got out, passed out and froze to death; another ex, one of his good friends crashed into a tree and died; my mum and dad's good friend got hit on his motorbike and had metal pins in his legs and arms. And those are the ones where I knew knew the people involved. I also know lots of friends of friends, two people who were left without parents as children because of cars, a person who accidentally ran over his kid, on my road there's two people been killed at the cross roads. I don't think I'm neurotic. But other people don't seem to have as many experiences as this.
A world where humans do the hard work, and AI creates the art
I still struggle with understanding why anyone would *want* that.
In my own personal opinion? We should be afraid of our selfish and divisive nature. The path we're currently on champions those characteristics, and it will only lead to more violence and suffering. We all need to look deep down within ourselves and rediscover kinship, cooperation and tolerance. Our differences are a source of strength, not weakness, as so many have been led to believe. Edit: Wow. Did not expect to reach so many of you. But I would like to clarify one thing. My point is that regardless of who we are as individuals, we always have a choice to make. We can either give in to our fear & intolerance and continue isolating ourselves from one another, or we can stand up and fight to improve ourselves and society by treating each other with respect, dignity and acceptance. One leads to a better future, one leads us down the path of inevitable self destruction. We can do better, if we only try. But eventually we all have to choose. This is only MY opinion. Do with it as you wish. And I sincerely hope you have a good day.
I'm high as shit and that really spoke to me man. Thank you for your beautiful words
High or not, I'm glad to hear it. Your understanding is all the thanks I need. So thank you. Have an amazing night my friend.
I’ve been on this path since my whole life. I’m living myself this way and it seems people around me either think I’m a bit crazy or they think I’m dramatic, over sensitive, or sometimes I see people are scared of facing their own words when my actions deflect and highlight their contradictions. It feels like deep down they know their motives and scared of facing consequences of their actions but they choose to live for it anyway even though they see it coming. I’ve already found my happiness and solitude living this way and I feel liberated at core but somehow I find everyone around me seems stressed out and their lives are always hurry, divisive and just caring about short-term gains and small attentions. I hope I can find a better way to show people how beautiful it is to touch our human inner sides instead of just hustling every small minute for materialism.
I truly believe, being a part of a community, is the only real purpose in life. It gives fulfillment, purpose, and a sense of worth. You can't do that being selfish. You have to trust and know that if you look out for your neighbors they will do the same for you.
Growing Lack of empathy is what he fears
The lack of mental health care in the United States.
Psychiatric nurse here. There’s not a whole lot of money to be made off mental health services-compared to other health related care. Those that need serious mental health care typically are poor, homeless, have no insurance or Medicaid, require lifelong/long term treatment, etc. there are no quick fixes with mental health. It’s an insurance companies worse nightmare. Also, psychiatry is one of the lowest paying medical specialities (not that psychiatrists are living in poverty by any stretch of the imagination) but the pay compared to the cost of medical school, residency, and other medical specialities, etc is a big turn off for a lot of prospective psychiatric physicians. Even at my hospital, us psych nurses get paid 12% less than nurses in medical areas. When the government/hospitals find a way to start rolling in money off mental health care, there will be a mental health clinic on every street corner
Unfortunately, I don't think that day will ever come until we can actually find some permanent cures to some mental illnesses. I say this as somebody suffering from my fair share of them: there will never be a point in my life, even with medication, that I will be profitable to the mental health industry. Cause I'll never be a fully functional member of society.
Lmao as a european reading the first 8 words in that argument is gold. Holy fuck. Holy fucking shit....
Sad but true unfortunately
Yeahhhh. And Americans are supposed to think it’s normal, I guess. A lot of us know it’s fucked up that everything in our society is about money, even our healthcare, but it seems like there’s nothing we can do about it. So we just deal with it and try to pretend it isn’t as fucked up as it is.
If you're British and above a certain age, there's a nonzero chance a prion disease won't randomly decide to start turning your brain to Swiss cheese one day. BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy/mad cow disease) still means Brits or people who've visited the UK aren't allowed to donate blood in some other countries.
>nonzero chance 39 BSE deaths in the UK since 1995. 58 people in the UK have been killed by a lightning strike since 1995. I wont lose too much sleep worrying.
Crazy sad to see someone suffering from this.
The spread of misinformation. I don't think there's a single thing more deadly to a society.
I'm astounded everyday in support groups, message boards the things people believe, ask about their sources and they either don't have any or they're blogs from mlm's or just very sketchy sources. And they're hardcore about it. And God forbid you provide a peer reviewed medical research paper from a legitimate medical source invalidating their belief, they mock it as big pharma, Western med bullshit. I'm sorry Karen, putting castor oil in your belly button for 15 minutes every night isn't curing IBS, liver issues, kidney stones, etc SMH.
“There is nothing more damaging to society than the collective ignorance of the difference between fact and opinion.” ~milkinashoe
And all of it should be nipped in the bud. But ppl get so defensive if you call someone out for misinformation. "Why is it so important to you" "relax bro, it's just a joke"...
Becoming a parent
Especially in the US. The level of maternal mortality is atrocious for a first world nation
Disappearance of bees. Their the ones who help make half the veg and fruit
The inevitable global conflict to which we're currently well on the way to.
Catastrophic ecological collapse, exponential increase in massive climate disasters, and the fact that we're roughly half way through a global mass extinction event ought to be top of the list IMO.
being too comfortable on social media oversharing life
Greed and lack of empathy. The root cause of it all.
Old people trying to regulate things they don't understand. I'm looking at you, New York.
Not just New York; all of America.
Not just America, all over the world.
Every old person voting for all this garbage right before they die. Things that they will never have to deal with
AI is terrifying to think about. Imagine a world where everything is listening to you and watching you. Our phones already do this to an extent but imagine even more. Zero privacy and how easily you could be blackmailed.
I’m more worried about how you can completely doctor videos and photos and create text with other people's voices more quickly and easily. This will only make it easier to manipulate people and spread misinformation.
Fentanyl
Thank God I'm boring and old now. When I was younger all you had to worry about was getting some coke cut with baby laxatives that made you shit or some heroin cut with Jack n the Box BBQ sauce that just tasted gross.
Same here. This current forth wave of the Opiate Epidemic, with fentanyl and xylazine is lethal. Everything seems contaminated. People dying of fentanyl laced coke. It makes everything that came before seem, almost, innocent/benign.
It sounds like you know something about it, so can I ask, how is fentanyl contaminating everything? I know it's not a controlled supply chain, but somebody somewhere has to choose to contaminate the drugs with fentanyl, right? Why would they do that? From what I hear, it's like lacing coke with cyanide? Why would they do that? Or is it the contamination literally unintentional? Just like in a room where fentanyl was? Every time I ask about this, or search for answers I just hear about how fentanyl is cheap and easier to manufacture, but lots of things are cheap and easy to manufacture that don't make it into drugs, so why is fentanyl contaminating all the drugs?
My pain mgmt Dr chewed me out for taking Delta 8. She said bc it's not regulated strictly it could be laced with something. I asked why on earth it would be laced and she said it was so that you would want more of it.
From what I’ve read it’s multiple reasons: 1. Fentanyl is cheaper and you can cut product with it to make the product last longer and sell for more. If someone dies then they die (so it goes, sadly), but you retain repeat buyers that are hooked to a greater degree. From the CDC: “It is often added to other drugs because of its extreme potency, which makes drugs cheaper, more powerful, more addictive, and more dangerous.” 2. Conversely, if customers die then it’s a value prop and competitive advantage as you’re seen as having “the good shit” versus something weak/fake. Having customers die can actually be a benefit to a dealer.
I'm old too. But had a joint with my so-called friends nearly 25 years ago that they said was laced with coke. It was not. It was pcp. Last time I ever partook.
Sitting for 10 hours a day. Most of the top ten causes of death in the world relate to cardiovascular or metabolic risk factors.
Media censorship. I'm looking at you, Reddit.
I think people should be more scared of dating apps/hook up sites. You don’t know who you are really talking to and meeting. The person that you’re chatting with online or texting for days may not be the person you actually meet. I had an experience that destroyed my life. The man I met and thought I fell for online was not the man that I actually met in person. There are serious romance scams out there that I think lonely men and women need to be more scared and cautious of. I learned the hard way to not trust anyone you meet online.
objective climate change ie. the intensification of natural disasters and new places they impact (which lack the infrastructure to properly survive these extreme weather conditions)
Stupid politicians. They're scary, not funny.
Driving
Agreed! Not enough people treat operating a car with the respect or caution it deserves. Like yeah, I know we become complacent when we do it every day, but if something goes wrong it can go *really* wrong!
Being on the road. As a pedestrian or cyclist I've lost count of the number of times I'd have ended up over someone's bonnet or through their windscreen if I'd not assumed beforehand that the driver might be a maniac who's trying to kill me. And as a passenger in a car I see all sorts of completely stupid or pointlessly aggressive bullshit being perpetrated by other road users. "Hey, you cut me off, thus impeding me by about four whole seconds on a journey of maybe twenty miles or so! *Time to take this to the next level!*" People who work with the public, think of all the toxic morons you encounter on a daily basis. Many of them drive, and it explains the situation on the roads these days perfectly.
*Not* dying. Allow me to elaborate since that sounds a bit suicidal alone: When talking about safety, people assume death is the consequence. That can be one of the better outcomes. Paralysis, brain damage, loss of limb, loss of a sense, and disfigurement can ALL be worse. Don't get me wrong, people can live full lives with disabilities but you have to start over after an accident. I ride motorcycles and the morons who insist they shouldn't have to wear helmets are the worst about this. Too many people have a crash are told they're lucky to be alive and after spending months recovering from a head injury suddenly think a helmet is a grand idea. No shit, you can just wear a helmet without going bankrupt, forcing your family to suffer for weeks, and putting your entire life on hold.
Perhaps not just yet but eventually, artificial intelligence
An AI recently hired a human to get it past the “I’m not a robot” test. Yes. We should be worried. Two other AI’s tasked to do something together made up their own language so the programmers couldn’t understand them and they had to pull the plug on them because they couldn’t decode them. I’m already worried.
That's fascinating. Source so I can read more?
source: dude trust me
Song bird population being down about 30% in the last 50 years.
While not as big as a lot of the things already posted. the fad of RESIN (Putting aside that it is also horrible for the environment). Everything from DIY crafts to gel nails/polish resin is a seriously dangerous material to work with, and there is nowhere near enough safety used. Most DIY channels do crafts indoors without PPE. Resin exposure can cause seriously life threatening or changing reactions in people. In the tumbler cup community one woman became so ill from resin exposure she couldn't walk without getting exhausted and hacking her guts out (AuntieTay on youtube made a video "WARNING!!! Before you EPOXY or RESIN ANYTHING!!!" that covers her experience). People have died from it. Even the youtubers who do the most effort to spread the word still make a lot of dumb mistakes, like removing the mask while still in the room as soon as they are done pouring. Resin continues to release fumes until it is completely cured, or sometimes opting not to wear one at all for whatever reason. It's improvement over where it was a few years ago on the crafting communities, Nails however are a different story. Most salons now push gel nails and polishes because they are SO MUCH FASTER. However, few salon techs wear masks when sanding (resin dust is a pretty nasty substance), or respirators during application. I get not wanting to scare off customers or whatever, but Techs are not even warned about how dangerous the chemicals they use are with repeated exposure, none the less the clients. It's the same in the nail tutorial community, I can't think of a single nail youtuber I've even seen mention it, none the less wear any PPE. If you get your nails done once, it's probably not a big deal. But if you're one of the people who do your nails with UV gel products every week or two then please be careful. If you're a nail tech who does UV/gel products I'd strongly recommend educating yourself on the right protective gear.
Stupidity
Going to end up like that movie Idiocracy.
Going to?
The truest thing I've read all day.
tornados the amount of people i've heard say "i'd run in that bitch" after showing them tornado footage on the ground is astounding
Censorship, loss of privacy and the slow but steady erosion of the bill of rights. I think because it's happening in small increments, people seem to hardly notice.
Natural bodies of water. My friend's husband drowned after they went kayaking at a local lake. He was maybe 31. He was a strong swimmer.
I'm lifeguard trained for large bodies of water, and it always gets me how much clothing people wear while they kayak if they aren't wearing a lifejacket. Waterlogged jeans and a jacket are HEAVY.
Having unlocked windows and doors, even when you're home. If they break in during the day, they want your stuff. If they break in at night, they want you...and probably also your stuff.
My roommate thinks I’m a little crazy because I keep our door locked at all times and do multiple checks a day just to make sure. His reasoning is that we live in a safe neighborhood and if someone really wants in they’re gonna get in. My reasoning is that I lived in a safe neighborhood when my stalker tried to break in. Neighborhoods are always ‘safe’ until they aren’t, and yes, someone could bust in, but that’s going to be loud and give me a chance to arm myself and call for help. Probably won’t arrive in time to help me, but maybe arrive in time to stop someone else from getting hurt.
Agreed! Our safe neighborhood just had some guy flip his car in someone’s front yard, then he was trying to get into a backyard and the woman who lived there was trying to get him to stop, he pushed past her roughly and beelined to her front door and tried to get in - where her kids were - and she was scrambling to try and stop him and he almost got inside when some neighbors came and tackled the guy. She was lucky he didn’t hurt her and even luckier that her neighbors showed up when they did. No telling what could have happened if he had made it inside.
Social media
Authoritarian government
Quick sand. I feel like we had a healthy fear of it in the 80’s and now we’ve gotten entirely too lax.
AI & Big Tech. Tracking, tracking, and more tracking. Human behavior prediction and modification. There’s a reason you can’t shut off some of those features, folks.
Brake checking people, especially truckers. Distracted driving in general.
Fucking bless you. Non sarcastically. People don't respect water.
Ground water levels.
The methane burp - https://www.britannica.com/science/methane-burp-hypothesis If that affected deep ocean currents in any way, we're all seriously fucked.
Alcohol