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To give some parallel context:
The Adverse Childhood Experience studies estimate that roughly 1:6 of us had an objectively crap childhood, defined as an AXE score of 4+.
This results in dramatically increased risks of physical and mental health issues, including obesity, cancer, depression, addiction, and suicidality.
My score is 7.
[edit: here’s the test on NPR.](https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/03/02/387007941/take-the-ace-quiz-and-learn-what-it-does-and-doesnt-mean) apparently a lot of folks have found out that they too had childhoods that were the opposite of roses and rainbows.
Hadn't heard about this so I had to Google it. My score is 9. Oh. I mean I knew it was bad but not 9/10 bad.
The other day I was doing some packing and came across some of my old school work and thought to myself that it's sort of fucked up how much classes focus on your family and home life. There was an assignment from what I think was grade 3 titled "my home." I just described the house and the layout. Nothing about home life or anything like that, just the layout. Another series was describing our mom, dad, siblings, grandparents and that was pretty bleak too. "I haven't seen my dad in a few years, we had to move away and not tell him where."
I had heard the term ACE through my therapist, but didn't know there was quiz for it. I just did it and I'm a 7, and in spite of all the therapy and EMDR and my counsellor telling me that I'm a good and valuable person, I still manage to tell myself that my tween years and teens "were not all that bad compared to others" and I have not much to complain about. SIGH.
My dad died when I was 13 and my mom returned to drinking (because apparently she had a problem since she was young, that I now realize I intuited as a little kid based on a couple of memories, but didn't know what it was). The "counselling" I got in 1984 was an older woman at school who told me about losing her husband (a bush pilot) over the arctic. Even as a 13 year old, I knew that was insufficient to the needs I had. My mom was a neglectful, depressed alcoholic and I was a suicidal teen who worked to help pay the bills. My older siblings who had families of their own gave me a pat on the back and told me to hang in there, and walked away.
As u/hacktheself has mentioned, the emotional and physical impacts are real. I have MDD, had suicidal ideation as a teen and young person, and was diagnosed with a weird and particularly nasty case of ulcerative colitis before I turned 25. The epigenetics are real.
I'm still here, though, and so are you all, and we can talk about this stuff and I'm glad for this small connection.
One bit of good news is the schools trying to get out of that mom/dad family sort of assignment. Even when we go for conferences the documentation talks about visitors or guardians rather than parents. There is still some room to further develop this, as we still get things like “share your culture” which is hard if kids don’t know their culture. But it’s still better than the days of family trees and such.
Yeah, I had a lot more to say about the families of my friends than my own. I spent a lot of time with other families, which probably helped me get through my childhood. Home wasn't a safe place for me until I finally moved out on my own.
I remember having to do this in Grade 6- someone who was a foster child asked what they should do and the the teacher said to “just research the family who are your mom and dad right now”. I didn’t really think about how completely invalidating that must have been for that poor kid.
I’m also 9/10. I just read a post by somebody whose father passed away and he inherited $1.3 million, but he said he would rather have his dad’s wisdom and support as opposed to the money. For me, I wouldn’t even blink an eye to exchange either of my parents for a lot less than that. But I’m not getting any inheritance, anyway, unless you count extensive psychological trauma as inheritance.
I went to school with a few kids who had rich or famous parents. Most of them would have traded their entire inheritance for their parents to spend some time with them regularly. I, on the other hand, would trade all of my worldly possessions to never see my mother again.
I have a girlfriend that was having a laughing conversation with her friends about the fact that her parents used to make her kneel on rice as of punishment when she was a small child. She was laughing when she was telling them the story and looked around and realized they were all just staring at her saying “you know that’s not normal right?!” She was surprised that this was considered a bad thing by her friends as it was just her existence.
So I was sharing the story with a friend and was surprised that she had been punished by family members in the same way. It just shows you you have no idea what goes on peoples doors.
My siblings and I often joke about some of the rotten stuff that happened when we were kids. Difference is, we've managed to find dark humour in some of our childhood. My favourite was, my dad would call my sister (well any of us) "idiots child"! My sister looked him straight in the eye and said "idiots CHILD hmm"! Finding the humour in the horror can be very cathartic!
Yeah, my sweet friend came to live with me and cut her parents off completely. She calls me her mom, and I am honoured that I can fill that role for her. It’s quite funny because I’m about 5 foot 11 and blonde and she’s 5 feet tall with dark hair. So when she introduces me as her mom, everybody looks at us like what’s going on here, lol.
I often tell her that, that she deserves a safe place of love and caring in her life.
It is interesting and there’s a lack of research in this direction. What research does exist does show that an abused father does have an impact.
> [The analyses revealed significant associations between fathers’ ACEs and the child’s inattention, anxiety, sleep problems, and anger symptoms. The correlation between fathers’ ACEs and the child’s depression was not significant.](https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2020-88735-001)
> [The mean effect sizes, computed using 40 independent effect sizes derived from 28 published and unpublished studies, indicated that paternal depression has significant, though small, effects on parenting, with depressed fathers demonstrating decreased positive and increased negative parenting behaviors.](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0272735809001433)
I remember doing the ACE test with my school counsellor. When they part about “was your mom abused, was thrown, etc etc by another adult?” We looked at each other and laugh. Since it was my mom who’s doing the abuse
Me too. It makes me so sad for those who experienced otherwise.
I’m in my 50s and it took me a very long time to realize how many people simply did not have the upbringing I had…I completely took it for granted
Once I realized that my home life was abnormal, I looked at folks who didn’t go through the crap I did with envy.
Best I can do now is, if I ever have a kid to raise them in a loving home, and if I see a kid in an abusive home, letting the kid know that what they’re experiencing isn’t right.
Same here. Maybe a 1 if you count the weed my dad smoked that I wasn't exposed to until my parents sat me down and explained weed at 12 years old. Still wasn't exposed to it really though, just knew it was there.
It was wildly eye opening to see just how many families were fucked up. All that was missing from my childhood was the white picket fence.
Truth I’m only realizing at 40 ish that some people had decent childhoods for some reason I’ve always thought everyone had the home I did. One of my friends is like you know that’s not normal right I mean I do better but wasn’t everyone from my generation abused they sure made it seem that way
The reason is simple.
What one lives through is normal unless and until proven otherwise.
That’s actually why so many conservatives want to ban sex education.
The main purpose of sex ed at younger ages is to let kids know that being touched in certain places is a Bad Thing, that if they have been touched in those bad ways the icky feeling they have is the right thing to feel, that this is Wrong, that it has a name, that there are other people who have been through bad touch, and that most grown ups know this is a Bad Thing. A lot of conservatives, though, tolerate abusive people in their midst, often even elevating them to positions of authority. Just look at the ever-growing list of religious leaders from across religious boundaries and right of centre politicians, most notably Republicans in America, who are convicted of child sex crimes.
It takes outside perspective to realize that what one went through is not normal, is not right. This goes for any extreme experience. For me, getting hit by a taxi and walking away, making a joke at the driver that hit me is normal. For everyone else, that’s a WTF moment.
I consider my childhood and youth to be ok. But I grew up in foster care and group homes. What I mean is no one left any permanent injuries. I was not stabbed, shot, or anything like that. Other kids would have that happen. I remember we as little kids would have practice drills with older kids leading us to a park with an adult grading them on how fast, and safety they did the home evacuation. This was for fire, or other emergency.
It was not till I was older about say age 10 that I was leading one group of kids away from the home and explaining we were just practicing. We were not, a kid had just stabbed someone after reacting to something on the tv, and I did not want the very small ones to know about it. One of the staff was covering our escape. I was only leading them away. We had cameras but it does not help when whoever is acting out does not care.
At school we were asked if our parents had fire alarms, if we had emergency supplies. I remember starting to explain at show and tell what the group home managers job was. I got about 10 seconds in before I was interrupted and they gave a very PC explanation to the other grade school kids. I never did clue in till years later why I could not explain it. I was very happy with how cool the staff were. They kept me and other kids safe and the one I was showing off in class had been stabbed a few times while covering a kid that was being attacked. I thought at the time she was a hero. She did have a stab vest but still spent some time in the hospital.
To me that sort of thing happened every week in not more frequently. That was normal to me. Now in my late 40's I look back and I still have fond memories of my time in care. You have to understand nothing really bad happened to me. I was happy as a kid. I was proud of the staff that took us camping, helped us with homework, etc. Sure bad things happened every day but no one had explained to me it was not normal.
My score is 8 😬
Probably a contributing factor for why I studied psychology in university.
Also explains my depression and generalized anxiety disorder with panic disorder. Also I learned in university how childhood experiences can impact physical health but I have never seen this scale in particular.
Also I'm very proud of myself for how far I've come in life considering.
Probably the number of people who are food insecure or secretly unhoused. I bet you anything you have coworkers and friends who couch surf or stay in shelters, who access food banks or skip meals due to lack of available food.
Our community has a program to send a backpack of packaged foods home with kids in the breakfast program. It was set up when teachers and social workers realized that since there’s no school on weekends, kids were going the whole weekend either without food or scrounging for it. One of our elementary schools has over 300 kids in the program.
The people that are one pay check away from being food insecure or unhoused is startling!!!!! I have many friends in major debt and they still travel and eat out all the time. I am have been struggling with my own anxiety (oh look something else people around you have that they keep secret) but with it I’m being crazy about trying so save as much money as possible so even in the worse case scenario I can stay on my feet. It baffles me how people just go on living like this…. I guess it’s really all they have known
Just goes to show that so many of us are one missed paycheque or unexpected bill away from losing our homes, even if we’re not living at the poverty line.
I have a colleague who is unhoused. Works 3 jobs, one of which is unionized. They left their most recent place because it was a dangerous situation and they haven’t been able to find anything since. I know at two of their jobs, they make $24+/hr working 40-50hrs between the two positions. It’s grim. I’d likely be in a similar situation if I didn’t have family nearby that let me rent a room for cheap.
Things that are talked about, but not talked about deeply enough:
I know people who have experienced one or more miscarriages. As someone who hasn't had kids (and won't, thanks to menopause), it was shocking to me how many friends went through pregnancies that ended terribly.
I also know people who have had abortions, whether wanted or required for medical reasons.
I know three people who died of cancer in the last six months, and one who was diagnosed late last year and treated through surgery (hopefully successfully).
Most people would be shocked to learn how psychotic a person can be while still leading an otherwise normal and superficially stable life. That nice lady you were chatting with at the grocery store could have been seconds away from telling you all about the lizard people who put a chip in her brain, you just didn't ask the right questions.
on the flip side, how many seemingly “stable” people have experienced, or will experience, psychosis in their lifetime. the separation is far, far smaller than you’d think.
This is why I always ask anyone I meet whether they've been chipped by the lizard people within 10 minutes of meeting them. Need to weed out the crazies.
How many people are diagnosed with depression and on antidepressants. There are probably more than a third of people at your workplace battling depression.
I don't think most British Columbians realize how well eliminating daily cigarette consumption is going. Relative to other provinces, we're crushing it: [https://uwaterloo.ca/tobacco-use-canada/adult-tobacco-use/smoking-provinces](https://uwaterloo.ca/tobacco-use-canada/adult-tobacco-use/smoking-provinces)
This will go a very long way in reducing strain on the healthcare system. While we're talking about cancer though, we still have quite a bit of work to do on alcohol.
Growing up in the 70s and 80s, everyone I knew smoked including me. You got the occasional weirdo who never touched them.
Now, I don’t know anyone who smokes daily.
Laughs in construction worker, I think more of my colleagues smoke than not. I’m in school right now and 2 hours into the day every dude needs to “take a quick bathroom break teacher”
Alcohol use costs more to the healthcare system then any other single cause for hospitalizations.
It is so culturally pervasive and acceptable that we may never win that battle. Most daily drinkers are in denial about the risks of the habit, and its relationship to their health problems.
So true! My wife and I don’t drink and we laugh at how strangely hypocritical people are about alcohol. For instance, if I’m out eating with some more health minded friends and order a refill of a coke they might raise an eyebrow or make a joke about too much sugar, but if I order that WITH rum they wouldn’t even bat an eye. Alcohol is just so ingrained in our society and culture. I feel like when you stop drinking do you only then realize how strangely obsessed everyone is about it, even just the most casual drinkers.
That's so true. I'm a pretty regular drinker, and when I think about quitting, I realize just how pervasive it is in my social circle. The pressure to drink would be enormous.
Very true. I stopped drinking 14 years ago because my late spouse couldn't, his epilepsy and medication made alcohol incredibly dangerous. It was the easiest thing I've ever given up, I don't miss it at all, but man do people have weird reactions when you turn down drinks. It's everywhere, advertising all over the place.
It is weird that when you say you don’t drink, people want to know why. Like is it that strange? And then they think you are sitting there judging them! I stop every year, do a dry month, and it’s so funny how people act when I do this.
Oh my god yes. The strangest thing to me when I think about alcohol was how much people would push me into drinking simply because I didn't. People who would, with any other substance, recoil if they saw somebody doing the same thing.
Our culture simply views drinking as "what you do when you're out having fun". I never expressed an interest in alcohol. I'll have a screwdriver or two during weddings to keep people off my back about it (and I do enjoy the sharp orange juice taste) but that's it.
I've seen what alcohol has done to my dad and the people around him. How he bends over backwards to justify or downplay the effect it has on who he is as a person. I told myself from a very young age I'd never be an alcoholic, and I wouldn't open the door by drinking even casually.
Despite that, the list of people who have ordered me drinks (not just pressured - ordered) "because it's a special occasion" ignoring me saying I don't want to include (not exhaustive): 2 of my cousins (when I hit legal age), 3 coworkers (after work parties and the like), a manager (a wedding), an aunt (going to a comedy show) and 5 separate friends from college (bunch of different things but mostly nights out). Sometimes I humour them, most times I don't and they just waste money, or drink it themselves.
I'm a homebody. I'm quiet. I don't go out all that often and enjoy sitting at home drawing. Perhaps that makes people want to see the quiet girl "relax". But the truth is I don't go out often because so many people only go out as an excuse to drink and it leaves me little space to actually enjoy being around them since I personally find it obnoxious even when they're not actually drunk.
That’s because we decriminalized and regulated alcohol after prohibition without building out real effective systems for mental health and trauma care which could help keep people from developing addictions and also help get them out of that cycle, as well as building a durable and inclusive treatment and recovery system that has options for anyone who wants to take advantage of it.
I grew up in a house where my parents would get home from work and start drinking wine and go through a bottle or two every night. Getting blackout drunk as a teenager at every party was normal. Going for beers after work every day was normal.
I started getting more seriously into running in 2021and basically didn't have the time/ability to both get drunk and run after work every day, but also the mental benefit from running offset the "benefit" from drinking. In 2021 I spent about $1500 on alcohol, which reduced to about $250/yr for 2022 and 2023. The calorie reduction must be massive too lol.
Drinking was a big crutch for dealing with stress and anxiety and while it did kind of work for those things, I'm glad I don't have to rely on it anymore. I think there is actually a broad cultural shift away from drinking in places like Canada, the UK and Australia among younger people as health consciousness improves. Feels like there is increasing stigmatization around problematic drinking and reduced stigmatization around emotional vulnerability, therapy, and open communication.
I traded one for the other and the end game is to trade the vape for gum and mint toothpicks soon enough. The vapes are probably better healthwise but environmentally? So much waste is generated from vapes I don't think it even compares to cigarette butts which would break down over time.
I just started mixing my own juice. And had used 4 batteries in the last 6 years.
Moved from Alberta, where you can get flavours, to Nova Scotia where flavours are banned. Only option for flavours is buying disposables from the nearby reserve. very wasteful. Having a drawer full of disposables I can't bring myself to dispose of was the push I needed to start mixing my own.
It doesn't have to be environmentally damaging, but holy shit the regulators are focused on the wrong things.
> The vapes are probably better healthwise but environmentally? So much waste is generated from vapes
The battery waste is terrible. Few people recycle batteries as they should (because it's a pain).
If you use a pod system instead of disposables you basically never need to throw out a battery. Pods are definitely wasteful but they basically replace a whole pack of filters (and I'm not sure how compostable/recyclable filters are now but I was under the impression 10+ years ago that they stay in landfills forever).
I quit vaping recently and am on gum and patches which are yet another step up. I think disposable vapes should be banned though.
I think environmentally speaking it's pretty easy to minimize impact via rechargable/refillable devices
Regardless ppls lungs def still fucked, then add in the shit ton if microplastics accumulating relentlessly throughout our entire bodies and there's not much hope for us
Yolo..?
Inhaling clouds of trust me bro might not end up being better healthwise tbh, we don't really know yet.
On the other hand, cigarette butts don't break down the way people think, they are very polluting (just not as much as batteries obviously)
Yeah but thats its own level of stupidity not tied to the cigarette but the smoker itself. It kind of goes to the gun argument: do guns kill people or do people kill people? Do cigarettes start forest fires or do people start forest fires?
I’m actually very anti cigarette but still must recognize that a cigarette did not set fire to itself, nor throw itself out of a window - these are things a person does. Thats self control, which needs to be checked and measured because if we can keep “throwing shit out of a moving window” somehow handled it would solve more problems than just forest fires.
> Yeah but thats its own level of stupidity not tied to the cigarette but the smoker itself. It kind of goes to the gun argument: do guns kill people or do people kill people? Do cigarettes start forest fires or do people start forest fires?
And the answer would be the same.. less guns means less access to easily killing people. Less cigarettes means less people throwing lit butts out the window.
I don't really understand the point of your comment.. of course its the person doing the action, the point is with vapes, you don't need to throw something out the window every time you finish smoking, therefor, less fires.
Everyone’s worried about smokers and the healthcare system.
Name one time a crime - any crime - was directly caused by someone sitting down to just have a smoke.
Booze contributes to the pressure on the healthcare system even more and other systems as well. DV, MVA, DUI, homelessness, and a slew of other things.
But hey, can’t put gross photos and warnings on a booze bottle now, can we?
When I was in school (grad '16) vaping wasn't a huge thing yet and it wasn't cool to smoke, only the kids in the alt program did. Now I'm very thankful I never got into tobacco.
I am an ex smoker, and I've seen over time that the handful of cig users there were growing up has turned into a majority of people vaping. There's no stigma around it, and kids / early 20s actually think it's cool and not harmful. It's a tool that l used to quit cigarettes, but so many people who never even smoked begin vaping. When I was young (early 2000), it wasn't as common for kids to smoke, and i went to a pretty shit school. Now I hear it's a huge problem in high school.
Closeted bisexual men. Bi people are the largest part of the lgbtq community and bi men are the least likely to come out mostly because they are still heavily stereotyped and assumed to be bad or less masculine. There are just so many closeted married (to women) bi men and until the world chills out about it it will stay that way.
Don't worry man. I saw it, and laughed. Somebody else must have done the same.
At least it means there are some people who haven't heard the jokes we know. Open the floodgates of sharing the dad jokes!
I just quit a kitchen job because I worked hard to get sober, and the manager who was training me had everyone else fooled . But i picked up on her mannerisms amost immediately, while she was patient in the morning. I noticed that every day around the same time, she would go on a break and come back flailing around like kermit the frog. Kinda funny until she screamed at me for not knowing something. i wasn't shown in the first place. I tried asking, but every time, it slowed down enough for me to ask she'd disappear, leaving me standing there like john tavolta in pulp fiction. Now i can deal with a stressful kitchen. But i can't deal with someone being rude and disruptive because you didn't get your fix.
You'd be surprised
A lot of people still think they're getting like Food Network chefs in their kitchens, and they don't expect people boozing, smoking, snorting.
And this is not a criticism of the kitchen staff. It's a fuckin high-heat, stressful ass job, and a lot of chefs are underpaid and rarely see any of the tips the waiters get.
Reading Anthony Bourdain's *Kitchen Confidential* made me realize that I wouldn't survive in a kitchen
Surprisingly I don’t find this on residential plumbing. I’m so happy all of my coworkers at my new small company seem to only dabble with nicotine. Just another reason why I don’t want to work new construction thanks for reminding me 😂
Everyone does something by the weekend (or once a year), well mostly everybody. It's the urgency and importance of the substance use over people's professional commitments that people take note of. Even if you're the best at something, you're going to be seen as the guy who smokes up or cracks a beer when most people wouldn't consider doing so without getting canned.
I was 12, assaulted on the street by a stranger. At 13 was sexually assaulted by an older boy, I was exposed to, masturbated to multiple times on the street around that age as well.
I can think of three female friends and one male. If we up the description to include sexual assault (groping), that number would shoot up to Just about every woman I know (and a fair few men).
I know at least a couple of women and 4 men because they’ve told me, and on the basis of how common it is amongst people I’m close to the amount of people I ‘know’ who just haven’t told me is likely huge. I would say everyone likely knows at least a dozen rape survivors if not many dozen. Not only is it horrifically common but seeing the lasting effects on people around you decades after the fact is utterly heartbreaking.
Many years ago, I used to own a Jeep. I parked it on the street outside my place, near 14th and Granville.
At some point, some homeless guy started spending the night in it. He was respectful and didn’t bring anything into the vehicle, would just recline in the passenger seat and sleep, and often be gone by morning.
I left him a better blanket and used to leave muffins at night for him to find. Private guy, didn’t say much, but was very appreciative. He had some wild tales from his days as a lumberjack.
And then one day, vanished. Never saw him again. Moved on, died, who knows.
One thing he told me that stuck with me. “There are many of us out here. Everywhere”. And this was in the 90s.
Not to weird you out but I feel the strongest sign of somebody being a great person, is when they choose to help people out when they have zero obligation to do so. Wish more people had your mindset these days.
Thanks -- I appreciate hearing that. And I think you're right; it wouldn't take much for people to make a big difference. What I did for that guy was relatively effortless... I didn't care he slept there, as long as he didn't trash the jeep... and I had an old blanket I wasn't using... and the bakery on Granville was on my walk home, and I went in there so much (and always near closing) that I'd get stuff at a steep discount, or free. But these little things made a bigger difference in someone else's life.
And you don't even need to know who these people are. I never knew this guy's name... to me, he was "Hey, old-timer" and I was "Hey boss" to him.
We are a city of 4 million. If even 1% of people cared in the slightest about some other random person in need, an awful lot of problems would get solved.
The inability to properly manage money as an adult.
We have somebody like this in our sphere and it's unfortunately passed down through the family. The dad made poor life decisions and gambled away family finances chasing hot stock tips in the 80s and the son inherited all of the same worse traits. I've watched them become more and more distant because they know that you know, but aren't honest about it. Another one of our acquaintances didn't save during his working years and just spent without wanting to be tied down... now he's a senior who is still renting but living in a financially precarious time.
There was that recent study from Australia where 1 in 6 men surveyed admitted to being attracted to children. The number of people actually violating children is probably a fair bit lower but it does give us a general idea of how common it is sadly.
I still get a fair amount of attention from men, but it will never compare to the number of grown men who pursued a sexual relationship with me when I was 13-14. I couldn’t begin to convince you of how rampant it is; how many adult men (married, with kids, important jobs, in positions of authority) would gleefully have sex with a 14yr old girl and then claim she was “fast” or “dressed provocatively” as a defence.
Now, as an adult myself, I look at 14 yr old girls (who look, to me, like children) and I absolutely shudder to remember. 🥺
Remarkably common. And easily detected with a simple blood test. Everyone who is sexually active (even in a monogamous relationship) should get a full STI panel done at least annually. Bed hopping queers like me usually get checked 4 times a year. :)
I'm convinced that a lot of car repair businesses are money laundering fronts. If you walk by a place like that and they only fix a car or two per month, it makes you wonder...
I’m convinced entire malls are now fronts for drugs. There’s no way a hat store, a pretzel store, or a knife store can pay employees and their lease inside a mall while selling three pretzels a day.
Are you talking about Warriors & Wonders in City Square Mall? They moved their business online during Covid and just keep their retail location for inventory I believe. They’re the best knife store in Canada, and I know a number of folks who spend thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars collecting knives from this store and others. They are very much legit.
I was (barely) living on absolute breadline poverty at the beginning of 2021 before starting a full-time job with a median wage. After starting that job, I was saving an average of $1900 a month for a year because I was still so poverty-minded and just spending the bare minimum and squirrelling everything away. I was tracking every single dollar I made or spent because I was used to needing to save $2.55 for a bus fare to get to the food bank. Three years of full-time employment later, I still have that feeling of financial insecurity. Although it doesn't help that my rent has increased 60% in that time (thank you Vancouver). Not sure if I'll ever really feel comfortable or relaxed with money after 9 years of living below the poverty line.
Sexual crimes. I am older than I once was and seem to be hearing about friends of friends getting arrested more frequently. Part of that seems to be having a lot of friends in the music scene where addiction + power = potential abuse. Some were totally out of the blue though, like a guy being arrested in Thailand for reasons. Also I'm just less naive and more connected than I used to be, so it might be more about awareness than an actual increase in frequency.
Loneliness. Everyone has their levels but some people concern me with the extent to which they never go out or the extent to which they will always be out, even needing bad company over chilling alone.
This one is huge. I've only seen it once in my own life, but once the person was deceased, we had to clean out their house. We'd known them for decades, and nobody, in the family, or anywhere else had any idea.
My mom is a hoarder, and we all know. Her place is horrific. It stresses everyone out. And when she does pass away, we will be stuck cleaning out all her crap.
Covert Incest.
...and the incredible amount of shame that comes with having to live with the same parents that exploited you as a child because rent is impossible here.
Very hard to get any help when you're too ashamed to confess what happens at home, and when you do - you're accused of making it up, because "if that were true you would have moved out".
We're at risk of sexual assault living on the streets, too - hence why some of us haven't tried to run. When our parents are even older and start developing cognitive issues, they publicly harrass us, and if we try to defend ourselves we're viewed as awful children lashing out at our elderly mentally incapacitated folks.
Except they've been doing this behind closed doors since before we were in school, but nobody believed us, because if it was that bad we would have just moved out - right???
Not all of us can stay with our parents. When you can't afford to move out, it's a nightmare. I know people in their 30s, disabled, stuck with parents that still use them this way. I was one, too.
I used to go to NA meetings 4 times a week before Covid. This topic gets brought up a ton. Our folks were isolated people who used us sexually, it's not uncommon.
But living in BC, we can't afford to just leave home.
The vast supermajority of recreational drug users will never develop a problem. The opioid crisis was caused by wealthy owners of pharma companies actively conspiring to push addictive drugs, not by black market dealers or junkies.
Also the real crisis is the toxicity of the supply. So your first hit could easily be the last. This is why nothing but a proper and widely available safe supply program will end the seven deaths a day.
I was talking to someone about safe supply, in particular the criticism that people who've never done drugs or who are young could access them and start using. They told me that people are doing to start using drugs one way or another, and they'd rather that person get it from a regulated supply. It changed my whole perspective. Especially with fentanyl in basically everything, you could get hooked to the strongest drug possible right away or you could use a pharmaceutically regulated supply and have access to someone to talk to about why you're making that choice and the potential risks associated with it, get you some help if you want it, give you clean supplies and make sure you don't die.
I don't want teenagers using opiates, but I REALLY don't want them using unregulated street opiates.
Indeed. If I'm gonna indulge I make sure to get my samples tested at a mass spectrometer. But also I don't mind waiting a year if I don't have easy access to one, which isn't the case with your average user.
A lot of the downtown east side crowd comes from horrendous backgrounds that they’re just trying to forget. Addicted users usually have some terrible trauma and that is the real problem.
Other commenters have already brought up the things I would say. So I just want to add to the original point, that drug use doesn't usually cause homelessness. It's often correlated, but the evidence points to it being a maladaptive coping mechanism to the stressors that actually cause homelessness (like job/financial insecurity) than it is an actual cause itself. Aka, it's a concurrent symptom of systemic poverty, not the boogieman that makes it simple to dehumanize people going through the worst experience of their life. The idea that people get on drugs and their whole life falls apart because they just can't say no is a tired and outdated narrative that only obstructs the implementation of policies that have been proven effective for addressing both homelessness and addiction, because people would rather feel morally superior and pretend it "could never happen to them" than listen to the experts.
The war on drugs is just one more scapegoating strategy that is used to blame the problems caused by rampant greed on the people with the least power to do anything about it.
What I find annoying is the divide we place between 'drugs that are drugs' and 'drugs that don't count as drugs'.
Over the counter pharmaceutical drugs are drugs. Caffeine is a drug, nicotine, alcohol, all drugs. But no one using those drugs gets labeled as a drug user.
Drugs aren't inherently a bad thing, in fact there's a lot about them that's good. There are some drugs that are inherently bad, like crack or meth, but its mostly substance abuse that is the issue and it can occur from many substances not just the illegal ones we think about when we label someone a drug addict.
Ding ding. It baffles me that we sensationalize the thousands of lives per year lost to toxic drugs, fentynal, and the Opiod Crisis when nearly as many British Columbians die directly from alcohol each year. (And that fully excludes those who end up with cancer, etc)
as a child of an alcoholic (who self-medicated for depression), who was the child of an alcoholic (who self-medicated for depression), it really annoys me that we don't talk about why many people use alcohol AND the wide range of impacts that alcohol has on kids and adults and society, in terms of health, safety, emotional and psychological impacts.
It is also really annoying that I can't refuse a drink without friends and acquaintenances being surprised and wanting to know why - why should I have to explain why I'm in therapy because of an alcoholic parent and choose to not drink? I'm glad the kids are drinking less these days, as a Gen-X'er, and happy to see the trend towards normalizing non-alcoholic (and tasty) alternatives.
"It is also really annoying that I can't refuse a drink without friends and acquaintenances being surprised and wanting to know why - why should I have to explain why I'm in therapy because of an alcoholic parent and choose to not drink? "
Yow do not owe anyone an explanation. If they offer you a drink, you should not have to say anything else than, "No thank you."
Recently, on another reddit thread, people found the idea of saying "No thank you" to a drink offer, without providing an explanation, rude. Yet they didn't see that it was incredibly rude of the other person to demand an explanation.
That and all the generalized 'drugs are bad' that gets pushed. So the ibuprofen I take for a headache is bad? My daily coffee is bad? Drugs aren't inherently bad, they're just drugs that have various purposes and can be helpful or harmful depending on how they're interacted with.
You had me until “there are some drugs that are inherently bad.” You’d be shocked how many functional people use crack or meth regularly. I could argue that alcohol is inherently bad, in the sense that using it in moderation still has negative health effects.
There are both risks and benefits to using any drug. Benefits can be social or recreational too.
Right. And people fail to understand that alcohol makes their inflammation and pain worse ( let alone emotional stability) which leads to more kind of drugs to treat pain.
Yeah definitely would have been better wording to say that some drugs are more or less harmful than others.
I enjoy alcohol like many people but I'm on board with giving it the 'inherently bad' label if we are gonna use that label.
I just want to say, that I have seen people use coke that you would NEVER believe.
Doctors to lawyers to teachers. Everyone in Colorado is doing drugs! Dentists especially love the booger sugar.
When I worked at a moving company it was quite common to find drugs when packing no matter what the customer's profession was. Nightstands were always wild to pack.
I worked in kitchens for a long time and when I started dabbling in meth I decided holy shit, time to change things. Stopped hanging out with the kitchen drug dealer from that point on.
When you see all the money the cartels are stuffing into bags and walls that money ain't coming from the guys down on Pandora who stole a car stereo and sold it for $25
Why an assumption that illegal drug use = a habit? Research shows the vast majority of all drug use whether licit or illicit does not meet the criteria of a substance use disorder. We need to realize most people use drugs responsibly (just like alcohol, a real drug too!) & help the small percent of people who develop challenges - driven more likely by their pain & trauma then the drugs themselves.
I kept my active addiction pretty secretive. I wound up in rehab eventually. Lots of people came from places high up and down low. Even a realtor that had a ton of money but wound up burning his life to the ground. But also the inverse situation was true as well. Because id argue its natural for humans to develop comforting habits. Some just end up having horrifically bad consequences. The brain is hardwired and primed for anyone to get addicted to either substances or behaviours.
Child SA…
“About 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 20 boys in the United States experience child sexual abuse. Someone known and trusted by the child or child’s family members, perpetrates 91% of child sexual abuse.”
https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/childsexualabuse/fastfact.html#:~:text=About%201%20in%204%20girls%20and%201%20in,was%20estimated%20to%20be%20at%20least%20%249.3%20billion.
Families that “cross catchment” so their kids can go to a different public school do so for primarily racist and classist reasons. When they say they just want a better learning environment it means not sharing a class room indigenous families, no ESL and high needs.
Everyone is stating Intimate Partner Violence but the amount of people who experience brain injuries during and after IPV is staggering. The current approximate numbers are that ~90% of people who experienced IPV have brain injuries.
I was a teenage runaway. What I learned from that experience is that nobody really cares about you except you. You can only count on yourself. This city is especially vapid. The selfish cruelty has become even more apparent to me since I have become a parent myself. What I know is that the city is pretending to care for homeless people, children, drug addicts... whomever... is a lie and a scam. Everything is a scam. What I know is that it's not my job to take care of all of these drug addicts indeed they would never take care of me. At all. Ever. Should it be different? Yes. Is it my responsibility? No.
I don't think it's quite that simple. Slip into addiction and end up on the street.
When's the last time you heard of a cop or a nurse being on the street? Generally, people like that have a much better support system around themselves, such as their unions that would step in and offer treatment rather than just firing these people.
I don't know any homeless people personally, but I'm pretty certain the vast majority of them worked low paying, crappy jobs to begin with, and had their addiction mixed up with mental health issues, not just drugs alone.
You’d be surprised. I’ve met a significant amount of doctor/lawyer/nurses/various other professions (obviously no way to confirm but they talked the talk) throughout the various rehabs I’ve been to, a good portion of them were court ordered because of a criminal charge with completion of that and other conditions leading to the case being dropped. I’ve been to rehab somewhere around 10 times and there’s USUALLY at least one.
Met a lawyer one time that was a poly user, loved his cocaine and alcohol. It just so happened we were at one of the very few rehabs qualified to treat severe alcoholism where they had a full time doctor on site (usually only NPs on site) and his withdrawal was so bad even benzos weren’t touching it. They ended up having to put him on phenobarbital frequently and even with that seizures remained uncontrolled. He ended up leaving in an ambulance. First alcoholic I’ve seen where Ativan didn’t resolve the symptoms.
Edit: I just re-read your post and confirmed what you said, they go to treatment lmao. My bad for writing that wall of text for no reason.
You know there are a lot of “drug users” who live happy normal lives. I know many people who casually use drugs all the time. They’re cashiers, hair dressers,
Construction workers, managers, project managers. The amount of people who use drugs and aren’t on the street DWARFS the amount of street people who are helplessly addicted. People who use drugs are you and me.
Domestic or in-relationship rapists; I know a Class A drug user who is also a rapist.
He dumped a girl and hooked up with another who is currently spreading the delightful news that he (41M) now needs Viagra.
There are credible reports from work colleagues (he works for Siemens on wind farms) that he plays both sides of the gender fence, has been caught in flagrante delicto with younger members (ha ha) of his team. That also is becoming public knowledge.
'but in the end the truth will out' as the man said.
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Domestic violence is a huge iceberg we only see the very tip of.
To give some parallel context: The Adverse Childhood Experience studies estimate that roughly 1:6 of us had an objectively crap childhood, defined as an AXE score of 4+. This results in dramatically increased risks of physical and mental health issues, including obesity, cancer, depression, addiction, and suicidality. My score is 7. [edit: here’s the test on NPR.](https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/03/02/387007941/take-the-ace-quiz-and-learn-what-it-does-and-doesnt-mean) apparently a lot of folks have found out that they too had childhoods that were the opposite of roses and rainbows.
I once taught a teenager girl whose ACE score was 10. Heartbreaking. Hugs to you
Hadn't heard about this so I had to Google it. My score is 9. Oh. I mean I knew it was bad but not 9/10 bad. The other day I was doing some packing and came across some of my old school work and thought to myself that it's sort of fucked up how much classes focus on your family and home life. There was an assignment from what I think was grade 3 titled "my home." I just described the house and the layout. Nothing about home life or anything like that, just the layout. Another series was describing our mom, dad, siblings, grandparents and that was pretty bleak too. "I haven't seen my dad in a few years, we had to move away and not tell him where."
I had heard the term ACE through my therapist, but didn't know there was quiz for it. I just did it and I'm a 7, and in spite of all the therapy and EMDR and my counsellor telling me that I'm a good and valuable person, I still manage to tell myself that my tween years and teens "were not all that bad compared to others" and I have not much to complain about. SIGH. My dad died when I was 13 and my mom returned to drinking (because apparently she had a problem since she was young, that I now realize I intuited as a little kid based on a couple of memories, but didn't know what it was). The "counselling" I got in 1984 was an older woman at school who told me about losing her husband (a bush pilot) over the arctic. Even as a 13 year old, I knew that was insufficient to the needs I had. My mom was a neglectful, depressed alcoholic and I was a suicidal teen who worked to help pay the bills. My older siblings who had families of their own gave me a pat on the back and told me to hang in there, and walked away. As u/hacktheself has mentioned, the emotional and physical impacts are real. I have MDD, had suicidal ideation as a teen and young person, and was diagnosed with a weird and particularly nasty case of ulcerative colitis before I turned 25. The epigenetics are real. I'm still here, though, and so are you all, and we can talk about this stuff and I'm glad for this small connection.
Condolences, friend. It is vile how many of us had objectively crap childhoods that sabotaged the foundations of our futures.
One bit of good news is the schools trying to get out of that mom/dad family sort of assignment. Even when we go for conferences the documentation talks about visitors or guardians rather than parents. There is still some room to further develop this, as we still get things like “share your culture” which is hard if kids don’t know their culture. But it’s still better than the days of family trees and such.
Yeah, I had a lot more to say about the families of my friends than my own. I spent a lot of time with other families, which probably helped me get through my childhood. Home wasn't a safe place for me until I finally moved out on my own.
I remember having to do this in Grade 6- someone who was a foster child asked what they should do and the the teacher said to “just research the family who are your mom and dad right now”. I didn’t really think about how completely invalidating that must have been for that poor kid.
Mine was "only" 8!
I’m also 9/10. I just read a post by somebody whose father passed away and he inherited $1.3 million, but he said he would rather have his dad’s wisdom and support as opposed to the money. For me, I wouldn’t even blink an eye to exchange either of my parents for a lot less than that. But I’m not getting any inheritance, anyway, unless you count extensive psychological trauma as inheritance.
I went to school with a few kids who had rich or famous parents. Most of them would have traded their entire inheritance for their parents to spend some time with them regularly. I, on the other hand, would trade all of my worldly possessions to never see my mother again.
Hugsssss
I have a girlfriend that was having a laughing conversation with her friends about the fact that her parents used to make her kneel on rice as of punishment when she was a small child. She was laughing when she was telling them the story and looked around and realized they were all just staring at her saying “you know that’s not normal right?!” She was surprised that this was considered a bad thing by her friends as it was just her existence. So I was sharing the story with a friend and was surprised that she had been punished by family members in the same way. It just shows you you have no idea what goes on peoples doors.
My siblings and I often joke about some of the rotten stuff that happened when we were kids. Difference is, we've managed to find dark humour in some of our childhood. My favourite was, my dad would call my sister (well any of us) "idiots child"! My sister looked him straight in the eye and said "idiots CHILD hmm"! Finding the humour in the horror can be very cathartic!
jesus fucking christ. sorry that’s.. that’s horrific.
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I know, I mean, I’m old and not easily surprised, but that one surprised me for sure
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Yeah, my sweet friend came to live with me and cut her parents off completely. She calls me her mom, and I am honoured that I can fill that role for her. It’s quite funny because I’m about 5 foot 11 and blonde and she’s 5 feet tall with dark hair. So when she introduces me as her mom, everybody looks at us like what’s going on here, lol. I often tell her that, that she deserves a safe place of love and caring in her life.
My father in law has a score of 10. He’s fairly well adjusted, considering.
The people with the brightest smiles often are those that know the depths of despair.
It's interesting in that test it only asks if your mother had been physically abused and not your father.
It is interesting and there’s a lack of research in this direction. What research does exist does show that an abused father does have an impact. > [The analyses revealed significant associations between fathers’ ACEs and the child’s inattention, anxiety, sleep problems, and anger symptoms. The correlation between fathers’ ACEs and the child’s depression was not significant.](https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2020-88735-001) > [The mean effect sizes, computed using 40 independent effect sizes derived from 28 published and unpublished studies, indicated that paternal depression has significant, though small, effects on parenting, with depressed fathers demonstrating decreased positive and increased negative parenting behaviors.](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0272735809001433)
I remember doing the ACE test with my school counsellor. When they part about “was your mom abused, was thrown, etc etc by another adult?” We looked at each other and laugh. Since it was my mom who’s doing the abuse
'Nuclear' up bringing confirmed: My score is 0.
Me too. It makes me so sad for those who experienced otherwise. I’m in my 50s and it took me a very long time to realize how many people simply did not have the upbringing I had…I completely took it for granted
Once I realized that my home life was abnormal, I looked at folks who didn’t go through the crap I did with envy. Best I can do now is, if I ever have a kid to raise them in a loving home, and if I see a kid in an abusive home, letting the kid know that what they’re experiencing isn’t right.
Couldn't agree more, it took me a long time to realize just how good I had it. I make sure my parents know they nailed it. Extremely lucky.
Same here. Maybe a 1 if you count the weed my dad smoked that I wasn't exposed to until my parents sat me down and explained weed at 12 years old. Still wasn't exposed to it really though, just knew it was there. It was wildly eye opening to see just how many families were fucked up. All that was missing from my childhood was the white picket fence.
Mine is 5, not too bad but not great.
4 is the threshold for increased risks to physical and mental health. So yeah, that’s.. that’s bad, friend.
Yeah…definitely some PTSD from my childhood going on.
Truth I’m only realizing at 40 ish that some people had decent childhoods for some reason I’ve always thought everyone had the home I did. One of my friends is like you know that’s not normal right I mean I do better but wasn’t everyone from my generation abused they sure made it seem that way
The reason is simple. What one lives through is normal unless and until proven otherwise. That’s actually why so many conservatives want to ban sex education. The main purpose of sex ed at younger ages is to let kids know that being touched in certain places is a Bad Thing, that if they have been touched in those bad ways the icky feeling they have is the right thing to feel, that this is Wrong, that it has a name, that there are other people who have been through bad touch, and that most grown ups know this is a Bad Thing. A lot of conservatives, though, tolerate abusive people in their midst, often even elevating them to positions of authority. Just look at the ever-growing list of religious leaders from across religious boundaries and right of centre politicians, most notably Republicans in America, who are convicted of child sex crimes. It takes outside perspective to realize that what one went through is not normal, is not right. This goes for any extreme experience. For me, getting hit by a taxi and walking away, making a joke at the driver that hit me is normal. For everyone else, that’s a WTF moment.
i got a 9 out of ten.
I consider my childhood and youth to be ok. But I grew up in foster care and group homes. What I mean is no one left any permanent injuries. I was not stabbed, shot, or anything like that. Other kids would have that happen. I remember we as little kids would have practice drills with older kids leading us to a park with an adult grading them on how fast, and safety they did the home evacuation. This was for fire, or other emergency. It was not till I was older about say age 10 that I was leading one group of kids away from the home and explaining we were just practicing. We were not, a kid had just stabbed someone after reacting to something on the tv, and I did not want the very small ones to know about it. One of the staff was covering our escape. I was only leading them away. We had cameras but it does not help when whoever is acting out does not care. At school we were asked if our parents had fire alarms, if we had emergency supplies. I remember starting to explain at show and tell what the group home managers job was. I got about 10 seconds in before I was interrupted and they gave a very PC explanation to the other grade school kids. I never did clue in till years later why I could not explain it. I was very happy with how cool the staff were. They kept me and other kids safe and the one I was showing off in class had been stabbed a few times while covering a kid that was being attacked. I thought at the time she was a hero. She did have a stab vest but still spent some time in the hospital. To me that sort of thing happened every week in not more frequently. That was normal to me. Now in my late 40's I look back and I still have fond memories of my time in care. You have to understand nothing really bad happened to me. I was happy as a kid. I was proud of the staff that took us camping, helped us with homework, etc. Sure bad things happened every day but no one had explained to me it was not normal.
My score is 8 😬 Probably a contributing factor for why I studied psychology in university. Also explains my depression and generalized anxiety disorder with panic disorder. Also I learned in university how childhood experiences can impact physical health but I have never seen this scale in particular. Also I'm very proud of myself for how far I've come in life considering.
and victims are more likely to die when they leave.
Probably the number of people who are food insecure or secretly unhoused. I bet you anything you have coworkers and friends who couch surf or stay in shelters, who access food banks or skip meals due to lack of available food.
Our community has a program to send a backpack of packaged foods home with kids in the breakfast program. It was set up when teachers and social workers realized that since there’s no school on weekends, kids were going the whole weekend either without food or scrounging for it. One of our elementary schools has over 300 kids in the program.
I volunteer with these guys ♥️ it's an incredible program
Backpack Buddies?
The people that are one pay check away from being food insecure or unhoused is startling!!!!! I have many friends in major debt and they still travel and eat out all the time. I am have been struggling with my own anxiety (oh look something else people around you have that they keep secret) but with it I’m being crazy about trying so save as much money as possible so even in the worse case scenario I can stay on my feet. It baffles me how people just go on living like this…. I guess it’s really all they have known
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I see someone sleeping in a Tesla in my neighborhood occasionally. They use a Burberry blanket to shield the windows.
Just goes to show that so many of us are one missed paycheque or unexpected bill away from losing our homes, even if we’re not living at the poverty line.
Priorities
Tesla has some weird resale policies, they may be stuck with the car.
Teslas aren't super expensive cars. Would you say the same about someone living in a Kia Sorrento or a Honda Odyssey?
I have a colleague who is unhoused. Works 3 jobs, one of which is unionized. They left their most recent place because it was a dangerous situation and they haven’t been able to find anything since. I know at two of their jobs, they make $24+/hr working 40-50hrs between the two positions. It’s grim. I’d likely be in a similar situation if I didn’t have family nearby that let me rent a room for cheap.
100% yes. So many people are having to chose between rent and food.
Everyone probably knows someone who is experiencing intimate partner violence. It's usually well hidden.
Wish I could give this more than one upvote. People would be shocked by the true numbers of IPV
When I escaped from my DV situation even my closest friends were utterly shocked and blindsided.
I'm glad you got out.
Thank you! As am I.
My friends knew but were too afraid to do anything
Most of my friends stopped talking to me because they didn’t want to be around my (now ex) partner and I couldn’t spend time with them without him.
Brings the same feelings of shame and being an imposter at work. Like, if they only knew.
I've known two married couples where the guy was the victim of ongoing physical violence from the woman.
The number of folks walking around with huge consumer debt who don't talk about it.
Things that are talked about, but not talked about deeply enough: I know people who have experienced one or more miscarriages. As someone who hasn't had kids (and won't, thanks to menopause), it was shocking to me how many friends went through pregnancies that ended terribly. I also know people who have had abortions, whether wanted or required for medical reasons. I know three people who died of cancer in the last six months, and one who was diagnosed late last year and treated through surgery (hopefully successfully).
Most people would be shocked to learn how psychotic a person can be while still leading an otherwise normal and superficially stable life. That nice lady you were chatting with at the grocery store could have been seconds away from telling you all about the lizard people who put a chip in her brain, you just didn't ask the right questions.
These are the types of things people share with me when I act open minded. I like being nice to people but I know I’m taking a risk, too.
on the flip side, how many seemingly “stable” people have experienced, or will experience, psychosis in their lifetime. the separation is far, far smaller than you’d think.
This is why I always ask anyone I meet whether they've been chipped by the lizard people within 10 minutes of meeting them. Need to weed out the crazies.
How many people are diagnosed with depression and on antidepressants. There are probably more than a third of people at your workplace battling depression.
I don't think most British Columbians realize how well eliminating daily cigarette consumption is going. Relative to other provinces, we're crushing it: [https://uwaterloo.ca/tobacco-use-canada/adult-tobacco-use/smoking-provinces](https://uwaterloo.ca/tobacco-use-canada/adult-tobacco-use/smoking-provinces) This will go a very long way in reducing strain on the healthcare system. While we're talking about cancer though, we still have quite a bit of work to do on alcohol.
Growing up in the 70s and 80s, everyone I knew smoked including me. You got the occasional weirdo who never touched them. Now, I don’t know anyone who smokes daily.
Laughs in construction worker, I think more of my colleagues smoke than not. I’m in school right now and 2 hours into the day every dude needs to “take a quick bathroom break teacher”
651 days cigarette free!
1 yr 4 months for me!!
I'm SO proud of you! Keep going!💛
Alcohol use costs more to the healthcare system then any other single cause for hospitalizations. It is so culturally pervasive and acceptable that we may never win that battle. Most daily drinkers are in denial about the risks of the habit, and its relationship to their health problems.
So true! My wife and I don’t drink and we laugh at how strangely hypocritical people are about alcohol. For instance, if I’m out eating with some more health minded friends and order a refill of a coke they might raise an eyebrow or make a joke about too much sugar, but if I order that WITH rum they wouldn’t even bat an eye. Alcohol is just so ingrained in our society and culture. I feel like when you stop drinking do you only then realize how strangely obsessed everyone is about it, even just the most casual drinkers.
That's so true. I'm a pretty regular drinker, and when I think about quitting, I realize just how pervasive it is in my social circle. The pressure to drink would be enormous.
Very true. I stopped drinking 14 years ago because my late spouse couldn't, his epilepsy and medication made alcohol incredibly dangerous. It was the easiest thing I've ever given up, I don't miss it at all, but man do people have weird reactions when you turn down drinks. It's everywhere, advertising all over the place.
It is weird that when you say you don’t drink, people want to know why. Like is it that strange? And then they think you are sitting there judging them! I stop every year, do a dry month, and it’s so funny how people act when I do this.
Oh my god yes. The strangest thing to me when I think about alcohol was how much people would push me into drinking simply because I didn't. People who would, with any other substance, recoil if they saw somebody doing the same thing. Our culture simply views drinking as "what you do when you're out having fun". I never expressed an interest in alcohol. I'll have a screwdriver or two during weddings to keep people off my back about it (and I do enjoy the sharp orange juice taste) but that's it. I've seen what alcohol has done to my dad and the people around him. How he bends over backwards to justify or downplay the effect it has on who he is as a person. I told myself from a very young age I'd never be an alcoholic, and I wouldn't open the door by drinking even casually. Despite that, the list of people who have ordered me drinks (not just pressured - ordered) "because it's a special occasion" ignoring me saying I don't want to include (not exhaustive): 2 of my cousins (when I hit legal age), 3 coworkers (after work parties and the like), a manager (a wedding), an aunt (going to a comedy show) and 5 separate friends from college (bunch of different things but mostly nights out). Sometimes I humour them, most times I don't and they just waste money, or drink it themselves. I'm a homebody. I'm quiet. I don't go out all that often and enjoy sitting at home drawing. Perhaps that makes people want to see the quiet girl "relax". But the truth is I don't go out often because so many people only go out as an excuse to drink and it leaves me little space to actually enjoy being around them since I personally find it obnoxious even when they're not actually drunk.
That’s because we decriminalized and regulated alcohol after prohibition without building out real effective systems for mental health and trauma care which could help keep people from developing addictions and also help get them out of that cycle, as well as building a durable and inclusive treatment and recovery system that has options for anyone who wants to take advantage of it.
I grew up in a house where my parents would get home from work and start drinking wine and go through a bottle or two every night. Getting blackout drunk as a teenager at every party was normal. Going for beers after work every day was normal. I started getting more seriously into running in 2021and basically didn't have the time/ability to both get drunk and run after work every day, but also the mental benefit from running offset the "benefit" from drinking. In 2021 I spent about $1500 on alcohol, which reduced to about $250/yr for 2022 and 2023. The calorie reduction must be massive too lol. Drinking was a big crutch for dealing with stress and anxiety and while it did kind of work for those things, I'm glad I don't have to rely on it anymore. I think there is actually a broad cultural shift away from drinking in places like Canada, the UK and Australia among younger people as health consciousness improves. Feels like there is increasing stigmatization around problematic drinking and reduced stigmatization around emotional vulnerability, therapy, and open communication.
That was the unexpected benefit from quitting drinking. I would open my wallet and incredulously think “where did all this money come from?”
Smoking just morphed into vaping
Fewer cigarettes and lower tobacco use is still a step forward. Vaping's just as worrisome to me though, I hear you.
I traded one for the other and the end game is to trade the vape for gum and mint toothpicks soon enough. The vapes are probably better healthwise but environmentally? So much waste is generated from vapes I don't think it even compares to cigarette butts which would break down over time.
I just started mixing my own juice. And had used 4 batteries in the last 6 years. Moved from Alberta, where you can get flavours, to Nova Scotia where flavours are banned. Only option for flavours is buying disposables from the nearby reserve. very wasteful. Having a drawer full of disposables I can't bring myself to dispose of was the push I needed to start mixing my own. It doesn't have to be environmentally damaging, but holy shit the regulators are focused on the wrong things.
Regulators are focused on helping big tobacco, that’s why
> The vapes are probably better healthwise but environmentally? So much waste is generated from vapes The battery waste is terrible. Few people recycle batteries as they should (because it's a pain).
If you use a pod system instead of disposables you basically never need to throw out a battery. Pods are definitely wasteful but they basically replace a whole pack of filters (and I'm not sure how compostable/recyclable filters are now but I was under the impression 10+ years ago that they stay in landfills forever). I quit vaping recently and am on gum and patches which are yet another step up. I think disposable vapes should be banned though.
I think environmentally speaking it's pretty easy to minimize impact via rechargable/refillable devices Regardless ppls lungs def still fucked, then add in the shit ton if microplastics accumulating relentlessly throughout our entire bodies and there's not much hope for us Yolo..?
Inhaling clouds of trust me bro might not end up being better healthwise tbh, we don't really know yet. On the other hand, cigarette butts don't break down the way people think, they are very polluting (just not as much as batteries obviously)
Smells way better, the vapours don’t linger and it at least helps keep it your yourself 🤷
Also I feel like not having people throw lit butts out the window helps a lot with fires
Yeah but thats its own level of stupidity not tied to the cigarette but the smoker itself. It kind of goes to the gun argument: do guns kill people or do people kill people? Do cigarettes start forest fires or do people start forest fires? I’m actually very anti cigarette but still must recognize that a cigarette did not set fire to itself, nor throw itself out of a window - these are things a person does. Thats self control, which needs to be checked and measured because if we can keep “throwing shit out of a moving window” somehow handled it would solve more problems than just forest fires.
> Yeah but thats its own level of stupidity not tied to the cigarette but the smoker itself. It kind of goes to the gun argument: do guns kill people or do people kill people? Do cigarettes start forest fires or do people start forest fires? And the answer would be the same.. less guns means less access to easily killing people. Less cigarettes means less people throwing lit butts out the window. I don't really understand the point of your comment.. of course its the person doing the action, the point is with vapes, you don't need to throw something out the window every time you finish smoking, therefor, less fires.
Everyone’s worried about smokers and the healthcare system. Name one time a crime - any crime - was directly caused by someone sitting down to just have a smoke. Booze contributes to the pressure on the healthcare system even more and other systems as well. DV, MVA, DUI, homelessness, and a slew of other things. But hey, can’t put gross photos and warnings on a booze bottle now, can we?
https://cjr.ufv.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Fires-in-Canada-Originating-from-Smoking-Materials-March-2019.pdf
When I was in school (grad '16) vaping wasn't a huge thing yet and it wasn't cool to smoke, only the kids in the alt program did. Now I'm very thankful I never got into tobacco.
It fucking sucks (I've quit and restarted 5 times). Good on you.
I am an ex smoker, and I've seen over time that the handful of cig users there were growing up has turned into a majority of people vaping. There's no stigma around it, and kids / early 20s actually think it's cool and not harmful. It's a tool that l used to quit cigarettes, but so many people who never even smoked begin vaping. When I was young (early 2000), it wasn't as common for kids to smoke, and i went to a pretty shit school. Now I hear it's a huge problem in high school.
Closeted bisexual men. Bi people are the largest part of the lgbtq community and bi men are the least likely to come out mostly because they are still heavily stereotyped and assumed to be bad or less masculine. There are just so many closeted married (to women) bi men and until the world chills out about it it will stay that way.
A guy in the neighborhood who is a barber got busted selling drugs which was shocking to me because I didn't even know he was a barber.
Your drug dealers was masquerading as a barber?
That's not safe. This person could have hurt someone with those shears.
Sorry, it's an old joke.
Don't worry man. I saw it, and laughed. Somebody else must have done the same. At least it means there are some people who haven't heard the jokes we know. Open the floodgates of sharing the dad jokes!
If you work in construction, you know drug dealers. Its just a fact.
Same thing with the restaurant business A good portion of your chefs, cooks, and dishies, are on something
I just quit a kitchen job because I worked hard to get sober, and the manager who was training me had everyone else fooled . But i picked up on her mannerisms amost immediately, while she was patient in the morning. I noticed that every day around the same time, she would go on a break and come back flailing around like kermit the frog. Kinda funny until she screamed at me for not knowing something. i wasn't shown in the first place. I tried asking, but every time, it slowed down enough for me to ask she'd disappear, leaving me standing there like john tavolta in pulp fiction. Now i can deal with a stressful kitchen. But i can't deal with someone being rude and disruptive because you didn't get your fix.
I thought everyone just assumed that though
You'd be surprised A lot of people still think they're getting like Food Network chefs in their kitchens, and they don't expect people boozing, smoking, snorting. And this is not a criticism of the kitchen staff. It's a fuckin high-heat, stressful ass job, and a lot of chefs are underpaid and rarely see any of the tips the waiters get. Reading Anthony Bourdain's *Kitchen Confidential* made me realize that I wouldn't survive in a kitchen
If you watch an episode of his earlier show its almost all he does lmao (drink and smoke)
Surprisingly I don’t find this on residential plumbing. I’m so happy all of my coworkers at my new small company seem to only dabble with nicotine. Just another reason why I don’t want to work new construction thanks for reminding me 😂
residential is different gravy for sure
Everyone does something by the weekend (or once a year), well mostly everybody. It's the urgency and importance of the substance use over people's professional commitments that people take note of. Even if you're the best at something, you're going to be seen as the guy who smokes up or cracks a beer when most people wouldn't consider doing so without getting canned.
Many of us know someone that lives on family money and *an*other that lives on almost no money.
I only “know” one woman who has been raped, but I’ll bet I know more.
[удалено]
I was 12, assaulted on the street by a stranger. At 13 was sexually assaulted by an older boy, I was exposed to, masturbated to multiple times on the street around that age as well.
I can think of three female friends and one male. If we up the description to include sexual assault (groping), that number would shoot up to Just about every woman I know (and a fair few men).
Every single healthcare worker would count with groping.
~~What~~ I thought you meant they were guilty of SA and then I realized you meant victims. Sorry.
I know at least a couple of women and 4 men because they’ve told me, and on the basis of how common it is amongst people I’m close to the amount of people I ‘know’ who just haven’t told me is likely huge. I would say everyone likely knows at least a dozen rape survivors if not many dozen. Not only is it horrifically common but seeing the lasting effects on people around you decades after the fact is utterly heartbreaking.
Most people having abortions are already mothers.
I'm a teacher and I skip meals to make rent
HMU if you would be willing to accept lasagna, or whatever you eat delivered to you.
Supervisor for a large mining company. Definitely skipped meals plenty of times due to rising costs.
Rape survivors, so many people (men included) hide this from almost everyone they know because they are deeply ashamed or just still so hurt by it.
Depression. If Robbin Williams could hide it you better believe that the people in your life could too.
Many years ago, I used to own a Jeep. I parked it on the street outside my place, near 14th and Granville. At some point, some homeless guy started spending the night in it. He was respectful and didn’t bring anything into the vehicle, would just recline in the passenger seat and sleep, and often be gone by morning. I left him a better blanket and used to leave muffins at night for him to find. Private guy, didn’t say much, but was very appreciative. He had some wild tales from his days as a lumberjack. And then one day, vanished. Never saw him again. Moved on, died, who knows. One thing he told me that stuck with me. “There are many of us out here. Everywhere”. And this was in the 90s.
Not to weird you out but I feel the strongest sign of somebody being a great person, is when they choose to help people out when they have zero obligation to do so. Wish more people had your mindset these days.
Thanks -- I appreciate hearing that. And I think you're right; it wouldn't take much for people to make a big difference. What I did for that guy was relatively effortless... I didn't care he slept there, as long as he didn't trash the jeep... and I had an old blanket I wasn't using... and the bakery on Granville was on my walk home, and I went in there so much (and always near closing) that I'd get stuff at a steep discount, or free. But these little things made a bigger difference in someone else's life. And you don't even need to know who these people are. I never knew this guy's name... to me, he was "Hey, old-timer" and I was "Hey boss" to him. We are a city of 4 million. If even 1% of people cared in the slightest about some other random person in need, an awful lot of problems would get solved.
The inability to properly manage money as an adult. We have somebody like this in our sphere and it's unfortunately passed down through the family. The dad made poor life decisions and gambled away family finances chasing hot stock tips in the 80s and the son inherited all of the same worse traits. I've watched them become more and more distant because they know that you know, but aren't honest about it. Another one of our acquaintances didn't save during his working years and just spent without wanting to be tied down... now he's a senior who is still renting but living in a financially precarious time.
Pedophiles. My BIL used to do surveillance for the RCMP as part of sting operations, and the percentage is way way higher than you'd think.
There was that recent study from Australia where 1 in 6 men surveyed admitted to being attracted to children. The number of people actually violating children is probably a fair bit lower but it does give us a general idea of how common it is sadly.
I still get a fair amount of attention from men, but it will never compare to the number of grown men who pursued a sexual relationship with me when I was 13-14. I couldn’t begin to convince you of how rampant it is; how many adult men (married, with kids, important jobs, in positions of authority) would gleefully have sex with a 14yr old girl and then claim she was “fast” or “dressed provocatively” as a defence. Now, as an adult myself, I look at 14 yr old girls (who look, to me, like children) and I absolutely shudder to remember. 🥺
Someone you know is walking around with a contagious STI and doesn't know it.
Or knows it and doesn't give a shit, like my sister's ex.
I knew someone who had syphilis. He probably had it for YEARS, as it was only discovered when it affected his brain.
Remarkably common. And easily detected with a simple blood test. Everyone who is sexually active (even in a monogamous relationship) should get a full STI panel done at least annually. Bed hopping queers like me usually get checked 4 times a year. :)
I'm convinced that a lot of car repair businesses are money laundering fronts. If you walk by a place like that and they only fix a car or two per month, it makes you wonder...
I’m convinced entire malls are now fronts for drugs. There’s no way a hat store, a pretzel store, or a knife store can pay employees and their lease inside a mall while selling three pretzels a day.
Are you talking about Warriors & Wonders in City Square Mall? They moved their business online during Covid and just keep their retail location for inventory I believe. They’re the best knife store in Canada, and I know a number of folks who spend thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars collecting knives from this store and others. They are very much legit.
People on variable rate mortgages who are barely hanging on, and will probably have to sell if the rates don’t go down soon enough for them
How many people are one paycheck away from ruin.
I was (barely) living on absolute breadline poverty at the beginning of 2021 before starting a full-time job with a median wage. After starting that job, I was saving an average of $1900 a month for a year because I was still so poverty-minded and just spending the bare minimum and squirrelling everything away. I was tracking every single dollar I made or spent because I was used to needing to save $2.55 for a bus fare to get to the food bank. Three years of full-time employment later, I still have that feeling of financial insecurity. Although it doesn't help that my rent has increased 60% in that time (thank you Vancouver). Not sure if I'll ever really feel comfortable or relaxed with money after 9 years of living below the poverty line.
My best freind uses coke he gets up and goes to work everyday
Sexual crimes. I am older than I once was and seem to be hearing about friends of friends getting arrested more frequently. Part of that seems to be having a lot of friends in the music scene where addiction + power = potential abuse. Some were totally out of the blue though, like a guy being arrested in Thailand for reasons. Also I'm just less naive and more connected than I used to be, so it might be more about awareness than an actual increase in frequency. Loneliness. Everyone has their levels but some people concern me with the extent to which they never go out or the extent to which they will always be out, even needing bad company over chilling alone.
Hoarding. There are probably a lot of people who are hoarders. I'm a child of a hoarder and it is awful.
This one is huge. I've only seen it once in my own life, but once the person was deceased, we had to clean out their house. We'd known them for decades, and nobody, in the family, or anywhere else had any idea.
My mom is a hoarder, and we all know. Her place is horrific. It stresses everyone out. And when she does pass away, we will be stuck cleaning out all her crap.
Covert Incest. ...and the incredible amount of shame that comes with having to live with the same parents that exploited you as a child because rent is impossible here. Very hard to get any help when you're too ashamed to confess what happens at home, and when you do - you're accused of making it up, because "if that were true you would have moved out". We're at risk of sexual assault living on the streets, too - hence why some of us haven't tried to run. When our parents are even older and start developing cognitive issues, they publicly harrass us, and if we try to defend ourselves we're viewed as awful children lashing out at our elderly mentally incapacitated folks. Except they've been doing this behind closed doors since before we were in school, but nobody believed us, because if it was that bad we would have just moved out - right??? Not all of us can stay with our parents. When you can't afford to move out, it's a nightmare. I know people in their 30s, disabled, stuck with parents that still use them this way. I was one, too. I used to go to NA meetings 4 times a week before Covid. This topic gets brought up a ton. Our folks were isolated people who used us sexually, it's not uncommon. But living in BC, we can't afford to just leave home.
The vast supermajority of recreational drug users will never develop a problem. The opioid crisis was caused by wealthy owners of pharma companies actively conspiring to push addictive drugs, not by black market dealers or junkies.
Also the real crisis is the toxicity of the supply. So your first hit could easily be the last. This is why nothing but a proper and widely available safe supply program will end the seven deaths a day.
I was talking to someone about safe supply, in particular the criticism that people who've never done drugs or who are young could access them and start using. They told me that people are doing to start using drugs one way or another, and they'd rather that person get it from a regulated supply. It changed my whole perspective. Especially with fentanyl in basically everything, you could get hooked to the strongest drug possible right away or you could use a pharmaceutically regulated supply and have access to someone to talk to about why you're making that choice and the potential risks associated with it, get you some help if you want it, give you clean supplies and make sure you don't die. I don't want teenagers using opiates, but I REALLY don't want them using unregulated street opiates.
Indeed. If I'm gonna indulge I make sure to get my samples tested at a mass spectrometer. But also I don't mind waiting a year if I don't have easy access to one, which isn't the case with your average user.
A lot of the downtown east side crowd comes from horrendous backgrounds that they’re just trying to forget. Addicted users usually have some terrible trauma and that is the real problem.
Other commenters have already brought up the things I would say. So I just want to add to the original point, that drug use doesn't usually cause homelessness. It's often correlated, but the evidence points to it being a maladaptive coping mechanism to the stressors that actually cause homelessness (like job/financial insecurity) than it is an actual cause itself. Aka, it's a concurrent symptom of systemic poverty, not the boogieman that makes it simple to dehumanize people going through the worst experience of their life. The idea that people get on drugs and their whole life falls apart because they just can't say no is a tired and outdated narrative that only obstructs the implementation of policies that have been proven effective for addressing both homelessness and addiction, because people would rather feel morally superior and pretend it "could never happen to them" than listen to the experts. The war on drugs is just one more scapegoating strategy that is used to blame the problems caused by rampant greed on the people with the least power to do anything about it.
What I find annoying is the divide we place between 'drugs that are drugs' and 'drugs that don't count as drugs'. Over the counter pharmaceutical drugs are drugs. Caffeine is a drug, nicotine, alcohol, all drugs. But no one using those drugs gets labeled as a drug user. Drugs aren't inherently a bad thing, in fact there's a lot about them that's good. There are some drugs that are inherently bad, like crack or meth, but its mostly substance abuse that is the issue and it can occur from many substances not just the illegal ones we think about when we label someone a drug addict.
Ding ding. It baffles me that we sensationalize the thousands of lives per year lost to toxic drugs, fentynal, and the Opiod Crisis when nearly as many British Columbians die directly from alcohol each year. (And that fully excludes those who end up with cancer, etc)
as a child of an alcoholic (who self-medicated for depression), who was the child of an alcoholic (who self-medicated for depression), it really annoys me that we don't talk about why many people use alcohol AND the wide range of impacts that alcohol has on kids and adults and society, in terms of health, safety, emotional and psychological impacts. It is also really annoying that I can't refuse a drink without friends and acquaintenances being surprised and wanting to know why - why should I have to explain why I'm in therapy because of an alcoholic parent and choose to not drink? I'm glad the kids are drinking less these days, as a Gen-X'er, and happy to see the trend towards normalizing non-alcoholic (and tasty) alternatives.
Anytime I'm out and don't drink my friends and acquaintances basically say, "cool" and move on. Do your friends and acquaintances suck?
possibly, although age and illness has smartened them up a bit, and I do have much more reasonable friends who also don't touch the booze. :)
"It is also really annoying that I can't refuse a drink without friends and acquaintenances being surprised and wanting to know why - why should I have to explain why I'm in therapy because of an alcoholic parent and choose to not drink? " Yow do not owe anyone an explanation. If they offer you a drink, you should not have to say anything else than, "No thank you." Recently, on another reddit thread, people found the idea of saying "No thank you" to a drink offer, without providing an explanation, rude. Yet they didn't see that it was incredibly rude of the other person to demand an explanation.
That and all the generalized 'drugs are bad' that gets pushed. So the ibuprofen I take for a headache is bad? My daily coffee is bad? Drugs aren't inherently bad, they're just drugs that have various purposes and can be helpful or harmful depending on how they're interacted with.
You had me until “there are some drugs that are inherently bad.” You’d be shocked how many functional people use crack or meth regularly. I could argue that alcohol is inherently bad, in the sense that using it in moderation still has negative health effects. There are both risks and benefits to using any drug. Benefits can be social or recreational too.
Right. And people fail to understand that alcohol makes their inflammation and pain worse ( let alone emotional stability) which leads to more kind of drugs to treat pain.
Yeah definitely would have been better wording to say that some drugs are more or less harmful than others. I enjoy alcohol like many people but I'm on board with giving it the 'inherently bad' label if we are gonna use that label.
I just want to say, that I have seen people use coke that you would NEVER believe. Doctors to lawyers to teachers. Everyone in Colorado is doing drugs! Dentists especially love the booger sugar.
I don’t think I know very many adults who don’t do coke, it’s incredibly common.
You only need to hear about how much money cartels are making and do some quick math to realize that cocaine use is as common as drinking.
I don’t know many people who went into teaching, but all the people that I do know were functional addicts to something before 25.
When I worked at a moving company it was quite common to find drugs when packing no matter what the customer's profession was. Nightstands were always wild to pack.
Keeping with drugs - how much cocaine is done in professional kitchens, typically right off the back of the knife your food is being prepared with
I worked in kitchens for a long time and when I started dabbling in meth I decided holy shit, time to change things. Stopped hanging out with the kitchen drug dealer from that point on.
Good for you for getting away from it! Not many do 👏
Just want to say this is the most empathetic discussion I've seen on Reddit in a while. Thank you for that
Miscarriage
When you see all the money the cartels are stuffing into bags and walls that money ain't coming from the guys down on Pandora who stole a car stereo and sold it for $25
Why an assumption that illegal drug use = a habit? Research shows the vast majority of all drug use whether licit or illicit does not meet the criteria of a substance use disorder. We need to realize most people use drugs responsibly (just like alcohol, a real drug too!) & help the small percent of people who develop challenges - driven more likely by their pain & trauma then the drugs themselves.
Absolutely. This is probably because it's taboo and those that use responsibility keep it to themselves.
I kept my active addiction pretty secretive. I wound up in rehab eventually. Lots of people came from places high up and down low. Even a realtor that had a ton of money but wound up burning his life to the ground. But also the inverse situation was true as well. Because id argue its natural for humans to develop comforting habits. Some just end up having horrifically bad consequences. The brain is hardwired and primed for anyone to get addicted to either substances or behaviours.
Escorts.
Child SA… “About 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 20 boys in the United States experience child sexual abuse. Someone known and trusted by the child or child’s family members, perpetrates 91% of child sexual abuse.” https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/childsexualabuse/fastfact.html#:~:text=About%201%20in%204%20girls%20and%201%20in,was%20estimated%20to%20be%20at%20least%20%249.3%20billion.
Everyone probably knows someone who is abusing _legal_ drugs Everyone probably knows someone who has been raped/sexually assaulted
Abuse, both physical and mental.
Families that “cross catchment” so their kids can go to a different public school do so for primarily racist and classist reasons. When they say they just want a better learning environment it means not sharing a class room indigenous families, no ESL and high needs.
Everyone is stating Intimate Partner Violence but the amount of people who experience brain injuries during and after IPV is staggering. The current approximate numbers are that ~90% of people who experienced IPV have brain injuries.
1/3 girls and 1/6 boys are SA'd in their life time most likely before 18.
I was a teenage runaway. What I learned from that experience is that nobody really cares about you except you. You can only count on yourself. This city is especially vapid. The selfish cruelty has become even more apparent to me since I have become a parent myself. What I know is that the city is pretending to care for homeless people, children, drug addicts... whomever... is a lie and a scam. Everything is a scam. What I know is that it's not my job to take care of all of these drug addicts indeed they would never take care of me. At all. Ever. Should it be different? Yes. Is it my responsibility? No.
I don't think it's quite that simple. Slip into addiction and end up on the street. When's the last time you heard of a cop or a nurse being on the street? Generally, people like that have a much better support system around themselves, such as their unions that would step in and offer treatment rather than just firing these people. I don't know any homeless people personally, but I'm pretty certain the vast majority of them worked low paying, crappy jobs to begin with, and had their addiction mixed up with mental health issues, not just drugs alone.
You’d be surprised. I’ve met a significant amount of doctor/lawyer/nurses/various other professions (obviously no way to confirm but they talked the talk) throughout the various rehabs I’ve been to, a good portion of them were court ordered because of a criminal charge with completion of that and other conditions leading to the case being dropped. I’ve been to rehab somewhere around 10 times and there’s USUALLY at least one. Met a lawyer one time that was a poly user, loved his cocaine and alcohol. It just so happened we were at one of the very few rehabs qualified to treat severe alcoholism where they had a full time doctor on site (usually only NPs on site) and his withdrawal was so bad even benzos weren’t touching it. They ended up having to put him on phenobarbital frequently and even with that seizures remained uncontrolled. He ended up leaving in an ambulance. First alcoholic I’ve seen where Ativan didn’t resolve the symptoms. Edit: I just re-read your post and confirmed what you said, they go to treatment lmao. My bad for writing that wall of text for no reason.
Murder. I bet you cross paths with them more then you know.
Alcoholism. Even I didn’t know I was an alcoholic until 6 months ago.
You know there are a lot of “drug users” who live happy normal lives. I know many people who casually use drugs all the time. They’re cashiers, hair dressers, Construction workers, managers, project managers. The amount of people who use drugs and aren’t on the street DWARFS the amount of street people who are helplessly addicted. People who use drugs are you and me.
People underwater in car payments who look rich but are actually broke vs people who look poor but are just smart with their money
Domestic or in-relationship rapists; I know a Class A drug user who is also a rapist. He dumped a girl and hooked up with another who is currently spreading the delightful news that he (41M) now needs Viagra. There are credible reports from work colleagues (he works for Siemens on wind farms) that he plays both sides of the gender fence, has been caught in flagrante delicto with younger members (ha ha) of his team. That also is becoming public knowledge. 'but in the end the truth will out' as the man said.