this post was submitted on 25 May 2024
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The amount of drug affected people wandering the streets these days is alarming and it's not just limited to one suburb.
The problem with meth, apart from the psychosis inducing effects of the drug itself, is the propensity for staying awake for several days, which compounds the effect.
I remember hallucinations so vivid, I was literally hearing voices with my ears. That's how messed up the brain can get. And the hallucinations weren't positive, let's put it that way.
The people you see on the street, have most likely been in a psych ward until they are stabilised with meds, and then thrown out back onto the street with no assistance.
It happened to me. They just get rid of you.
There's a lot to be said for both psychiatric and addiction services in Australia.
As a former sufferer of really intense auditory hallucinations, I strongly relate to what you've said. I had long given up drugs but was still suffering from the voices for ages afterwards. It's hard to get people to understand just how real they felt. And so spiteful, mean and negative. Also hard to get some people to understand that it's strong enough motivation to never go back there and go through that horrifying shit again. The "once a junkie, always a junkie" crowd just don't get it at all.
I completely understand. In the end I had to take a med to make it all go away because I was still getting faint whispers upto 18 months after quitting.
Mine weren't too bad when I was sober. It was when I was fucked that they were nasty.
You couldn't pay me enough to touch that shit again. Not for a million bucks.
As for what people think, I have two thoughts about that:
only people I trust a shitload know about my past
if anyone wants to treat me poorly because of my past actions, they can fuck themselves with a giant spikey cactus.
So few people ever get clean, and have a normal life. 95% of people that talk shit about addicts, were they to be addicted themselves, would not get clean. That's a statistical fact.
So fuck em. They don't know the strength it takes to escape the hell of using. And in all likelihood, they wouldn't be able to.
Let them enjoy their high horse. I know who I am, and what I've achieved. No one can take that away from me.
Meth is very obvious, heroin is quiet.
You're not wrong. I saw one guy randomly headbutting a pole yesterday.
If you're on meth in many cases you're either going to be in prison, in some kind of hospital (normal or psychiatric), or on the streets.
Unfortunately at the moment option 3 is becoming a much more prevalent outcome.
If these folks were harmless that would be one thing, but people on meth can become scary violent.
we have to have a society with hope, where people have real chances at making a life worth living, so when they are offered choices they can choose to not have meth
the way things are now is not good
That's very well put. I got into that world because of child trauma, but having grown up in poverty, I saw no reason to try to have a normal life.
Most of you guys are too young to have lived through the angel dust (PCP) craze of the late 60s and 70s. That was some scary violence all right. Fortunately, angel dust out of fashion now. Meth, oddly enough, has a much milder effect. Scary, yes. But the violence level is a lot lower and the triggers a lot higher.