Stossel on Moore's Sicko

[Tikker]

Durothil got shot up with morphine when he got his nose smashed playing football in the park

[Harrison]

I don't care how much pain I am in, I don't ever want morphine in my body.

[Arlos]

If you ever are as badly screwed up as my brother was, you'll change your tune rather rapidly, I assure you.

-Arlos

[Harrison]

Adrenaline has a funny way of making sure you don't remember the pain you were in after it's over.

[Arlos]

Sometimes, maybe, but not if it's bad enough for long enough. My brother was in that truck after the accident literally for a couple hours before medical help arrived. The car they were in even caught on fire, but luckily good samaritans that saw the wrecked cars and stopped to help got it put out before the gas tank went. He remembers the pain he was in at the accident and in the hospital quite clearly, I can assure you.

-Arlos

[Lyion]

I don't care how much pain I am in, I don't ever want morphine in my body.

I think that tune would change with the right amount of pain. I despise putting any drugs into my body, but when I was in *real* pain, I thanked God for the invention of morphine.

[Yamori]

Btw, what are y'alls opinions on health savings accounts (ie tax free savings designated for medical expenses) and dollar for dollar tax credits for medical bills/insurance coverage? And dollar for dollar tax credits to companies providing employees with insurance? Or how about giving the option for part of the 15% social security witholdings to be allocated to insurance instead?

I've never heard any real consideration for these - it seems like a pretty good idea for the conservative side of the spectrum though...

I'd imagine that would do a lot for a big chunk of the uninsured (those who are employed but can't afford it or risk going without it for expense sake).

[Evermore]

Btw, what are y'alls opinions on health savings accounts (ie tax free savings designated for medical expenses) and dollar for dollar tax credits for medical bills/insurance coverage? And dollar for dollar tax credits to companies providing employees with insurance? Or how about giving the option for part of the 15% social security witholdings to be allocated to insurance instead?

I've never heard any real consideration for these - it seems like a pretty good idea for the conservative side of the spectrum though...

I'd imagine that would do a lot for a big chunk of the uninsured (those who are employed but can't afford it or risk going without it for expense sake).

good idea but there is one catch. you do not get back what you dont spend. imo fuck them

[Tikker]

too many loopholes

[Lyion]

It's like putting a band aid on a bursting Dam, in my opinion.

What we need is actual serious tort reform, an overhaul of the over regulation and under consumer protections of the insurance agencies, and to scrap our entitlement system and replace it with something hospital based with local accountability and metrics.

[Darcler]

I don't care how much pain I am in, I don't ever want morphine in my body.

I'm addicted to morphine when I go to hospitals. I'll play up my pain level to get another shot.

[Gaazy]

Ive heard some funny ass stories fro my ER buddy. Like when the nightly crackeads come in and try to act hurt and get drugged up, they give them fucked up drugs that made them feel like shit and sicker than hell. Fucked up stories, but funny. They said they even caught a guy who wanted pills so bad he was caught in the parking lot slamming his arm in the car door trying to break it

[Arlos]

You want scary about pills? I used to know people who would clean up after raves, often of 2000-3000 people size. They would find random pills in packets from people who had crap fall out of their pockets while they were dancing and fucked up, etc. Then, without having any idea what some of these pills were, the people I knew would just take them.... No fucking way, thanks.

-Arlos

[Darcler]

See I have the control to not hurt myself to get them in the first place, I also take what I know.
Since I came to the realization that I take pills when I dont need them simply for pleasure, I stopped taking pills completely. That means I deal with my depression and severe anxiety on my own, which isnt really working for me, to be honest.

[Gaazy]

I wont lie, I take a percocet or whatever every now and then when they are around, but Ive never, ever gone looking for them or thought I had any dependance on them. Some people that are on them are just pitiful.

I had a buddy who played center at school and would have been a top recruit for the NFL. Im talking 6'5 or 6'6, 290-300 lbs. SOLID. Incredible athlete and great guy. I watched him put up 495 flat bench AFTER the spotter put too much push on it when he lifted it off the rack and he stabilized the weight hisself. Anyway, he started messing around with oxycontin, and now he lives in his parents basement, sleeps all day, cooks oxy and shoots up and gambles all night. All in 2 years. He once needed money and drugs so bad he stole thousands of dollars of coke from a drug dealer he went through. That dealer had guys from Atlanta hunting him down for a few weeks before his rich Daddy bailed him out of it and paid the guy. Fucking OC turns people to shit >< The "hillbilly heroin" has simply gotten out of hand here. You can throw a rock and hit a dealer in any direction. Its pretty sad


Are those people still alive Arlos?? What kind of fucking idiots are they?

[Harrison]

It's like that here too Gaazy, Heroin and OC are interchangeable though. If they do one, they have or do the other.

[Gaazy]

The state police are always like Oh man yeahz we are crackin down hard! If you have it we'll find it!

Bullshit. Those crooked faggots are probably selling what little they take

The problem just gets worse and worse. That shit fuckign expensive too! It used to be a dollar a milligram, but now its jumped to like 100 bucks an 80.

Ive tried OC a few times when its been around, but I just cant imagine being that fucked up all the time. Its no wonder the people on it are worthless and cant hold jobs, I probably couldnt even have moved to tie my damn shoes ><

[Arlos]

Yeah, they're still alive. I am even friends with a couple of them, though to be fair, they'd stopped doing that shit before I met them. But seriously, they'd take anything they found cleaning up; called it "Ground Score". I mean, sometimes, if it was E and pressed into a recognizable pill form, you could tell what it was, but WTF knows what a capsule with white powder in it is? One guy I talked to about it remembered taking this giant horse-pill sized thing one time, no clue wtf it was he was taking.

I can't even begin to understand that. I mean, I'm no saint, I've tried a lot of different substances, but I *ALWAYS* knew what it was I was putting into my body and how much of it I was putting in. I've never tried abusing legal pills actually, just never was popular during the times when I was more heavily doing stuff. Ultimately, for most drugs, it got to be the after-effects got to be more annoying than the fun I got from the initial high. E was like that. While I was high, sure, it was fun, everyone likes everyone, lots of hugging, dancing, kicking back, etc. But when I was on the tail end of it at about 5-6am, I started getting really bad temper/anger problems, I'd be utterly useless the entire next day, only slighly better 2 days later, and if I took it Saturday night/sunday am, I wouldn't get back to semi-normal until Wednesday. Sleep was hard as hell, food tasted weird, no energy or drive, etc. So, I just stopped doing it, there was no point.

I've also always tried to avoid the physically addictive stuff. For me, since I have ADD, speed was never an option for getting high. Fuck, for a while I was prescribed an amphetamine and it helped me sleep better when I was on legal speed. Cocaine, about all it did for me is make my head feel like it was stuffed with wool, my teeth felt numb and tingly, frequently I felt like I had a huge wad of phlegm I couldn't hack up (really uncomfortable), and yet had a strange desire to do more. 2 seconds of thought of "Gee, I didn't enjoy that, and yet I want to do it more out of proportion to how much I liked it... Yeah, lets not do that again." Never tried heroin, never wanted to try heroin, would never have tried it even if it were offered to me free. Only time I ever had morphine, I was half delirious with pain and fever, with a lower leg swelled up 3x its normal size and oozing giant pus patches, so I don't exactly have a happy association, or even memory of if it made me feel anything other than "not hurting so bad".

Shrooms were my hard drug of choice for a while, til their comedown got too bad, plus I had a semi-bad experience one time I took 'em when I was in a shitty mood. Acid never did shit for me, except one time I mixed it with E and had a FANTASTIC experience, but that's once. Best hallucinogen out there that I'd do again, no hesitation, is fucking rare as hell, called 2CB. But again, I'd only do that if I had a weekend to dedicate to being out of my skull.

No, these days it's pretty much just pot, which I use as much for pain control as I do for recreation. Most of my friends are pretty much the same way, just they're lucky enough not to have knees that hurt like hell 24x7.

-Arlos

[Gaazy]

Never tried E, but thought about it just to try it.

Shrooms, I dont consider a hard drug. Ive done them half a dozen times or so over the past like 6 years. I enjoy them, but only once in a blue moon obviously. Ive got buddies who choke them down every weekend, and I couldnt get into that. I think they are best on a rare occasion, especially while im camping or outdoors in the woods. I tried river fishing on them, but it doesnt work, i ended up distracted wandering around by myself for a few hours chasing animals and rolling in the leaves rofl.

I have ADHD pretty fucking bad, but i dunno if im starting to grow out of it or something, but its not as bad as it used to be. I can still feel myself getting uppity a lot, but I just suck it up and calm down, no drugs needed. I got tested for it when I was 12 or 13 at the big University of Virginia hospital whatever it is, while I was getting tested and diagnosed for Tourettes Syndrome. The meds I take for tourettes is supposed to help with ADD and stuff too, so I got a 2 for 1 there.

Coke I thought sucked, I felt bout the same as you, weird in the head, jumpy, and jumb bout. Bout it so ive only done it a couple times, prob never do it again.

I love taking a perc or some legal pain killer every now and then and just layin down a watchin a movie or something. No harm in that imo, its not like im poppin em like tic tacs like some other guys i know. OC was decent, just a little too hardcore for me...little too fucked up to function if something were to come up, seein as I have to go in late at night to work or somethin sometimes if machinery goes down, so I dont like to risk it. I can function just fine on percs or tabs.

Never tried acid or anything else like that though.


On a side note, I took shrooms 2 weekends ago for the first time in years at the Tool concert. Talk about a fucking experience. Ive never experienced anything like that in my entire life. Ive heard a lot of people say Tool has sucked when theyve seen them the past few years, but everyone I talked to says it was the most amazing time theyve seen them. Played for like 3 fucking hours. A guy I know has seen them over 15 times in '89 or so and he said this was the most amazing hes seen, effects AND music and setlist wise. Was my first time seeing them live so I dont have much to compare it to, but I cant imagine how they could be.

[Gaazy]

And I dont smoke pot. I have a bit before, but not in years. Coal mine drug testing is a bitch~ Never really been into that much anyways

[Harrison]

I did acid once and it was amazing. I haven't done it since. Might do it again someday, might not

I've done a lot of different things and as Arlos said, I always knew what it was and how much of it.

I won't touch cocaine, heroin, OC and the like. I just won't do it.

[Tikker]

I'm actually pretty happy to admit I have zero clue about wtf OC is.

I don't think I've ever even seen any real hard drugs

I knew a few folks who were rumoured to have been on coke, but that's about it


yay for clean living

[Gaazy]

OC is oxycontin. Youve never heard of oxycontin? WTF, its not like its some crazy street drug. Just a legal pain killer.


Eh, Harri, Ive never tried heroin, and never will, but I just cant see OC being anywhere near as bad as that. OC fucks you up, but God, not as bad as the crazy street guys that are so strung out they cant walk straight. Its fun and fucks you up good, but like I said I wouldnt want to be like that all the time, it would get old after a while =/ I think I may have made it out to be worse than it is in the first post, but it still is pretty hardcore compared to lortab and whatever else. It just relaxes the shit out of you, not makes you stumble all over the place and cant talk. I wouldnt want to try and run machinery on it or anything like that just because its a risk, but from all the people I know on it, most of them if you didnt know you wouldnt be able to tell it unless you REALLY knew what you were looking for. And of the times ive taken it ive never felt the urge for more, like I did for coke the times I did it for a few hours. Ive always heard if you shoot heroin once you are fucked, addiction wise, but ive never seen anyone crave for more OC unless theyd taken a shit ton milligrams for a few days. Which I could see people doing just because it just feels good, but not because of plain out craving, shaking addiction. On another note, OC is too fucking expensive to do too often~ Ive got better shit to spend my money on.

[Gaazy]

Ill add too I dont like sniffing shit through my nose. I dont see how people do that so often. Ive sniffed a couple things, and its the most absolute uncomfortable feeling for me at least. Prolly never sniff anything else again

[Harrison]

That's why they start out on OC usually, and then when their drug dealer tells them they have heroin for $5 a baggy and it fucks you up the same way, they think "Cool, maybe just this once".

Then they might as well just shoot themselves in the face and piss on all of their friends. If they survive the shot in the face and their friends stick around, they win. It's the same rate of "survival".