All this proves is that journalists are as poor as Doctors at listening to people who are sick.
There are people dying right now from illnesses that are under researched under diagnosed and untreated, and people are suffering beyond anything you could imagine or begin to endure.
If tiktok facebook or any other media is being used to share pain because friends families support networks and medicine are failing these people then that says much about society and shame on you for band wagon jumping instead of critically thinking that the article may be wrong and JK Rowling has picked on a vulnerable group of people who have diseases that need better treatments and better support.
Show me proof young people are doing that, because what I see people - young and old that have legitimate illnesses that arenтАЩt being taken seriously because medicine hasnтАЩt caught up. People post videos for awareness. I have never come across a kid willing themselves to have an illness for attention. There have been a couple of cases that have been in the media, one young girl now dead, a genuine case of MCAS and EDS that have been used as examples of this when they are not.
тАЬIn life you tend to get what you ask forтАЭ this is not true.
No one celebrates illness. People share their illness states because they have such weak support networks. People who have little empathy and understanding telling others to pull their socks up.
These passages are particularly ridiculous -
тАЬThe only way you can get legitimacy and care is if you have a diagnosis,тАЭ Dr. Mark Sullivan, a psychiatrist at the University of Washington Medical Center, told me. Dr. Sullivan was talking about the American healthcare system, but he was also gesturing toward the whole of contemporary society and our quest for other peopleтАЩs eyeballs, for their likes and shares and acknowledgement. Spoonie-ism amounts to an endless search for a diagnosisтАФa campaign to be taken seriously, to be tended to, to be granted care and attention (or тАЬawareness,тАЭ to use the spoonie term).
Another reason for spooniesтАЩ failure to improve may be тАЬsecondary gain,тАЭ Assaf said. тАЬThere might be something you're gaining by having this diagnosis, like that itтАЩs keeping you from a job that you hate, or from responsibilities that you donтАЩt want to do.тАЭ
No one fakes an illness so they donтАЩt have to work. This is the worst kind dangerous ableism that allows for 24 year olds to die in agony.
You might want to keep up if youтАЩre going to comment about things you know nothing about, as should the author. This is why there authors who specialise in Health, not ten a penny who know little about nothing.
So tell me how this hasnтАЩt elicited hate again? All because JK Rowling put it in a book, and Sooooz wrote an article which triggered another and another.
All this is untrue btw. There are knowledgeable Doctors treating POTs/MCAS/and understand EDS which DOES have genes associated with it and seizures are associated with these diseases they are not тАЬpseudoтАЭ https://www.reddit.com/r/medicine/comments/xaqb60/the_spoonies/
When a child is born in America, thereтАЩs a constant diet of this pill or drug will cure or treat something, or if you have this ailment, we can sue someone to get you money, with the addition of fundraising to help treat or cure this or that. And we wonder why there is (invisible illness)?
Social medial also reinforces negative adult behavior on this issue by "rewarding" the "brave" parents who stand by and support their children through such "adversity": a new channel for Munchausen by Proxy.
You think autoimmune diseases are just virtual? My question is: what if they are really suffering? At least some of them might be. I was until I found carnivore diet. And it isnтАЩt in your head when MS brain scans come back negative after two years like my friend George. Or when your skin clears up from horrible psoriasis. It is very real for some people. Sure these groups arenтАЩt helping them, but who is? What doctors are telling these kids to change their diets to carnivore? None of them. And I believe nearly all autoimmune, anxiety, depression and more starts with diet. I cured mine:
I didn't know there was something specifically called the "carnivore diet," I thought that was just the normal American meat-eating diet. If you're going to eat meat I think the medical evidence shows that lean meats like fish and poultry and no or minimal red meat is the way to go.
I tried being Pescatarian for a couple of years and felt like crap all the time. Low energy, lethargic. I added poultry back in and started feeling a lot better. But then there are vegetarians who say they've never felt better in their lives. I think you also have to address all the sugar and "bad" fats in the American diet, not the least of which is high-fructose corn syrup which is in everything. It's a huge driver of obesity and other health issues.
Lean meats won't work. We need good fats. Reduce carbohydrates to a minimum (20 - 50 grams per day) and increase good fats (olive oil, butter, coconut oil, lard). Avoid all seed oils.
I highly recommend Dr. Berry, Dr. Berg, Dr. Ekberg, Dr. Cywes and Nutrition with Judy. Learn more about it.
Yes. I am learning more about that. Started a book yesterday, "Cholesterol Clarity: What the HDL is Wrong With My Numbers?" by Jimmy Moore and Eric C. Westman, MD.
I need to know more because I have been on the carnivore diet since late July. I see my endocrinologist again in November and if my cholesterol numbers are higher I will need to explain and show her why this is not dangerous.
It has been proven there is no coorelation between high cholesterol and heart disease.
Rations...i use a mix diet, but i refer often to the fact that man lives much longer, which in turn leads way to more illness, if we live long enough, we'll get some illness.
Before fossil fuel, not that long ago, we lived till 40, while today we are pushing 80 years.
We do have a poster on this site, diets on golf balls...depends.
The Rat...yes sir, mortality rate went up, right along with , hospitals, airports , highways, Ac, heating...right along with da fossil fuel business...thanks
I'm really happy that you have found better health through the change in diet---in your case, the Carnivore Diet. I've been through a similar discovery process in realizing that I need to eat a low-carb diet for life. And it was a big ol' fight to get people to understand that it works for me, and for many other people. Eating a typically-recommended diet of at least 60% carbs, I inexorably gain weight and my blood sugar and cholesterol levels are terrible.
But when I eat proteins, fats, and lower-carb veggies, the weight comes back off without me having to count calories or be hungry all day. Also, my blood levels respond quickly, even before significant weight loss. Additionally, heartburn disappears overnight and I get more energetic and clear-thinking. Not my imagination. Blood work doesn't lie.
It's so hard! Especially because the parts of the metabolic process that are broken in us (basically, insulin is all out of whack) make us really crave carbs. I can't eat a small side of pasta, for instance---as soon as I have a few bites, my hunger goes "whoosh" and I only feel satisfied that I've had enough if I have a big bowl-full.
As far as the acid reflux going away, that is such a common report by people who eat low-carb, and it breaks my heart that this phenomenon is pretty much unknown by the public and definitely by the medical establishment. It. Breaks. My. Heart. Because my mother suffered terribly from reflux in the last few years of her life. We didn't know at the time (the 1990's) that her weight gain, blood pressure, and heartburn were all related to a metabolic syndrome. She kept trying to lose weight by eating less and less and less fat and it wasn't working. She had a sudden heart attack at age 59 and died. NOW I know that our family's problem with heart disease/atherosclerosis is related to the tendency towards diabetes, but didn't realize it then and as far as I know, none of her doctors ever explored the possibility that she might have been diabetic.
Half of the people on my mom's side inherited this problem. Those folks gained weight early on and it's all in the belly. And they died early of cardiovascular disease. The other half take after her father and they are wiry and only moderately overweight in their old age.
There are a lot of pitfalls that are plant based foods that I need to avoid. Here is a good thought exercise: humans can eat nearly all meat on earth except poison dart frogs, the organs of a puffer fish and a few others. However humans can only eat a small portion of plants, and of those plants only tiny pieces. We donтАЩt have 4 stomachs like ruminant animals to digest foods and detoxify them. If we went in my back yard and started eating plants we would die.
I do think you can eat safely and incorporate plants, it is just a much trickier. For example if I accidentally eat nuts then 24 hours later I have a reaction where all my muscles cramp up and I am stuck at home.
I think this could be a huge part of it! My sister who experiences this is vegan and I keep begging her to change to see if it improves her health and she wonтАЩt.
Have her read Nina Planck's Real Food or Nina Teicholz's books. They both quickly dispose of the myths around veganism being "natural" or "healthy." It's neither.
Humans are omnivores. If you want a healthy diet, eat a balanced diet which means vegies, grains, fruits and yes meats. That is the diet our bodies, through evolution, were for designed for. Vegetarians and vegans aren't eating properly.
I know I will get blowback from the vegie fanatics but before you yell at me, tell me our ancient hunter gatherer ancestors weren't omnivores.
However, I do believe in PETA, People Eating Tasty Animals.
Vegetarians, eating eggs and dairy, can manage, with some planning. With whole rice and beans, plus eggs and dairy, you'll get all the essential amino acids and animal fats.
For vegans, there's no hope. Kids and teens should not be on such diets, unless there's some compelling medical threat from not doing it. There's a kid in our neighborhood whose been on a vegan diet since about age 1. It shows. He's stunted in height and underweight and has bad teeth. I bet he's skirting with rickets. You need dairy with vitamin D (sunshine, mainly) to get decent levels of calcium. The idea you can get enough from kale, spinach, or almonds is superstition.
The kids are learning about the real world, in the backyard, as they watch our female cat, an expert hunter, massacre, dismember, and sometimes devour a variety of wildlife. Cats are "obligate carnivores," meaning that they must eat most of their diet as meat. Nature red in tooth and claw.
It's been quite an eye-opener from our last cat, who was mostly indoor and a bit of a slouch in the huntress department. The new one has the equivalent of a doctorate in the art.
Petaphiles are VILE creatures who kill over 90% of the animals ( mostly dogs) that they either "take in" or steal then kill. they are liars and cheats never ever give them ONE dime. meanwhile I see Bill Maher coming to our side while still sitting on PETAS BOD. come on Bill wise up. www.petakillsanimals.com
Completely agree and especially for children. Of my 16 yo daughter's friends, one is vegan, one vegetarian, one allergic to nuts, and one is lactose intolerant. Good Lord, what is happening to us?
I'm not trying to be sexist or a MCP but most anorexics are young females and it seems from the article most of these weird chronic diseases are happening to young females. It makes me shudder when I see a young beautiful anorexic female. It seems to me it is a psychosis they cannot break and most die. It is tragic and I don't know what can be done about it.
I know from experience how easy it is to become anorexic. 25 years ago, I was diagnosed with diabetes. I knew weight was a factor in diabetes. I weighed 200 pounds. When I was diagnosed, I became a fanatic, put myself on a strict diet and lost 35 pounds in three months. I was always hungry but I had gotten to the point of when I looked at food, I thought "I don't need that." I literally had to force myself to eat. My friends said I looked like a death camp survivor. I have maintained my weight for 25 years now and eat a healthy diet. I restrict my diet to not eating simple carbs and have never taken and anti-diabetic meds.
The whole point of this story is, if you have the will power you can break this destructive cycle. If it is a psychosis, which I don't think I had, it may be impossible to break the cycle. But you have to ask yourself, why are these diseases limited mostly to females?
I was reading an article earlier today about a detransitioner who had been put on puberty blockers and testosterone at age 13. She laid out the emotional pathways that led her there, and most of it involved feelings of not meeting expectations. She felt like she didn't look right, based on false ideas she had absorbed about what a girl is *supposed* to look like. Online, she fell in with the trans community, and that's the "solution" she found. Except that it wasn't a solution at all.
Want my unpopular opinion? It is mostly women because society (and I mean other women) put so much pressure on women to be "all" the things. We have to be smart & pretty. We have to want to have a career & have a family and be able to juggle both. We have to be a slut in the sheets and a lady in the streets. And, honestly, I feel/felt most of this pressure from other women, not men. Women can be horrible, ugly, judgmental people....way more than men. (See? Unpopular.)
No doubt, there's part of the truth here. Women's problems with anorexia and certain other disorders is documented at least as far back as the 19th century, so it's not about modern media. Of course, most autistic and ADD children are boys.
Heavens, sex asymmetry in afflictions! Can't be, it's all cisheterostraightpatriarchical false consciousness ....
We are all judgmental but I think you are right. Women are worse. An example, my wife and I were at a Christmas party years ago and wife said, looking at another woman, "She wore that dress last year."
Hell I have to look down to see if I put my pants on. I don't know what I'm wearing much less what some woman was wearing last year. Women are amazing creatures and a wonder to behold and men will never, NEVER understand them! And that is part curse and part of the wonderment.
OMG, I can totally relate to your story. About two weeks ago, I said something similar to my man. We saw this couple at multiple events and all three times the wife was wearing the same outfit, which I pointed out. He never even noticed. LOL
Not feeding an infant a balanced diet is child abuse.
I can't prove this but I would bet that more leftists are vegans and vegetarians than conservatives, you know, tree huggers. I would bet more hunters, Bambi blasters, are conservatives.
Without natural predators, the deer population has exploded and, in some states, started to over grazer and starve. Hunters help thin the herds. Tree huggers hate this. They would rather have the deer starve than have the herds thinned.
There is a documentary on how the wolves saved Yellowstone:
It's anecdotal, I know, but the tomatoes and berries I grow in my yard taste MUCH better than those from the supermarket. I even did a blind taste test with my family and they all chose the home grown ones as the best tasting.
I went to one of Trump's rallies and never heard him request to "remove dissenters from the venue by using violence." It may have happened at another rally - I cannot speak to that; but at least he does not condemn as "fascists" a whole body of supporters of his political opponent against a venue backdrop that makes him look like he came out of a "30's news reel and suffer no adverse consequences regarding censor.
Bernd...Hey, that's what George Washington did. .. nice.
Censor and Fascism are at least 3 different issues. They both deal with unsuitable, but not militaristic. I'm thinking...to ask for the removal of demonstrators ??, i am not seeing "Violence". When George/Donald used the term "violence", they refer to the attackers using violence. thanks.
Terry...yep, i am thinking, Trumpty tried to Ban the company, back when they were getting their feet wet, other countries went that way but not the USA...not a fan, but the guy keeps getting it right...gloomy
And for dessert, add the looming legalization of marijuana and the broad set of issues it adds to our already messed up youth. Some job of parenting weтАЩve done!
as if no one underage ever used marijuana before it became legal.
Clandestine/illicit drug experimentation and market participation has arguably been a rite of passage for more American teenagers than any other social ritual for the last 50 years. Unsurprisingly, the pathological and dysfunctional fallout has become worse with every decade, as might be expected in the case of a peer group activity that's pronounced by the wider society as a behavioral so taboo that it treats users as social pariahs (an attributed status not helped by rehab) while paradoxically reinforcing the valorization of the practice within the peer group subset of users, which is incidentally vast (paradoxically, rehab doesn't exactly help with this aspect, either; it can make it worse.)
Do I endorse the use of powerful mind-altering substances by minors? No. And I didn't make the rules of criminalization and zero tolerance prohibition that ended up putting the retail market in the hands of teenagers, either. The Drug War as presently constituted is an iatrogenic disease. Should law enforcement retain a role in a more rational system of user decriminalization, regulation, and control? Of course. And no one should be able to use drug addiction as an excuse to permit them impunity for dysfunctional behaviors that impact the health and safety of others. But to return to the topic of the story... (Note that I wasn't the one who introduced "marijuana" into this comment discussion.*)
There's a wider situation to be addressed in this: "Teenager" is an invented status, and one largely invented with no forethought, simply as a function of modernity and the obligations of work and schooling that have worked to exacerbate the alienation of parents from their adolescent children, and vice versa. To encourage their physical separation from supervision, in fact (an already bad situation that's been made almost inconceivably worse on account of the psychic separation enabled by the Phone.) That artificial separation needs to be combated.
we might consider combining our high schools with a wider mission- like placing them adjacent to elder care facilities, perhaps- and introducing classes related to adult "vocational" training (not just about jobs, about basic competence in adult skills like home repairs and finances), and re-oriented our attitudes toward Physical Education away from emphasizing it as a Star System for precocious and elite athletes (and a low expectation dispensable option for everyone else) and in the direction of comprehensive nutrition/exercise/health education as a top priority for public schools beginning in elementary school, we might possibly re-right the ship of functional adulthood in a context of intergenerational family unity and mutual aid. I think we can agree that in all too many cases, that ship is swamping, and taking on water. In some families, it's already capsized.
Modern societies need to find ways to enable adolescents to navigate through the ages 11-18 without taking it for granted that there's anything normal about allowing them to escape en masse into the insulation of exclusive peer groups- social networks that are increasingly not even underpinned by a basis in material reality. Caring about the "likes" of other people whom one wouldn't be able to identify on the street (much less call by their given name), and being conditioned to develop behaviors to solicit those illusory positive reinforcements- that's just ominous.
I guess I phrased that passage as a question because I've so often been the target of unwarranted inferences of that sort in debates over "drug criminalization" that I've internalized the rhetorical questions that get tossed at me. And maybe it's also to do with my tendency to muck up my writing with double-jointed syntax (and unwieldy subordinate clauses, etc.,etc.). Especially in first drafts.
However, knowing the tendentiousness of the Internet, it's tough for me to not feel it necessary to attempt to anticipate and address every last objection to a given statement in advance, especially when the topic is a controversial one. The more I feel compelled to do that, the more verbose it all gets. That said, I am trying to write so that I can't be misunderstood...
Modern marijuana, which was Sea Sentry's specific comment, is vastly different from the marijuana of 50, or even 20, years ago. Illicit drug use was not a rite of passage for the majority for most of the last 50 years. Having said that, I agree with your commentary regarding the artificial concept of "teenager", their education, and the detrimental effect of social media. To your education comments I would add basic economics (budgets, credit/debt, savings, investment, etc.) and vocational training.
"Modern marijuana, which was Sea Sentry's specific comment, is vastly different from the marijuana of 50, or even 20, years ago."
You pulled that inference out of the air. Sea Sentry did not specify what kind of marijuana he worried about being legalized. I mean come on, read what was written.
I do get that much of the marijuana on the market is significantly higher potency than it used to be, beginning in the 1990s. That is not due to legalization. It's due to indoor growing technology, which I happen to think is inappropriate except for specialized medical purposes. Although I do understand how it caught on, years before the passage of the first medical marijuana initiative by the voters.
We are off topic. I'm planning to open the part of my Substack devoted to the Drug War in a month or two. I'll have more to say then. I have a few other essay topics to publish in the meantime. (I began having some serious computer issues a couple of months ago, and it turns out my hard drive imploded and needed to be replaced. There have been other annoyances since then; I've found that the program that formerly allowed the remapping of keys to allow me easier access to the right caps shift function has been discontinued, petty impediments like that...)
That's because I was candidly expressing my own opinion, and addressing a topic which encompasses a wider frame of reference than an exclusive focus on the particular "forbidden substance" referred to in the comment to which I initially replied. Although if someone were to conclude that my remarks indicate support for commercial legalization of every currently illicit substance, that would be an unwarranted inference. My views are not that simple.
I've already expressed my disinterest in driving the comment thread off-topic. In that regard, I'm not inclined to continue to respond to replies that persist in taking it there. Or to attempts to bait me, were that situation to arise.
The broad acceptance of recreational drugs like pot since the early 1960s has had a terrible effect on our country. I mean, I basically agree with Mascot's points, and yet, I wish we had not gone so far down this road. We have now at least two or three lost generations, starting with the teenagers of the mid-60s and down to today's very confused and poorly guided teens.
We don't have "broad acceptance of recreational drugs" in this country. Many members of this society partake of a two-faced attitude of ignorant unexamined assumption so compartmentalized and hypocritical that it verges on a mass outbreak of Dissociative Personality Disorder.
We don't have "two or three lost generations", either. Not in the sense of everyone who ever used drugs for a period of time becoming a hopelessly dysfunctional addict, at least. Despite all of the socially corrosive side effects of a clandestine subculture of officially ordained malum prohibitum criminals, and a street market for drugs that has functioned for decades as a de facto criminal monopoly with an illegal multilevel marketing scheme often staffed by teenagers, the illegal drug scene wasn't producing mass user casualties until lax regulation (that was supposed to exist, but didn't) allowed the supposedly controlled prescription opioids to slip the chain, back in the 1990s. (The effects of mass imprisonment, on the other hand, constitute an iatrogenic disease that blew up around 400%, beginning in the mid-1980s. One or two aspects of which are so well-known that at this point they go without saying, and others which have received so little examination that most Americans haven't given them a moment's thought.)
Incidentally, the opioid epidemic is no longer drawing the pool of recruits that it formerly did; opioid use (both prescription and illicit "heroin") among teenagers has dropped by around 2/3 over the previous five years. (If you read that fact here first, I think it's a reasonable question to ask yourself why that is.)
The toll of death and debilitating self-harm in the population of those who were already opioid abusers- most of the long-termers being addicts- continues to be staggering, of course.
That is an interesting statistic. I wonder why that is, that opioid use is down in the younger ages over the past 5 years. I suppose COVID has had its impact, but I might have expected the opposite.
To hazard a guess, I'd say it's because even though teenagers are naive by definition, few of them are hopelessly stupid. The kids see the overdose death statistics just like the rest of us. Especially since the other big new development is this phenomenon of lethal counterfeit drugs., like fentanyl being pressed into tablets that are made to look like prescription opioids like Oxycontin.
Authentic Oxycontin showing up on the street in 2022...no way. The word spreads fast in street drug culture folklore. Practically everyone knows that it's all fentanyl, that's it's mixed up unevenly, and that even a broken off chunk of one of those pills might kill whoever swallows it. Even the street heroin is actually fentanyl. Almost everyone still buying knows better by now. It's just that most of them are addicts so deep into the junkie game that they're convinced that they're too hooked to quit, and that's what's out there on the market. So they buy it.
There's always been some level of informed awareness among teenagers about what drugs are more dangerous than others. It just so happens that a subset of teenagers- most of them male, but not always- have naive/reckless attitudes that incline them to try anything that turns up in their local illegal marketplace once, just because it's there. They're the kids most likely to end up with drug problems. But even the most reckless mentalities tend to draw the line when they get the word that the market is flooded with counterfeit pills cut with fentanyl, where a corner of a pill can kill you. And there are spinoffs of fentanyl that are 100 times more powerful. On occasion, that shit has gotten into every other powder drug- even cocaine and meth, which are stimulants that are supposed to provide an entirely different sort of high.
There are test strips to check for fentanyl now, and in some cities there are harm reduction efforts that make them available so people can check what they buy. But to judge from the most recent SAMSHA statistics, a lot more kids have chosen to skip the entire hassle of experimenting, because at this point the stakes really are life and death on a plate. Even most type-R teenagers are capable of deciding to stop short of literally playing an obvious game of Russian Roulette by using fentanyl, or chancing the risk of dope cut with fentanyl. Tragically, for people who already have a history of use and have already succumbed to opioid addiction, it isn't that simple.
That is thoughtful. My recent ex-wife is an opioid addict (and an alcoholic) so the subject has added poignance for me. She's still on prescriptions, but who knows when that ends and street drugs begin. I am not much of a believer but I pray for her.
LOL I believe they were pretty mushy even before TikTok came along. By the way, the China version of TikTok is "Dou Yin" and is a different experience, more emphasis on science achievements and the like, and has a "youth cut-off" of 40 minutes and 10pm curfew. Interestingly, you can't access TikTok from within China!
ThatтАЩs not what this refers to. The brain goes through 2 periods of extreme growth and pathway proliferation: the first is in the first years of life, the second after puberty begins. Teen brain neural pathways sprout connections in all directions like mad. As some get left unused they die off, while the others which get most used proliferate more. Why drug and alcohol abuse by teens is more harmful than later. We literally тАШbuildтАЩ our brains according to what we experience and how we respond. Social media with all its rabbit-holes of virtual unreality and focusses on fantasy are what feed into toxic pathway growth. ThatтАЩs what this refers to
I think it's a virtual certainty that most people have some level of addiction to their phones, with some addictions being quite severe. You can't read this Substack without coming across plenty examples of how technology, and specifically social media, can be highly addictive. I know from the experience of a close family member that technology addiction is a real thing. Addiction very much does alter our brains, so categorically dismissing the potential for that is incorrect. Madjack is more right than you are here.
Agree. I have a friend who had her 16 yo son forcibly removed from their home and taken to a program in Utah for tech addiction. He's a smart guy---was able to hack into the high school grading system. There were several difficult years because he was able to sign himself out at 18 prior to receiving his HS diploma equivalency. He dabbled for two more years in other things, some illegal.
Well since January he's been a marine and shipped to a foreign country a couple of months ago.
So glad he got help. I honestly think technology addiction is as bad or worse than others because unlike substance abuse or sex addiction, there is no taboo associated with technology addiction so it's just accepted but it can be as damaging as other forms of addiction to certain people.
"addiction very much does alter our brains" --- alter them how? are there scans or blood tests? which area of the brain exactly that is "altered by addition" ?
come think of it --- what is "addiction" ? Is addiction to sugar the same as addiction to heroin, or the same as addiction to exercise, or to sex?
is there anything anywhere that shows physically altered brains from addiction?
Please. Your other comments make it clear you're here to simply troll and play devil's advocate. There is exhaustive literature on the effects of addiction (AA, anyone??). Anyone who doesn't understand that addiction can dramatically alter our brains is either being willfully ignorant or has blessedly never had experience with addiction. Get back to me when you've sat in therapy sessions with a recovering addict and spent hours reading about how addicts can recover.
not at all a troll or a devil's advocate. i like to use the words i mean, and mean the words I use. Never said addiction wasn't real, only said there is no magic alteration of the brain from phone use.
my question was 100% sincere --- if there is any evidence of consistent patterns of physical alteration in the brain as a result of "addiction" of any sort, I'd be curious to see it. Are there differences between brains of addicts and brains of not-addicts? Can we see them on a scan?
Otherwise, it's just wordy words about "chemical brain imbalances", which was a very popular thing to talk about for a time and which most certainly is NOT a real thing.
I recommend Google, there are plenty of resources that explain the effects of addiction. How addiction alters or creates new neural pathways in our brains.
If your question is sincere, perhaps you should do some research to satisfy your curiosity instead of insisting others are wrong without providing any evidence yourself.
do the substances we consume affect our minds and bodies? clearly (e.g., by "satisfying hunger"). are brains perceptibly (demonstrably) physically changed by substance abuse? not as far as I've seen.
to clarify: as far as I know, there is no scan that shows a "before" and "after" picture of brain addiction. is that what you're claiming? If so, I'd appreciate a link. If not, there is no disagreement
If you agree that addiction can alter neural pathways, and that neural pathways are detectable visually (they are, a macroscopic inspection of the brain reveals long and intricate pathways) then you must agree that addiction physically alters the brain.
Both of these are accepted facts within medicine, I don't feel the need to do your research for you.
All this for a silly sidebar to a discussion about the mental health of young girls.
Ultimately I think most parties can agree that social media and the accompanying risk of contagion is dangerous to some people and we need to do better as a society to protect the vulnerable from those effects.
Parents need to put safety apps on the phones and know what the kids are doing online. Any kid suffering mental issues should have their social media searched and be taken off of all of it.
The hardest word for a parent is No. But 8 is much too young for a phone and 18 or 21 too old. The biggest concern is that today a phone is a computer that provides access to a world that a child is too young to experience. I would suggest no phones before age 12 and then phones with strict and ungenerous daily time limits and no internet access.
Are they given ample access to medical journals so they can be strong advocates to their doctors if and when they do get sick? Will they/you just trust a doctor because you believe they're an authority on the subject? If they start showing signs of the conditions above when they hit puberty, will you buy them books to read up on EDS, POTS and MCAS? If they're voracious readers, why wouldn't they want to know everything about what is making them sick?
Spoonies aren't a social media plauge. Community plays an important role to the health and wellbeing of sick and disabled folks. There's nothing wrong with keeping kids balanced and grounded, but I would assume, as a parent, you'd understand how harmful isolation is to a kid when they're dealing with health issues. Sure, you're gunna find garbage in any community. But a family of well read kids should be able to sort out bad information easily, and extract useful treatments from a wealth of lived experiences.
The best treatments I received for my EDS, POTS and MCAS were discovered from friends I consider "spoonies". Because those same spoonies demonized by this article have seen some of the best doctors in their fields, practicing modern, effective treatments that clearly work for them. They're not just selling essential oils and candles. They were nurses, lawyers. Intelligent, hard working individuals that were suddenly struck with a constallation of debilitating symptoms nobody believed. You'd never dare call these people lazy or seeking secondary gain.
I'd challenge you not to let a single article scare you into believing that a community of chronically ill folks are coming for your kids, and consider those communities a valuable source of information if your children find themselves with unexplainable illnesses that your doctors don't seem to know how to help. Leverage social media and community as a tool, rather than treat it like a 21st century boogieman.
My kids didn't get phones until 7th grade and didn't get texting or internet on them until high school. (Last one's in their class to get it.) We had a "TV Allowance" box on the TV and they couldn't watch more than an hour of TV a day unless it was a family activity. That was 15 years ago and they are pretty well adjusted adults now...
Agree and include this rule phones will be charged in a shared space in the evenings rather than in the child's bedroom. A phone in the bedroom allows access to your child when they are the most vulnerable. A phone in the bedroom allows a child to become the midnight terror with inappropriate texting (that will bite them back!). A phone in the bedroom amplifies the crazy sleep patterns of growing children and interferes with needed sleep (who needs an even more grouchier child at breakfast?)
My mom instilled reading into me as a child. I was limited in entertainment options to a few hours a week of TV/videos and computer use but was free to read as much I wanted.
I remember my mom being very angry once when the school, as punishment, assigned reading and math problems because she (rightly) thought it would cause students to view these fun/challenging activities as punishment.
All this proves is that journalists are as poor as Doctors at listening to people who are sick.
There are people dying right now from illnesses that are under researched under diagnosed and untreated, and people are suffering beyond anything you could imagine or begin to endure.
If tiktok facebook or any other media is being used to share pain because friends families support networks and medicine are failing these people then that says much about society and shame on you for band wagon jumping instead of critically thinking that the article may be wrong and JK Rowling has picked on a vulnerable group of people who have diseases that need better treatments and better support.
Shame on all of you.
JK Rowling put тАЬspoonieтАЭ into the spotlight. Nothing to do with Trans people.
Just because YOU donтАЩt SEE it doesnтАЩt mean it hasnтАЩt happened Lord Barry.
Show me proof young people are doing that, because what I see people - young and old that have legitimate illnesses that arenтАЩt being taken seriously because medicine hasnтАЩt caught up. People post videos for awareness. I have never come across a kid willing themselves to have an illness for attention. There have been a couple of cases that have been in the media, one young girl now dead, a genuine case of MCAS and EDS that have been used as examples of this when they are not.
тАЬIn life you tend to get what you ask forтАЭ this is not true.
No one celebrates illness. People share their illness states because they have such weak support networks. People who have little empathy and understanding telling others to pull their socks up.
These passages are particularly ridiculous -
тАЬThe only way you can get legitimacy and care is if you have a diagnosis,тАЭ Dr. Mark Sullivan, a psychiatrist at the University of Washington Medical Center, told me. Dr. Sullivan was talking about the American healthcare system, but he was also gesturing toward the whole of contemporary society and our quest for other peopleтАЩs eyeballs, for their likes and shares and acknowledgement. Spoonie-ism amounts to an endless search for a diagnosisтАФa campaign to be taken seriously, to be tended to, to be granted care and attention (or тАЬawareness,тАЭ to use the spoonie term).
Another reason for spooniesтАЩ failure to improve may be тАЬsecondary gain,тАЭ Assaf said. тАЬThere might be something you're gaining by having this diagnosis, like that itтАЩs keeping you from a job that you hate, or from responsibilities that you donтАЩt want to do.тАЭ
No one fakes an illness so they donтАЩt have to work. This is the worst kind dangerous ableism that allows for 24 year olds to die in agony.
We need to move on from this ridiculous thinking.
IтАЩm not interested in what JK Rowling has written about TRANS people. She has kicked off hate about тАЬSpooniesтАЭ
We read the same article with spin.
You might want to keep up if youтАЩre going to comment about things you know nothing about, as should the author. This is why there authors who specialise in Health, not ten a penny who know little about nothing.
Tedious. I am referencing other articles and comments on social media. Did you think there would be anything positive?
I am not a тАЬspoonieтАЭ nor do I care for one.
So tell me how this hasnтАЩt elicited hate again? All because JK Rowling put it in a book, and Sooooz wrote an article which triggered another and another.
All this is untrue btw. There are knowledgeable Doctors treating POTs/MCAS/and understand EDS which DOES have genes associated with it and seizures are associated with these diseases they are not тАЬpseudoтАЭ https://www.reddit.com/r/medicine/comments/xaqb60/the_spoonies/
When a child is born in America, thereтАЩs a constant diet of this pill or drug will cure or treat something, or if you have this ailment, we can sue someone to get you money, with the addition of fundraising to help treat or cure this or that. And we wonder why there is (invisible illness)?
Social medial also reinforces negative adult behavior on this issue by "rewarding" the "brave" parents who stand by and support their children through such "adversity": a new channel for Munchausen by Proxy.
You think autoimmune diseases are just virtual? My question is: what if they are really suffering? At least some of them might be. I was until I found carnivore diet. And it isnтАЩt in your head when MS brain scans come back negative after two years like my friend George. Or when your skin clears up from horrible psoriasis. It is very real for some people. Sure these groups arenтАЩt helping them, but who is? What doctors are telling these kids to change their diets to carnivore? None of them. And I believe nearly all autoimmune, anxiety, depression and more starts with diet. I cured mine:
https://joshketry.substack.com/p/does-carnivore-diet-really-work-for
I didn't know there was something specifically called the "carnivore diet," I thought that was just the normal American meat-eating diet. If you're going to eat meat I think the medical evidence shows that lean meats like fish and poultry and no or minimal red meat is the way to go.
I tried being Pescatarian for a couple of years and felt like crap all the time. Low energy, lethargic. I added poultry back in and started feeling a lot better. But then there are vegetarians who say they've never felt better in their lives. I think you also have to address all the sugar and "bad" fats in the American diet, not the least of which is high-fructose corn syrup which is in everything. It's a huge driver of obesity and other health issues.
Check out this video from Dr. Cywes: 10 Critical Mistakes Keto Rookies Make
https://youtu.be/OQqxiQ75Qho
Lean meats won't work. We need good fats. Reduce carbohydrates to a minimum (20 - 50 grams per day) and increase good fats (olive oil, butter, coconut oil, lard). Avoid all seed oils.
I highly recommend Dr. Berry, Dr. Berg, Dr. Ekberg, Dr. Cywes and Nutrition with Judy. Learn more about it.
IтАЩve long suspected that vegetarian and vegan diets are an exacerbating element of this condition.
Good point. Lack of B-12 can have a deleterious effect on brain function.
And lack of cholesterol
Yes. I am learning more about that. Started a book yesterday, "Cholesterol Clarity: What the HDL is Wrong With My Numbers?" by Jimmy Moore and Eric C. Westman, MD.
I need to know more because I have been on the carnivore diet since late July. I see my endocrinologist again in November and if my cholesterol numbers are higher I will need to explain and show her why this is not dangerous.
It has been proven there is no coorelation between high cholesterol and heart disease.
I don't think you will need to explain to anyone. They should be studying this on their own, and instead just accept whatever they are spoon fed.
That said, I also recommend this book about fat and cholesterol:
https://www.amazon.com/Big-Fat-Surprise-Butter-Healthy/dp/1451624433/ref=asc_df_1451624433/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=312069250960&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=9294656866307358852&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9005534&hvtargid=pla-473958257674&psc=1&tag=&ref=&adgrpid=61316180599&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvadid=312069250960&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=9294656866307358852&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9005534&hvtargid=pla-473958257674
I read the latest American Heart Association (AHA) diet recommendations for good health. It's the same old same, low fat and lots of carbs.
It is shocking just how basic you people are.
I don't understand your comment. Basic about what?
Rations...i use a mix diet, but i refer often to the fact that man lives much longer, which in turn leads way to more illness, if we live long enough, we'll get some illness.
Before fossil fuel, not that long ago, we lived till 40, while today we are pushing 80 years.
We do have a poster on this site, diets on golf balls...depends.
If you take out infant mortality we live pretty close to the same
The Rat...yes sir, mortality rate went up, right along with , hospitals, airports , highways, Ac, heating...right along with da fossil fuel business...thanks
I agree. Dr. Bikman, "Why We Get Sick." It's our diet, the Standard American Diet, (SAD). It's poisonous.
She should have been put on an elimination diet which is carnivore.
Yes, something that cobbles together paleo-keto with vegan, a mix of animal fat and protein with lots of fiber.
I'm really happy that you have found better health through the change in diet---in your case, the Carnivore Diet. I've been through a similar discovery process in realizing that I need to eat a low-carb diet for life. And it was a big ol' fight to get people to understand that it works for me, and for many other people. Eating a typically-recommended diet of at least 60% carbs, I inexorably gain weight and my blood sugar and cholesterol levels are terrible.
But when I eat proteins, fats, and lower-carb veggies, the weight comes back off without me having to count calories or be hungry all day. Also, my blood levels respond quickly, even before significant weight loss. Additionally, heartburn disappears overnight and I get more energetic and clear-thinking. Not my imagination. Blood work doesn't lie.
Low carb makes my acid reflux go away. I also lose weight. It's just hard to maintain the discipline!
It's so hard! Especially because the parts of the metabolic process that are broken in us (basically, insulin is all out of whack) make us really crave carbs. I can't eat a small side of pasta, for instance---as soon as I have a few bites, my hunger goes "whoosh" and I only feel satisfied that I've had enough if I have a big bowl-full.
As far as the acid reflux going away, that is such a common report by people who eat low-carb, and it breaks my heart that this phenomenon is pretty much unknown by the public and definitely by the medical establishment. It. Breaks. My. Heart. Because my mother suffered terribly from reflux in the last few years of her life. We didn't know at the time (the 1990's) that her weight gain, blood pressure, and heartburn were all related to a metabolic syndrome. She kept trying to lose weight by eating less and less and less fat and it wasn't working. She had a sudden heart attack at age 59 and died. NOW I know that our family's problem with heart disease/atherosclerosis is related to the tendency towards diabetes, but didn't realize it then and as far as I know, none of her doctors ever explored the possibility that she might have been diabetic.
Half of the people on my mom's side inherited this problem. Those folks gained weight early on and it's all in the belly. And they died early of cardiovascular disease. The other half take after her father and they are wiry and only moderately overweight in their old age.
agree...not sure about "Clear Thinking" for me.
There are a lot of pitfalls that are plant based foods that I need to avoid. Here is a good thought exercise: humans can eat nearly all meat on earth except poison dart frogs, the organs of a puffer fish and a few others. However humans can only eat a small portion of plants, and of those plants only tiny pieces. We donтАЩt have 4 stomachs like ruminant animals to digest foods and detoxify them. If we went in my back yard and started eating plants we would die.
I do think you can eat safely and incorporate plants, it is just a much trickier. For example if I accidentally eat nuts then 24 hours later I have a reaction where all my muscles cramp up and I am stuck at home.
I
the Rationalist... i would think that nuts are good, cept for peanuts (legume). thanks.
I think this could be a huge part of it! My sister who experiences this is vegan and I keep begging her to change to see if it improves her health and she wonтАЩt.
Have her read Nina Planck's Real Food or Nina Teicholz's books. They both quickly dispose of the myths around veganism being "natural" or "healthy." It's neither.
Humans are omnivores. If you want a healthy diet, eat a balanced diet which means vegies, grains, fruits and yes meats. That is the diet our bodies, through evolution, were for designed for. Vegetarians and vegans aren't eating properly.
I know I will get blowback from the vegie fanatics but before you yell at me, tell me our ancient hunter gatherer ancestors weren't omnivores.
However, I do believe in PETA, People Eating Tasty Animals.
Vegetarians, eating eggs and dairy, can manage, with some planning. With whole rice and beans, plus eggs and dairy, you'll get all the essential amino acids and animal fats.
For vegans, there's no hope. Kids and teens should not be on such diets, unless there's some compelling medical threat from not doing it. There's a kid in our neighborhood whose been on a vegan diet since about age 1. It shows. He's stunted in height and underweight and has bad teeth. I bet he's skirting with rickets. You need dairy with vitamin D (sunshine, mainly) to get decent levels of calcium. The idea you can get enough from kale, spinach, or almonds is superstition.
!. What you described with the vegan kid is child abuse.
2. I am sorry to hear your not from Texas.
3. It is impolite to ask someone where they are from for fear of embarrassing them if they are not from Texas.
I would be embarrassed to say where I'm really from :)
What I described is child abuse, indeed. In certain European countries, it's now correctly labeled as such.
Vegans typically won't pass an opportunity to flaunt their moral superiority.
I'm a PETA just like Polecat!
The kids are learning about the real world, in the backyard, as they watch our female cat, an expert hunter, massacre, dismember, and sometimes devour a variety of wildlife. Cats are "obligate carnivores," meaning that they must eat most of their diet as meat. Nature red in tooth and claw.
It's been quite an eye-opener from our last cat, who was mostly indoor and a bit of a slouch in the huntress department. The new one has the equivalent of a doctorate in the art.
Petaphiles are VILE creatures who kill over 90% of the animals ( mostly dogs) that they either "take in" or steal then kill. they are liars and cheats never ever give them ONE dime. meanwhile I see Bill Maher coming to our side while still sitting on PETAS BOD. come on Bill wise up. www.petakillsanimals.com
Completely agree and especially for children. Of my 16 yo daughter's friends, one is vegan, one vegetarian, one allergic to nuts, and one is lactose intolerant. Good Lord, what is happening to us?
I'm not trying to be sexist or a MCP but most anorexics are young females and it seems from the article most of these weird chronic diseases are happening to young females. It makes me shudder when I see a young beautiful anorexic female. It seems to me it is a psychosis they cannot break and most die. It is tragic and I don't know what can be done about it.
I know from experience how easy it is to become anorexic. 25 years ago, I was diagnosed with diabetes. I knew weight was a factor in diabetes. I weighed 200 pounds. When I was diagnosed, I became a fanatic, put myself on a strict diet and lost 35 pounds in three months. I was always hungry but I had gotten to the point of when I looked at food, I thought "I don't need that." I literally had to force myself to eat. My friends said I looked like a death camp survivor. I have maintained my weight for 25 years now and eat a healthy diet. I restrict my diet to not eating simple carbs and have never taken and anti-diabetic meds.
The whole point of this story is, if you have the will power you can break this destructive cycle. If it is a psychosis, which I don't think I had, it may be impossible to break the cycle. But you have to ask yourself, why are these diseases limited mostly to females?
I was reading an article earlier today about a detransitioner who had been put on puberty blockers and testosterone at age 13. She laid out the emotional pathways that led her there, and most of it involved feelings of not meeting expectations. She felt like she didn't look right, based on false ideas she had absorbed about what a girl is *supposed* to look like. Online, she fell in with the trans community, and that's the "solution" she found. Except that it wasn't a solution at all.
It's a "solution" in search of a problem.
Want my unpopular opinion? It is mostly women because society (and I mean other women) put so much pressure on women to be "all" the things. We have to be smart & pretty. We have to want to have a career & have a family and be able to juggle both. We have to be a slut in the sheets and a lady in the streets. And, honestly, I feel/felt most of this pressure from other women, not men. Women can be horrible, ugly, judgmental people....way more than men. (See? Unpopular.)
No doubt, there's part of the truth here. Women's problems with anorexia and certain other disorders is documented at least as far back as the 19th century, so it's not about modern media. Of course, most autistic and ADD children are boys.
Heavens, sex asymmetry in afflictions! Can't be, it's all cisheterostraightpatriarchical false consciousness ....
We are all judgmental but I think you are right. Women are worse. An example, my wife and I were at a Christmas party years ago and wife said, looking at another woman, "She wore that dress last year."
Hell I have to look down to see if I put my pants on. I don't know what I'm wearing much less what some woman was wearing last year. Women are amazing creatures and a wonder to behold and men will never, NEVER understand them! And that is part curse and part of the wonderment.
OMG, I can totally relate to your story. About two weeks ago, I said something similar to my man. We saw this couple at multiple events and all three times the wife was wearing the same outfit, which I pointed out. He never even noticed. LOL
nope. they need a year in the peace corps ..preferably in Africa. makes for a quick diet change and little "intolerance"
Not feeding an infant a balanced diet is child abuse.
I can't prove this but I would bet that more leftists are vegans and vegetarians than conservatives, you know, tree huggers. I would bet more hunters, Bambi blasters, are conservatives.
Without natural predators, the deer population has exploded and, in some states, started to over grazer and starve. Hunters help thin the herds. Tree huggers hate this. They would rather have the deer starve than have the herds thinned.
There is a documentary on how the wolves saved Yellowstone:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gc52l5ZcAJ0
Also, and this REALY surprised me, foods have lost a lot of their nutritional value since 1950 (https://www.bbc.com/future/bespoke/follow-the-food/why-modern-food-lost-its-nutrients/). Maybe one reason people are eating more is that it's required to get the same nutrients?
It's anecdotal, I know, but the tomatoes and berries I grow in my yard taste MUCH better than those from the supermarket. I even did a blind taste test with my family and they all chose the home grown ones as the best tasting.
Blind date with a tomato
Did you get a bite on the first date?
Fully devoured ;-)
I agree.
And then I competed in jiu jitsu again. At age 44. Which I never thought would be possible.
https://joshketry.substack.com/p/jiu-jitsu-competition-carnivore-diet
It sounds like the cure for many of these invisible illnesses is removing cell phones and men from society.
China's TikTok social media app has no doubt preformed better than the CCP's wildest dreams in turning American youths brains into mush.
Scot, men?
Scot...very funny and it seems that Trumpty "s call to stay away from tik, hit the mark Again.
Maybe Trump should stay away from social media himself. That would "hit the mark" even better.
Kind of easy since he was censored/erased from some large tech platforms. Fascism much?
Let me ask if I get this right.
We are talking about the same guy? The guy who told his supporters at his rallies they should remove dissenters from the venue by using violence?
Talking about censorship and fascism.....
I went to one of Trump's rallies and never heard him request to "remove dissenters from the venue by using violence." It may have happened at another rally - I cannot speak to that; but at least he does not condemn as "fascists" a whole body of supporters of his political opponent against a venue backdrop that makes him look like he came out of a "30's news reel and suffer no adverse consequences regarding censor.
Bernd...Hey, that's what George Washington did. .. nice.
Censor and Fascism are at least 3 different issues. They both deal with unsuitable, but not militaristic. I'm thinking...to ask for the removal of demonstrators ??, i am not seeing "Violence". When George/Donald used the term "violence", they refer to the attackers using violence. thanks.
Sorry, Jim, I don't know what you're referring to. I don't follow Trumpty nearly as much as those on the left do.
He might be talking about Trump's warning that TikTok is a Chinese-owned company.
ThatтАЩs exactly what President Trump was talking about he even wanted to ban Tik Tok.
Terry...yep, i am thinking, Trumpty tried to Ban the company, back when they were getting their feet wet, other countries went that way but not the USA...not a fan, but the guy keeps getting it right...gloomy
And for dessert, add the looming legalization of marijuana and the broad set of issues it adds to our already messed up youth. Some job of parenting weтАЩve done!
as if no one underage ever used marijuana before it became legal.
Clandestine/illicit drug experimentation and market participation has arguably been a rite of passage for more American teenagers than any other social ritual for the last 50 years. Unsurprisingly, the pathological and dysfunctional fallout has become worse with every decade, as might be expected in the case of a peer group activity that's pronounced by the wider society as a behavioral so taboo that it treats users as social pariahs (an attributed status not helped by rehab) while paradoxically reinforcing the valorization of the practice within the peer group subset of users, which is incidentally vast (paradoxically, rehab doesn't exactly help with this aspect, either; it can make it worse.)
Do I endorse the use of powerful mind-altering substances by minors? No. And I didn't make the rules of criminalization and zero tolerance prohibition that ended up putting the retail market in the hands of teenagers, either. The Drug War as presently constituted is an iatrogenic disease. Should law enforcement retain a role in a more rational system of user decriminalization, regulation, and control? Of course. And no one should be able to use drug addiction as an excuse to permit them impunity for dysfunctional behaviors that impact the health and safety of others. But to return to the topic of the story... (Note that I wasn't the one who introduced "marijuana" into this comment discussion.*)
There's a wider situation to be addressed in this: "Teenager" is an invented status, and one largely invented with no forethought, simply as a function of modernity and the obligations of work and schooling that have worked to exacerbate the alienation of parents from their adolescent children, and vice versa. To encourage their physical separation from supervision, in fact (an already bad situation that's been made almost inconceivably worse on account of the psychic separation enabled by the Phone.) That artificial separation needs to be combated.
we might consider combining our high schools with a wider mission- like placing them adjacent to elder care facilities, perhaps- and introducing classes related to adult "vocational" training (not just about jobs, about basic competence in adult skills like home repairs and finances), and re-oriented our attitudes toward Physical Education away from emphasizing it as a Star System for precocious and elite athletes (and a low expectation dispensable option for everyone else) and in the direction of comprehensive nutrition/exercise/health education as a top priority for public schools beginning in elementary school, we might possibly re-right the ship of functional adulthood in a context of intergenerational family unity and mutual aid. I think we can agree that in all too many cases, that ship is swamping, and taking on water. In some families, it's already capsized.
Modern societies need to find ways to enable adolescents to navigate through the ages 11-18 without taking it for granted that there's anything normal about allowing them to escape en masse into the insulation of exclusive peer groups- social networks that are increasingly not even underpinned by a basis in material reality. Caring about the "likes" of other people whom one wouldn't be able to identify on the street (much less call by their given name), and being conditioned to develop behaviors to solicit those illusory positive reinforcements- that's just ominous.
Spot on.
"Do I endorse the use of powerful mind-altering substances by minors? No. And I didn't make the rules of criminalization and zero tolerance..."
Editing: No need to ask a question to set up your opinion. Just state your opinion: "I do not endorse the use of mind-altering substances by minors."
That is a better way of putting it.
I guess I phrased that passage as a question because I've so often been the target of unwarranted inferences of that sort in debates over "drug criminalization" that I've internalized the rhetorical questions that get tossed at me. And maybe it's also to do with my tendency to muck up my writing with double-jointed syntax (and unwieldy subordinate clauses, etc.,etc.). Especially in first drafts.
However, knowing the tendentiousness of the Internet, it's tough for me to not feel it necessary to attempt to anticipate and address every last objection to a given statement in advance, especially when the topic is a controversial one. The more I feel compelled to do that, the more verbose it all gets. That said, I am trying to write so that I can't be misunderstood...
Modern marijuana, which was Sea Sentry's specific comment, is vastly different from the marijuana of 50, or even 20, years ago. Illicit drug use was not a rite of passage for the majority for most of the last 50 years. Having said that, I agree with your commentary regarding the artificial concept of "teenager", their education, and the detrimental effect of social media. To your education comments I would add basic economics (budgets, credit/debt, savings, investment, etc.) and vocational training.
"Modern marijuana, which was Sea Sentry's specific comment, is vastly different from the marijuana of 50, or even 20, years ago."
You pulled that inference out of the air. Sea Sentry did not specify what kind of marijuana he worried about being legalized. I mean come on, read what was written.
I do get that much of the marijuana on the market is significantly higher potency than it used to be, beginning in the 1990s. That is not due to legalization. It's due to indoor growing technology, which I happen to think is inappropriate except for specialized medical purposes. Although I do understand how it caught on, years before the passage of the first medical marijuana initiative by the voters.
We are off topic. I'm planning to open the part of my Substack devoted to the Drug War in a month or two. I'll have more to say then. I have a few other essay topics to publish in the meantime. (I began having some serious computer issues a couple of months ago, and it turns out my hard drive imploded and needed to be replaced. There have been other annoyances since then; I've found that the program that formerly allowed the remapping of keys to allow me easier access to the right caps shift function has been discontinued, petty impediments like that...)
He said marijuana. You said illicit drug use which encompasses a LOT more than marijuana.
That's because I was candidly expressing my own opinion, and addressing a topic which encompasses a wider frame of reference than an exclusive focus on the particular "forbidden substance" referred to in the comment to which I initially replied. Although if someone were to conclude that my remarks indicate support for commercial legalization of every currently illicit substance, that would be an unwarranted inference. My views are not that simple.
I've already expressed my disinterest in driving the comment thread off-topic. In that regard, I'm not inclined to continue to respond to replies that persist in taking it there. Or to attempts to bait me, were that situation to arise.
trying to l,ike your statement but not getting the red heart. but you are 100% correct
The broad acceptance of recreational drugs like pot since the early 1960s has had a terrible effect on our country. I mean, I basically agree with Mascot's points, and yet, I wish we had not gone so far down this road. We have now at least two or three lost generations, starting with the teenagers of the mid-60s and down to today's very confused and poorly guided teens.
We don't have "broad acceptance of recreational drugs" in this country. Many members of this society partake of a two-faced attitude of ignorant unexamined assumption so compartmentalized and hypocritical that it verges on a mass outbreak of Dissociative Personality Disorder.
We don't have "two or three lost generations", either. Not in the sense of everyone who ever used drugs for a period of time becoming a hopelessly dysfunctional addict, at least. Despite all of the socially corrosive side effects of a clandestine subculture of officially ordained malum prohibitum criminals, and a street market for drugs that has functioned for decades as a de facto criminal monopoly with an illegal multilevel marketing scheme often staffed by teenagers, the illegal drug scene wasn't producing mass user casualties until lax regulation (that was supposed to exist, but didn't) allowed the supposedly controlled prescription opioids to slip the chain, back in the 1990s. (The effects of mass imprisonment, on the other hand, constitute an iatrogenic disease that blew up around 400%, beginning in the mid-1980s. One or two aspects of which are so well-known that at this point they go without saying, and others which have received so little examination that most Americans haven't given them a moment's thought.)
Incidentally, the opioid epidemic is no longer drawing the pool of recruits that it formerly did; opioid use (both prescription and illicit "heroin") among teenagers has dropped by around 2/3 over the previous five years. (If you read that fact here first, I think it's a reasonable question to ask yourself why that is.)
The toll of death and debilitating self-harm in the population of those who were already opioid abusers- most of the long-termers being addicts- continues to be staggering, of course.
That is an interesting statistic. I wonder why that is, that opioid use is down in the younger ages over the past 5 years. I suppose COVID has had its impact, but I might have expected the opposite.
To hazard a guess, I'd say it's because even though teenagers are naive by definition, few of them are hopelessly stupid. The kids see the overdose death statistics just like the rest of us. Especially since the other big new development is this phenomenon of lethal counterfeit drugs., like fentanyl being pressed into tablets that are made to look like prescription opioids like Oxycontin.
Authentic Oxycontin showing up on the street in 2022...no way. The word spreads fast in street drug culture folklore. Practically everyone knows that it's all fentanyl, that's it's mixed up unevenly, and that even a broken off chunk of one of those pills might kill whoever swallows it. Even the street heroin is actually fentanyl. Almost everyone still buying knows better by now. It's just that most of them are addicts so deep into the junkie game that they're convinced that they're too hooked to quit, and that's what's out there on the market. So they buy it.
There's always been some level of informed awareness among teenagers about what drugs are more dangerous than others. It just so happens that a subset of teenagers- most of them male, but not always- have naive/reckless attitudes that incline them to try anything that turns up in their local illegal marketplace once, just because it's there. They're the kids most likely to end up with drug problems. But even the most reckless mentalities tend to draw the line when they get the word that the market is flooded with counterfeit pills cut with fentanyl, where a corner of a pill can kill you. And there are spinoffs of fentanyl that are 100 times more powerful. On occasion, that shit has gotten into every other powder drug- even cocaine and meth, which are stimulants that are supposed to provide an entirely different sort of high.
There are test strips to check for fentanyl now, and in some cities there are harm reduction efforts that make them available so people can check what they buy. But to judge from the most recent SAMSHA statistics, a lot more kids have chosen to skip the entire hassle of experimenting, because at this point the stakes really are life and death on a plate. Even most type-R teenagers are capable of deciding to stop short of literally playing an obvious game of Russian Roulette by using fentanyl, or chancing the risk of dope cut with fentanyl. Tragically, for people who already have a history of use and have already succumbed to opioid addiction, it isn't that simple.
That is thoughtful. My recent ex-wife is an opioid addict (and an alcoholic) so the subject has added poignance for me. She's still on prescriptions, but who knows when that ends and street drugs begin. I am not much of a believer but I pray for her.
you got me. I subscribed. legalize drugs .. all of them
LOL I believe they were pretty mushy even before TikTok came along. By the way, the China version of TikTok is "Dou Yin" and is a different experience, more emphasis on science achievements and the like, and has a "youth cut-off" of 40 minutes and 10pm curfew. Interestingly, you can't access TikTok from within China!
and yet TIK TOC is owned by the Chinese. go figure
Terry...wow, sayin something
The use of the phone actually changes how your brain is wired. Literally тАЬbrain damageтАЭ.
There is no magical alteration of one's brain wiring due to phone usage.
ThatтАЩs not what this refers to. The brain goes through 2 periods of extreme growth and pathway proliferation: the first is in the first years of life, the second after puberty begins. Teen brain neural pathways sprout connections in all directions like mad. As some get left unused they die off, while the others which get most used proliferate more. Why drug and alcohol abuse by teens is more harmful than later. We literally тАШbuildтАЩ our brains according to what we experience and how we respond. Social media with all its rabbit-holes of virtual unreality and focusses on fantasy are what feed into toxic pathway growth. ThatтАЩs what this refers to
Janet,...that was good, well done. thanks
Thanks
I think it's a virtual certainty that most people have some level of addiction to their phones, with some addictions being quite severe. You can't read this Substack without coming across plenty examples of how technology, and specifically social media, can be highly addictive. I know from the experience of a close family member that technology addiction is a real thing. Addiction very much does alter our brains, so categorically dismissing the potential for that is incorrect. Madjack is more right than you are here.
Agree. I have a friend who had her 16 yo son forcibly removed from their home and taken to a program in Utah for tech addiction. He's a smart guy---was able to hack into the high school grading system. There were several difficult years because he was able to sign himself out at 18 prior to receiving his HS diploma equivalency. He dabbled for two more years in other things, some illegal.
Well since January he's been a marine and shipped to a foreign country a couple of months ago.
Hope he is doing well he sounds like a good kid, maybe just controlled by the wrong forces like a lot of things happening in America today.
It's been an incredible turnaround. We are all so thrilled for him and his family.
Thank God!
Yes! Thanks be to God!
So glad he got help. I honestly think technology addiction is as bad or worse than others because unlike substance abuse or sex addiction, there is no taboo associated with technology addiction so it's just accepted but it can be as damaging as other forms of addiction to certain people.
"addiction very much does alter our brains" --- alter them how? are there scans or blood tests? which area of the brain exactly that is "altered by addition" ?
come think of it --- what is "addiction" ? Is addiction to sugar the same as addiction to heroin, or the same as addiction to exercise, or to sex?
is there anything anywhere that shows physically altered brains from addiction?
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Relationship-between-dopamine-DA-D2-receptors-in-the-brains-of-cocaine-abusers-and_fig2_7882114
this is interesting - thanks.
https://americanaddictioncenters.org/health-complications-addiction/chemical-imbalance
Please. Your other comments make it clear you're here to simply troll and play devil's advocate. There is exhaustive literature on the effects of addiction (AA, anyone??). Anyone who doesn't understand that addiction can dramatically alter our brains is either being willfully ignorant or has blessedly never had experience with addiction. Get back to me when you've sat in therapy sessions with a recovering addict and spent hours reading about how addicts can recover.
not at all a troll or a devil's advocate. i like to use the words i mean, and mean the words I use. Never said addiction wasn't real, only said there is no magic alteration of the brain from phone use.
my question was 100% sincere --- if there is any evidence of consistent patterns of physical alteration in the brain as a result of "addiction" of any sort, I'd be curious to see it. Are there differences between brains of addicts and brains of not-addicts? Can we see them on a scan?
Otherwise, it's just wordy words about "chemical brain imbalances", which was a very popular thing to talk about for a time and which most certainly is NOT a real thing.
I recommend Google, there are plenty of resources that explain the effects of addiction. How addiction alters or creates new neural pathways in our brains.
If your question is sincere, perhaps you should do some research to satisfy your curiosity instead of insisting others are wrong without providing any evidence yourself.
do the substances we consume affect our minds and bodies? clearly (e.g., by "satisfying hunger"). are brains perceptibly (demonstrably) physically changed by substance abuse? not as far as I've seen.
to clarify: as far as I know, there is no scan that shows a "before" and "after" picture of brain addiction. is that what you're claiming? If so, I'd appreciate a link. If not, there is no disagreement
If you agree that addiction can alter neural pathways, and that neural pathways are detectable visually (they are, a macroscopic inspection of the brain reveals long and intricate pathways) then you must agree that addiction physically alters the brain.
Both of these are accepted facts within medicine, I don't feel the need to do your research for you.
All this for a silly sidebar to a discussion about the mental health of young girls.
Ultimately I think most parties can agree that social media and the accompanying risk of contagion is dangerous to some people and we need to do better as a society to protect the vulnerable from those effects.
A quick Google search would be useful for you:
https://www.mentalhelp.net/addiction/effects-on-the-brain/
Oh no! I think I am addicted to reading Substack comments! No joke. But better than watching "the news."
Parents need to put safety apps on the phones and know what the kids are doing online. Any kid suffering mental issues should have their social media searched and be taken off of all of it.
My granddaughter age 8 desperately wants a cellphone.
Daughter told her she can have one when she can sign the contract.
I told daughter the irony is delicious given the four years of teenage girl angst I received for saying no when she wanted a cell phone.
The hardest word for a parent is No. But 8 is much too young for a phone and 18 or 21 too old. The biggest concern is that today a phone is a computer that provides access to a world that a child is too young to experience. I would suggest no phones before age 12 and then phones with strict and ungenerous daily time limits and no internet access.
Would that all of us could rid ourselves of the social media monsters across the board. Privacy concerns make the case as well.
Amen!
Are they given ample access to medical journals so they can be strong advocates to their doctors if and when they do get sick? Will they/you just trust a doctor because you believe they're an authority on the subject? If they start showing signs of the conditions above when they hit puberty, will you buy them books to read up on EDS, POTS and MCAS? If they're voracious readers, why wouldn't they want to know everything about what is making them sick?
Spoonies aren't a social media plauge. Community plays an important role to the health and wellbeing of sick and disabled folks. There's nothing wrong with keeping kids balanced and grounded, but I would assume, as a parent, you'd understand how harmful isolation is to a kid when they're dealing with health issues. Sure, you're gunna find garbage in any community. But a family of well read kids should be able to sort out bad information easily, and extract useful treatments from a wealth of lived experiences.
The best treatments I received for my EDS, POTS and MCAS were discovered from friends I consider "spoonies". Because those same spoonies demonized by this article have seen some of the best doctors in their fields, practicing modern, effective treatments that clearly work for them. They're not just selling essential oils and candles. They were nurses, lawyers. Intelligent, hard working individuals that were suddenly struck with a constallation of debilitating symptoms nobody believed. You'd never dare call these people lazy or seeking secondary gain.
I'd challenge you not to let a single article scare you into believing that a community of chronically ill folks are coming for your kids, and consider those communities a valuable source of information if your children find themselves with unexplainable illnesses that your doctors don't seem to know how to help. Leverage social media and community as a tool, rather than treat it like a 21st century boogieman.
My kids didn't get phones until 7th grade and didn't get texting or internet on them until high school. (Last one's in their class to get it.) We had a "TV Allowance" box on the TV and they couldn't watch more than an hour of TV a day unless it was a family activity. That was 15 years ago and they are pretty well adjusted adults now...
Great policy to have enforced well done!
Agree and include this rule phones will be charged in a shared space in the evenings rather than in the child's bedroom. A phone in the bedroom allows access to your child when they are the most vulnerable. A phone in the bedroom allows a child to become the midnight terror with inappropriate texting (that will bite them back!). A phone in the bedroom amplifies the crazy sleep patterns of growing children and interferes with needed sleep (who needs an even more grouchier child at breakfast?)
My mom instilled reading into me as a child. I was limited in entertainment options to a few hours a week of TV/videos and computer use but was free to read as much I wanted.
I remember my mom being very angry once when the school, as punishment, assigned reading and math problems because she (rightly) thought it would cause students to view these fun/challenging activities as punishment.