Rob Ford is Not a Joke

20 Comments

1. 

   JLHolsinger on November 14, 2013 at 2:59 pm

   The whole thing is quite sad and the more we joke about it the more we stigmatize it.  A few years back when Britney Spears was going through all of her problems Craig Ferguson did a monologue on why he wasn’t going to make jokes about it anymore.  It is one of the best “opinion pieces” I have ever seen on addiction.  

   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZVWIELHQQY

2. 

   seabe on November 14, 2013 at 3:03 pm

   Fucking thank you. Whenever I criticized your posts before about comparing the teahadists with alcoholics or substance abusers, this is the stigma I wanted to avoid. It’s also why I cringe at the Boehner cracks, but I wish he would just retire.

   This post is bonza. Kudos.

   • 

     BooMan on November 14, 2013 at 3:51 pm

     What you don’t get is that I am serious about this teabagging shit being indistinguishable from substance addiction.  Rage addiction, you might call it, but it’s a problem with the wiring of the brain, and while some people might be genetically predisposed to the addiction, others can get it just from prolonged exposure to right-wing media.  It is an actual disease of the brain and it requires treatment.  

3. 

   Geov Parrish on November 14, 2013 at 3:03 pm

   starts with prescription pain killers and leads directly, almost every single time, to heroin addiction.

   Boo, I’m in total sympathy with the rest of this, but that one statement is a serious problem. Got any citation for it? Because without it, it comes off as the sort of “Gateway Drug” scare hyperbole that has made War On Drug anti-drug propaganda such an open joke for decades. Prescription painkillers and heroin are both opiates, but they’re different drugs. As are opium, etc. Even different opiate painkillers (codeine, oxycodone, morphine) work differently. And they’re all very different in terms of both availability and their standing in youth culture.

   The problem is real and serious enough. Please don’t dabble in hyperbole unless there’s at least a link to back it up (that’s more than someone else’s similar opinion). It just discredits all the rest.

   • 

     BooMan on November 14, 2013 at 3:46 pm

     You want links?

     Try the second one:

     When Prince William police decided this summer to target dealers of prescription pills, the stereotypical suburban drug, they saw something even more troubling: Many residents had switched to heroin because it was cheaper and easier to get. So officers expanded the investigation’s scope to heroin, and on Tuesday they rounded up 31 alleged dealers of pills or heroin and filed charges against 10 more in a day-long sweep.

     I can get dozens of links, but you can do that yourself.

     Here’s one more, similar to any number of others.

     Heroin is becoming an increasing problem throughout the Philadelphia suburbs, including the most affluent. In all areas, police officials say recreational use of prescription drugs is leading down a road to heroin addiction.

     “Instead of going to a crack dealer on a street corner, suburban kids are getting powerful prescription drugs out of bathroom medicine cabinets,” Chester County District Attorney Tom Hogan said. Chester County defense attorney Thomas Ramsay added that those prescription painkillers are leading youths who use them on a path toward heroin.

     In Berks County, Coroner Dennis Hess said opiate overdoses, including heroin and painkillers, “is happening everywhere.”

     “The problem is the city, (Reading), is so concentrated, so we get a lot of them in the city, but we get them in Birdsboro, Greenwich Township, Spring Township, all the townships,” he said.

     In Delaware County, a Heroin Task Force has been created to combat what District Attorney Jack Whelan labeled an “epidemic.”

     In January, Whelan spoke of creating an educational program in schools to warn those of the dangers of the deadly substance. “The statistics aren’t getting better,” he said…

     …Young people start dabbling in opioids, raiding the medicine cabinets of their parents for potent painkillers like OxyContin and Percocet.

     “Every case is going to be different. There certainly will be people who try this once and they can become addicted so quickly because it is so potent,” Ferman said. “What we have seen in our county more frequently, is people, especially younger people, who start using prescription drugs. We see a lot with OxyContin. They’ll use that and become addicted to it.”

     “I think, with our high school kids, they’re introduced to the opiates,” Daywalt said. “Somebody’s dad or mom gets hurt at work or something, they get the Oxy(Contin) or the Percocet, start in with that, and then they want to try something else.”

     “Two things happen. One is that those prescription drugs might become too expensive or difficult to get and they will then turn to heroin, or sometimes they no longer can get the high they want from the prescription drugs and they will turn to heroin because it is so powerful,” Ferman said.

     The opioid turned heroin addiction problem cuts across all age and socioeconomic barriers…

     …Opiate pills, such as oxycodone, can cost $30 a pill, or $1 per milligram, when it’s sold on the street. A bag of heroin costs a lot less – between $5 and $10, detectives said.

     Typically, heroin is not being sold on the streets of Montgomery County, like other illegal drugs such as crack cocaine or marijuana. Investigators said those involved in the suburban heroin culture are familiar with one another and so one or two might travel to Philadelphia, Reading or Allentown to purchase the drug and then distribute it to their acquaintances.

     A bundle of heroin, which can produce 10 to 13 bags, can be had for about $100, authorities said.

     Daywalt said that it’s gotten to the point where heroin is actually cheaper than marijuana.

4. 

   Medicine Man 2 on November 14, 2013 at 3:28 pm

   Rob Ford the person should get the consideration you talk about, whether he deserves it or not, for exactly the reasons cite.

   Rob Ford the mayor deserves all of the ridicule he gets.

5. 

   Brendan Skwire on November 14, 2013 at 4:08 pm

   I see it both ways, as Medicine Man does. Ford needs to step down, and if he won’t go voluntarily, the media shaming is necessary to remove him.

   As someone who grew up with an alcoholic mother, I am sympathetic to Ford’s disease.  But he is also a notorious fucking asshole with a strong reputation as a bully. If he was a US politician he’d be a solid tea-partier.

   So I guess what I’m saying is “fuck him”. I’m sorry he has a disease, but that’s no excuse for being a royal dick, and so I laugh at him now that he’s brought low by his own outrageous behavior.

   • 

     cruzy on November 14, 2013 at 4:09 pm

     wasn’t he essentially elected on a platform of “we upper middle class suburbanites are superior to you dirty city dwellers?”

     You’ve signed up for ridicule if you so much as jaywalk after that sort of thing.

   • 

     BooMan on November 14, 2013 at 4:13 pm

     Of course he needs to step down.  That’s not even in question.

6. 

   Quaker in a Basement on November 14, 2013 at 5:11 pm

   It’s not Ford’s addiction that’s ridiculous, it’s the insane transparency of his denial.

   Now I can understand if you want to say that denial is just one of the many symptoms of addiction, but when you stand in front of the press and say you’re not completely sure if you smoked crack because you were too drunk to remember, AND THEN continue to insist there’s no problem, ridicule is coming to visit.

   • 

     BooMan on November 14, 2013 at 7:08 pm

     Yeah, the guy is talking about eating pussy, so it’s pretty hard not to laugh at him, but no one needs to win an argument with him.  He needs help and the situation should evoke more sadness and compassion than ridicule.  

7. 

   gratuitous on November 14, 2013 at 7:52 pm

   I gotta say I’m in full agreement here. I think it was last week on The Daily Show Jon Stewart was talking with a guest doing Rob Ford jokes. He said they taped at 6:30 and it aired four hours later. He was worried that one day by the time the show got to air, something horrible would happen.

   I’m not his doctor, but I don’t think it takes a medical degree to see Ford and discern that he’s dealing with a grand slam of risky behavior. He’s grossly overweight, drinks too much, doesn’t appear to exercise a whole lot, and has a volcanic temper. The crack smoking is just the cherry on top of this early grave sundae.

   He needs help, and he needs it yesterday.

8. 

   DaveW on November 14, 2013 at 8:25 pm

   Like cancer? Please. Using opiates is an entirely voluntary and known high risk choice. Yes, rehab should be freely available, but I’m not so sure ridiculing asses like Ford is a less effective deterrent than all the “sympathetic” drivel about how it’s just like any other disease. Ford can, and always could, choose to fix the problem, but he chose not to. I’m not playing any violins for the stupid slob.

   • 

     BooMan on November 14, 2013 at 9:44 pm

     1.

     “Heroin is an opiate,” he explained during an interview at the hospital last month. “It affects the area of the brain that perceives pleasure. It’s in powder form, basically. Pure heroin will be white. There’s something called black tar that’s like asphalt that hasn’t dried yet. That’s a very impure form of it. You can inject it, you can snort it, smoke it as well.

     “It gives you this instant sense of euphoria,” he said. “It’s a false sense of well-being. Unfortunately, because it’s an opiate, it can cause severe respiratory depression, where the drug is fooling your brain into believing that it doesn’t have to have a respiratory drive.

     “There have been studies done with rats in which they were offered water, food, a fertile mate, but the rats would rather have the drug,” Fernandez said. “I’ve had patients tell me they’ve been through several detox facilities, and each time they have relapsed. That’s because the urge to use the drug is so great. Sometimes patients will basically give up the urge for, let’s say, eating. They would rather have the drug.”

     2.

     He said the sensation was like that of an instant rush, the physical and mental parts of himself speeding to the pleasure zone of his body in an effort to get there first. Once there, it was like exploding in a warm sense of euphoria, like laying in a bed of nothing but feathers, and melting into himself. Coke, he said, will get you amped up. Crystal meth will keep you up for days. Pot will bring you down to a two-dimensional world, but heroin will send you nodding somewhere into outer space.

     “Heroin is a really weird drug,” Timmy said. “It comes on in waves. It had its hooks in me from the beginning. I did it one day and the next thing I knew, it had turned into an everyday thing. I  realized it was overtaking my life right away. As soon as you find yourself doing it on an everyday basis, you see your life as a daily cycle, and then there is the dependability, and soon you realize that you can’t go through the day without it.

     “I was awake but in my own world…and I simply disconnected.”

     He was 19 years old.

     3.

     What is Addiction

     Definition of Addiction: Addiction is a chronic, progressive, incurable disease characterized by loss of control over alcohol and other drugs.

     Chronic – lasts for life – is always present

     Progressive – a person active addicted to alcoholic and other drugs will continue to get worse… But, if alcoholics remain clean and dry, the coming months and years will bring remarkable and often miraculous improvements in their spiritual, emotional, physical and social well-being.

     Incurable – so far, science has given us no cure for alcoholism and other drug addiction. Victims of the disease can return to normal life, but only as long as drinking is stopped.

     Characterized by loss of control over alcohol and other drugs – once the addicted person take that first drink or use after being sober or abstinent, they can’t predict with any reliability whether they are going to have a normal or abnormal drinking episode. They no longer control alcohol; it controls them.

     Alcoholics have lost control over not just the drug alcohol – for alcohol is basically nothing more than a widely available, socially acceptable, non-prescription and inexpensive tranquilizer or sedative. They’ve lost control over all other mood-altering drugs as well. Loss of control is a most important clinical factor. Do they have predictable behavior when they drink? If they do, then they are not an alcoholic. But if their behavior isn’t predictable when they drink – if they simply can’t tell what will happen next – then the disease has got them in hand.

     Addicted people may go on denying their alcohol and other drug problems, even when their lives are in shambles. It often takes serious trouble — with the law, at school, at work, or in the family — for them to make a move towards treatment.

     Addiction is a disease. Developing alcoholism and addictions to other drugs is not intentional. Today, these individuals can get proper treatment for the disease of addiction. Reaching out for information and help is the first step toward getting well.

     4.

     When Cancer Doesn’t Go Away

     Cancer isn’t always a one-time event. It can be a chronic (ongoing) illness, much like diabetes or heart disease. Cancer can be closely watched and treated, but sometimes it never completely goes away. This is often the case with certain cancer types, such as ovarian cancer, chronic leukemias, and some lymphomas. Sometimes cancers that have spread or have come back in other parts of the body, like metastatic breast or prostate cancer, also become chronic cancers.

     The cancer may be controlled with treatment, meaning it might seem to go away or stay the same, and it doesn’t grow or spread as long as you are getting maintenance treatment.

     Sometimes when treatment shrinks the cancer, you can take a break until the cancer starts to grow again.

     But in either of these cases the cancer is still there – it doesn’t go away and stay away – it’s not cured.

     5.

     Kacie Rumford was 23 when she died in March of a heroin overdose. And in the months since, Andy Rumford has turned his grief for his daughter outward, forming a heroin-awareness group called Kacie’s Cause and advocating tirelessly throughout the region for just about anything that would spare another parent from experiencing what he has.

     “I was like a naive parent,” he said. “I thought [heroin] was an inner-city drug – that there was no way it was out in this area.”

     But local law enforcement officials say that heroin has a marked presence in the suburbs – and that the drug once associated with the inner city has made its way into suburban and rural communities. The U.S. Justice Department says heroin abuse has spread across the nation in recent years. One reason: Heroin is cheaper than some of the alternatives.

     In Chester County, where Kacie Rumford grew up, 34 people died of heroin-related causes last year, 12 so far this year.

     Neighboring Delaware County, where officials say heroin use is much more widespread, saw 52 heroin-related deaths in 2012 and has dealt with 20 so far this year.

     “In my generation, when we were in our teens and early 20s, we never heard of anyone taking heroin,” Delaware County District Attorney Jack Whelan said. “And I don’t know what happened – how it made such a strong comeback.”

     “Back in the day, it was basically centralized in North Philly,” said Sgt. Robert Friel, a narcotics officer with the Philadelphia Police Department. “Now it’s in any part of the city. You can get it from anywhere. Even as far as Delaware, Maryland – they all come to Philly.”

     Kacie Rumford came to Philly, too, buying heroin in Kensington and squirreling it away in her room in Kennett Square. But she also bought in tiny, bucolic Oxford, a 20-minute drive from her home, her father said. At his kitchen table last week, he pulled out a makeup case he and his wife found in Kacie’s room after her death.

     It was filled with tiny blue heroin bags, all empty.

     “I start to realize what an addict she was – I think, Why did she treat me this way?” Rumford said. “Well, it wasn’t her. It was the drug talking.”

     Kacie was a bright child, he said – a voracious reader, involved in a slew of extracurriculars at school. “She gobbled books up,” Rumford said. (He reads passages from her favorite, Sue Monk Kidd’s The Secret Life of Bees, at her grave sometimes.)

     After high school, however, Kacie “really couldn’t find her way,” Rumford said. She hopped from school to school, with stints at Pennsylvania State University and community colleges. She started using drugs around age 18 – likely, Andy Rumford said, by stealing prescription medications from her mother, who had suffered a stroke years before.

     “Most people think these kids are still continuing to make a choice,” said Gina Dischert, a member of Kacie’s Cause, with two sons who have dealt with heroin addiction. “But eventually, that choice is taken from them.”

     6.

     In a testimony read by Delaware County Executive Director Marianne Grace, she noted that in 2007 there were 19 heroin fatalities, but that number rose to 61 in 2011. In all, there were 232 heroin-related deaths from 2007 to 2012.

     Grace is part of the Delaware County Heroin Task Force that was started in September of 2012. While she says the education process has started, results from that are yet to be seen.

     “It’s really too soon to see a difference in the numbers,” Grace said after her testimony.

     Some other numbers are not yet tragic, but just as alarming. The Office of Behavioral Health in Delaware County reported that the admission numbers for heroin use increased 680 percent from 2009 to 2012. That includes having 98 clients for heroin in 2010, 400 in 2011 and then 667 in 2012.

     What the county task force and other experts in the field told the panel Thursday was that heroin is usually not the addict’s first experience into drugs. They each said the addiction generally begins with prescription drugs and painkillers. Once that supply runs out, usually by being too expensive, users then turn to the cheaper heroin to gain a similar experience.

     “Limiting the availability and supply of heroin is missing the issue and will not decrease demand,” Delaware County District Attorney Jack Whelan said at the hearing. “There is an ever increasing demand of heroin because users are already addicted opiate abusers.”

     Two of those opiate drugs include the FDA approved OxyContin and Percocet. They are sometimes easily available in a household’s medicine cabinet. But once the addiction sets in, some users then turn to doctor shopping to try and get prescriptions for the drugs.

     “These drugs do have a legitimate medical purpose when prescribed and managed appropriately,” Whelan said. “These drugs don’t have the dirty or negative stigma that you find with heroin, cocaine and other street drugs.

     “Therefore we cannot assume that our children understand the nature and seriousness concerning the abuse of these pharmaceuticals.”

     Stouch learned about her daughter’s real issues when reading her journal after she had died. Pamela Stouch apparently felt she didn’t fit in and started hanging out with what she described as outcasts. At least some of them, as Stouch found out later, were using prescription drugs. Even though her daughter eventually entered a rehab center, treatment lasted for only 30 days. Pamela Stouch thought she had beat her addiction, only to tragically discover she had not.

     “Addicts choose to use, yes, at first they do,” said Stouch, who is also a member of the county’s heroin task force. “They do not choose to have drugs take over their brains. Whether prescribed by a doctor, given to you by a friend or as teenagers trying to fit in. Once addicted, your brain fights. It craves these drugs till the day you die.”

     You want to tell these grieving parents that their kids used opiates entirely voluntarily?  

   • 

     BooMan on November 14, 2013 at 10:26 pm

   • 

     BooMan on November 14, 2013 at 10:49 pm

     Nice Mother Jones project.

   • 

     BooMan on November 14, 2013 at 10:57 pm

     All these kids could choose to fix the problem but chose not to.  Right?  

   • 

     BooMan on November 14, 2013 at 11:03 pm

     Yeah, Dale Rinaldi sure sounds like a guy who could have stopped at any time but simply chose not to.  No violins for that stupid slob. May he rest in peace.

9. 

   MNPundit on November 14, 2013 at 10:16 pm

   I think part of the issue is that the Canadians seem a lot less puritanical about this than we would.

10. 

    sherifffruitfly on November 15, 2013 at 12:56 am

    here’s who need caring and compassion and MEDICAL TREATMENT: blog subject.

    the rest? GO TO FUCKING JAIL AND DEATH ROW AND WHATEVER.

    oh there’s a color difference?

    OH TOTALLY ACCIDENTAL