R.I.P. Philip Seymour Hoffman

[The Man]

People overdose because heroin is illegal, not because they are users of the drug. As I pointed out above, consistently using a consistent amount of the drug presents at most a minimal risk of overdose, but because of the war on drugs, users have no way of being assured that what they get has uniform consistency (or, for that matter, that it is in fact heroin; as the link I posted above indicates, it's quite possible that what killed Hoffman was actually fentanyl). Regulating the drug would solve that, but it's impossible to regulate a black market, because it's a black market. Drug addiction is a health issue, and treating it as a criminal matter kills drug users.

And as far as I'm aware Brand has been sober for quite some time, but whether he is an addict or not is irrelevant to his point, which is that the war on drugs causes overdoses.

[Miriel]

Listen.

The war on drugs is stupid and has some terrible consequences. It's terrible that PSH is gone because he was a tremendous talent in this world. Addiction is horrible and tricky and insidious and definitely something that can stay with someone for the entirety of their lives.

But can people please stop acting like people with addictions don't have personal responsibility for their own trout? No one should be doing god damn heroin. The very very first time a person uses heroin, they do it probably knowing the rabbit hole they're going down. The fact that PSH is dead is his own fault. Tragic for sure. I feel so terribly sad for him that he couldn't beat his addiction. And I'm not going to pretend that keeping clean is easy or anything but a constant struggle. Or that mentally and emotionally, addicts don't face a huge challenge. But that doesn't change the fact that when an addict dies of a drug overdose, it is STILL THEIR OWN FAULT.

That doesn't mean they deserved to die, or that treatment programs shouldn't be readily available. It just means that it's a life choice they made that brought them down that path. Those who die of drug overdoses, unless forced into using drugs against their free will, are responsible for themselves. That means being responsible for their addiction.

[The Man]

If his supply was laced with fentanyl without his knowledge, then no, his death is patently not his own fault; it's the fault of the dealers responsible for lacing the drugs with fentanyl and the lawmakers responsible for the troutty smurfing war on drugs which makes such practices possible in the first place. It's easy to say, "People just shouldn't do drugs in the first place", but that's utterly useless. People have been saying that for hundreds of years and it hasn't stopped people from doing drugs. People do do drugs and they will continue to do them regardless of whether they are legal or not, not least of which is because of their addictions. The war on drugs makes drugs dramatically less safe than they need to be. Heroin is dangerous because of the war on drugs, not because it's heroin.

Hoffman is responsible for his addiction, yes, but he is not responsible for his death. An addiction shouldn't be a death sentence, and if we had sensible drug laws, it wouldn't be.

[Del Murder]

Well, so far, it doesn't look like Hoffman's heroin had fentanyl. But even if it did, he's still buying an illegal substance from an unknown origin and he should/would be aware of the risks of such additives possibly being included. It's his choice to ignore those risks and take it anyway.

If I buy an illegal jet pack from a guy in a van and it explodes in my face, I'm not going to blame the guy in the van. Sure he sold me a crap product but it's my own damn fault for being dumb enough to trust someone selling me an illegal jet pack. Does that mean jet packs should be made legal and regulated by the government? No, because those things are dangerous even when they work properly.

[Quindiana Jones]

Your responses in this thread are functionally like a combination of slut-shaming and that thing arseholes do when they meet people with mental issues, i.e. "have you tried not being depressed?"; ignorance mixed with self-righteous judgemental-ness, and it's quite frankly disappointing to hear from people who normally try to consider things with more depth and clarity.

[The Man]

No, because those things are dangerous even when they work properly.

Which thereby distinguishes it from heroin, which poses fewer health risks than cigarettes as long as you continually inject the same amount. A more adequate analogy is buying sugar and getting rat poison instead. The person who sold you the rat poison is clearly culpable.

And even if Hoffman's heroin wasn't tainted with fentanyl (notably it only takes a couple drops of it to kill someone, because the stuff is at least 50 times more potent than heroin) that still doesn't mean he wasn't given an unusually potent dose, which is also possible.

Quin is absolutely 100% correct.

[Miriel]

Your responses in this thread are functionally like a combination of slut-shaming and that thing arseholes do when they meet people with mental issues, i.e. "have you tried not being depressed?"; ignorance mixed with self-righteous judgemental-ness, and it's quite frankly disappointing to hear from people who normally try to consider things with more depth and clarity.

And this kind of response is an absurd sort of twisting of someone's disagreement to your own stance by willfully ignoring reasonable and logical thinking. Akin to slut shaming?? Seriously you want to go there? In one situation you have someone who could potentially be harmed completely because another separate human being can't allow for someone to dress or express themselves in a way they deem appropriate. If someone else had forcibly given heroin to PSH because he had an addiction problem and therefore "deserved" to be drugged, then you're silly ass argument might have some semblance of making sense. And yeah, expressing sadness at the difficulties an addict faces without absolving them of their responsibilities is soooooo exactly like telling someone to just stop being depressed. You're so right! There is no distinction or nuance here! Please, give me a break. Ridiculous. Ten thousand eye rolling emoticons for you.

I've had the option to take ecstasy before. And you know what? It's a fairly safe drug. The worst that happens is usually overheating or dehydration. But there is a small, very small, chance that you might have seizure or stroke cause of it. Now if I took some for recreational fun and ended up in the hospital, you know whose fault that would be? smurfing MINE. Jesus smurfing Christ on a stick. It would be my god damn fault. If the person I had got it from gave me some sort of shotty laced version of the drug then it would be that persons fault too. But just because multiple people might be at fault doesn't mean that the responsibility still wasn't mine own as well. Is that a difficult concept to grasp?

No one is saying that the person who might have supplied PSH didn't have a hand in his death, just that this doesn't take away from PSH's own responsibility as well. Responsibility isn't a zero sum game. You can blame the government and society and dealers and bad friends and all sorts of other people. That doesn't absolve PSH for his own hand in his death. Not unless the death is somehow discovered to have been a murder staged as an overdose.

[Shorty]

People overdose because heroin is illegal, not because they are users of the drug.

I cannot disagree more with this. They overdose because they are addicts addicted to an addictive substance and cannot control their intake of it because they relinquish their own self-discipline in exchange to comply with their compulsive needs. It's really an absurd statement to make, and a presumptuous one at that.

People die from alcohol poisoning every day because they are addicted to drinking. People become addicted to sugar and fats and what have you, and they die from the effects those substances have on their bodies when they grow to be 400 pounds. People lose body parts due to being unable to stop smoking. It doesn't matter the legality issues of the substance. If a substance is addictive and you cannot respond properly to it, it will harm you. And if you think that regulating heroin as a legal substance will prevent addicts from overdosing on it, you are living in a fantasy world.

I seriously doubt his heroin was laced with anything. Heroin kills you, period. He's been clean and sober for 20+ years and probably took a portion that was the size of what he would have done when he was raging two decades ago. It was too much for his body to handle and it killed him. Simple as that.

[Del Murder]

No, because those things are dangerous even when they work properly.

Which thereby distinguishes it from heroin, which poses fewer health risks than cigarettes as long as you continually inject the same amount. A more adequate analogy is buying sugar and getting rat poison instead. The person who sold you the rat poison is clearly culpable.

First of all, an addict will build up a tolerance and therefore will not be continually injecting the same amount. Second, suggesting a continual injection of heroin as an acceptable course of action is atrocious. Finally, your sugar analogy doesn't work because sugar is not a dangerous addictive substance and you can buy it at any grocery store. If the grocery store sold you rat poison, then yes they would be at fault. If instead sugar was illegal and the guy you bought it from on the black market sold you rat poison, then sure he's an butthole for selling you poison, but it's also your fault for buying something on the black market you know you shouldn't be buying. If heroin wasn't dangerous or addicting, then I'd be fine with making it legal. If we were talking about sugar and PSH died of injesting rat poison-laced sugar then I'd be all with you guys in making it legal. It still wouldn't change the fact that the guy was dumb for buying something illegal from an unknown source.

I'm not being judgmental. I acknowledge that addiction is a serious disease and people who suffer from it need to he helped rather than treated like criminals. The criminals are the ones making and selling this stuff, but that's kind of the point. They are criminals and should be criminals. Addition is a disease but it still takes a personal choice to inject that needle or smoke that rock (for the first time at least). How many thousands or millions of potential addicts are there out there who are not currently addicts because the illegal nature of the drugs have prevented them from trying it? Think about all the people suffering from alcoholism and dying of lung cancer as a result of legal drugs. Everyone killed by a drunk driver. Why would you want to potentially create more addicts by decriminalizing an extremely dangerous substance and making it widely available for recreational use? That's just irresponsible.

Your responses in this thread are functionally like a combination of slut-shaming and that thing arseholes do when they meet people with mental issues, i.e. "have you tried not being depressed?"; ignorance mixed with self-righteous judgemental-ness, and it's quite frankly disappointing to hear from people who normally try to consider things with more depth and clarity.

I feel like your responses to some of the things we disagree about lately have been full of judgement and it makes me kind of sad. It seems like you are the one who is not thinking about things with depth and clarity. I've actually learned a lot from the responses in this thread and I'd like to thank Hsu and The Man (up until the last sentence of his most recent post) for presenting the rationale for their views in a respectable way, even if I don't agree with them.

[Crop]

Which thereby distinguishes it from heroin, which poses fewer health risks than cigarettes as long as you continually inject the same amount.

While that may be true, I think it's missing the point. With consistent heroin use, your body eventually becomes used to the effects and the high isn't as good. That's why users have to have a little more, or take it more often to chase the high. Thus the spiral is born.
Heroin isn't some misunderstood drug, it is deadly and utterly abhorrent.

[Shorty]

Crop makes an excellent point. Addicts aren't rationalizing to themselves to maintain their doping amounts in order to avoid risks with a dangerous substance.

[Spuuky]

I've had the option to take ecstasy before. And you know what? It's a fairly safe drug. The worst that happens is usually overheating or dehydration. But there is a small, very small, chance that you might have seizure or stroke cause of it. Now if I took some for recreational fun and ended up in the hospital, you know whose fault that would be? smurfing MINE. Jesus smurfing Christ on a stick. It would be my god damn fault. If the person I had got it from gave me some sort of shotty laced version of the drug then it would be that persons fault too. But just because multiple people might be at fault doesn't mean that the responsibility still wasn't mine own as well. Is that a difficult concept to grasp?

Is it "your fault" if you take aspirin, have a terrible (extremely low percentage, but technically possible) fatal reaction to it and die? Is it "your fault" if you encounter peanuts for the first time in your life, eat them, and die of an allergic reaction? Would I be right in saying "you know the risks, Jesus H, take responsibility"?

[Quindiana Jones]

Formal request for drugs talk to be taken out of the RIP thread.

[Del Murder]

I've had the option to take ecstasy before. And you know what? It's a fairly safe drug. The worst that happens is usually overheating or dehydration. But there is a small, very small, chance that you might have seizure or stroke cause of it. Now if I took some for recreational fun and ended up in the hospital, you know whose fault that would be? smurfing MINE. Jesus smurfing Christ on a stick. It would be my god damn fault. If the person I had got it from gave me some sort of shotty laced version of the drug then it would be that persons fault too. But just because multiple people might be at fault doesn't mean that the responsibility still wasn't mine own as well. Is that a difficult concept to grasp?

Is it "your fault" if you take aspirin, have a terrible (extremely low percentage, but technically possible) fatal reaction to it and die? Is it "your fault" if you encounter peanuts for the first time in your life, eat them, and die of an allergic reaction? Would I be right in saying "you know the risks, Jesus H, take responsibility"?

Not unless you bought them from some guy on the street. I'll refrain from discussing this further since Quin made another thread for it.

RIP PSH. Sorry for derailing your thread, but The Man started it!

Thinking back on his career, I don't remember a lot of leading roles Hoffman had, but I think that was the beauty of his work. You don't remember Phillip Seymour Hoffman being great in some movie, you just remember movies with him in it being good. He owned his roles so fully that they seamlessly fit in with the rest of the film and brought the whole thing to a new level. Films like The Big Lebowski, Moneyball, and the recent Hunger Games films all aren't PSH-heavy, but his presence gave the movies a sort of credibility that would be lacking without him.

[Quindiana Jones]

Should The Man be made illegal in Lounge threads? Discuss.

I never paid much attention to his roles, which as Del says, is actually kind of a compliment and is in line with what everybody says about him as an actor. He isn't PSH As..., he just is that character. He was never some big AAA actor who overwhelms the character they're meant to portray, he just blended seamlessly.

Reminds me of Heath Ledger actually, and not because of the drugs thing. He had a similar class of acting, I always thought. Excellent actors to get addicted to hard drugs it seems, much like the best comedians often suffer from depression. Weird.