I want to build a high-trust community but the other day I offered to lend a fellow white man a tool if he would return it to me and he stole it. In retrospect I should not have trusted a drug user even though he was white. Drugs will hold us back. How can we realistically stop white men from using drugs?
Provide a better alternative for happiness. Nowadays the hope is lost in many and the only joy they can find is when they can forget about the sad, sorry state of their lives and the world.
This reminds me of the Rat Park experiment. How do we provide a better alternative? In the Rat Park experiment the rats were given community instead of isolation. What can we do to increase community?
2 years ago3 points(+3/-0)Edited 2022-09-12 18:54:05
I would say to take a page out of what Germany did for its people. The solutions themselves are not complicated concepts, but getting the solutions started is the main issue. The people in control of this rat park are only offering the morphine water.
My post about an increase in middle aged white men taking their lives seems to directly relate to this question
I think part of the conflict is the extremes white men are being subject to, of being thought to be the "best" in society and being treated as such with certain rights and privileges, to being downgraded and treated with a lot less respect than in the past
Women are being given the privileges that really in justice are men's, so that they are able to lead a family. The wages of men are being cut in half, as well as the investment in their educations, all while women still in practice have the same traditional expectations of men that they are to be strong, make more than them financially and to provide for a family, and so on.
Plus there is the unfair divorce court and culture of divorce where women file for divorce on a 4:1 basis compared to men. So basically a ton of men, especially white men, are being overloaded with responsibilities and expectations that they have trouble living up to or simply cannot given the unjust structure of society. They fall in to drug abuse to cope. So a big thing would be fixing all these things, which we already know are issues.
Men should also look out for each other and have each other's back, like when a divorce happens.
Another big driver specifically of opiate use, I believe is when people are prescribed a legal opiate by a doctor, the prescription runs out, they still want pain relief, so they try some illegal drug, or become addicted and try to continue using the drug to cope. Either pain management without drugs, or continuing a prescription, or using lesser painkillers might help this issue. I guess some people have negative experiences with kratom, but this is an herbal painkiller that is much less intense in my experience, practically free of overdoses unlike fentanyl or heroin. It does reportedly have addiction potential for some people I guess, but I have used it moderately and experience no addiction (it has been a long time since I last had any).
So that's another possibility, is using drugs that are less harmful. Instead of people doing meth, they could use caffeine or nicotine (not cigarettes which can be more addictive but maybe gum or losenges now and then; the addictivity of nicotine also seems to vary). Instead of alcohol, maybe some valerian tea might be relaxing.
Social support is also important, like alcoholics anonymous or narcotics anonymous. Or just having friends to talk to rather than turning to a bottle. There has been a breakdown of social groups and socialization opportunities today and there is opportunity to organize men (or especially white men) to mutually help each other.
Pretty much I guess helping people to cope with stress is important.