Are there any other Atheists here?

[[Bi...]]

I wonder how many people voted for Trump just because he will probably appoint a conservative supreme court justice who will uphold their religion-based anti-abortion beliefs.

Aloha, I'd love to comment on this but first I'll need to get Collin to grant me a waiver from the "no politics on Benzo Buddies" rule.

 

Hahahaha!!! I want to open the discussion up so badly! If people are to sensitive they wouldn't have to participate!! Won't someone see if it's possible???

 

Why?  Opinions rarely (if ever) change.  People just rant or try to persuade or even try to proselytize.  Never ends well.  Just more polarization.

Spoton

[[ho...]]

Yes but seeing things from someone else's perspective can oftentimes be enlightening.

[Guest [ba...]]

Yes but seeing things from someone else's perspective can oftentimes be enlightening.

 

I find it's more enlightening about the person who is sharing their perspective than it is enlightening for the actual information (or misinformation) that they are espousing.  For this group (well for me, anyway), a change in perspective would require demonstrable, reproducible, observable, testable facts that we (I) weren't aware of previously. 

 

I'm very painfully aware that in this day of blatant and deliberate media lies, there are people who only care to hear what they want to hear, and will believe and follow any person or belief that supports their mindset (facts be damned).  I don't think the people in this thread fall into that category.

[[Bi...]]

Yes but seeing things from someone else's perspective can oftentimes be enlightening.

 

I find it's more enlightening about the person who is sharing their perspective than it is enlightening for the actual information (or misinformation) that they are espousing.  For this group (well for me, anyway), a change in perspective would require demonstrable, reproducible, observable, testable facts that we (I) weren't aware of previously. 

 

I'm very painfully aware that in this day of blatant and deliberate media lies, there are people who only care to hear what they want to hear, and will believe and follow any person or belief that supports their mindset (facts be damned).  I don't think the people in this thread fall into that category.

 

There is lots of lies in the media but the biggest lie of all is the national debit.  Why!  Because we hit the "PRINT" button on the J.P. Morgans federal reserve printing press? (federal reserve bank is privately owned by bankers!!).  They did not borrow the money from any one and then they charge us 220 million dollars a day interest!!  WASTE of tax payer money for ALL political parties!

We need to kick the privately owned Federal reserve bank out of this country and then have the US Treasury hit the PRINT button on their own printing press which is FREE to do.  Yes that means NO NATIONAL DEBIT and 220 million dollars a day to spend on other programs for all of us Republican or Democrat, we are being RIPPED OFF!  Those dirty snakes at the Federal reserve bank have to go!!!

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IJeemTQ7Vk

[[Ph...]]

Yes but seeing things from someone else's perspective can oftentimes be enlightening.

Hopeandfaith, I saw no sign in the previous political thread that anyone was about to be enlightened by someone else's perspective.  My head still aches a bit from bashing it up against a brick wall.  Collin made the right call.  Plenty of other places on the internet to vent our spleens.

[[Mi...]]

I do wish this thread would stick to atheism and not politics.

 

MirandaJane

[[Bi...]]

I do wish this thread would stick to atheism and not politics.

 

MirandaJane

 

It's hard to run a thread based on the belief of nothing.  "NOTHING" is a pretty boring topic.

Example, three Atheist's walk into a room:  "Hey I believe in nothing" -- Hey "me too, I believe in nothing too how weird!  Dude me too I believe in totally nothing also, how weird is that dudes, ahhh what next?"

I mean really what's an Atheist to do except talk about all the ways religion has fucked up our lives with their laws, jails, punishments, fees, fines, licensees AND their morality etc.  Atheists suffer every day under a political doctrine we have nothing to do with and do not believe in. In the end it is politics that's at stake here.  True freedom with a morality stamp being stuck on every video, photo or chemical substance is not an Atheist life style. 

I was happily on low dose Oxycontin for 7 years before my new doctor said "NO WAY, your going on benzo's"  The war on drugs is a Christian battle ground.

 

I'll be honest with ALL of you.  I never healed and do not know if I ever will.  Benzo's changed my brain chemistry somehow and it's not getting better.  I am VERY protracted in my healing.  Thank you to the fucking 'WAR ON DRUGS' Christian's for destroying 8 years of my life and counting!  The Christian's are also the one's leading the charge to make Oxycontin even harder to get.  Probably since pastors don't get good donations when working people are on disability.  I was on and off of oxy for years and it was always easy to quit.  BENZO'S are a monster.  (Keep in mind I was using 5 mg oxy for SLEEP, a tiny dose and it worked like a champ! Even after 7 years it still worked and no massive withdrawal problem ever)

At times I ran out of Oxycontin for weeks and it was never even close to the "HELL" benzo's put me through. The worst was insomnia and that faded fast. Benzo's hurt me so bad, no comparison. 

If I knew than what I know now I'd be buying dime bags of good quality brown heroin and be using tiny traces of that for sleep.  A balloon full would last me for 4 months I figure, not bad for $15.00 - But no that's bad for me and I needed benzo's.  For years I did not understand how people could go in to a crowded room and blow themselves up.  I guess you would have to understand anger and hopelessness and benzo's w/d has opened my eyes to what total desperation really is. On some nights I cry my self to sleep whispering "I have destroyed my brain, it's gone, it's gone. Gone forever".

 

I am so pissed I ever got tricked into using these drugs and I have a feeling I will never be 100% healed ever.  I have miles to go, and years to travel before I get the privilege of writing a success story.

 

[[Be...]]

Birdman, are you saying Christians are involved in the regulation and laws about prescribing drugs?  I don't understand? 

[[Bi...]]

Now to answer your question "Do Christians get involved in government? YES THEY DO!

So Why shouldn't Atheists become political too.

 

Here is what the Christians are doing!!!!!

 

 

Welcome to the Christian Coalition website!  REF: http://www.cc.org/welcome

 

You have come to the home of one of the largest conservative grassroots political organizations in America.

 

Christian Coalition of America offers people of faith the vehicle to be actively involved in impacting the issues they care about - from the county courthouse to the halls of Congress.

 

We are a political organization, made up of pro-family Americans who care deeply about ensuring that government serves to strengthen and preserve, rather than threaten, our families and our values.  To that end, we work continuously to identify, educate and mobilize Christians for effective political action.

 

We believe that effective citizenship begins with knowledge.  Since our founding, we have worked to provide critical education and political training to the pro-family community in order to challenge and equip individuals and churches to make a difference at all levels of government.

 

Under my leadership, the Coalition has distributed tens of millions of voter guides throughout all fifty states, (up to seventy million in 2000 alone!).  These guides help give voters a clear understanding of where candidates stand on important pro-family issues - before they go to the polls on Election Day.

 

Our efforts do not stop with voter guides. We actively lobby Congress and the White House on numerous issues and hold grassroots training seminars and events all around the country that draw thousands of pro-family supporters and help organize activists on critical issues facing our country.

 

Today, Christians need to play an active role in government again like never before.  If we are going to be able to change policy and influence decisions, it is imperative that people of faith become committed to doing what Ronald Reagan called "the hard work of freedom".

 

Please take some time to investigate the resources our site has to offer and decide how you would like to get involved.

 

Click here and become a registered user of our site today!

 

Your involvement is critical to our success!

 

Roberta Combs

President & CEO

 

 

 

[[Ph...]]

I do wish this thread would stick to atheism and not politics.

 

MirandaJane

 

I was happily on Oxycontin for 7 years before my new doctor said "NO WAY, your going on benzo's"  The war on drugs is a Christine battle ground.

 

Christians made your doctor switch you from one poison to another?  Christians are (or were) in charge of the FDA and the AMA?  This is news to me.  But hey, I can't blame you for venting.  We're all trying to figure out how we got into this mess.

[[ho...]]

I do wish this thread would stick to atheism and not politics.

 

MirandaJane

 

I was happily on Oxycontin for 7 years before my new doctor said "NO WAY, your going on benzo's"  The war on drugs is a Christine battle ground.

 

Christians made your doctor switch you from one poison to another?  Christians are (or were) in charge of the FDA and the AMA?  This is news to me.  But hey, I can't blame you for venting.  We're all trying to figure out how we got into this mess.

 

Christians are to blame???

 

Now that's a stretch....

[[Mo...]]

 

Christians are to blame???

 

Now that's a stretch....

 

Thats a bummer indeed....

[[Bi...]]

I do wish this thread would stick to atheism and not politics.

 

MirandaJane

 

I was happily on Oxycontin for 7 years before my new doctor said "NO WAY, your going on benzo's"  The war on drugs is a Christine battle ground.

 

Christians made your doctor switch you from one poison to another?  Christians are (or were) in charge of the FDA and the AMA?  This is news to me.  But hey, I can't blame you for venting.  We're all trying to figure out how we got into this mess.

 

Christians are to blame???

 

Now that's a stretch....

 

Believe it,  Ever heard of  THE WAR ON DRUGS  Christians have a bug up their ass on opiates and weed!  THE WAR ON DRUGS" is a Christian mantra. (There are so many Christians on benzo's they do not war against benzo's ever!)  In my own life I have 11 heavily Christianized family members, Brothers, cousins second cousins and their spouses and kids and they are all still on xanax for the last 25 years and have no plans to get off. They march against weed and opiates while popping benzo's like candy, gives me the creeps.

 

    Patrik Jonsson/The Christian Science Monitor

 

Woodstock, Ga. — In the "war on drugs," Phil Price has battled crack, methamphetamine, heroin, and pot. But the newest drug epidemic – abuse of prescription opioid painkillers – has the narcotics agent reassessing his role in policing America's hunger for illicit highs.

 

As head of the narcotics squad in Cherokee County in Georgia, Mr. Price has ordered his 14 agents to shift focus from meth labs and Mexican drug gangs to eyeing vans full of average Joes in search of prescriptions for a legal, but habit-forming and potentially deadly, fix: oxycodone. A pharmaceutical form of heroin, the drug is now a top seller, with 100 million prescriptions written over the past 15 years – the equivalent of 1 bottle of pills for every 3 Americans.

 

But fighting oxycodone abuse – an epidemic that now results in millions of overdoses and at least 11,000 deaths annually – has unique and vexing challenges.

Recommended: Could you pass a US citizenship test?

 

For one, the drug is not illegal. But there are right ways and wrong ways to dispense it, though regulations vary from state to state. Large-scale dispensers, whom Price calls "drug dealers with MDs," are protected, to a point, by federal law and by powerful medical and pharmaceutical lobbies. For another, it's increasingly difficult to identify abusers. They range from retirees to high school girls, and many attempt to "doctor shop" to find a fix.

Test your knowledge Could you pass a US citizenship test?

Graphic Georgia

Photos of the Day Photos of the day 02/08

 

"It's far more complex than any other drug epidemic I've seen," says Price. "What it all boils down to is a societal issue, not a law enforcement issue. I don't know how we can keep everybody from doing harm to themselves."

 

Abuse of oxycodone is not new. The introduction 15 years ago of "miracle" drugs like OxyContin was hailed as a leap forward in the field of pain management for patients, but early on oxycodone's addictive properties became clear. Since then, not only have patients developed addictions, but recreational drug users are increasingly seeking out oxycodone, crushing the pills to negate time-release formulas and even vaporizing pills, a method called "chasing the dragon."

 

As demand grew, unscrupulous doctors set up shop in strip malls and began offering large prescriptions dispensed for cash. These "pill mills" popped up by the hundreds, especially in south Florida. The result is an "Oxy Express," a steady flow of users who became black market dealers, selling part of the stash in their distant hometowns to finance their addictions.

 

"All it takes is 1/10th of the physician population [to act unethically] to create a national epidemic," says Stanford University researcher Keith Humphreys, a former adviser to the White House's Office of National Drug Control Policy.

 

The overnight appearance of a pill mill in Cherokee County last year is what drew Price into the fight against the epidemic. Neighbors complained about parking lots jammed with out-of-state cars and vans. The clinic advertised on billboards and in newspapers across north Georgia, drawing the notice of police.

 

Price says local officials managed to "force" the clinic to move elsewhere, but no arrests were made. Subsequently, the county placed a moratorium on new "pain clinics," and towns like Woodstock are crafting tough regulations that require owners to be licensed physicians. Four remaining pain clinics in the county "are being watched carefully," says Price.

 

The fact that town councils are using zoning codes to thwart a drug epidemic indicates how widespread prescription opioid abuse has become – as well as how hard it is to check, says Dr. Humphreys.

 

But it's also a sign of the difficult debate among regulators, police, and the medical establishment as they try to squash the epidemic. "The problem we face is that policy is always a cudgel, never a rapier," he says. "In trying to solve the abuse problem, do we leave someone in a nursing home crying in pain?"

 

For addicts, the effects of pharmaceutical opioids can be pernicious and life-altering. One user, profiled in the 2009 television documentary "The Oxycontin Express," continued to seek out pills even after his wife and his brother died of pharmaceutical pill addictions.

 

More people now die of oxy abuse than of heroin, cocaine, and methamphetamine abuse combined. There were some 11,000 oxy-related overdose deaths in 2007 (the latest national figure available), a tripling since 2000, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in Atlanta. "The number today is much worse," says Humphreys. Emergency-room visits stemming from prescription-drug overdoses doubled from 2004 to 2009, when they topped 1.2 million, report federal health officials.

 

This year, hospitals in the United States are reporting a surge in withdrawal symptoms in newborns. In April, oxy abuse claimed the life of the New York Rangers enforcer Derek Boogaard, who was enrolled in the National Hockey League's drug treatment program. "Batman" actor Heath Ledger died in 2008 of a drug overdose that included painkillers.

 

Crime appears to be a close companion of oxy abuse. In West Virginia, which has the highest rate of opioid-related deaths, adult children of elderly parents with prescriptions have installed safes to lock up their medications, convinced that otherwise their parents would be robbed. In May, authorities charged a former New York police detective with robbing several pharmacies. The detective had retired because of an injury, which in turn led to a prescription-pill addiction.

 

It's "the most dangerous, most addictive, and most deadly drug problem of our lifetimes," says Jim Hall of the Center for the Study and Prevention of Substance Abuse, in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

 

Mike Agar, an ethnographer and long-time drug culture researcher, says that as with other epidemics, including opium and heroin, the rise in oxycodone abuse corresponds with economic travails and "political change."

 

In all previous epidemics he has studied, "they were populations that [were thrown] a sudden and unpleasant curve, an undelivered promise of doing better or just fine, and then someone pulled the rug out," writes Mr. Agar, in an e-mail. "Moral of the story: Narcotics, especially initial uses, are a 'give me peace' drug, a relief from anger and depression. We might well now be seeing a chapter from the same book," he adds, given "economic collapse, jobs, housing, education for the kids, health care, a kid in Iraq or Afghanistan."

 

Partly in response to opioid abuse, 38 states now have prescription-monitoring programs to try to crack down on "doctor shopping" by users who supply the black market. This fall, Florida begins implementing a new prescription-monitoring program and new licensing requirements for pain clinics in a bid to curb the ready supply, even as the state is considering 500 new pharmacy applications.

 

One sign of a political shift: After opposing a prescription-monitoring program as government overreach, Florida Gov. Rick Scott ® relented once it became clear that even small-government tea partyers saw the problem as serious enough to require more government oversight. The Obama administration has also kicked in some extra money for drug-abuse prevention and treatment. Whether new policy and enforcement measures will actually curb abuse remains a question.

 

"It's going to be an expensive proposition in terms of lives and the cost and the critical need for more treatment opportunities," says Mr. Hall. But without a more concerted national effort, he adds, "we're going to have increasing crime rates and more tragic consequences."

 

 

 

 

REF:  http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2011/0601/Why-it-s-so-hard-to-win-the-war-against-US-oxycodone-epidemic

[[co...]]

There's nothing inherent in being Christian and being opposed to drugs. I'm a Christian and I think a war on a plant is stupid, to use a nicer adjective. Christians can be worked into a frenzy to support stupidity, but so can members of all faiths or even atheists. Wouldn't it be better to bash stupid arguments rather than specific religions? There is nothing in Christianity's creed that says, "Thou shalt not smoke weed."

[[Ph...]]

I do wish this thread would stick to atheism and not politics.

 

MirandaJane

 

It's hard to run a thread based on the belief of nothing.  "NOTHING" is a pretty boring topic.

<<"It's hard to run a thread based on the belief of nothing.  "NOTHING" is a pretty boring topic.">>

 

It's like eating plain egg noodles.  You have to spice it up with some good old fashioned Christainophobia to make it tasty!

[[co...]]

Hey Photo bug, I see you're down to zero. Congrats! How's it hangin'?

[[Bi...]]

I do wish this thread would stick to atheism and not politics.

 

MirandaJane

 

It's hard to run a thread based on the belief of nothing.  "NOTHING" is a pretty boring topic.

<<"It's hard to run a thread based on the belief of nothing.  "NOTHING" is a pretty boring topic.">>

 

It's like eating plain egg noodles.  You have to spice it up with some good old fashioned Christainophobia to make it tasty!

:laugh:   that is kind of funny actually  :laugh:

 

No I am not Christainophobic.  Just looking back on my life and how I got here.    Basically the Christians took my opiates away from me and stuck me on benzo's.  That about sums it up.  Why, because Jews and Muslims are OK with opiates and weed?  That's kind of true actually. 

 

[[Bi...]]

I hope all my fellow atheists are doing well. Just thought I would swing by.

[[Bi...]]

I hope all my fellow atheists are doing well. Just thought I would swing by.

 

Since we can't talk about politics we are bored silly now

[[Ph...]]

Hey Photo bug, I see you're down to zero. Congrats! How's it hangin'?

Hey there confused!  Yep, jumped two weeks ago, thanks.  Good to be off, but not healed yet.  Finding out what post-jump feels like.  Looks like I'll be in protracted for a good long time.  The price we pay for freedom, man.  Glad to pay it.  Not fun being Big Pharma's bitch...