Going From Being A Portland State XC Runner To A Heroin Junkie In Two Years

'counseling' is the only place on the planet where professionals get away with saying that bad behavior is not the fault of an individual.

This is just dumb on its face - here are some places I am responsible for my actions:

school

work

marriage

parenting

running

personal finances

health

weight

grammar

how I dress

how I speak

Here is a list of places I am not responsible for my actions:

addiction

someone explain this to me.

I want the shit this guy is smoking!

You are supposed to puff puff pass bro. Quit hogging it.

So how do you explain siblings from the same family - raised the same way at the same time, yet one becomes an addict, the other doesn't?

If the non-addict can survive the supposed parental failings, why can't the addict? Is there not some choice there that the addict must answer for (to him or herself I mean)?

You think siblings are all treated the same? Do all siblings behave the same?

hooba dooba wrote:

So how do you explain siblings from the same family - raised the same way at the same time, yet one becomes an addict, the other doesn't?

If the non-addict can survive the supposed parental failings, why can't the addict? Is there not some choice there that the addict must answer for (to him or herself I mean)?

Not sure he was making that claim. I am an addict (alcoholic) and I am responsible for my actions--while drinking and while not. I've never had a counsellor tell me otherwise.

5er wrote:

'counseling' is the only place on the planet where professionals get away with saying that bad behavior is not the fault of an individual.

This is just dumb on its face - here are some places I am responsible for my actions:

school

work

marriage

parenting

running

personal finances

health

weight

grammar

how I dress

how I speak

Here is a list of places I am not responsible for my actions:

addiction

someone explain this to me.

great, another bum we have to run around on the sidewalks and bike paths in portland. I'm so sick of these slobs dumping their trash and dirty clothes all over, sleeping right on the sidewalks, aggressively panhandling, leaving graffiti everywhere, and acting as if WE are imposing upon them by not being even more accommodating.

If you haven't been to downtown portland, don't bother responding with your bleeding heart bullshit either. I have lived and traveled all over the US, and this is by far the worst homeless/vagrant/junkie problem I have seen out in the open right in an otherwise good city. The government and the police do absolutely nothing to fix the problem. It's disgusting.

You kidding? Portland's pretty nice. There's homeless people and addicts everywhere.

I'm not sure what you expect the police to do - round up the homeless and kill them? Throw them in prison? Otherwise, the best way to solve the problem is to provide help to addicts and homeless to get them off the street and back on their feet. Yes, that includes providing clean needles so people aren't spreading diseases around. This guy is going to be extremely lucky if he doesn't end up with Hep. at the very least, probably HIV too.

Er... wrote:

Not sure he was making that claim. I am an addict (alcoholic) and I am responsible for my actions--while drinking and while not. I've never had a counsellor tell me otherwise.

I've had every counselor I've ever seen tell me that I am not responsible for my actions, it's the addiction or the alcohol. I don't believe now at all it but used to when they first told me. I think I would have done much better at first if I had the counselors you had.

At the end of the day Ryan is still a weak, stupid, thieving scumbag.

Yeah, I just don't get that. I did some incredibly stupid things when I was drinking (sober almost eleven months now). I did things while drunk that I would never have done under the influence of alcohol. But I did them. And so I'm responsible for them. If I don't accept that then I don't think my recovery is going to be all that successful. But that's my take: others may disagree.

Lee Corso Phrase wrote:

I've had every counselor I've ever seen tell me that I am not responsible for my actions, it's the addiction or the alcohol. I don't believe now at all it but used to when they first told me. I think I would have done much better at first if I had the counselors you had.

Sorry, let's try that again: I did things drunk I never would have done HAD I NOT been under the influence.

Sheesh: even sober I can write like shite sometimes...

Ran against him in high school - Danner invite, Borderclash etc.

Didn't know him personally but knew of him. Moderately suprising to hear of someone from the Oregon running community becoming a heroin addict.

Hope he can turn it around.

He is hot. hopefully he can turn this around and get back on track.

"Forget the image of a black-robed figure cloistered with law books and gavel. Multnomah County judges today are forced to act as front-line social workers—playing nanny in a state so lacking in basic services, judges otherwise must watch severely drug-addicted and mentally ill defendants walk out of court with virtually no help or supervision."

Basic services? This author considers the state acting as parents to grown men to be a "basic service?"

From 44.68 HSR to attempted suicide:

http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=19960407&slug=2323010

Is it just me or do other people think that there can be a high correlation between the type of personality that is attracted to running and the type of personality/mentality of a drug user?

I have often thought that the kind of obsessive personality that makes up a decent percentage of distance runners could translate into a dangerous hard drug user fairly easily.

Look at it this way, if a certain component of the reasoning of why people to run/race is the pleasure you get from hitting a zone where you feel euphoric and high than why not skip all of the hard training and mental difficulties of running and jump straight to the euphoric feelings by using drugs? Again, this wouldn't apply for all runners but if that is at least part of the reason why some people run than I can see it devolving into a debilitating drug addiction fairly easily when you have that kind of personality. He obsessiveness would factor in along with the addicting nature of some of these hard drugs.

Again, this is just an idea that has been kicking around my mind for a few years.

Though I am sure this will get ripped apart by the pundits...

Ho Hum wrote:

You kidding? Portland's pretty nice. There's homeless people and addicts everywhere.

I'm not sure what you expect the police to do - round up the homeless and kill them? Throw them in prison? Otherwise, the best way to solve the problem is to provide help to addicts and homeless to get them off the street and back on their feet. Yes, that includes providing clean needles so people aren't spreading diseases around. This guy is going to be extremely lucky if he doesn't end up with Hep. at the very least, probably HIV too.

They could make it a little bit harder to buy and sell drugs. Even as a tourist waiting on line at Voodoo Donuts (and on the walk there) I saw guys walking around the corner scoring drugs. It was completely obvious what was going on.

runner_pucci wrote:

Is it just me or do other people think that there can be a high correlation between the type of personality that is attracted to running and the type of personality/mentality of a drug user?

No, if you really want to find that correlation try hanging around with skydivers for a little while.

u idiot wrote:

You think siblings are all treated the same? Do all siblings behave the same?

hooba dooba wrote:

So how do you explain siblings from the same family - raised the same way at the same time, yet one becomes an addict, the other doesn't?

If the non-addict can survive the supposed parental failings, why can't the addict? Is there not some choice there that the addict must answer for (to him or herself I mean)?

Am I really an idiot? I grew up with two guys who were identical twins. As far as I could tell their seemingly reasonably middle class parents treated them the same their whole life. They did similar sports with similar success, we all hung out with the same friends, etc.

In university one of them got into hard drugs and spent 7 years totally addicted. He is clean now, but I don't think you can pin that one solely on his parents, as the initial guy I was responding would have us do.