alt Hacker News> It feels like every worry in the world has disappeared. Everything is cozy. Everything is fine. It's like being in the womb again.
> I understand how people can get addicted to it.
If you really care that much about making "every worry in the world disappear" from your mind by entirely artificial means (even to the point of remarking that you understand the POV of those who get addicted!), you might benefit from learning about how to live your life with more equanimity. It's a vastly healthier approach to coping with the challenges of a stressful life than any kind of strong narcotic. The topic is explored in great depth in both Stoicism and Buddhism - and via the latter, in more generic "mindfulness" approaches. (It can of course be useful to cross-reference all of these philosophies; they tend to have complementary perspectives.)
Needless to say, therapy can also have very similar benefits, and many people will derive even more benefit from that kind of highly structured approach.
Replies
I think you're interpreting
> I understand how people can get addicted to it
as
> I understand how people can get addicted to it and I endorse it as a route to making all your worries go away.
I'm going to put words in the ops mouth here and assume what they were communicating is more akin to: "It's absolutely terrifying how quickly, easily, and thoroughly fentanyl can erase your sufferings and worries, replacing them with a feeling of total peace."
I'm assuming they didn't immediately become a fentanyl addict, precisely because they understand how destructive a path to equanimity it is.
Meditation and therapy are great, but addiction disorders often come with comorbidities like (or are comorbid to) PTSD, ADHD, MDD, and bipolar disorder. These are all things that can make establishing a habit like meditation difficult to impossible. Combine that with a lack of life skills and limited access to healthcare (or a complete unfamiliarity with navigating that system re:life skills) and therapy feels impossible as well.
In the last two years I've lost two very close family members to fentanyl. We scheduled therapy sessions and drove them there ourselves, we helped try to find rehab centers, we worked with them to find jobs, walked them through buying cheap transport on craigslist, helped work through medicaid paperwork with them, connected them with people we know who've gone through similar things, and in the end, they didn't make it.
I'm going to guess you're getting down-voted because your response interprets the OP as being against or unaware of meditation and therapy as tools for healthy living; it reads as lacking empathy and a recognition of the realities of addiction.
I'd encourage you to look into the literature in that area and read through the stories of people who have gone through it and survived. I find that for me it was especially helpful to find the stories of people who had life circumstances similar to mine, and still fell into addiction.
I also have strong opinions on the likelihood that meditation and therapy could mimic or match the physiological response a brain has to fentanyl, but the whole topic is draining for me. I hope you'll forgive me for passing on it. I think it might be worth your time to specifically research the physiological mechanisms as well, though.
No amount of therapy or Buddhism will make you feel how fentanyl makes you feel and to claim otherwise is disingenuous at best.
You misinterpret me. I have never taken fentanyl outside of a surgical setting and have no intention of ever doing so.
But because I have experienced it (in a surgical setting), I have a better understanding of the motivations behind people who are addicted to it.