Weekend Literary Supplement: The Climate Trials, Part Five

In this instalment of The Climate Trials, we learn a little bit of another project that the Old Ones are working on---the Land Gods. Can you tell what is Guelph's most obvious functional Land God? It's a human-built structure, but it was placed there by the planning department to protect the environment around it from future development. (If you can't think of it, here it is.)

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Recollections by Mikhail Bookchin

About the same time that I connected with the Elders, I noticed something odd happening in my home town.

Like everyone else, I’ve noticed the odd impromptu “shrine” at the side of the road where someone had died in a car accident. People leave flowers, sometimes a cross, sometimes with a picture. In the city, I’d seen the same thing once in a while. Flowers or tea lights where someone had been killed one way or another. 

But then I started noticing something I’d never seen before, little “shrines” in places where some natural thing was particularly beautiful. The first example was an old, gnarly tree in a city park. It wasn’t terribly ostentatious, but you could see that someone had put up a tiny little altar where people were burning incense once in a while. There was also a little taiji---or “yin-yang”---unobtrusively carved into the trunk of the tree above where the incense was being burnt. I had the vague inspiration that this might have something to do with the Elders, so I emailed them and asked if they knew anything about it.

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A couple days later I got this:

 

The Land God Project

The Old Ones have several projects on the go at this time. One of them is an attempt to recreate in modern society the sort of reverence that ancient peoples used to have for the environment. We are doing this by trying to get individuals to start treating specific parts of the existing landscape as what the old Chinese called “Land Gods”.

Many literate people have heard of the old Chinese story about the carpenter and the “useless tree”. Briefly, it talks about a master carpenter who was travelling with a group of apprentices. Along the way they see a spectacularly huge and ancient oak tree. One of the young people asked the teacher whether or not the tree would be worth something. His reply was that obviously the wood was totally worthless or it would never have survived as long as it had in a public space. Maybe the grain was all twisted, or the wood rots very fast, or something else. The “take away” is that for anything to survive a long time it has to be something that is isolated from the ebb and flow of the human world around it. In the story’s case, this is done by the tree’s refusal to be of any utility.

What this popularly known story misses, however, is that it is described as “being the local shrine” (it’s in the Zhuangzi, if you want to look it up). In the Victor Mair translation, a student mentions this point

“If the oak’s intention is to be useless, then why does it serve as the local shrine? They asked.

“Silence! Don’t say another word! The oak is merely assuming the guise of a shrine to ward off the curses of those who do not understand it. If it were not a shrine, it would still face the threat of being cut down. Moreover, what the oak is preserving is different from the masses of other trees. If we attempt to understand it on the basis of conventional morality, won’t we be far from the point?”

Land Gods continue to exist in isolated parts of Taiwan, but have mostly died out in the modern world. But there seems to be a basic instinct among human beings to create shrines, which is why there are---as you noted---roadside shrines being spontaneously erected along highways where people have died. Some urban environments also have shrines plus the outline of a bicycle painted on the pavement where someone has died in a bicycle/car collision. In addition, some “mega shrines” have been created after a mass killing or the death of a celebrity---the pile of flowers, etc, dedicated to the memory of Princess Diana comes to mind.

 

One of the Elders proposed that if we were able to get the Land God meme working again in modern society it might create a useful “brake” that could slow down developers and other business enterprises from making money off bulldozing the environment. Since the opportunity cost of creating these impromptu shrines is very low, some of our operatives have been working creating memes with the hope that they will eventually hit critical mass and spread throughout society.

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Moreover I say unto you, the Climate Emergency must be dealt with!

 

Morgan Dandie Hannah Interview, Part Three: Addiction and the Legal System

In this part of the conversation about addiction, Morgan Dandie Hannah and I talk a bit about the legal system and how well the war on drugs works. As I point out below, we squander a huge amount of money and do a terrible job. Clearly, we could do much, much better.

Cloudwalking Owl · Addiction and the Legal System

Morgan says that a good treatment facility costs about $20,000/month. I have no reason to doubt this figure, so let's use it as a baseline and compare it to how much it costs to incarcerate someone. I dug up a copy of a 2018 Parliamentary Budget Office report titled Update on Costs of Incarceration and found the following chart.

Operating Expenses Associated with Custody, 2016-17

                                             Total Spending Average             cost per Inmate     % of Total

Salaries and employee benefits             1,102,774,000                           78,188.74             70%
Utilities, materials and supplies                 136,852,00                              9,703.06               9%
Amortization of tangible capital assets       127,889,000                             9,067.57               8%
Professional and special services               96,746,000                            6,859.47                6%
Payment in lieu of taxes                                 35,063,000                            2,486.03                2%
Machinery and equipment                             28,779,000                            2,040.48                2%
Repairs and maintenance                              27,693,000                            1,963.49                 2%
All other expenses                                         17,891,000                            1,268.51                 1%

Total                                             $1,573,687,000                             $109,971 

Notes: Correctional interventions and internal services are not included. Cost per inmate based on total spending divided by average custodial population (14,310). Source: Correctional Service of Canada, 2016-2017 Financial Statements, s 16.

First of all, it's important to remember that there are huge variations in the cost of incarceration based on the level of security, which ranges from a high of $463,000/inmate in segregation, $139,000 for a "regional treatment centre", and, $123,000 in a "healing lodge"; to the lower end of $47,400 for a male in minimum security. 

Secondly, these figures are just for the federal prison system. There are also provincial ones. The dividing line is the length of sentence, with the provinces being responsible for people serving sentences of two years or less. The 2015 average cost of incarceration per Ontario inmate was $78,475.

Third, look at the way the expenses of the prison system break down. The overwhelming cost is staffing:  $78,200 or 70%. This is something that we find over and over again whenever you look at the cost of any social program. Human-to-human interactions are the most expensive part. I'd suggest, therefore, that any program that is aimed at ending a behaviour through a cure is going to be a lot cheaper than simply warehousing individuals for long periods of time. 

Also, it's important to understand that while the largest cost per individual is that of keeping someone in prison, there are other costs involved in the criminal justice system. For example, the Department of Justice published a report that provides some idea of the numbers: Costs of Crime in Canada, 2009.

• average $1420 in court costs/person
• $1110 in prosecution costs/person
• totals of $8.59 billion in policing (that's only spent in criminal cases)
  
• $373 million for legal aid 

Don't forget that there is a lot more money flying around. Consider, for example, the cost of safe injection sites, methadone clinics, paramedics and hospital emergency departments for overdoses, the enormous amount of training that goes into teaching front line staff at many different institutions (schools, arenas, businesses, universities, etc) about how to identify and deal with both overdoses and addiction, the cost to individuals and communities who have to deal with street people and the petty crime associated with the drug pandemic, and, probably other things I haven't thought of. In that context it certainly seems to me that it would make sense for society to fund drug treatment programs!

Of course---like so many other issues that the government deals with---because each of these expenses comes from one department's budget as opposed to another, people tend to be oblivious to the aggregate costs of supporting a drug addict. The result is that emotionally-driven, simplistic solutions tend to dominate political discourse. People want the guy who stole their bicycle stolen arrested and often have little patience for the argument that money would be better spent on a drug treatment centre or housing for the homeless.  

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Hannah also says that it's very easy to get drugs in prison. According to a 2007 survey of federal prisoners, it appears that is an exaggeration---although only a bit.

The proportion of inmates who reported injecting drugs in prison compared to the community declined by about 30% for men (16% vs. 22%) and 50% for women (15% vs. 29%) (see Figure 2). Furthermore, the proportion injecting at least once per week and "often or always" binge-injecting (i.e., injecting many times over a short period) significantly declined by at least 70% in prison compared to the community.

I suppose it only stands to reason that it is harder to get drugs in a prison, both because they have to be smuggled in, and, because it's harder to get the money required. Having said that, it is pretty remarkable that so many inmates are able to get their hands on injectable narcotics given the barriers.  

Morgan also says that there is precious little drug treatment for people in prison. It is very difficult to find information about what happens in prisons, but there are some indications that might allow a person to draw conclusions. 

First of all, I found a 2018 story in the CBC about a person arrested in Guelph for breaking the terms of his probation---a provision about not using narcotics---after being treated for an overdose. He later died of a fentanyl overdose in the Maplehurst prison near Milton. According to that story, part of his problem was that doctors in prisons are forbidden to prescribe methadone to inmates who have not already been prescribed before incarceration.

CBC sources familiar with health care in the Ontario correctional system, who requested anonymity because they are not authorized to speak publicly, blame a provincial policy that says methadone should not be started with "inmates who have not been previously enrolled in [methadone treatment], except under special circumstances." The policy is in place in spite of a 2016 report by the provincial Methadone Treatment and Services Advisory Committee that recommended to the health minister that prisoners have access to methadone therapy.

Blair Bigham: 'A human rights issue': Lack of treatment for drug users means deaths behind bars

I suspect that a big part of the problem is how you define "addiction treatment". Hannah repeatedly says that you have to treat the underlying psychological issues---what the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) identifies as "the concurrent mental health problem"---or else you won't be successful. Moreover, she says that people have to be at the point where they really want to stop their addiction. That means that simply putting people in jail and taking away their source of drugs---which is only partially done anyway---isn't enough to get the monkey off their backs. 

And from what I could see while researching this subject, there are precious few resources for people with mental illness in prison.  

The results speak for themselves. I came across a study from the Canadian Medical Association Journal titled Mortality over 12 years of follow-up in people admitted to provincial custody in Ontario: a retrospective cohort study. It contained the following graph that illustrates the grim reality. 

As you can see, there are dramatically higher rates of overdoses in the first four weeks after release from Ontario prisons. Primarily, this tells me that lots of people come out still addicted. What probably fuels the overdoses is the fact that when someone goes through a physical detox (ie: "cold turkey" in a prison cell) without dealing with the underlying reasons they are addicted, they often naively take the same amount that they were used to taking before---but which is now a fatal overdose.  

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Hannah mentioned a figure of $20,000/month. It's important to remember that that's just a one-shot cost. After that, the price tag should decline pretty dramatically. For example, how much would it cost per person per month to house someone in supportive housing? Probably a whole lot less than prison! Or to pay for some sort of psychological counselling to deal with the underlying problem that fuelled the addiction in the first place? Again, a whole lot less than prison!

People often complain that such and such a program would be a good idea, but we just can't afford it. I hope the numbers I've cited above would put that canard to rest---at least with regard to helping addicts. We are already spending a lot of money---just in a tremendously wasteful way. 

Looking at the issue from "on high", it appears that the real problem is one of perceptions and prejudices. Our society is based upon the myth of "Horatio Alger" that says that people should "pull themselves up by their bootstraps". Instead, I think we would be much better served by the Bantu concept of Ubuntu, which can be translated as "I am because we are" or "humanity towards others". Political scientists say that most people vote on the basis of their values, instead of a deep understanding of policy alternatives. What that suggests to me is that no matter how many numbers and graphs I dredge up to educate readers, what we really need is for people stop fixating on self-reliance and instead develop a little more ability to "walk a mile in another person's moccasins".  

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Furthermore I say unto you, we have to deal with the Climate Emergency!

Weekend Literary Supplement: The Climate Trials, Part Four

In this weekend's instalment, readers get a taste of how the public's case against big oil was argued. 

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Climate Trials: the Case Against Oil

: Excerpt from the book The Climate Trials: Mikhail Bookchin and the YouTube “Stunt” that Changed the World, by Patti Weaver, p-42.

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The opening part of the Climate Trials was a case of the oil companies versus humanity, specifically dealing with the role they played in creating the climate emergency.

The prosecutor was an obscure lawyer from New York by the name of Wilson Gillespie who had volunteered to help with Mikhail Bookchin’s YouTube project. Contrary to all expectations, he turned out to do a brilliant job of succinctly explaining how the oil companies had known for decades about the threat of climate change yet had consciously chosen to methodically sow doubt and spread confusion in order to protect their profits. He was also able to provide documentation showing the way money spent on lobbying public institutions plus public relations campaigns had created tremendous pressure on elected officials to support their industry.

Since none of the institutions on trial wanted to give the climate trials any credibility through participation, Bookchin found independent individuals to act as “Devil’s advocates”. Their job was to work through as many public and private documents they could find in order to create the strongest possible arguments in defence of the oil industry. These were based on the same “talking points” used to delay implementation of real measures to mitigate and adapt to climate change. Again, an obscure yet tremendously-talented lawyer was found to be lead council in this particular trial: Hillary Chang.

Gillespie’s team did a great job of documenting the ways in which the oil corporations had:

• known about the problem long before it became common knowledge

• made a documented decision to “double down” on fossil fuel production instead of diversifying and moving the corporation towards a post-fossil fuel future

• hired public relations companies that:

  • lobbied governments against taking action on climate change

  • funded politicians who were willing to fight against climate change

  • created fake “think tanks” to promote climate deniers who could then be cited as sources

  • created campaigns aimed at convincing third parties to think of dealing with climate change as being “anti-Christian” or “anti-patriotic”

In response Chang knew that she had no hope of winning her case based on facts. Instead she started out with an appeal to ideology and emotion. Primarily, her initial argument centred on the idea that fossil fuels had created an enormously wealthy society allowing humanity to flourish in ways unprecedented in human history. She attempted to pad her argument by bringing up the green revolution, dramatic improvements in housing, growth in the Gross National Product, and, so on.

After the end of Chang’s formal argument, Gillespie responded by pointing out that whenever an argument in favour something is based on tangible benefits, it is important to ask the ancient Roman question “Cui bono?”, or, “Who does it benefit?”. Did the tar sands mines in Northern Alberta benefit the Athabasca Chipewyas? Did Royal Dutch Shell’s oil extraction in the Niger Delta benefit the Ogoni and Ijaw people? Indeed, with all the catastrophes we are currently going through because of the Climate Emergency, are the people of today and future generations benefiting from the fossil fuel use of previous generations? It’s exceptionally easy to find benefits for some people in any activity, but to be truly beneficial, it needs to help everyone. If it doesn’t, then it just becomes another case of one group asserting privilege over another.

Even if one were to accept that this was a case of “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few”, he pointed out that it is important to understand exactly what was on trial. Technology can have a tremendously useful role to play in our lives. But ultimately many problems humanity faces are the result of human behaviour. And if technology is used to just “paper over” these problems, it ceases to be a solution and just enables problems to get worse.

Gillespie specifically referenced the “green revolution” that Chang had spoken of. Fossil fuel agriculture misdiagnosed population growth and redistribution problems and redefined them as a lack of food problem. In exactly the same way, defining human prosperity simply in terms of an expanding Gross National Product redefined the problem of financial inequality out of the picture. And, as everyone now admits, these two problems simply didn’t go away until society decided to make dealing with them a priority. But by then, they had grown to be absolutely horrendous in magnitude.

Realizing that she had been neatly skewered by Gillespie, Chang changed tack. Her next statement boiled down to a defence of the individual leadership of the various oil corporations. She argued that they had merely been following the general wave of society---which was committed to various variations of the “fiduciary responsibility”. By law, by cultural norm, by competitive pressure, they were all selected for and forced to maximize profit at the expense of “sacrifice zones”, “externalities”, future generations, the environment, and so on. You cannot expect individuals to fight against their entire civilization---especially those people who have been schooled and selected to be its leaders.

Gillespie responded by pointing out that no particular individual was on trial. Indeed, that no one was going to be taken out of the court and “hung by the neck until dead”. Instead, the entire industry was on trial---especially the underlying assumptions that allowed it to exist in the way it did.

But having said that, he did point out that it isn’t enough to say that the leadership were “just doing what they were told to do”. That argument had been tried at the Nuremberg war crimes trials, and it had been found wanting. Moreover, it misses the point that the individuals managing the corporations---and the many minions who went out to do their bidding---used their access to large sums of money to influence government policy and public opinion. Gillespie drew the judges attention to the evidence he had presented to the court where oil money had been used to create fake think tanks with the cynical intention of creating doubt in the public about whether climate change was actually happening. He also reminded them about the sophisticated campaigns using hired consultants to convince evangelical Christians that environmentalism was “anti-religious”. He pointed out that professional lobbies had routinely put great pressure on politicians to weaken any legislation aimed at curbing the power of the oil industry. Complaints about how “all of society believed the same thing” seemed hard to believe when corporations felt the need to spend millions of dollars in campaigns to reinforce the “already universally accepted” point of view.

At this point Chang moved onto what was possibly the real “core” of her defence. It revolved around the belief that free market capitalism is absolutely essential to liberal democracy and even the concept of “freedom” itself. The idea is that the free market is what allows for the wide diversity of occupations and individual decision-making that makes a democratic society functional. A society where every aspect of life is governed by regulations not only can’t be felt as being “free”, but wouldn’t give individual citizens enough experience as autonomous individuals to be able to perform the responsibilities of citizenship. It might be the case that business executives were participating in the crafting of public policy with regard to climate change, but in doing so they were simply performing their role as good citizens in a liberal democracy.

Gillespie objected that this was an appeal to something as a universally agreed-upon ideal, which it was very far from being. It was true that some people believed that the core of the idea of “freedom” is the freedom to engage in corporate capitalism, but that isn’t how all everyone understands it. Indeed, all the world’s religions and most of it’s philosophical systems would reject this definition out of hand. And because the climate emergency was something that will exist all over the earth for hundreds of years into the future, it can be argued that this vision of uncontrolled capitalism as being the ultimate goal of all of humanity’s cultural evolution is just a form of cultural imperialism.

Having said that, he did admit that Chang’s point was extremely important in understanding how humanity had gotten into the current mess.

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Moreover I say unto you, the Climate Emergency must be dealt with!

Morgan Hannah Conversation, Part Two: Gambling Addiction

In this second part of my conversation with Morgan Dandie Hannah, I dig into the issue of behavioural addictions---which can be just as debilitating as substance abuse.

Cloudwalking Owl · Gambling Morgan Dandie Hannah

I originally asked Hannah about how common individual types of chemical addictions are in Ontario, and her response was to remind me that there are behavioural addictions too. That got me thinking back to a conversation I had with a lawyer I once worked with for a public campaign. He said that when he started out in his profession---I believe it was his articling year---he had a job foreclosing on people's homes for a casino in Atlantic city. From his description, it sounded like an absolutely horrible job. 

Mainly, according to him, it involved men with gambling problems losing a bundle one way or another. Desperate to "win back" what they'd lost, they got the casino to front them money based on the equity in their homes. (I did some quick research on line and it appears that all of this is both quite easy to do and legal.) When that got lost too, eventually the casino would hire this law firm to take possession and liquidate the home so they could get their "pound of flesh". According to this guy, he'd often show up with the paperwork to evict the family and there'd be a wife who had no idea that her husband had lost their home while gambling---and it was all perfectly legal.

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Natasha Dow Schull, from her website

Of course, if you gamble away the family home, almost by definition, you have a
problem. This raises an interesting question, "Just how do people get so addicted?" There's an interesting book, Addiction by Design, by Natasha Dow Schull on this subject. She argues (I haven't read the book, but I did watch several interviews on You Tube) that casinos have been able to become very good at "reading the numbers" in order to "fine tune" the gambling experience in order to extract the maximum amount of money from people. 

She focuses primarily on "Electronic Gaming Machines" EGMs---what ordinary folks call "slot machines". These have evolved from being mechanical to digital, which means that it is possible to infinitely modify them simply by changing the software. This means that a casino operator can routinely "tweek" a machine based upon the amount of money it makes over a period of time. The result is an evolutionary "arms race" where EGM owners are able to find better and better ways of taking advantage of human frailty.       

An EGM, c/o Wikimedia Commons.

 

Through extensive interviews with problem gamblers she found that what motivates them isn't so much an idea that they will actually win money so much as the altered state of consciousness---"the zone"---that they achieve when they have been gambling for a long period of time. Indeed, she says that they often state that when they do win something they are irritated because it interrupts the "zone state".

People who design computer games (and, don't forget, that a EGM is basically just another computer game) spend a great amount of energy thinking about how they can engineer the experience of the person playing the game to create something called a "compulsion loop". That is, a feedback effect that creates a desire among players to continue to play the game. 

To understand what I'm talking about, let me share a bit about my experience with the first video game I ever played: Space Invaders. This was a stand-up machine that showed up one day next to the pinball machines in the Massey Hall coffee shop at the University of Guelph. 

The above gif basically shows what it was all about visually. You slide an icon back and forth across the bottom and shot at hordes of "invaders" coming at you. At the same time there was a sound track that mimicked a heart beat. As you went up levels in the game the invaders came faster and faster---and the sound got louder while the artificial heart beat sped up in lockstep with the game action. I found that by the time I got to the higher levels, I was so "trapped" that I was white-knuckling the joystick and felt like I was going to have heart-attack. 

Sebastien Samson, Linked In

What was going on here? To understand that, I found an interesting article on a website written by and for professional game designers titled Gamasutra. It was written by a Toronto game designer (now living in Sweden) named Sebastien Samson, who seems to have had a lot of experience in the field. To his line of thinking, it comes down to understanding what motivates the players. 

As he describes it, what playing games is all about isn't winning, but rather the release of a specific chemical in the brain: dopamine. (I'm not sure that this is an accurate description of what really happens---I'm not a neurologist and neither is Samson---but that's not really all that important. Forget about the specific chemicals that are involved and simply accept that what is happening is a sort of brain event that results in a special feeling in the consciousness of the individuals involved.)

This is an important point because we can get hung up on the idea that what people always want are the external rewards (free play in the case of Space Invaders) or some other intangible result (ie: being the "cool guy" who can play the game for hours and hours on only one quarter). Samson's insight is that what people actually want is that special feeling that is associated with these rewards---which he identifies as being an internal reward. And even more interesting, he points out that people can get that feeling from anticipation as much as from actually getting something from the game.  

That's right. The challenge can be an intrinsic reward into itself. Mind-blowing is it not! The challenge is.. a Reward! Jackpot! Alright that's great if it's the case  but what if it's not though? What if it's boring? Good question! Sometimes the skills and outcome are all just uninteresting and I need an extrinsic motivation to do it. Like cleaning my room. First I do it in fear of punishment, then because I don't want to disappoint my parents, then finally I internalize it completely and do it just because I like it clean. It is still an extrinsic motivation to the activity unless I am a Kung-Fu master of cleaning, unless I like cleaning just for the sake of it and could do this all day because it gets me in the Zone. That would be intrinsic to the activity. But lets be honest, most people don't get there... and the Internalization stops there.

Notice that he's using the same language as Schull, "the Zone". Another key point comes from the last sentence: "most people don't get there... and the Internalization stops there".

What if the people who are problem gamblers are those folks that Samson describes as the "Kung-Fu master"s---only it isn't cleaning their rooms but rather playing EGMs? Could they be internally motivated by the act of seeing the spinning display teasing them into wondering that perhaps they will win---even more so than the external motivation of winning itself? And what if the Electronic Gaming Machines are being designed to maximize their attraction to these particular types of people because they are the ones that make the most money for the casino?

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I'm pretty happy with this post in that I've worked hard and dug up a lot of interesting info. (I know that I've learned a lot doing it.) But it is very hard work---I've felt absolutely whipped several days after a long session. I offer the results to the entire community freely because I think that it's important to a healthy democracy that people get access to good information. But if you can afford to buy a subscription, please do. I can use the dough and it's plug simple to do using Pay Pal or Patreon. 

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The first thing to remember is that EGMs are by far the most used and most lucrative part of casinos. According to the website Fact/Myth,

From March 2015 to February 2016 a NEVADA GAMING CONTROL BOARD GAMING REVENUE REPORT shows that the “total gaming win” (the casino’s win) over twelve months from slots was $7,066,306,000 (about 7 billion) total. Meanwhile, the total table games win was $4,094,401,000 (about 4 billion).^[3] The implication of this is that, even with sports gaming’s comparatively small return of $19,236,000 (about 19.2 million) considered, no casino game even comes close to slots in terms of revenue for the casino.

Another website, The BigThink.com says that 85% of all gambling revenue comes from EGMs. I don't know how that percentage was arrived at. That number of "85%" should be viewed somewhat skeptically, simply because how you define the terms has a huge impact on the results. For example, does it count lottery tickets? (Doubtful.) How about on-line gambling? (Maybe, maybe not. But is an on-line slot machine an EGM? If it is, we should add it to the percentage, not subtract.) I do believe, however, that whatever the specific numbers are, it's safe to say that EGMs are a very, very big part of the gambling industry. And that's enough for the purposes of this blog post.

In the December 2016 issue of The Atlantic magazine, John Rosengren writes

Problem gamblers are worth a lot of money to casinos. According to some research, 20 percent of regular gamblers are problem or pathological gamblers. Moreover, when they gamble, they spend—which is to say, lose—more than other players. At least nine independent studies demonstrate that problem gamblers generate anywhere from 30 to 60 percent of total gambling revenues.

Again, I haven't seen the research that Rosengren is talking about (it's journalism, not an academic paper---so there are no citations), but this is a pretty damning statistic. Over the years I've heard this idea before, so I'm inclined to believe that there is something to this. 

And as you might imagine, given that so much money is coming from this very small pool of problem gamblers, casinos are very careful to identify and encourage these people to come to their particular place of business. The article goes on to cite evidence that casinos were at one time buying information from credit card companies in order to find addicts in the general population. Since then, they've started using loyalty cards to identify these people themselves so they can target their marketing campaigns towards them.

If this is all true---and I have no reason to believe it isn't---what exactly is the morality of what's going on here? Isn't this a bit like a drug company finding out everyone who is prone to becoming addicted to Oxycontin and then trying to sell then on the idea of taking opioids "out for a spin"?

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According to the 2018-2019 report of the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation (OLGC); casinos, lotteries, and, on-line gambling gave the province of Ontario a net profit of $2.47 billion, or, a little under 6% of total government revenues (which were $44.07 billion, according to Statistica.com). Compare that to revenue from the Liquor Control Board of Ontario: $2.20 billion, or a little under 5% of Ontario revenues. In addition, $137.3 million goes to First Nations communities under and agreement signed in 2008 that gives them 1.7% of gross gaming revenues. These are enormous amounts of money and there's about as much chance that the governments will do anything to threaten that revenue stream as there is that pigs will fly.

But having said that, we should get some handle on how much damage gambling does inflict on society. First of all, how many problem gamblers are there in Ontario? I found a 2013 report titled Gambling and Problem Gambling in Ontario that was prepared by Robert J. Williams, Ph.D. and Rachel A. Volberg, Ph.D. for The Ontario Problem Gambling Research Centre and the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long Term Care. It came to the conclusion that in 2013---depending on how you defined "problem gambler"  there were something like between 105,000 and 231,000 problem gamblers in Ontario. In 2011 there were about 12,852,000 people in the province, which translates to between 1%  and 2% of the population.

Casinos in Ontario have a "Self-Exclusion Program" that gives people who decide at some point that they have a gambling problem the option of signing away their right to gamble. In effect, they sign a contract and this puts them on a database that is supposed to keep them from being able to get into a casino again. The problem is, however, that no one asks for ID when you go inside. The only thing that can catch someone is facial recognition software and that appears to be relatively easy to "spoof" through things like floppy hats and sunglasses. Lots of people who have signed up still routinely find themselves in a casino feeding money into an EGM.

One interesting by-product of this system, however, is that it is possible to track where people live who have signed onto self-exclusion. And this yields the surprising result that shows that there is a direct correlation between how close one lives to a casino and the odds that you think you have a gambling problem. This would suggest that the best way to prevent problem gamblers is to avoid building casinos. 

Having said all of the above, there is an interesting finding from Williams and Volberg's study. They believe that rates of problem gamblers in Ontario show a steady decline over several years.

"The year to year variability in the Ontario rates is partly due to measurement error within each study as well as methodological differences between the studies. However, the one thing that seems apparent is that the prevalence rate of problem gambling in Ontario has decreased over time."

In my (admittedly cursory) reading of their study I didn't see any suggestions about why there has been this decline. But several hypotheses do immediately spring to mind. It might be the that self-exclusion is having a positive effect on a significant minority of the province's problem gamblers. It might also be that local communities have become better mobilized to exert pressure on their casinos to enforce rules more strictly. It might also be the case that local social agencies have developed new programs that are getting better at helping local people deal with their addiction or prevent them in the first place. 

Having said that, even one person gambling away the family home is a tragedy and I think we should really think about preventing this sort of catastrophe. People kill themselves. Families break up. Talking about this with an aquaintence, he told me about his single mother making him and his sister go hungry because she put the grocery money into slot machines. Gambling addictions are addictions---plain and simple. And the work of Natasha Dow Schull would seem to indicate that at least some of them are created by very intelligent people---like Sebastien Samson (but working on EGMs instead of computer games)---who know exactly what it is they do. Just t Tell me---if anyone cares---just what about this is any different from someone out giving away free samples of heroin?

From my research it appears that there are some very simple policies that could dramatically cut down on the harm done by EGMs. The first one would be to require everyone who goes into a casino to show some ID. This could be checked against the people on the self-exclusion list. The casino managers argue that people would bristle at this invasion of privacy. But since most of them have already voluntarily signed up for loyalty cards and they are being scanned by facial recognition software too, it would seem that the privacy horse left the casino barn long ago. 

The second idea would be to regulate the amount of money any given person can lose in one day. Again, this could be done through a computerized registry administered through ID cards. So when Fred loses $500 at one time, the computer kicks in, and a security guard sidles up to him and gently suggests that it's time to go home to Ethel to get some sleep before the next visit. The kids might end up without dinner that night---but there's a chance that the house won't get sold. According to Schull, this is already being done in Norway.

Of course, anyone without a vested interest in not seeing the obvious will suspect that the reason why these simple reforms haven't been made is because the casino makes a disproportionate amount of their money off problem gamblers. Getting people to gamble away their life savings isn't a bug---it's the program a feature. But there's no reason why a crowd of voters with torches and pitchforks couldn't get some government to institute these reforms.

This post is long enough already, so I'll stop here. Stay tuned for more next week---. 

&&&&& 

Furthermore I say unto you, the Climate Emergency must be dealt with!

Weekend Literary Supplement: The Climate Trials, Part Three

In this week's instalment of The Climate Trials, we learn a little more about the trials themselves, why the help Mikhail has received from Isabeau isn't more widely available, and, some hints about who the Old Ones are.

&&&&

Court Procedures Used By the Climate Trials

Preface by Conrad Splitzer, JD, Phd, Monash University, Australia.

The “Climate Trials” that marked the end of the “age of destruction and desolation” and the beginning of the present time of “preservation and restoration” were a radical departure from the jurisprudence traditions that reached back to the Roman Empire. The essential differences came about due to the following changes in emphasis and court structure:

1. No attempt was made to try individuals. Instead, the defendants consisted of ideas and institutions.

2. Court proceedings did not follow the dictates of case law, but rather that of inductive and deductive logic.

3. Decisions were presided over not by individuals with a background in law, but instead in science and philosophy---who had a proven expertise in inductive and deductive logic.

4. The verdicts rendered had no actual direct impact on law, but were designed to exert maximum force of moral suasion throughout the entire human race.

The Climate Trials were specifically based on the idea that the best way to change human behaviour is not through the coercive power of the state, but rather through the persuasive power of culture. They literally were trials in “the court of public opinion”.

The people who organized the trials realized that humanity was not only facing an unprecedented existential threat in the form of climate change, but that as a result it was also facing an equally unprecedented rapid change in human culture. This was the emergence of a universal human civilization based on the World Wide Web.

The first element of human civilization to understand the importance of the Web was the academic and scientific community. But shortly thereafter it became recognized by the forces of international capital as being a new community that could be colonized and exploited for financial gain. Almost immediately afterwards, reactionary forces desperate to preserve the supremacy of the nation state recognized that the Web could be weaponized as a means of controlling mass populations. This was not done by restricting the information “signal” (which was impossible to do in the Web), but by “jamming” it (like jamming a radio signal) in an avalanche of nonsensical pseudo-information “noise”. As political commentators pointed out while this was happening, the aim of the populist/neo-fascists wasn’t to keep people from finding out the truth---it was destroying people’s belief that there was any such thing as truth at all. This was widely manifested in a general, non-specific belief that “all politicians are the same” and “all news is bullshit”.

If everyone thinks all politicians are the same, then no new political movement can emerge to threaten the status quo. And if all news is bullshit, then no one bothers to pay attention to what is happening around them.

In retrospect it is now obvious that the rise of the populists happened because the so-called “neo-liberal consensus” had out-lived it’s usefulness. (Indeed, if it ever did have any utility at all.) Politicians all over the world had no answers to the problem of wealth-stratification that became “super-charged” in the Web-based, tech “gold rush”. Nor were they capable of providing any sort of answers to the climate emergency. Finally, under neo-liberal leadership, democratic institutions proved incapable of predicting, reacting, or, dealing with the threat offered by the culture jamming signals emanating from organizations like Cambridge Analytica and the Russian-financed “Internet Research Agency”.

There were several reasons for this failure to respond. For example, the neo-liberal consensus was based on a fundamentalist belief in free market solutions. In fact, this ideology was so “locked in” that most government leaders were psychologically incapable to understand the importance of redistribution for a functioning democratic society. Moreover, their commitment to the status quo meant that they were bound to always choose incremental over radical solutions. The result was a seemingly infinite number of “baby steps” that led nowhere but to a cliff that was increasingly obvious to anyone outside of the ruling class.

Liberal democracy was especially incapable of dealing with Web-based propaganda because one of it core principals---freedom of speech---had become “weaponized” through the creation of an implicit doctrine of “free-speech absolutism”. This ceased being about allowing the down-trodden the right to speak “truth to power”, and instead became about allowing the wealthy and powerful the right to drown out any other voices. It was as if a New England Town Hall Meeting had decided to allow a heavy metal band to come in and crank it’s amplifiers to “11” while the community was trying to work out it’s school budget.

It became evident to the people who organized the Climate Trials that what was needed was not a return to the old, discredited, and, obsolete mechanisms of neo-liberalism, but rather a new set of institutions that were egalitarian, post-capitalist, and, based on the Web. To that end, when Mikhail Bookchin created his web-channel, there was a tremendous hunger for anything that could break the logjam that stopped reform. He did this through the simple idea that the outward form of a criminal trial could be used show that the existing system was strangling humanity’s future. The fact that he had assembled a team of brilliant communicators to act out this drama allowed billions of people to clearly and precisely understand the core problems that humanity now faced. And this---finally---released the blockage and swept away the old “culture of destruction”.

&&&&

Here I am putting out my begging bowl. I know many people are down-and-out right now. I don't want anything from you. But other folks are doing OK. For you, why not buy a subscription? It's easy to do with Patreon and Pay Pal. This blog is an attempt to prove that it is possible to create an independent media that isn't beholding to corporate sponsors, government bail outs, and, doesn't have to hide itself from low income people by using a pay wall. Whether or not this business model proves itself all comes down to you---the readers. 

&&&&

Mikhail received another essay from the Old Ones expanding on the previous one.

Sub-Populations in Altruistic Species

One of the implications of selfish gene theory is that within large populations of altruistic species there may exist sub-populations of parasites that take advantage of altruism while not reciprocating. This is called the “free rider problem”. Popular language describes the altruistic instinct as being “a conscience”. Free riders are, in effect, people without consciences.

This won’t happen with species like ants or bees, where the entire hive has the same mother. This is simply because none of the truly selfish individuals (as opposed to the genes) have the opportunity to reproduce because all workers are sterile. And any queen termite or ant that produced significant percentages of selfish workers would place her colony at a survival disadvantage, so evolution would select against that specific genetic trait.

In species like humans, however, the free rider problem comes into play because selfish individuals are able to reproduce. In small tribes where each individual is known by every other, this doesn’t become a problem because it soon becomes apparent who is working for the good of the tribe and who is not. Individuals without an instinctual altruistic conscience either learn to mimic the helping behaviour of other individuals, or, they end up banished from the tribe---and thereby removed from the gene pool.

Free rider parasitism only became a significant issue when humanity started the transition from tribal organization to larger groupings such as cities, empires, and, states. From this point onward it was possible to effectively hide past and present behaviour from other individuals, allowing free riders to hide their true intentions. In effect, among other developments, civilization facilitated the ability to convincingly lie to other human beings.

From a strictly evolutionary point of view, free riders have the ability to steal more resources than they are entitled to from the general population. This increases their ability to survive periods of scarcity. In addition, they are able to shirk dangerous duties, which also increases genetic viability. Finally, the males are able to reproduce with females when they have no intention of ever helping raise the offspring (either through seduction or rape.) While it’s true that this will decrease the survival rate for the children, and the mother’s genes---it will increase the number of children that the male will be able to produce---which increases the success for his genes.

It must be understood, however, that there is a specific maximum percentage of free riders in any population. This is because lacking a conscience is only an advantage in a population where the majority of people have one. Any population that consisted of a free rider majority---or even a particularly dominant minority---would spend so much of its energy in wasteful competition that any group of genuinely altruistic people who bonded together would be sufficiently efficient to out-compete it. (Think about, for example, a military contest between a functioning modern democracy and a third-world “kleptocracy”. It would obviously be a totally one-sided contest.)

Unfortunately the hierarchical structures of cities, empires, and, states have created further problems beyond anonymity. That is to say, people who lack a conscience have an advantage in the political power-plays that control access to the top decision-making positions. This can cause disastrous problems when the culture is under stress---such as the current Climate Emergency. People without consciences lack the ability to consider the good of the entire community when they make decisions.

Fortunately, there is another sub-population besides those with no conscience. These are others who have a super-abundance of altruistic instincts. These individuals almost always put the good of the community ahead of their own well-being. The popular language identifies these people as “saints”. This would not appear to be a winning strategy for reproduction, but because the altruistic genes do have an overall value in the whole population, another mathematical equilibrium asserts itself the same way it does with free riders. Saints will never be more than a small segment of the population, but the advantage altruism conveys to all individuals ensures a high enough percentage of the necessary genes to ensure that there will always be saints in any population. (Remember, benefits accruing to the entire population will also result in increased reproduction of the genes carried by brothers, sisters, nieces, and, nephews. All of which overlap to a greater or lessor degree with those of the “saint”.)

And like the free riders, civilization has also created a mechanism that allows saints to assert influence beyond their mere numbers would indicate. Culture, in the form of philosophy, religion, literature, and so on , which allow saints to amplify their influence through memes.

&&&&

Who are the Old Ones?

One day Mikhi asked Isabeau exactly who the Old Ones are. She explained that she wasn’t one of them, so what follows was speculation based on her own personal observations, but she didn’t think that they were “superior beings” or possessors of anything magical. They were simply people who were part of a tradition that reached back for thousands of years.

“I suppose you could say that in the beginning they were something like proto-scientists who never made the transition to using the modern scientific method. What I mean is that modern science is objective, whereas what they do is subjective.”

“Think about your arthritis. If you’d gone to a regular doctor, she’d have probably prescribed some sort of medication. As a general rule---actually sort of an gross over simplification, but just forget about that for the purposes of this discussion---the pills she could prescribe would work equally well for everyone. The exercises I’ve given you would only work for about one person in 1000. That’s not because of anything that can be seen in your physical body, but rather because of your particular personality. Most people wouldn’t do the work. And even if they did, they wouldn’t be able to grasp the subtle details that make them really effective. Instead, they’d just consider it something to rush through---like the push-ups they endured in their high school phys ed classes.”

“Seen from the totally objective viewpoint of modern medicine, the exercises only have something like .1% success rate. That makes them fundamentally worthless for modern scientific medicine. But what if someone was able to identify the one person in 1,000 who would be able to actually benefit from the exercises? If everyone they taught the exercises to had their arthritis helped, wouldn’t the success rate be 100%?”

“The problem is, however, that it takes a special type of insight---that personality thing---to be able to recognize those particular individuals who could benefit from the exercises. Again, let’s say one person in 1,000. If only one person in 1,000 can identify the people who would benefit, then we’re back to only 0.1% effectiveness.”

“And there is a significant wrinkle that you need to consider. How does someone who is one of the 0.1% that could benefit from the exercises know that the person who is telling them to do something---like the exercises I taught you---is actually one of the 0.1% who actually knows what they are talking about? There aren’t any universities awarding special diplomas to people who can recognize and teach stuff like this.”

“Let me correct myself, there aren’t any credible institutions awarding diplomas. There are, however, schools that do purport to be run by “Masters” of esoteric wisdom. The problem with the concept of ‘Mastery’ is that once it steps beyond the very mundane examples of ‘Master plumber’ or ‘Master of science’, the title becomes a trap. Pretty much all human beings---to a greater or lessor degree---have an instinct that pushes them to have their ego reinforced and built up. In addition, human beings---also to a greater or lessor degree---seek someone that can answer all their questions and save them from the uncertainty and ambiguity of life.”

“These two innate tendencies create very unhealthy group dynamics. They are so unhealthy that even if the teacher and the student both are members of that one in 1,000 types that I am talking about, they will inevitably waste most of their potential dancing around the “Master-student” relationship. Even if a person is a “real Master” and has genuine insights to teach they will often succumb to the temptations that come from being surrounded by students that will do anything that they say. Similarly, students who might benefit greatly from learning a real esoteric teaching are often---at least partially---also looking for a “big daddy” that will tell them how to live their life. Things could start out well, but they usually degrade over time and the group becomes more and more dysfunctional and counter-productive. This is how most cults and the world’s religions came into being.”

“The original Old Ones identified this problem and found themselves stuck on the horns of a dilemma. If they tried to spread what insights they’d gained widely, they knew that they would quickly become twisted into something that was at best worthless and at worst down-right destructive. But if they kept what they had learned to themselves, they knew that it would eventually die out with them. This would mean that the human race would have no opportunity to build upon the work of previous generations and create an advancing historical movement.”

Isabeau quietly poured both of them a cup of tea to let what she had said sink in.

“So what they decided was to be content publishing clues and hints in a few books and remain a totally secret group otherwise. The books are out there, and really bright individuals are able to figure out bits and pieces on their own. If members of the secret society of Old Ones came across an individual that seemed to be able to understand what they had to say, they were approached and tested to see if they could become part of the group. Slowly---very slowly---the Old Ones spread across the world and became embedded in every culture on the planet. But they have always remained a tiny fraction of the population.”

“Then the Internet came along. This gives the Old Ones a new ability to communicate among themselves and reach out to potential new members---like yourself. Unfortunately, at the same time the human race is going through a bottle-neck in it’s evolution. Our alienation from the ecosystems that sustain us have reached a crisis level. We need to deal with the Climate Emergency, dramatically shrink the human population, preserve and restore wildlife, deal with imbalances in the nitrogen cycle, and so on. The Elders have initiated crash programs aimed at engineering “fixes” to our culture that will make these projects a priority. They want you to help just one of many---although there is a hope that it might be particularly useful.”

Mikhi was pensive for a few moments. He then decided to ask what he feared might be a “career limiting” question. “Wow. This sounds like a real conspiracy. How do these guys decide on what to do, who to talk to, etc? Is there an election? A governing committee? Annual conventions?”

Isabeau smiled. “Nope, nothing like that. Or at least nothing I know about. (I get mysterious information by email just like you.) But there’s no coercion. And I’ve never been asked to do something “just because” and the explanation why it needs doing always seems to make perfect sense. And it’s never been anything of a sinister ‘the ends justify the means’ sort.”

“I asked the same question as you when I was first recruited. As it was explained to me, throughout most of its history the group was under threat of being denounced and destroyed as a danger to the rulers. There have been Old Ones who lived in empires, theocracies, totalitarian states, etc. And most of these governments were protected by paranoid, brutal security apparatuses.”

“Did you know, for example, that the late Roman Empire was so afraid of citizen-based movements that it outlawed volunteer fire departments? In most states any rumour that the Old Ones existed would have led to pogroms, crusades, witch-hunts, etc. Indeed, how many of these stains on history may have come about because of poorly understood stories about the Elders that leaked out to the general public? Indeed, how many Old Ones did end up burnt at the stake while being denounced as being something very different?”

“As a result, information has tended to be spread simply on a ‘need to know’ basis. Luckily, the Old Ones really do seem to believe that people shouldn’t do anything unless it makes sense to them. This means that I’ve never seen anything like an ‘order’ in the sense of something I have to do without explanation. Another important issue is that when they ask people to do something it’s not because the person has proved to be obedient, but rather because they have a known level of expertise. This means that they get asked to do something, not told how to do it. (To do otherwise would go against just about everything the Old Ones stand for.) So I’m told to help someone with their arthritis, not told how to do it. This is very different from how terrorist cells operate---if that’s in the back of your mind.”

She smiled at Mikhi.

“And, of course, it should be.”

&&&&

Moreover, I say unto you the Climate Emergency must be dealt with!

The Addiction Epidemic, A Conversation with Morgan Dandie Hannah, Part One

I thought that it was about time to tackle a problem that I've been thinking about for quite a while: drug addiction. Just to put things into perspective, according to Statistics Canada, in this year from January to March, across Canada there were a total of 1,018 deaths by drug overdose---96% of which were deemed accidental (ie: not suicide). Compare that with the number of deaths by COVID-19, which was 1,193 as of October 4th. Clearly more people are dying by addiction pandemic than viral. 

In Guelph the latest numbers I could get for opioid overdose deaths was a CBC report of July 14th, that said that there had already been 14 in 2020 alone. In contrast, Guelph Today reports that as of October 5th there had only been 11 deaths in Guelph because of COVID-19.  

It's important to not read too much into this comparison. There are a lot more people getting the bug than who are addicted to drugs. Moreover, many of these folks are getting really sick but aren't ending up dead. Moreover, compared to other places---like the USA---Guelph is doing exceptionally well controlling the spread of the virus. In contrast, it might be the case that we are doing an abysmal job controlling addiction here. This could well mean that we are seeing the worst it can get with opioid addiction and almost the best it could be with COVID-19. Having said that, it is important to compare these death numbers in order to get some sense of scale.

I don't really know much more about this subject than anyone else. Nor do I have a lot of contacts in this world. To that end, I put out feelers through social media looking for someone with some experience as a healthcare worker who could "clue me in" about the issues people should think about. The person I ended up interviewing was Morgan Dandie Hannah, who spoke clearly and persuasively on many different sides of the subject. What follows is a conversation we held on September 30th of 2020. As usual, I've split the audio files up into segments and then tried to expand on the issues raised by research after the fact. 

Cloudwalking Owl · Who Is Morgan And Addiction 101

Hannah mentions that she worked in a facility that did "Holistic Treatment for Concurrent Disorders". I think that it's important that readers understand exactly what she's talking about. According to a publication from the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) titled Concurrent substance use and mental health disorders: An information guide:

People who have combined, or concurrent, substance use and
mental health problems are said to have concurrent disorders.
Concurrent disorders can include combinations such as:
• an anxiety disorder and a drinking problem
• schizophrenia and addiction to cannabis
• borderline personality disorder and heroin addiction
• depression and addiction to sleeping pills.

and

• 30 per cent of people diagnosed with a mental health disorder will also have a substance use disorder at some time in their lives.
This is close to twice the rate found in people who do not have a lifetime history of a mental health disorder.

• 37 per cent of people diagnosed with an alcohol disorder will have a mental health disorder at some point in their lives. This is close to twice the rate found in people who do not have a lifetime history of a substance use disorder.   

• 53 per cent of people diagnosed with a substance use disorder
(other than alcohol) will also have a mental health disorder at
some point in their lives. This is close to four times the rate found
in people who do not have a lifetime history of a substance use
disorder.

&&&&

Amy Winehouse, public domain. 

 

 

I seem to have repeated an untruth about Amy Winehouse. It had been reported by several prestigious sources---including the New York Times---that she died as a result of trying to kick her alcoholism through going "cold turkey". (More evidence that it's important to be skeptical about what you read on-line.) But the consensus after an official inquest seems to be that she consumed a great deal of vodka and ended up dying by aspirating on her own vomit. (Alas, like many other famous singers.) Yet another story of a young person with a lot to offer the world dying far too young---.

Having said that, there are significant physiological problems that come from trying to get off an addictive drug without medical help. In the case of many different types of addicts, after prolonged abuse of the drug, their brains learn to compensate for the high levels of whatever they are abusing. This adaptation causes problems once the drug has been removed from their system because the "new normal" isn't functional without it. 

Alcohol Kills, public domain.

In the case of alcohol, this unfortunate situation can lead to a variety of symptoms, including: anxiety, depression, fatigue, headache, insomnia, headache, vomiting, heart palpitations, excessive sweating, and, tremor. In extreme cases of long term alcoholism, a small percentage develop delerium tremens (Ie: "the DTs"). People often make jokes about people seeing pink elephants, but this is a serious and sometime fatal illness. This is something that the French public health poster to the right does a very good job conveying. 

&&&&

Alcohol isn't the only drug that causes significant changes in the human body. It's important really understand how complex the human/drug interface really is, and how it affects behaviour. Just to drive this home with readers, I'd like to share with you a truly horrifying side effect of addiction to both amphetamines and alcohol: formication.

This is the feeling that insects (the word "formication" is derived from the Latin word "formica" or "ant") are crawling over and even sometimes under the skin. I'm not a medical researcher so I won't get into the mechanism, but this syndrome is identified with people using or giving up amphetamines and alcohol "cold turkey". Indeed, it can get so bad that some alcoholics go into an even worse condition: delusional parasitosis. This is the delusion that one is actually suffering from parasites under the skin. 

This is a common-enough condition that there are street names for it: "crank bugs" and "meth mites". ("Crank" was the 1960s word for amphetamines, or "speed".) The author Phillip K. Dick was a speed freak for a time and had a house where he rented out rooms to addicts. He wrote about his experiences in the auto-biographical novel A Scanner Darkly. This was made into a movie, which had an opening sequence that showed a person afflicted by crank bugs.

This is a significant problem for addicts, to the point where health professionals are told to be on the look out for people who have torn up their skin scratching at these invisible beasts. I had never heard about this until I researched this article, but now that I know about it, I remember seeing lots of folks in the pre-pandemic downtown Guelph who probably had this issue. 

Here's a photo from an American Department of Justice website that shows the sort of harm that people have caused scratching away at their "meth mites".

 

&&&&

From my reading it appears that there are fairly well-established medical methodologies that can be used to deal with the physical dependencies from drug addiction. For example, diazepam (known to most people through the trademarked name "Valium") has been used for a long time to help alcoholics get off the bottle without suffering from the DTs. 

Morgan also mentions the use of methadone and suboxone. Methadone was invented in Germany during the NAZI regime as a way of producing a cheap alternative to opium and was used extensively during WWII. Since then, it has become known mostly as treatment regime for opioid dependency. Indeed, I often see people downtown who are going to the two clinics to get their daily dose. This is done because methadone can get you high if taken in large enough doses. Forcing addicts to take their daily dose through a clinic stops them from either selling it for money or saving up their doses in order to get high. As a story about someone who was convicted of illegal methadone possession in the Duluth News Tribune says:

And his favorite type of methadone: the liquid form provided at methadone clinics, including at the clinic in Duluth, the Lake Superior Treatment Center.

"It gets you very, very high. I think it's stronger than (Oxycontin)," he said. "With pot, you get a little bit of a head buzz. With methadone, it was throughout your whole body. You'd get a warm glow, a sense of well-being."

Under federal law [US, not Canada], if patients prove their trustworthiness at methadone clinics, they can get up to a month's worth of take-home doses of the drug. It's intended to be a reward for patients, who start their treatment by having to go to a clinic each day, six to seven days a week to take their dose. Getting take-home doses is standard practice at methadone clinics around the country and is fully legal.

But the pressure to sell those doses can be extremely high, as they go for about $1 a milligram on the streets, with doses ranging from 50 to 300 milligrams, according to local law enforcement experts and current and former users of the drug.

For this reason, there was originally a great reticence towards methadone treatment. But because of the huge explosion of opioid addiction in recent decades, methadone clinics have become very common---to the point where in 2004 there was a proposal that the United Nations add it to their World Health Organization (WHO) list of "Essential Medicines". (I couldn't find out if it was added or not.)

Suboxone is a combination of two drugs: buprenorphine and naloxone. Buprenorphine is another synthetic opioid substitute---like methadone---and just like it, can be abused. When it is mixed with naloxone (that's the drug that is used by police, paramedics, etc, which can immediately pull someone out of an opioid overdose), it is then called suboxone. The naloxone prevents someone who abusing buprenorphine from getting high when they inject it, which makes it safe to prescribe to addicts.

&&&& 

I dwell upon this issue of withdrawal symptoms because Morgan made a real point of emphasizing how much Guelph (and many other places too, of course) needs a specialized medical facility where addicts can be supervised and offered the treatment they need to minimize these sorts of severe physiological problems. Recently Doug Ford announced $176 million to help with addiction issues in the province. On the face of it, this seems like a lot of money. But when you drill down into the specifics, there seems to be a lot less than meets the eye. The highlights they identify are:

• $4 million for nurse practitioners for detox services to improve the medical management of clients who are withdrawing from substance use in residential withdrawal management facilities;
• $8 million for addictions day and evening care to increase access to intensive non-residential addictions and substance use treatment services for youth and adults;
• $3.5 million for in-home/mobile withdrawal management services to increase access to community withdrawal management services for hard to service clients, including those located in rural areas; and
• Over $900,000 for an additional four inpatient beds at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) to support capacity pressures at CAMH.

For a province that has 14.5 million citizens, and who's annual medical budget is over $60 billion, this seems like pretty small potatoes----especially as over 1500 people died just of opioid over doses alone in 2019. With this small amount of money diluted across Canada's biggest province, I'm not holding my breath for Guelph being helped much as the province builds what the Ford government calls "a Modern, Connected and Comprehensive Mental Health and Addictions System". 

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Another depressing article, another blue-lettered appeal for subscriptions. I know many readers can't afford to pay for this project of mine. But I know some of you can. Why not sign up for a monthly payment? Patreon and Pay Pal make it easy.

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Hannah also mentions the role of pharmaceutical companies in the epidemic of opioid dependency. I think it might be a good idea to do a bit of an overview of how much it has ballooned in recent decades. Here's a short video from a respected medical news site. 

Dr. Carroll mentions the huge numbers of American citizens who are wrestling with chronic pain, how opioid prescriptions exploded for several years, and, how a small percentage of people who get these drugs go on to become addicted. But unfortunately, this still ends up being a big problem. 

The question that comes immediately to mind is "why did the numbers go up so fast?" The consensus seems to be that a number of drug companies heavily promoted the idea they had come up with a relatively safe type of opioid that didn't cause dependency among patients. Several US states have sued several drug makers, with some out-of-court settlements. In Canada British Columbia is currently suing 40 drug companies for compensation.

What seems to have happened is that some very effective---if questionably ethical---marketing was aimed at doctors by sales people who convinced many of them that these new drugs were safe, effective, and, non-habit forming. Just to give you an idea of how much "hard sell" was going on by sales people working for companies that put the "bottom line" ahead of public health, I did some rooting around on line and found out that there seems to be something of a subculture of people who collect the "swag" that they used to dole out. Here's a small sample of stuff I gleaned from sources like Ebay ads.

How about an OxyContin combo pocket knife/wrench?

 

Or maybe a fishing hat for those lazy summer afternoons?

How about a mug for the lunchroom?

Would your daughter like a doll?

Here's pen with a built-in reminder----.

(Isn't capitalism grand? Frankly, I'm of the opinion that since the free market doesn't play well with science, it should spend some time in detention until it learns to stop being such a bully.)

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I admit that this deep dig---like most of the ones I've done for this blog---is yet another downer. But I'd like readers to leave this post with the idea that the people who are dying from this epidemic are real human beings---just like you and me. Their lives can have just as much meaning as ours, and they have just as much to offer to everyone else. It's just like the 17th century poet James Donne wrote several centuries back:

No man is an island,
Entire of itself,
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thy friend's
Or of thine own were:
Any man's death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind,
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.

To that end, I'd like to share with you this video by the late Amy Winehouse that echos part of what Morgan had to say about how scary rehab can be for addicts. I'd never heard it before I sat down to write this article. I'll admit that given the context, it brought tears to my eyes.  She was a gifted musician and when she died all of our lives were "diminished"---to use Donne's language. Keep that in mind when you hear more statistics about people dying of overdoses. 

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Moreover I say unto you, we have to deal with the Climate Emergency!