Counterintuitive Spring 2024

The arising battle of heroin addiction is prominent in the city of Vancouver, Canada.  Heroin addiction is a very unstable and extremely dangerous. In many cases this addiction leads users to commit crimes to support their habit.   Addicts are  more focused on getting their next high then they are about using heroin safely.  Normal routes of defeating this addiction include giving the heroin user methadone, which is a substitute for heroin, even though 15-25% of addicts do not react to the prescripted drug.  Vancouver has a taken on a new way of battling heroin addiction.  By giving the user the very own drug that is corrupting them.

Fighting fire with fire, Vancouver has set up clinics which gives heroin users free prescribed heroin.  At clinics such as Vancouver’s Providence Medical Clinic, the addicts are given a safe place to ‘shoot up’ while being supervised by medical personnel, incase anything may go wrong.  They are given sterile needles which helps decrease the factor of disease spread through dirty needles in common use.  Users who use these clinics also have no fear of being arrested, because safe use is condoned in them. 

Studies made in Europe with these programs have shown a positive outcome, with reduced crime and improved public health.  Giving heroin to heroin addicts to help them fight their addiction may seem counterintuitive, yet these clinics have shown many positive results.   Giving this option of ‘treatment’ to heroin users is exactly what some of them need.  Some do not respond to regular treatment techniques and having this option is extremely beneficial in an addicts life.

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/11/vancouver-experiments-with-prescription-heroin/383086/

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2014/11/25/prescription-heroin-vancouver-salome_n_6215188.html

The word addiction can mean a lot of different things, to a lot of different people. For most, addiction is just the idea of not being able to give something up. Addiction is classified as a brain disease. Addiction causes compulsive substance abuse, despite any harm that could come from it. The city of Vancouver is facing an addiction problem among their people.

In Vancouver, there has been a heavy and dangerous use of heroin. Heroin is a highly addictive street drug that is very popular in Vancouver. People who suffer from this addiction are willing to go to extreme lengths to acquire this drug. Addiction can ruin a person’s health, relationships, careers, and much else. Vancouver is seeking out these addicts with the idea of helping them with their addiction.

Vancouver has set up an experiment where they will give some addicts doses of methadone and other addicts doses of heroin. They have set up something called Insite, which is essentially just safe zones for people to go to in order to receive the free doses of heroin. Most of these people would be out on the street committing crimes and stealing in order to get their hands on heroin. These has increased the crime rate in Vancouver and it is dangerous for the people in the city. They go through committing crime, just to be left with heroin from the street and unsanitary needles. These safe zones protect these people from being arrested, where as out on the street, police would most likely have multiple reasons to arrest these people. The Insite zones also provide these addicts with some of the best heroin around, as well as clean and sanitary needles.

What Vancouver is doing does not seem to make much sense on the surface, but really looking into what they are doing, they really can help these people in a different way. Of course many people would think it does not make sense to give heroin users heroin, but it is the way they are supplying the addicts. If Vancouver did not have these safe zones, then these people would be out on the street getting heroin some way some how. Unfortunately, that is part of being an addict and having such an addiction to a substance. Addiction interferes with a person’s life so much because the need for the substance becomes compulsive and it is all they think about. Vancouver’s idea may seem crazy, but it is helping their city and these people tremendously and that is really what counts.

What Is The MarshMallow Test?

Children now a day are tested in so many different ways for several disorders or problems, but do we really know what the results actually resemble. For example what does the famous Marshmallow Test really show in its results? This simple test created by psychologist Dr. Walter Mischel includes a child being given a marshmallow from an instructor then while trying to control themselves, are asked to wait for an additional treat 15 minuets later. So as we can guess some kids waited and others did not but it wasn’t the results that aren’t clear, it’s the meaning of them.

Mischel states that the results show a child’s strength  to control it’s impulses when confronted a stressful situation. By the child not eating the treat and showing techquies to delay gratification a reflection of how he or she will act later on in life in a stressful, is shown. This is important for a parent to know so a child can gain help to gain  self-control, but it is vital for a child to realize. Once a child can realize how to delay gratification the sooner he or she is  on a better track to succeed. results show the children who had enough self-control to not eat the first treat had higher grades, were not as addictive, and also were able to hold down more jobs compared to the children whom eaten the treat.

This seems logical and accurate opposed to other theories from scientists stating that the children actually lack trust in the instructor. This theory is illogical because children grow up in all different environments that have opposing types of living styles which conflicts with their everyday reasoning. For example a child whom comes from a suburban community might trust others because his environment is small and everyone in his community is trustworthy. While a child from an urban community choses to trust few people because of the lack of trust in his large environment. It all depends on how your child is raised and the influence of its environment when it comes to how easily someone will trust another, not a marshmallow test. This would simply  be the wrong test for trust issues unless you pick children from the same neighborhood or community.

The right test would be “Rational snacking” done by Celeste Kidd, Holly Palmeri, and Richard N. Aslin from the University of Rochester. This is a test where children were separated into two groups to do art,  the instructors would say they will give more supplies, but only one group actually gets them. Then in the same groups and with the same instructor they ran the marshmallow test. Now we can see why it becomes a trust issue problem because the children already have met the instructor and saw if he or she was true to their word. Sadly this is not the same as the original Marshmallow test so trust doesn’t get tested, but self-control is.

Work Cited

Elharo. “A New Interpretation of the Marshmallow Test.” – Less Wrong. N.p., 05 July 2013. Web. 02 Mar. 2015.

Hadad, Chuck. “What the ‘marshmallow Test’ Can Teach You about Your Kids – CNN.com.’ CNN. Cable News Network, 22 Dec.2014. Web. 02 Mar. 2015.

Content is a little slim, betterthanyou

Death is usually looked at like a sad, painful stop to a beautiful life, but to those who suffer from terminal illness, death can be a beautiful end to a sad, painful life. In America, a terminally ill patient has no legal way of putting an end to the suffering their disease comes with, but in Belgium, a law has been passed that gives its citizens this right.  Euthanasia has been legal in Belgium since 2002, but just recently has it become legal for youths to receive this treatment. This law has allowed patients and their parent the comfort to know that they will not have to live a life full of pain and suffering, that they can die a “good death”, which is what the word Euthanasia means.

Euthanasia is a medical practice of intentionally ending someones life to relieve pain and suffering. It is done in full supervision of, and usually administered by doctors, making it fully safe and pain free. It is simply a doctor giving the patient a lethal does of two medicines, one to slowly ease them into unconsciousness and the other to ease them into death. This differs from a similar form of death known as physician-assisted death. This is when a doctor gives a patient a bottle of different pills to take at home, and allows the patient to decide when and if they take the pills.  The pills have a similar effect as the medicine used in euthanasia, some of the pills are used to make the patient unconscious and the others to put them to their death.

Euthanasia is a safer and generally better practice than physician-assisted death, and that is because of the doctor supervision.  With euthanasia, everything is done with a doctor watching, so any complications can be quickly solved.  In physician-assisted death, the patient can come into a bunch of problems, with no one to help.  If they receive the wrong dosage of medicine, or they somehow don’t take all of the prescribed pills, they could be left in a worse state then they originally were.

With the passing of the law, many people in Belgium feel that it will create “death tourism”, and that euthanasia is what Belgium will be known for.  To combat this, the Belgian parliament have put in place a list of stipulations a patient needs to meet before they apply for euthanasia. Although no age limits are set, the law says that the child must display “a capacity of discernment and be conscious at the moment of the request,” and psychologists must test them to confirm they understand the gravity of the situation and what they are doing.  Minors need parental consent, and also approval from their doctor, saying the child is near death, and suffering constant and unbearable physical pain with no available treatment.  With these stipulations, there is no way a “tourist” could go to Belgium just to get legally euthanized.

Euthanasia is a seriously miss-interpritade practice.  They hear the word and think of people committing suicide, when in reality, it is very safe and heavily regulated.  Instead of being a practical social taboo, euthanasia should be embraced. For the average person, a law allowing euthanasia has no affect on them, but for someone suffering from a terminal illness, that law would be freeing.

Is just enough too much?

It can be said that any amount of multivitamins is an excess because they are not conducive to a person’s health.  This can apply to my topic of the true usefulness of multivitamins because it is becoming more believed that the supplements are useless. If this is true, then perhaps we can also say that not only are they useless but can be detrimental to one’s health. Researchers are saying that any amount of multivitamins is an excess because we get all the vitamins and minerals from the foods we eat. When trying to figure out how much of these multivitamins we should take if any, we encounter words such as useful, health, and deficiency.

Now let’s say, contrary to growing belief, multivitamins do have some use. It can be disputed how much a person needs. Of course it will differ with age, gender, and other health characteristics.  What is deemed to be an excess to one person may be just right or not enough for another. In the case of multivitamins however, the only way we can compare what is too much for certain people is through multiple tests on their health. With that said, it is not a conscious decision on what may be too much for our bodies or what may not be enough. It would in-fact be easier to define a deficiency. With a deficiency in something, it is likely will see negative effects before an excess.

Nevertheless, one can evaluate how they feel after taking a certain supplement or eating a certain food. For example, taking a supplement for 30 days and recording how it makes you feel, followed by cutting the multivitamin cold turkey and recording how you feel. It is more likely for an adult to try this method than a child. The reason for this can be either because children are less likely to be health conscious; an adult is more likely to have some kind of disorder that prohibits them from eating too much unhealthy products. Regardless of the reason the point is that what is too much for one person can be regular or perfectly normal for another and vice versa.

With that said, an excess can be something tangible or otherwise, that is more than enough for a person. Whether or not this person realizes something is an excess such as in this case with supplements is irrelevant.

In order for us to evaluate the meaning of one word, there may be others that have to be clarified. When we look at what an excess is, we also should look at words such as proper, useful and health. These tie into an excess because in a way, a person’s point of view on the word can be related to how useful they believe something to be. We can also define usefulness as being of service or helpful. In the case of multivitamins however, the argument is that they are useless so any amount is an excess. The definition of proper easily varies from culture to culture, household to household, city to city etc. The important thing when arguing a definition is to remember the different point of views.