Abandoned Wisdom
I don't expect my work to ever get popular. My methods are very much in line with methods that have been steadily abandoned even though they worked.
When I was a child, it was not uncommon for my mom to take me and my siblings and sometimes even cousins ALL to the doctor at the same time. ALL of us would get treated for strep -- or whatever -- at the same time rather than letting it cycle through the family one by one while only one child was treated.
Historically, the way that STDs were stopped was that when you got diagnosed, they would take the NAMES of everyone you had slept with and track them down and notify them so they could get tested and treated. This fell out of fashion due to the politics surrounding AIDS.
AIDS was primarily a disease of gay men and IV drug users. These populations were understandably reluctant to give up the names of anyone they might have infected, so they advocated for two things:
In some sense, this method only reinforces homophobia. It implicitly agrees that "We are up to something we can't defend, so we won't even try."
I'm also for the decriminalization of drug use. I firmly believe that most recreational drug use is actually literally self-medicating for unidentified medical issues and this is why addiction is so hard to beat: Your craving won't go away if the underlying cause for it is not treated.
Criminalizing drug use makes it harder, not easier, to break an addiction in part by making people HIDE their drug use and deny that they have an issue. I think we should double-down on prosecuting for bad behaviors that arise out of excess drug use when such do but not prosecute for the drug use per se.
We should not be excusing bad behavior based on the idea that "They have an addiction/personal issue and can't help it." We don't tolerate extremes of bad behavior from cancer patients due to them being on harsh drugs, though we do make reasonable accommodation for them not exactly being at their best and most socially polished.
The same standard should apply to all drugs. If you can't behave while on them, this is not about the drug per se. It's not as simple as that.
If you have been exposed to an STD, I encourage you to:
When I was a child, it was not uncommon for my mom to take me and my siblings and sometimes even cousins ALL to the doctor at the same time. ALL of us would get treated for strep -- or whatever -- at the same time rather than letting it cycle through the family one by one while only one child was treated.
Historically, the way that STDs were stopped was that when you got diagnosed, they would take the NAMES of everyone you had slept with and track them down and notify them so they could get tested and treated. This fell out of fashion due to the politics surrounding AIDS.
AIDS was primarily a disease of gay men and IV drug users. These populations were understandably reluctant to give up the names of anyone they might have infected, so they advocated for two things:
- Greater privacy in that regard.
- Drug development as a preferred method of control rather than contacting your contacts.
In some sense, this method only reinforces homophobia. It implicitly agrees that "We are up to something we can't defend, so we won't even try."
I'm also for the decriminalization of drug use. I firmly believe that most recreational drug use is actually literally self-medicating for unidentified medical issues and this is why addiction is so hard to beat: Your craving won't go away if the underlying cause for it is not treated.
Criminalizing drug use makes it harder, not easier, to break an addiction in part by making people HIDE their drug use and deny that they have an issue. I think we should double-down on prosecuting for bad behaviors that arise out of excess drug use when such do but not prosecute for the drug use per se.
We should not be excusing bad behavior based on the idea that "They have an addiction/personal issue and can't help it." We don't tolerate extremes of bad behavior from cancer patients due to them being on harsh drugs, though we do make reasonable accommodation for them not exactly being at their best and most socially polished.
The same standard should apply to all drugs. If you can't behave while on them, this is not about the drug per se. It's not as simple as that.
If you have been exposed to an STD, I encourage you to:
- Get tested and create a medical record if positive, even if you are using remedies from this site or elsewhere to try to treat it.
- Talk to a social worker.
- Make a list of whom you may have exposed and, if necessary, a list of whom they may have exposed if they gave it to you. Start making phone calls if that's at all a reasonable/feasible thing to do.
