This is how I explain to people the idea of free clean needles. People are always going to do drugs. It's been that way since they were discovered. The best thing we can do as a society is to try to get people clean, but if they cannot stay clean, then we need to keep them safe.

Preach that! My dad caught HIV because free clean needles weren't a thing. They'd rather people got sick and died than to make sure they were, at least, as safe as we could help them be.

And what I cannot abide by is the so called "justice" system being punitive towards those people. Which, thinking about it, is kind of ableist.

Because people don't go around destroying their bodies like that for fun. It means something is wrong. So to arrest people and put them in a cell with actual criminals for this? Bonkers (and don't get me started on how prison in the first place is such a stupid system in itself for everyone involved)

Those people need psychological help and support! Think punishing them is going to get them clean? Then you're stupid af lol. Or you're ableist and just want these people out of your sight and mind.

Let me tell you a story:

When my mum was around 12 years old, the cops showed up at my grandparents' home and violently arrested my 20-something uncle, Fred, who was an addict, in front of my mum and my at the time 5-YEAR-OLD aunt, traumatizing them for life.

Then, when my mum was 14 and my uncle got out of prison... he got high again. Surprise! He ended up on a train, got high with a friend, went into overdose. His friend panicked, because he knew if he told someone, the police would be waiting at the next station to arrest him, and so he left my uncle to die. And if fucked my family up.

Fred was a good person.

When mum couldn't sleep as a kid, he would tuck her into bed and tell her there was a baby wolf named Leonard napping under her bed with her... my name is Eleonore, by the way.

Whenever Fred came home to visit, he would play football with the kids in the neighborhood because he knew it made them happy for an adult to take the time to play with them.

He was a good person and he was taken from the people who loved him because the justice system isn't, actually, just.

So maybe, society should stop shaming and punishing addiction and start treating it with the same respect and compassion as we should give any mental illness. Maybe then people will want to get better.

“They might not get clean”

It should be far more important that some ARE getting clean. If that’s really your goal.

Good news for me: new mattress arrived! And I can’t feel the bars of my bedframe through it!!

Bad news for my heart: move heavy stuff heart go brrrrrrrrrrrrr

THE BED. It is set up. That was fuckin exhausting to do on 5 hrs sleep.

I am shocked though! This is my first new mattress in about uhhh. Almost a decade. It’s also like half the thickness of my previous mattress but I can’t feel my bedframe through it even when I’m on my knees on it, which is impressive especially because it’s still foam, this one is just latex foam instead of memory foam.

It was 800$, but I’ll be real and say that the fact that its half the thickness of my previous one that I could feel the slats of my bedframe thru easily is. Woagh. I won’t even be mad if I end up needing a mattress pad or smth. I thought for sure my weight would make this thing crunch into the center instantly.

I’ve noticed a sort of implicit belief that people used to do things the hard way in the past because they were tougher or something. In reality, labor-saving devices have historically been adopted by the populace as soon as they were economically feasible. No one stood in front of a smoky fire or a boiling pot of lye soap for hours because they were virtuous, they did it because it was the only way to survive.

Taking these screenshots from Facebook because they make you log in and won't let you copy and paste: