Two of A&E’s series, Hoarders and Intervention document (some might say “exploit” but that’s a whole other can of worms) extremely troubled people. In many ways the underlying causes of both the hoarding and substance abuse problems of these people are very similar, but manifest themselves in two different but still self-destructive ways. They are both addictions in some way, and are certainly both indicative of some manner of mental illness.
Who, in your opinion, is worse off, the hoarders or the drug addicts?
I watch Hoarders on occasion with the g/f. I have only seen snippets of Intervention in passing. Perhaps my information is a little too limited, but it seems to me that the Hoarders are far more screwed up. The drug stuff I get. It’s a biochemical response, at least at the outset there’s a clear benefit to what they are doing, the addiction has a explainable action as does the detox. The hoarding however just boggles the mind. How these people could possibly end up like this is a mystery. I know it’s simply another form of addiction and mental illness, which often defies explanation, but I just can’t begin to fathom how one starts down that road and where the positive feedback comes from.
I had to give the hoarders the edge for two words: animal hoarding.
I’m no card-carrying animal rights activist, but nothing is more aggravating than watching an episode about an animal hoarder, whose floors are caked with inches :eek: of animal shit, have dead animals just lying in corners, and are surrounded by an army of weak, emaciated, diseased animals yet vehemently insist that they are all perfectly healthy, happy, and loved. Yes, I know it’s a mental disorder, but that shit is just too fucked up for even the most jaded of bastards like me.
Also, it makes it worse to me that the hoarders generally seem to be completely oblivious to their insanity.
I voted both equally bad. I don’t watch the shows often, but I can at least stomach the intervention shows. The dead animals and feces and what not in the homes of the hoarders just makes me literally sick to my stomach. I don’t know how they live with the bad smells.
The hoarders. The drug addicts at least have an external source they may be able to fight or avoid. The hoarders; something is fundamentally broken in their heads, and no matter what, I don’t know that they can be “healed”. How? There’s always more stuff.
I think drug addicts are worse off. At least the hoarders have some stuff, might be worth something. The drug addicts usually just keep losing things
BTW, saw my first episode of Intervention last night, with the girl that sucked on the computer air dusters. My chest was hurting every time I saw her puff one of those things, I can’t imagine how she can keep it up
The show explained that the air dusters have certain chemicals that give a really quick high if inhaled. However, they wear off almost as quickly, in as little as 5 minutes, so she was constantly huffing on those things. She can empty up to 10 cans a day
As a recovering alkie, this isn’t quite right. The fight for addicts and alcoholics is all inside the head. The booze or the drugs aren’t the main cause, they are the symptom. For the addict and the hoarder the thing that has to change is the thinking.
Personally I’d go with the addicts, mainly because there is a much, MUCH higher chance that they will end up dead in a short amount of time compared to the hoarders. When I’ve watched Intervention the addicts tended towards very hard drugs, meth and heroin. For meth, the number I’ve heard is that the average life span after addiction begins is 5 to 7 years if they do not get sober. For heroin, it is supposed to be 10 years or so.
It’s my impression watching the show drug addiction is really just a symptom of emotional hostage taking. While I’m sure getting yourself off of drugs is harder to do physically I think the strange hole in the life of hoarders is harder to fill.
The addicts. At least the ones that make it on “Intervention.”
Their lives are usually totally messed up. No job, strained relationships, poor health, endangering their children, embarrassing their family, getting in trouble with the law, etc.
Many of the hoarders actually keep down a job. Their relationships with their families aren’t great, but you don’t see them mooching off anyone usually. The ones whose children are being taken away from them are sad cases. But I guess I’d be more traumatized as a child seeing my mother sprawled out on the lawn with a bottle of rubbing alcohol in her hand–in front of the whole neighborhood–than I would be seeing her sitting on a pile of junk, in the privacy of our home. Also, at least as an older kid, I would be able to clean up a little. No one can make an addict stop drinking or shooting up.
Although as a kid in a hoarding situation, it would be harder asking for help from the outside world. “My momma’s sleeping on a pile of used adult diapers!” is more embarrassing to say than “My momma’s drinking too much and popping pills!”
Yeah, drugs go straight to your pleasure center (though I suppose that becomes a moot point once you’re actually addicted, as you end up needing the drug in order to function at all). Hoarding is an OCD disorder, which often has an element of terror to it, as in, “if I don’t touch this lightswitch exactly twenty times, my mother will die,” or “if I don’t save every single one of these canned goods, my family will starve.”
Both are equally messed up, but I feel like hoarding would be messed up in a suckier way.
Hoarders have a mental disease that AFAIK has no “magic bullet”. Yeah, therapy seems to help with some, but for a lot it’s just a gear wrong in the brain and I’ve not seen anything (yet) that can easily fix the phobia of discarding something that has no use.
Drug addicts on the other hand - in most cases, it’s a chemical problem. Most addictions, and nearly all drug addictions, are chemical problems. The drugs of choice overwhelm the brain with need/reward chemical pathways, which is why it’s so hard to quit. That said - for some drugs, there are chemical therapies.
I absolutely do not deny that either condition is devastating, difficult and heartbreaking. And I would never diminish the arduous struggle that anyone has with either. I have family members with each. But AFAIK, there’s still no methadone for hoarding. And as it is a “natural”, or at least reliably repeating condition, how the deuce do you treat it?
What about the hoarders who are drug addicts? As someone with OCD who has, many years ago, also abused a variety of drugs, I can say that really is the cream of the crap. The bizarre thing is that, as it turns out, certain recreational drugs like Ecstasy seem to hold great promise as a treatment for OCD. One of the drugs I used fairly extensively was 3,4 methdioxyamphetamine. It’s a compound similar to Ecstasy, being a member of a class known as psychedelic amphetamines. I used MDA for about 2 years. After I stopped, my OCD symptoms had virtually vanished and stayed in remission for several years.
While my initial comment was meant to be humorous, the fact of the matter is that in many cases, drug use and abuse arises out of an attempt, when conscious or otherwise, to self-medicate. Because of the nature of OCD (e.g., fears of contamination), it’s probably less likely to find people with the disorder who also use drugs. But when I hear about someone who is an addict, my first thought isn’t something like ‘oh, they’re just a degenerate.’ Rather, I wonder what demons they must be trying to run from.