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Peter MoskowitzBrendan O'Connor
11/02/15 8:17pm
It probably all starts with these people hooking large swaths of America on opiates www.forbes.com/sites/alexmorrell/2015/07/01/the-oxycontin-clan-the-14-billion-newcomer-to-forbes-2015-list-of-richest-u-s-families/
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  BathtubStuPeter Moskowitz
  11/02/15 8:32pm
  I’m currently watching this play out with one of my siblings. Drinks too much, asks her doctor for oxy and hydro for every toothache and stubbed toe (literally). Most of the time, they give it. The rest of the time, she takes some from well-meaning relatives who have “a few extra” from surgeries and things. Refuses the idea that this is a problem and no one else will address it with her.
  
  She’s almost 30 and I look at these statistics and feel like this is her in 15 years.
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  Billy JackPeter Moskowitz
  11/02/15 8:34pm
  Doctors prescribe that shit like candy. TO MY 15 YEAR OLD SON! Who was handling the pain just fine.
  
  You sneezed! Here are 20 percasets.
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Jerry-NetherlandBrendan O'Connor
11/02/15 8:17pm
Meanwhile this same segment most reliably votes against their own best interests in areas of finance, healthcare, and job security.

[graph from The Atlantic]
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  ThidrekrJerry-Netherland
  11/02/15 8:25pm
  Wealthier conservatives—those who have the luxury to “vote their values”—essentially dictate to poorer folk in their churches to vote the same way by telling them that these “values” are all that matter. And the reality too is that “peer pressure” is still quite strong in communities; how many people are truly willing to vote against the values of “their tribe”? Most people are likely going with the flow and not analyzing the issues in depth, regardless of ideology.
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  2DollarzJerry-Netherland
  11/02/15 8:25pm
  Well until they die at least
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ratchedBrendan O'Connor
11/02/15 8:29pm
I think for a lot of us, it was the battering we did to our brains, livers, lungs, etc., etc., we volunteered for as a huge band of largely feral kids ingesting anything and everything. There’s recreational stuff, and there’s just stupid. Pop a pill in your mouth someone gives you THEN ask, “Äm I going up, or down?” Most of the people who were wild as March Hares when we were “kids” are usually the religious zealots now, but they sure do die off fast. Maybe they’re just anxious to meet their Dog. :shrug: I would be *really* surprised if I would still be alive if I was alive in 5 years (and not using a puff wheelchair, if I can still puff) and I’ve been “good”for several decades with small, itsy-bitsy, teensy weency, dips in the cold, black water.

We *played* with elemental mercury, lead, and ammonia. Also fire. Snakes. Guns. Whatever was in any adult’s medicine cabinet, plus all the shit your boyfriend walks over from Mexico with. Harvesting psilocybin from the cow patties. Microdot, Windowpane. Yellow Sunshine, Orange Barrels, 714’s, Trees, Reds, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, not all the olds did that, but I sure had a bunch of company back then. Company that is now someone’s Nanna and you don’t *even* know what Nanna did in the day.
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  Armageddon T. Thunderbirdratched
  11/02/15 8:34pm
  Have you ever tried reading this comment...
  
  ... on weeeed?
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  ratchedArmageddon T. Thunderbird
  11/02/15 8:38pm
  I can't even do it straight. I am just one of those theoretical 100 monkeys with 100 typewriters for 100 years who happened to make a few sentences, by mistake.
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CagefreeHenBrendan O'Connor
11/02/15 8:14pm
It’s likely that middle-aged white people without degrees aren’t going to reach those cushy corner office positions where you barely have to work yet get paid a lot (with benefits). Therefore, they’re working as hard as someone a decade younger and have little chance of retiring comfortably, if at all. That’s enough stress to lead one to drugs, alcohol, and dropping dead of heart failure.
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  amgarreCagefreeHen
  11/02/15 8:30pm
  I think there are quite a few in the corner office still. I’ll save my Kleenex.
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  CagefreeHenamgarre
  11/02/15 8:50pm
  Yeah, I hate to be ageist, but... After spending an internship printing emails for a c-suite exec, I want to tell them all to shove off! There’s a generation of underemployed workers behind you!!
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Armageddon T. ThunderbirdBrendan O'Connor
11/02/15 8:16pm
Really takes the pressure off of long-term retirement planning.
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  Masshole JamesArmageddon T. Thunderbird
  11/02/15 8:38pm
  Seriously! I’m just gonna blow all my money on opiates for the next twenty years!!
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  Armageddon T. ThunderbirdMasshole James
  11/02/15 8:40pm
  May you never feel things until the day that you die.
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The Original SunshineBrendan O'Connor
11/02/15 8:39pm
I love it when researchers say “Nobody knows why”. I remember when the alarming statistics came out a few years ago about the high suicide rate among middle class men. Some answers are obvious but it was necessary to do a study anyway, so they did. More middle aged suicides can be traced right to the economy and the job market for the middle aged.

Health issues can probably be directly correlated to states with no health insurance combined with the fact that many middle aged workers are contract workers (ie: Uber, Federal Express, etc.) who don’t have jobs that cover them.

If you do have health insurance, most but not all preventative testing is covered but, beyond that, even those who have health insurance often have very high deductibles and can’t actually afford to go to the doctor (all Obamacare should be HMO’s, all of it).

Yes, the prospects for the middle aged are dim. Very dim. The truth is that right now they appear to me to be dim for every demographic except for those people who believe that they pulled themselves up by their bootstraps because they haven’t been laid off yet and weren’t forced to work at McDonalds with a useless College degree.

I don’t fit this demographic (not white) but my pain & medical issues may be traced to the fact that I work sitting down all day and don’t exercise enough. When I do exercise, I tend to over do it.

Diabetes in the middle aged is very high in many demographics because we generally eat crap diets. (I also am pretty certain that I am in constant pain because of the amount of sugar that I imbibe, I’m buying into that). Less lung cancer because fewer people smoke.

The death rate has always been higher for African Americans. A lot of it, besides the known stress of being a minority in this country, is due, according to research, to disease caused by Vitamin D deficiencies.

Lots of questions, but in many cases, the truth is out there.
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  CagefreeHenThe Original Sunshine
  11/02/15 8:46pm
  I mean, they *know* why, it’s just bad manners in science to state your opinion because it’s still an assumption.
  
  What they probably said is “more research is needed in these areas...”
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  The Original SunshineCagefreeHen
  11/02/15 8:50pm
  Maybe. My point was that in some of these instance, the research has already been done.
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Mrs.Choate PFLAG GrandmaBrendan O'Connor
11/02/15 8:18pm
When I tell my grandchildren that many Americans not so long ago with only a high school diploma were able to find full-time employment with benefits, buy a house, a car, raise children and retire, they look at me like I am reading them a story about unicorns and magic beans.
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  DrMantisTobogganAtYourServiceMrs.Choate PFLAG Grandma
  11/02/15 8:36pm
  And yet, life is still better for virtually everyone in America. Funny how that worked out.
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  Mrs.Choate PFLAG GrandmaDrMantisTobogganAtYourService
  11/02/15 8:39pm
  Better how?
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GeorgeGeoffersonLivesBrendan O'Connor
11/03/15 1:52am
Welcome to how the rest of us live. You guys were spared so long as you had tons of factory jobs which you could keep for life (thus shutting everyone else out), but now your down with the rest of the dregs having to eke out a living on a shitting-paying secretary job, here, and a shitty-paying retail job, there.

But, hey, “at least your not black.,” right? I mean, you have pre-diabetus, and you’ve on your seventh dead-beat boyfriend, and your pregant daughter and her unemployed boyfriend are living in the basement, and your youngest son is currently suspended for shooting out the windows of your school with a pellet gun, and your 50-something mother who sleeps on a spare couch in the living room is hooked on Oxy after a fall, and you have to go to the food pantry a few times a week for to get dinner and then use your facebook page to troll black people who have to do the same on your local newspaper comments section, and your boss at the bill collection agency you work at hasn’t given you a raise or a promotion in years...but it could be worse; you could be black. At least that’s what you have to han on to, right?

Trump 2016!
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  LauraNorderGeorgeGeoffersonLives
  11/03/15 4:59am
  And we wonder why so many lower-middle-class American’s disdain coastal progressives...
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  GeorgeGeoffersonLivesLauraNorder
  11/03/15 9:08am
  Coastal? Bitch, please. I’m at ground zero of the Rust Belt; these people are my literaly neighbors. They have the same problems everyone else has, yet their shit doesn’t stink as far as they are concerned.
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TerribleRedMonsterBrendan O'Connor
11/02/15 8:22pm
I have to say that, unfortunately, this phenomenon isn’t surprising to me. When peoples’ economic fortunes plummet, or are in turmoil, it’s virtually a foregone conclusion that their mortality rate will increase. My intuition regarding the subject is that much of it comes down to access to quality healthcare. Even with the improvements made to general access under the Affordable Care Act, anyone who lives on the wrong side of the income divide (as I do) can tell you that there are varying and drastically different standards for healthcare in this country. The middle aged white people without college degrees referenced by this article are more likely than their educated counterparts to work shifts that disagree with the body’s natural rhythms, or two work multiple jobs that result in the same effect - disruption of circadian rhythms, decreased overall sleep, increased stress and decreased immune function. Beyond that, these folks are far more likely to earn their livings by the proverbial sweat of their brows, depending on physical labor to make their wages. Employments such as this are far more likely to result in repetitive stress injuries, hernias, and the like than the jobs landed by folks with college educations. This is especially dangerous because the standard of healthcare available to the working poor has a lot more to do with symptom management than it does with actually correcting problems - and that is when meaningful healthcare is available to us at all.
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  The Original SunshineTerribleRedMonster
  11/02/15 8:41pm
  Good point, and everything that you said (I said something similar). 12 hour shifts turned out to be something that my body literally could not handle which ruled me out of being able to drive for a car service in New York.
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  CagefreeHenTerribleRedMonster
  11/02/15 8:45pm
  This is the response I wish I wrote. Yours is the doctoral level to my sociology 300.
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╰(　´◔　ω　◔ `)╯< Woke and BokeBrendan O'Connor
11/02/15 8:16pm
It’s probably because being cucked by minorities causes stress, which leads to arteriosclerosis and ultimately to death. Be be better lovers, White dudes.
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  김치전!╰(　´◔　ω　◔ `)╯< Woke and Boke
  11/02/15 8:40pm
  Pfft, like white dudes aren’t getting off on being shamed for their micropenises.
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  Armageddon T. Thunderbird김치전!
  11/02/15 9:00pm
  If you could point at it and giggle, that would be swell.
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