[triviatise]

Despair is the absence of hope. People have been given an unrealistic view of what life should be and when it is so much worse than their expectations they fall into despair.

The media hurts because we are exposed to the "lifestyles of the rich and famous". Im gen X which seems to have the suicide problem. Gen X was raised with "greed is good" and glamorized miami vice. That is a hollow empty promise even when fulfilled.

I think another of the key problems is a lack of life philosophy (spirituality?) where people can find meaning in their lives outside of material goods. This is partially due to the death of religion. There also is a lack of understanding that life is fundamentally unfair and there somehow is the expectation that it should be fair. Without religion people are missing a clear moral compass that guides their life to find meaning. There needs to be a new modern philosophy that has moral underpinnings, but incorporates science, without necessarily having a deity.

Finally, children (including my generation) have been sheltered from lifes daily challenges by being given too much. I suspect when they become adults they simply can't handle what their lives actually are.

I think the current generation of kids are being raised to try to change the world and to seek meaning in helping other people. However they are also being raised to think that life should be fair and they are going to be bitterly disappointed.

[airza]

The material conditions of life have been annihilated in the areas that have been ravaged by the opioid epidemic. My brother died of a drug overdose on one of them, and it wasn't because of a lack of moral underpinning. It was because almost nobody who is born and grows up in one will ever have a chance of a stable life. No steady access to income, healthcare or a chance of escaping the working class. Hoping for the chance to lead a stable middle class life isn't a moral failing.

[triviatise]

Im sorry about your brother.

I never said it was a moral failing. What I did say is that people lack a values system to find meaning in their life. Even if you are poor, you can find meaning in your life, yet our society is completely geared around material goods= meaning. Religion used to fill that role.

That hole is often times filled with meaningless partying that can include experimentation with drugs. Of course many people get addicted via actual prescriptions. I havent done much research, but the article below suggests that few people are getting addicted via prescriptions.

why do people start using opioids in the first place?

https://tonic.vice.com/en_us/article/a3z98b/big-pharma-didnt...

<<The research actually shows that people who developed new addictions in recent years were overwhelmingly not pain patients. Instead, they were mainly friends, relatives, and others to whom those pills were diverted—typically young people. Among the older patients, many who appeared to be newly addicted had actually relapsed or never recovered from prior addictions: some faked pain to get pills from well-meaning doctors; others got them from pill mills where shady physicians wrote prescriptions for cash.>>

[bilbo0s]

Condolences with regard to your brother.

I'm just not sure that all of this is down to material prosperity?

Blacks and hispanics have been much more poor, with far fewer prospects, for much longer, and yet this suicide and opioid overdose issue seems to affect whites disproportionately. That suggests maybe two things, either blacks and hispanics have been poor for so long that they are accustomed to it, or the suicide rate doesn't have as much to do with material prosperity as you seem to suggest.

It could have to do with material prosperity, I'm not saying you're definitely wrong. I'm just pointing out the fact that there is evidence, in black and hispanic poverty rates, that agitates against that explanation.