There was a tremendous amount of unemployment during the Great Depression - far worse than now. Sure, opioids weren't as available, so people didn't turn to them. (Alcohol, on the other hand...)
But I think a lot of what people did then was turn to each other. They had deeper relationships with people than (many) people do today. Sure, you've got two hundred Facebook friends. How many of them can you call at 3 AM because your marriage is about to fall apart, or because you're feeling suicidal? Technology has given us more relationships, but I think that in the process, we've lost much of the depth. That leaves a huge hole, because people are wired to connect to people. We crave human contact, and we get tweets. It's not enough.
So my suspicion is that we're turning to opioids to try to fill that void. But as I said, this is just my suspicion.
I don't know, I see young people taking to each other about suicidal thoughts and making support groups do each other all the time. Teenagers making Discord chats where they can talk about how their families are abusive and they want to kill themselves, Skype chats where young adults discuss obscure chronic illnesses that the rest of the world can't empathize with them for.
Fair enough. Technology allows people to connect who would not have been able to in the past. But I still claim that, for the average (or perhaps median) person, the net result has been dehumanizing - it has resulted in less depth of relationship.
There was a tremendous amount of unemployment during the Great Depression - far worse than now. Sure, opioids weren't as available, so people didn't turn to them. (Alcohol, on the other hand...)
But I think a lot of what people did then was turn to each other. They had deeper relationships with people than (many) people do today. Sure, you've got two hundred Facebook friends. How many of them can you call at 3 AM because your marriage is about to fall apart, or because you're feeling suicidal? Technology has given us more relationships, but I think that in the process, we've lost much of the depth. That leaves a huge hole, because people are wired to connect to people. We crave human contact, and we get tweets. It's not enough.
So my suspicion is that we're turning to opioids to try to fill that void. But as I said, this is just my suspicion.