> Why would people abuse opioids en masse unlike anywhere else in the world? They must be living genuinely traumatic and desperate lives, in which there is little healthcare, so they have to self-medicate the terror away. But what is so desperate about them? Well, consider another example: the “nomadic retirees”. They live in their cars. They go from place to place, season after season, chasing whatever low-wage work they can find — spring, an Amazon warehouse, Christmas, Walmart.<p>These traveling workers in many ways were an involuntary Oxy distribution as teens would raid their grandparents medicine cabinets (as well as other thiefs who would going looking for anything).<p>If true, the way the conflation of events can transpire always amaze me.