On Reddit, Intimate Glimpses of Addicts in Thrall to Opioids
By Reddit standards, the forums are tiny — about 13,000 unique users posted on the buying
and selling group over the past four years, some of them overlapping with the nearly 38,000 subscribers to the forum Ms. Helton Mitchell moderates.
“Some people might see it as a dysfunctional one, but it’s a support group,” said Ms. Helton Mitchell, a former heroin addict.
In a statement, a Reddit representative said that using the site “as a marketplace for illegal goods
and services will get users and communities banned from Reddit.”
The company said it evaluates violations of its user agreement case by case,
but did not explain why the opiate-buying forum had escaped detection from Reddit and law enforcement for at least four years.
One of the packages went to a Reddit user calling herself jelllly, who wrote a tribute to Ms. Helton Mitchell two years ago.
Her group — which shares stories about scoring drugs
and getting high, and discusses struggles with relapse, recovery and family — can save lives, she said in an interview.
“And usually I would get some opiates for taking them.”
Tracey Helton Mitchell, a volunteer moderator of the “opiates” discussion group,
doesn’t sugarcoat what’s going on: People talk about drug use in Reddit forums.