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