OpSec made a major mistake today...

If you were concerned about your friend overdosing on drugs then it sounds like you might have done the right thing. Is there such thing as calling paramedics or an ambulance in China or do you have to call the police?

It truly sounds Orwellian given you might face penalties for accessing Twitter.

My internal response to this is to always help your friends no matter what the tyrants tell you. But I live in the US so maybe easier said than done. You know your Opsec levels and threats better than we do. It sucks your friend was possibly overdosing. Sorry to hear that.

@Untagged8
He and I are from different provinces, and I only have his WeChat ID. The police can use their cyber-policing division to query their databases and track him down—he’s probably already had the police show up at his door by now. Also, China restricts access to the international internet (the Great Firewall, or GFW, blocks TCP connections, though I2P’s UDP protocol can bypass this). I personally use a self-hosted Tor bridge to get around the restrictions; I also have a VPN (specifically, one based on the Xray core, using my own domain name with SSL/TLS encryption). I’ve already reported the situation to the police—they might not have immediately realized the platform involved was Twitter, but since I’m a minor (15 years old), I’ll likely just get a warning. Honestly, I feel that the only real upside to living in China is the sense of safety (since the laws are so strict that few people dare to cause trouble). Furthermore, while it is possible to sync the Monero blockchain from within China, I always use a VPN—I’m terrified that the cyber-police might figure it out and show up at my doorstep, shouting, "Open the door!"

As for my friend, he did indeed overdose—he took an excessive amount of Pregabalin. He’s been using large doses of psychoactive medication to chase a high—much like someone would use marijuana or cocaine—which is highly addictive and, crucially, carries a high risk of death. I didn’t want him to die; he’s a good friend of mine, so I felt I had no choice but to call the police. I needed them to track him down and show up at his door—to shout, "Open the door!"—just to make sure he was still alive.