[HN Gopher] I am a heroin user. I do not have a drug problem
___________________________________________________________________
I am a heroin user. I do not have a drug problem
Author : CapitalistCartr
Score : 238 points
Date : 2021-02-18 12:23 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (m.nautil.us)
(TXT) w3m dump (m.nautil.us)
| mmlkrx wrote:
| There is a subreddit called /r/MuseumOfReddit that is "dedicated
| to cataloguing the posts and comments that will go down in reddit
| history."
|
| One of the more chilling posts on there[1] is the account of a
| user who randomly tried Heroin one day, got addicted within 2
| weeks, overdosed and was clinically dead within a month, got
| revived and admitted, came clean, then posted an update to his
| story 7 years later.
|
| I would personally suggest trying meditation first before trying
| opioids to alter consciousness and feel euphoric.
|
| [1]
| https://www.reddit.com/r/MuseumOfReddit/comments/68srty/spon...
| amvalo wrote:
| Fake story -- that's way too fast.
| mmlkrx wrote:
| You're correct, he actually overdosed roughly a year after
| his first use of heroin, not a month like I remembered:
|
| >I overdosed on a combination of (mostly) fentanyl, plus I
| had a lot of diphenhydramine, pregabalin, temezepam, and
| maybe some lingering oxymorphone in my system. I stopped
| breathing with several fentanyl patches in my mouth (they
| were previously used and I thought they had much less left in
| them) partially blocking my airway and would have been dead
| dead if I was found 10 minutes later according to EMS. It
| took multiple shots of Narcan to revive me.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/dw6u0/iama_patient_in.
| ..
| biolurker1 wrote:
| I'm reading Freud book "civilization and it's discontent" and
| he says that some people can experience what others experience
| with substances, only by yoga and meditation. I'm really
| curious cause I have only done "simple yoga" and simple
| meditation like just breathing exercises.
| mavsman wrote:
| He says only 1% to 8% of opioid prescriptions result in addiction
| (and that this is often misreported as being higher). If knew it
| was even this high I would never accept a bottle.
| confidantlake wrote:
| Absolutely. 8% is incredibly high.
| wrongdonf wrote:
| I've lost a close friend to heroin. But the vast majority or
| Vietnam soldiers who were doing heroin overseas stopped using
| without issue after coming home -- an inconvenient truth for the
| chemical-centric model of addiction. In reality, it's deep
| emotional pain or psychological distress that makes the
| difference between a person who gets addicted to drugs and a
| person who doesn't, basically. Like everything else that is
| touched by dogma and epidemiology, this fact has been lost.
| jariel wrote:
| So does your health insurer know, and how much are your premiums?
| Etheryte wrote:
| Even this comment section alone demonstrates that this is a very
| loaded topic and that's one of the main reasons purely logical
| argumentation won't help drive the discussion far. If someone has
| a person close to them that's had (or has) issues with drug
| abuse, it won't be easy to have a neutral discussion on the
| matter. What I find contrasting though, is that this doesn't seem
| to be the case with alcohol abuse. This probably stems from a
| number of reasons, normalization of alcohol being one of the
| largest, but I would also argue that lack of education is
| probably one of the highest contributing factors. Without delving
| into the subject of whether regular heroin use is or isn't
| healthy, as I simply don't know enough about the matter, I think
| it's good to educate people on the topic. Educated people make
| better choices, regardless of what they choose to do in the end.
| mmmBacon wrote:
| I had a group of college friends who started taking heroin in the
| 90's who thought like this. It upset me and I told them so. At
| the time they said I was "being uptight." We fell out over their
| heroin use. About a year later, one of these former friends died
| from an overdose. He was a generous person with a great future
| ahead of him. He's been dead 25 years now. When I think about it
| now, it still saddens me. He missed so much.
| gojomo wrote:
| The article, and "Carl", attribute this sentiment to Professor
| Carl Hart.
|
| But what if it's actually the heroin speaking?
| Noctem wrote:
| It's bizarre to me that he would describe heroin as a "social
| lubricant." I've had the misfortune of attempting to socialize
| with people who were under the influence of heavy opioids and
| "social lubricant" is not how I would describe their vacant
| stares or frequent nodding off.
| m0llusk wrote:
| This is interesting personal testimony. For anyone curious about
| a more scientific view of this issue I would recommend the book
| High Price by Dr. Carl Hart. While it is common for people to
| believe strongly that drugs are bad and addictive, actual
| scientific observation of drug users finds in many cases there is
| little evidence of harm and instead of forming an enduring habit
| they follow a progression which is more like a hobby.
|
| There are plenty of comparisons that might be made, but driving
| seems an apt comparison. Driving is extremely dangerous,
| magnifies even small mistakes, and kills or maims very large
| numbers of people on a regular basis. And yet even with similar
| evidence of harm and habit formation people do not treat driving
| with the same fear but instead face driving with irrational
| positivity and optimism.
|
| Scientists using rigorous observations and mathematical analysis
| do not see drug use and driving as having risk profiles that are
| completely different.
| undecisive wrote:
| I'm assuming that's the same Dr. Carl Hart from this interview?
|
| Driving was my go-to analogy too (I've got a longer post where
| I go into it) Surely there's the concept of legal drugs though
| too? You're allowed to have wine, but not drive at 120 miles
| per hour past school gates.
|
| My feeling is that there's a difference between "safe" and
| "worth the risk". And as far as lawmakers are concerned, for
| most drugs there's not case where it's worth the risks.
| m0llusk wrote:
| Yes, that is the same guy. I misread his name with my early
| morning scanning. Time for some caffeine maybe?
| renewiltord wrote:
| The fascinating thing about this stuff is that you _can_ have
| outlier people. For instance, tobacco is supposed to be highly
| addictive.
|
| Well, I picked up smoking from a girlfriend in college and we
| used to smoke all the time. Like ten cigs a day for a year and a
| half. Real bad, right?
|
| Well, one day, I decided "Meh. I'll just stop" and I did. Not
| because of any reason. I just chose not to.
|
| Now cigarettes are way addictive but I just chose to stop. More
| addictive than Benzos and shit and I just stopped cold turkey
| without any other reason.
|
| Many of my friends struggled with quitting but eventually did.
| But I did it way easy. It's unlikely that I'm some super outlier,
| but clearly I'm some near the right edge of the bell curve in
| ease of exiting cigarette dependence.
|
| That makes me think there are other outliers. This guy must be a
| heroin outlier. And considering the dependence inducing strength
| of that drug, he must be a far outlier.
| chasd00 wrote:
| i remember struggling to start smoking tobacco in 8th grade to
| impress a girl (heh i saw her get sent home for wearing a
| Metallica Kill'Em All concert shirt, I was instantly in love).
|
| I just couldn't stand it the feel of tabacco. Same goes for
| weed, i hung around very heavy smokers all during college but
| just hated the feeling from THC so i never really got into it.
| lamontcg wrote:
| I used to smoke a cigarette or three a year. Get drunk on NYE,
| smoke a couple cigs. Wake up the next day with a hangover and
| have zero impulse to ever touch a cigarette again for another
| year.
|
| I outright abused alcohol early in 2020 because shit got a bit
| cray-cray. Then just stopped because alcohol got boring. Done
| that a lot with alcohol.
|
| Had an experience with Xanax several years ago though and I'm
| not touching that stuff again ever unless I'm terminal (then,
| yes, please). Still managed to identify the onset of addiction
| and stop it before it really got going, but I'm not touching
| that chemical again.
| staunch wrote:
| This is a bit silly. You never developed an addiction to
| cigarettes so you were able to easily quit smoking them. Well,
| yeah, of course.
|
| The hard part is quitting something when you want to but cannot
| make yourself i.e. addictions are what is hard to quit.
|
| The majority of people are able to smoke, drink, eat, and
| fornicate without developing an addiction. The people that
| become addicted are the outliers.
| mattowen_uk wrote:
| The parent comment is being downvoted for some reason, even
| though the viewpoint is exactly the same as the original
| article.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Are the majority of people able to smoke without developing
| an addiction? That's not been my experience growing up. I
| only know three people total who quit cold turkey and I'm
| one.
|
| That's interesting, though.
| neonological wrote:
| In the science of addiction what people have found is that if
| you change your environment you can literally get rid of any
| addiction. The studies from this are from Vietnam.
|
| Experts were expecting an unprecedented heroin epidemic from
| veterans returning from the Vietnam war as drug use among
| soldiers was rampant. Turned out these soldiers came back and
| were no longer addicted. Scientists are guessing the causal
| factor for the loss of addiction was a "change in environment."
| It is literally the same thing that happened to the European
| person who replied to your post. Your brain hard wires
| dependencies to certain drugs but when you change your
| environment it may trigger something in your brain to actually
| unconsciously eliminate these dependencies. This makes
| evolutionary sense.
|
| No doubt about it, people think that the above description
| means that the addiction is some sort of conscious decision. It
| is not the case. Addition is real, but the tricks to get out of
| addiction may be simpler then most people think.
|
| So the question to ask is, when you quit tobacco, were you in
| the process of moving? Were there big changes going on in your
| life that would change the environment around you?
| renewiltord wrote:
| Nothing notable in my case. I'd broken up with the girl
| halfway through the period of using but I was still using
| after.
|
| I know grandpa quit cold turkey after my dad (newly invested
| as a medical doctor) came home and said "You will die of lung
| cancer almost surely if you keep this up". And an uncle quit
| after his 8-year-old daughter (my cousin) said "Papa please.
| I don't want you to die" plaintively or something like that.
|
| I guess some things just change the game for people.
| bane wrote:
| Addiction is an incredibly fascinating endless hole to get
| into, including these outlier folks.
|
| My wife for example has struggled to quit smoking for at least
| 10 years. As in very hardcore struggle.
|
| When I was young my father managed to quit from a 3 pack a day
| habit to nothing cold turkey. But it was obviously pretty tough
| on him during the process and took a couple of years to really
| break out of.
|
| My brother has a pretty bad pot addiction, a relatively
| harmless drug with almost no known chemical mechanism for
| addiction. Yet he can't shake it and it's haunted him his
| entire life.
|
| I'm a bit like you w/r to tobacco. I occasionally smoke cigars
| and have played around with cigarettes from time to time. Once
| I lose interest I just stop and it's over. No urge or desire or
| anything else.
|
| On the other hand, I have a bad day at work and all I want to
| do is shove shit food in my mouth.
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| I have repeatedly tried to stop eating pastries and candy but
| can't do it. I can't imagine how much willpower it takes to
| get off truly addictive drugs.
| mywittyname wrote:
| Sweets can be very addictive.
|
| You addiction might seem trivial in comparison, but you
| could be experiencing something quite similar to someone
| who is addicted to a "hard" substance.
| ecmascript wrote:
| Same here, stopping to smoke was really easy but my candy
| addiction is real hard. It's like day and night for me. I
| struggle and have been struggling in not eating candy for years
| (or at least a lot less) but I have failed each time.
|
| I think different substances are differently addictive to
| people.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Likewise, I found it impossible to quit sugar. Fruits
| especially still ruin me. I'll eat any amount of fruit you
| place before me.
| groby_b wrote:
| With any kind of addiction, it's worth exploring what the
| triggers are. There might well be some underlying emotional
| thing that makes you eat fruit.
|
| For me: I eat cookies because my Mom baked a lot, and I
| lost her early. This is a way to feel close to her. Knowing
| that makes it easier to not eat all the cookies. That
| doesn't mean all addictions are rooted in early childhood
| or psychological symptoms, or that your life gets fixed if
| you just talk about your parents a lot ;) But especially
| with addictions that only create mild physical addiction
| symptoms, it's worth looking at.
| king_panic wrote:
| Sugar is one of the hardest addictions to kick. I've kicked
| cocaine and alcohol too.. sugar was by far the hardest
| physically. It's also hard to stay sober because it's so
| accessible in foods and accepted by society.
| ecmascript wrote:
| Yeah it's like if people would put nicotine in every
| product, it would most likely make smoking harder to quit
| as well.
| nickthemagicman wrote:
| My dad quit smoking cold turkey one day and never thought about
| it again, my mom smoked until she died of lung cancer, she
| would take the oxygyn mask off to take a puff.
|
| It's bizzarre the genetic/environmental differences in
| addiction.
| bserge wrote:
| Indeed, it's very dependent on the individual. Nicotine has me
| by the balls, very firmly. Alcohol even more so, it's something
| that I'm trying to quit for over a decade to no success.
|
| Cannabis? Smoked for months every day, decided it wasn't for me
| and that was it. Same for many other chemicals, including
| cocaine. I just... stopped.
|
| I feel like I could stop nicotine intake within a few weeks.
| Could be wrong about it. But not alcohol, that's the number 1
| enemy. Every time I think about it, there's an insane urge to
| drink some, it's insane.
|
| I mean, I literally have access to something with effects
| between alcohol and cannabis, yet I go with alcohol.
| Ridiculous.
| confidantlake wrote:
| That is interesting because alcohol was extremely easy for me
| to quit. I decided at the start of last year to not drink for
| a year and that was that. Haven't hadn't a drink since last
| January. But 2 weeks without my morning decaf coffee, oh boy
| was that hard.
| AntiImperialist wrote:
| Nicotine helps calm down anxiety. People with anxiety disorders
| get addicted to it because when they do it, the anxiety
| subsides. The anxiety starts setting in once the effect wears
| out. One doesn't get addicted to it right away because it takes
| time for the body to model what is this thing that is helping
| it and how it is getting access to it it. Once the body finds
| out, it seeks cigarettes; usually the body "overfits" and
| thinks it needs a particular brand of cigarette... and reliance
| on a particular brand is a problem, one can switch to another
| one by alternating with the brand you want to switch to... you
| can use the same strategy to switch to vaping or other nicotine
| delivery mechanisms.
|
| For people with no existing anxiety disorders, like you, there
| is no significant effect so the body doesn't bother seeking it.
|
| Same is true for any other drug addictions. They work by
| suppressing trauma or sadness or depression... and when the
| effect wears out, people need it again because the extreme
| emotions that were being suppressed come back with a bang.
| [deleted]
| foobiekr wrote:
| I honestly don't think it's actually an outlier issue.
|
| In highschool almost everyone I know got into smoking pot, at
| least for awhile, and within a year or two 90+% of them just
| lost interest in it, maybe 5% kept using and maybe a quarter of
| them literally made pot the center of their lives and are still
| daily users with big impact on their lives and careers (or,
| honestly, lack thereof for all but one). The same thing
| happened with alcohol.
|
| As an adult, I've seen the same pattern repeat for people who
| just didn't try things, for whatever reason, or perhaps people
| who changed.
|
| What's actually happening, IMHO, is that you have a ton of
| overlapping processes that are filtering for with people who
| are vulnerable to becoming addicted to a given drug. Obviously
| those people will have trouble quitting.
| [deleted]
| umvi wrote:
| There most certainly are outliers, and you are likely one of
| them for nicotine at least. What you want to avoid though is
| using your outlier status to influence people into thinking
| "hey, maybe I'm an outlier too, maybe I can use highly
| addictive substances and still stay in control too" because
| statistically that's going to end in a public health disaster.
| hellohello1 wrote:
| Pretty much. My mom's soon-to-be-former partner had been an
| alcoholic previous to their relationship and was clean when
| they met. She got him some whisky for Christmas and figured
| it would be fine if he drank a little, because its never been
| a problem for her. Big mistake.
|
| People are very very different in their drug tolerances and
| really shouldn't give advice to other people, because they
| are not the same.
| goat_whisperer wrote:
| Yeah, I mean some people smoke all of their lives and live to
| be 90 and die of natural causes. Doesn't mean that smoking
| isn't incredibly dangerous and bad for you.
|
| edit: this is agreement with the original comment, not sure why
| I'm being down voted. Just highlighting how outliers can exist,
| but it doesn't reflect on the danger of the underlying activity
| in general
| datavirtue wrote:
| I practically tried to get addicted to cigarettes about 20+
| years ago. Smoked quite a bit but could never quite cozy up to
| an addiction. The taste and smell was really bothering me so I
| just quit. Most of the people I know who smoked, never quit,
| and did various hard drug cocktails are all dead from heroine
| overdoses. I experimented with nearly every drug (no heroine,
| by they time that was available it was not something I would
| consider trying) but never formed an opiate or cocaine habit.
| king_panic wrote:
| The argument the author is making is that addiction is an
| outlier. Many many many people drink, snort cocaine, smoke
| cigarettes and in the author's case, use heroin, and never
| develop addiction.
|
| I can understand why this infuriates people who've seen or
| known people who've died from an addiction but it's important
| for people to understand that alcohol, drugs, gambling,
| facebook, the internet, shopping, and everything that can turn
| into an addiction are not the problem. The problem is deep
| emotional pain from traumatic experiences.
| ta8645 wrote:
| You had me until your last sentence. There are people who are
| born with huge lung capacity, they are able to swim faster
| and longer than anyone else. We would never believe that it's
| emotional pain that is keeping everyone else from swimming as
| well. And people are born colorblind, they don't lose that
| ability because of emotional pain. Physics and our individual
| body chemistry at birth plays a deep role in our unique life
| experiences. There's every reason to suspect the same
| mechanism affects addiction proclivity.
| renlo wrote:
| I think OP is saying that trauma leads to addiction, not
| necessarily the act itself; ie, shopping addicts are
| addicted to shopping because of past trauma not necessarily
| because of the act of shopping itself. As a prior nicotine
| addict I don't necessarily agree with this, as I have felt
| firsthand what the addictiveness nicotine feels like and I
| don't believe it's psychological (and, it seems like heroin
| may be similar)
| datavirtue wrote:
| If you have lower dopamine levels watching TV can be
| enough to get addicted. Any opiate is going to grab you.
| Some people cannot stop watching TV as it bumps up the
| pleasure enough for them to feel normal or not
| depressive. Some people get from seeing comments/likes on
| their FB posts.
| king_panic wrote:
| Look up Gabor Mate
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| Take a look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park .
| It's not conclusively relevant to humans, but it does at
| the very least cast doubt on the models historically used
| to understand addiction.
| Cederfjard wrote:
| I think it makes sense that people who, due to trauma or
| other lived experiences ( _in addition_ to those who are
| genetically predisposed), have a brain chemistry that
| leaves them not feeling as well as they could, would be
| more vulnerable to getting addicted to substances that make
| them feel better (or "normal", even).
| jimz wrote:
| I don't know why you'd assume you're the outlier. Never mind
| the differences between physical and psychological dependence
| and problem use (which can happen without dependence, and one
| can be dependent but not using problematically), you personally
| experienced underwhelming withdrawal effects on multiple drugs
| that don't all affect the same parts of your brain, and some
| more physically addictive than others (benzos on top of that
| list). As for your friends, you know about their struggles
| because they had struggles in the first place. Just as the news
| doesn't report things when nothing bad happens, it's unlikely
| that, with the potential of stigmatization and jailtime, most
| people would volunteer something that caused them no issues but
| can only cause issues if they let it be known. If I were in
| your shoes I'd not assume that you and this guy happens to be
| the outliers, but rather, selection bias, the well-documented
| history of our drug laws being based on racial panics (Chinese
| for opiates, cocaine for African-Americans, marijuana for
| Mexicans, the crack sentencing disparity, et cetera) that
| happens to fund a lot of the economy via the prison-industrial
| complex, it's not much of a leap to think that a great deal of
| the harm linked to drug use is linked really to the various
| behavior undertaken to hide from detection and not necessarily
| from the drugs themselves, most of which - diamorphine included
| - are classified as having some medical use somewhere, although
| for whatever reason MDMA and marijuana are classified as having
| none. I think it's not hard to buy into the idea that
| problematic use is not the outlier because that's been taught
| to us for decades. But if your personal experience doesn't
| indicate that, why jump directly to thinking that you're the
| odd man out?
| renewiltord wrote:
| A fair question. I haven't thought about it deeply. But
| smoking is a very social habit. No one hides the smoking. And
| it's really hard to hide because smokers have a sharp odour
| that's really hard to mask. So among the people I know, I
| know the smokers (or knew, since vaping wasn't common when I
| was young and had the habit).
|
| So I guess I had a pretty good hold on what the population of
| smokers was, and so I know most struggled to quit.
|
| As for the other drugs, yeah, I'm open to thinking otherwise.
| I have lots of friends who recreationally use cocaine, MDMA,
| LSD, mushrooms, and whatever else. Personally I've tried all
| of those and really just use shrooms now occasionally1. No
| particular addictions there among my group of friends, so I'm
| open to your school of thought there.
|
| 1 Cocaine is boring. MDMA is great. LSD is cool. Shrooms has
| massive therapeutic effects for me. I can skip my Adderall
| for two weeks after a trip. I feel so motivated to work and
| find it trivial to focus.
| nostromo wrote:
| I think it's selection bias.
|
| Lots and lots of living people have smoked at some point.
| However, many (most?) of those people quit smoking at some
| point.
|
| So, the remaining people are the people that are most
| addicted, which gives us the impression that tobacco is
| highly addictive for everyone.
|
| Edit: the CDC says that 62% of people who have ever smoked
| have quit.
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/ces
| s...
| renewiltord wrote:
| The part that breaks that is that in the population I'm
| talking about, I have known the people continuously from
| age 15 to age 34. Twenty years continuously, over 20
| people. No one ever tried to hide the habit (hiding your
| smoking is a thing no one did 20 years ago). So I can
| observe this population fixedly and not suffer from
| survival bias.
|
| It _could_ be selection bias. Maybe I hang out with other
| people with addiction potential because of who I am. But
| it 's definitely not survival bias (which is sort of what
| the rest of your comment talks about). The thing that
| makes it unlikely and the article's premise unlikely is
| that the weight of evidence is on this stuff being
| addictive.
|
| But, you know, I'm a huge fan of the therapeutic effects
| of many scheduled drugs, so I'm open to the idea that
| addiction works differently from currently understood.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| That doesn't mean quitting was easy for them.
| cafard wrote:
| Considering only tobacco, I'd assume he is an outlier. I'd
| assume so because of the many quite intelligent people who
| started smoking before the Surgeon General's warning, tried
| to quit after it, maybe eventually quit after a dozen years
| of work, maybe never did.
|
| Back during one of the big buyouts of ca. 1980, an executive
| of KKR explained why it was buying some cigarette company:
| You make it for a dime, you sell it for a dollar, and people
| are addicted to it.
| Kaze404 wrote:
| > Well, one day, I decided "Meh. I'll just stop" and I did. Not
| because of any reason. I just chose not to.
|
| My girlfriend smoked for almost a decade and did the same thing
| as you, including drinking. She's been 2 years clean.
| blamestross wrote:
| Nicotine is well established as a nootropic and use of it
| correlates with reduced incidence of dementia (even when
| corrected for mortality biases). I am at a really high risk for
| dementia and I keep trying to vape in hopes of that (possible)
| benefit but I keep forgetting to do it. Note that the logic for
| your health choices get weird when accounting for high odds of
| being a zombie after the age of 65. Plenty of room to dump
| externalities onto "zombie-you"
| zappo2938 wrote:
| This video about our primate cousins, the alcoholic vervet
| monkeys in St. Kitts, might give some insight into addiction.
| [0]
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSm7BcQHWXk
| renewiltord wrote:
| Very cool. Thanks.
| tshaddox wrote:
| I did the same thing. In fact, everyone I know who successfully
| quit smoking for a long time quit the same way. I'm not really
| sure that proves that cigarettes were any less addictive for
| you, unless you're saying you never had any significant craving
| or desire to resume.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Interesting. None of my friends smoke any more, with the last
| having quit two years ago after a long struggle and then
| reading Alan Carr's book and working with patches and gum.
| Cold turkey quitting hasn't been the norm. Most have tapered
| off.
|
| And no, I don't really even 'want' a cigarette. I know what
| addiction is, in that I feel this strong pull towards sweet
| stuff. I _must_ have any kind of dessert, and if I see a
| novel food, I _must_ eat it. I just must. It 's like a fugue
| state. Try as I might I fall. Also with online validation for
| comments I write or stories I tell. The dopamine hit from an
| upvote has a debilitating hold on me.
|
| But with no drugs have I felt this desire. Not even shrooms
| which I enjoy or MDMA which has been my all time favourite. I
| have some shrooms and some LSD in my fridge so I can partake
| any time. I just don't.
|
| I'm amenable to the Rat Park hypothesis too. Maybe it's all
| Rat Park stuff.
| yters wrote:
| There is a possibility that drugs being illegal has resulted in
| many less addicted and dead drug users. Supposedly, prohibition
| back in the day was quite successful keeping people from becoming
| alcoholics.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| This guy's whole viewpoint seems to be pinned on "it's not
| addiction if it's not negatively affecting the rest of your life"
| (yes, I know this is a major criteria for a lot of medical
| diagnosis, addiction included).
|
| The problem is that what it takes "negatively affect the rest of
| your life" depends a lot on what role you have in society.
|
| Short of pornography producer, fantasy fiction author, songwriter
| and other professions where copious drug use fit one's "brand
| image" or potentially enhance one's work, a tenured college
| professor gets about about as much leeway from the rest of
| society as a white collar professional can get. He can be
| "eccentric" and nobody blinks twice. But for other professions
| the standards of behavior are different (and generally get more
| permissive as you go down the economic ladder).
|
| Defining the difference between acceptable use and addiction, and
| by proxy who's problems are bad enough to be considered problems
| and therefore in need of solving in a way that is relative to
| one's place in society is very dangerous. If you're blind in one
| eye you're still blind in one eye even if it doesn't negatively
| affect you. Addiction (and a multitude of other conditions) are
| the same.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _a tenured college professor gets about about as much leeway
| from the rest of society as a white collar professional can
| get_
|
| Doesn't this bolster the argument that the principal damage
| from this type of drug use is social, not chemical?
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >Doesn't this bolster the argument that the principal damage
| from this type of drug use is social, not chemical?
|
| Most people would rather not be debilitated than have society
| be accommodating.
| altcognito wrote:
| A better way to say that is that if the tenured professor
| accidentally takes 5mg more, or has an off day, he doesn't
| kill somebody while driving a truck, or someone who programs
| a circuit wrong and causes a dump of chemical into a water
| supply.
| wuxb wrote:
| The time axis is incomplete. It's just 5 years "without
| problem".
| vmchale wrote:
| > This guy's whole viewpoint seems to be pinned on "it's not
| addiction if it's not negatively affecting the rest of your
| life" (yes, I know this is a major criteria for a lot of
| medical diagnosis, addiction included).
|
| That's what distinguishes dependency from addiction.
|
| I think he's glossing over the fact that some drugs can be
| addictive, which is a thing on its own, aside from promoting
| happiness.
| pessimizer wrote:
| This is not about refusing people treatment who want it, this
| is about not forcing treatment on people who don't.
| mcguire wrote:
| " _Hart reports that more than 70 percent of drug users--whether
| they use alcohol, cocaine, prescription medications, or heroin--
| do not meet the health criteria for drug addiction._ "
|
| One would hope that would be well over 99%, given how many use
| asperin/acetaminophen/etc, caffeine, alcohol, nicotine, and so
| forth.
| marcosscriven wrote:
| He states he's been a regular user for five years AMD is not
| addicted. I'll believe him when he writes an article saying he
| just happened to not have it for at least several months just
| because he decided to.
| lqet wrote:
| > One of the major reasons people can't overcome it is because
| we're not very good at treating addiction in this country.
|
| I am often wondering about how addiction "feels". I don't
| consider myself being addicted to anything, and always wonder how
| an addiction actually manifests itself. Is it a pain? Is it
| comparable to being extremely hungry or thirsty?
|
| Slightly related: a few years ago, I overheard a conversation
| between a fairly large woman and a child. The child said that it
| was hungry. The woman said: "Oh yes, that hurts". That struck me
| as odd, because even after eating nothing for 1-2 days, I never
| actually felt pain when I was hungry. It was surprising to me
| that some people seem to do, and it would have certainly
| explained why the woman was so heavy: I, too, would of course eat
| much more if being hungry was painful.
| Geee wrote:
| I'd say that cigarette addiction doesn't really feel like
| anything. Mostly it's just like a feeling that you forgot
| something. Or a feeling that you didn't complete your to-do
| list. Then you get satisfaction when you're able to complete
| it.
| darkerside wrote:
| Former smoker. You also get increasingly annoyed at anyone
| and everyone until you get to check off that box. Nothing
| feels complete, none of life's little victories or big
| disasters, until you've had a smoke to commemorate it.
|
| To me, it always felt like there was something like a little
| pebble be stuck in my brain and there was only one way to get
| it out. Not physically, but in terms of how it affected me
| mentally.
| entropie wrote:
| > I am often wondering about how addiction "feels"
|
| It highly depends on the "thing" (it must not really be a
| thing). I would say "its the desire to plug a hole".
|
| Do you drink tea? Why dont you drink tea without sugar? There
| are lots of answers to this question. It can be "it tastes
| better". Thats what your mind is telling you. It probably would
| be more healthier to drink tea without sugar but you still add
| sugar to it.
|
| Thats addiction. And there are tons of other examples and its
| hard to determine it for every case. Addictions are deeply
| implemented in our brains. Eating, the urge to be close to
| people, getting complemented for things you do, all this is
| kind of an addictional behaivour.
|
| Drugs can basically fill this already existing but empty
| receptors more efficient. Then your brain tells you to do it
| again. It will find reasons.
|
| That was harder to explain than i thought. I hope it makes
| sense.
| lqet wrote:
| But certainly it is much harder for an alcoholic to stop
| drinking, than for me to stop putting sugar in coffee or tea?
| I actually did that 15 years ago because I was too lazy to
| buy sugar. It tasted strange for 4-5 cups, then I was
| accustomed.
| entropie wrote:
| Alcohol is very addictive. Its one of the few drugs that
| can actually kill you on cold turkey. Your body will sign
| that it wants it and it feels very bad.
|
| I generally tried to explain what addiction is and what it
| feels like. It really depends on the matter.
| hnick wrote:
| A guy I knew in college told me not smoking for him was like
| not eating. Not physically in the stomach, but those same urges
| and feelings that you'd better do something about it soon
| because it's important. It becomes the main thing you're
| thinking about until it's resolved and anything or anyone that
| gets in the way annoys you.
|
| Hunger never hurt me, but I used to give into it quickly
| because it distracted me a lot and I enjoyed cooking and
| eating. The first time I dieted intensively it took about 5
| days but I mostly stopped feeling it. It was more of a notice
| "probably a good time to eat" than a strong urge anymore. It
| was easy to reframe in my mind as a positive - this is the
| feeling of fat evaporating! Getting to that point can be tough
| though.
| [deleted]
| kenniskrag wrote:
| do you drink coffee or soft drinks? Try not to drink them for 2
| weeks.
| ChrisRR wrote:
| Speaking as someone who cut out caffeine cold turkey, it's a
| different thing
|
| I got stinking headaches for a week, but not an overwhelming
| urge to drink caffeine
|
| When smokers quit, they almost always describe the urge to
| smoke rather than the physical side effects, often described
| more like hunger.
| monadic3 wrote:
| There's got to be more to this because even though I consume
| prolific amounts of caffeine I do not experience any pain on
| cessation. Yet, many of my coworkers do feel this pain.
| arsome wrote:
| I've done this several times, I have a headache for 24-48
| hours then pretty much back to normal. Tolerance takes longer
| to reset obviously and I'm sure I get more energetic in
| subtle ways I'm unaware of in there... but I don't think it's
| remotely comparable to a serious addiction, from what I've
| read tobacco is probably the most widely accepted thing able
| to cause that level of addiction.
| darkerside wrote:
| The worst is over after a couple of days off cigarettes
| too, but there's a thick trail for a couple of weeks and a
| long thin tail for a couple of years.
| varjag wrote:
| You don't get cramps from nicotine withdrawal, it's more a
| nagging discomfort and unease.
| ishmaeel wrote:
| I was a smoker for several decades. I would describe being away
| from a cigarette as "an acute feeling of thirst, but in your
| chest."
|
| And when you decide to quit, it takes quite a while before you
| stop feeling that strange thirst.
| nemo44x wrote:
| Good way of putting it. It's in the chest for sure. I've
| always thought of it as something missing in your chest - a
| type of emptiness. "Thirst" is a good metaphor.
| tmp-20210218 wrote:
| for heroin it's ... hard to describe? one thing about heroin
| though is it is motivating as hell, at least in terms of
| motivation to _obtain heroin_ and you're going to do stuff
| that ranges from ill advised to ... very ill advised? anyway,
| thing i discovered is that if you stop taking the stuff, it
| takes a long time to find a replacement motivation. e.g.
| found myself waking up, discovering i didn't have an
| immediate need for heroin, and then, well that's it. nothing
| important to do here. it was ... annoying? fucking terrible?
| still is, so there's that.
| aminozuur wrote:
| Addiction is rooted in truama. It's almost impossible to become
| an addicted if you didn't have to endure (childhood) trauma. So
| addiction is often an attempt of escaping, or soothing that
| pain.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _Addiction is rooted in truama. It 's almost impossible to
| become an addicted if you didn't have to endure (childhood)
| trauma._
|
| Sounds like pop psychology. There are tons of extremely
| addictive substances.
|
| Try one and you will get addicted after a while, even if your
| whole childhood was hugs and roses and ponies.
| arsome wrote:
| I'm not sure, I agree it sounds like pop psych crap and
| you'll develop physical dependence of course, but I suspect
| there's a big difference between people who can pick up
| smoking weed on a weekly or monthly basis recreationally
| and people who find a need to be high every waking minute
| of their day. People who take to drinking a bottle of vodka
| for breakfast and those who keep it to the odd occasion. I
| don't see why we wouldn't see similar for other, even more
| physically addictive drugs.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _but I suspect there 's a big difference between people
| who can pick up smoking weed on a weekly or monthly basis
| recreationally and people who find a need to be high
| every waking minute of their day._
|
| Maybe, but why would it be due to childhood trauma alone?
|
| I can imagine someone with a happy childhood and a big
| 20-something or 30-something trauma (loss, divorce,
| various other issues) falling for drugs/alcohol addiction
| for the first time just the same.
| aminozuur wrote:
| Veterans who are given an opioid for pain, rarely got
| addicted if they had a warm and loving childhood, and lived
| a life with community and friends.
|
| Veterans who had many Adverse Childhood Experiences (A high
| ACE score), such as coming from a broken home, or faced
| neglect and isolation growing up, were much more likely to
| become addicted to the opioids they were given to treat
| pain.
| ChrisRR wrote:
| Got a source for that?
| coldtea wrote:
| > _Veterans who had many Adverse Childhood Experiences (A
| high ACE score), such as coming from a broken home, or
| faced neglect and isolation growing up, were much more
| likely to become addicted to the opioids they were given
| to treat pain._
|
| Veterans at that stage are also usually young, so if they
| came from a broken home, or had isolation growing up,
| they'd still return to something like that.
|
| What about veterans that have build a succesful family
| and working life in between (aside from having had
| childhood trauma)?
| darkerside wrote:
| I'd say it's much more likely related to their existing
| support network (which is correlated to childhood
| situation). See the Rat Park study.
|
| Do you have any evidence as basis for your theory?
| gundisclosed wrote:
| When source of addiction is not fulfilled for a long time it
| can have different effects on different individuals. It is not
| a generalised "feeling".
|
| Some people might feel a drive to do something completely non-
| rational, some might go into depression, some might even feel
| hungry.
| [deleted]
| rmac wrote:
| there could be some underlying pain or trauma or anxiety, and
| when you find a chemical that obfuscates it, your brain goes
| "oh I like this new feeling", and you start using that chemical
| as a way to mute the negative, often without realizing it OR
| realizing those underlying issues even exist.
|
| then, the press secretary in your brain (the thing between your
| subconscious & conscious mind) goes into hyper-rationalization
| (denial) mode and you start to defend the amount and type of
| chemicals you use, even when they are literally killing you and
| those around you
|
| If you're asking about what physical or psychological
| withdrawal from a drug feels like, it depends on the person,
| the chemical, and other variables. The worst opiates (Suboxone
| / Methadone) have 6 month+ withdrawal symptoms, and the faster
| ones are ~7 days. Hellish times. However, while abstinence
| frees you from withdrawal symptoms, unless the underlying
| mental issues are addressed it's likely you'll go back to the
| very same substance that got you here.
| aktiur wrote:
| Ever read a good book, or played a video game, and known that
| you have to stop now but thought "I'll just read another
| chapter / play one more turn"?
|
| I would say that's basically how addiction manifests itself:
| even if you know that you're dealing with substance abuse, come
| on, one more time won't matter, will it?
|
| And then there's also the comfort aspect: you're getting back
| from a hard day's work, you're feeling tired and cranky, you do
| deserve something nice, don't you?
|
| N.B.: I'm not saying that not being able to drop the book or
| stop playing that game IS addiction, just that substance
| addiction might feel the same way.
|
| N.B. 2:And I'm not talking here about the medical aspects of
| withdrawal, because that's not the thing an addict would
| usually experience (withdrawal would only happen because you're
| trying to stop or cannot get access to the substance you need).
| Xenoamorphous wrote:
| Like trying not to scratch an itch.
| curtisblaine wrote:
| Addiction to smoking is like a mixture of itch and thirst, to a
| certain extent. You can get other psychological symptoms, like
| irritability and anxiety, or physical ones, like headache, but
| mainly it's this continuous need of absorbing the substance,
| that never goes away. A bit like when you're itching and you
| can't scratch, or you're thirsty and you can't drink.
| throwaway0asdfg wrote:
| > Is it comparable to being extremely hungry or thirsty
|
| Not for me. I used to be a smoker and alcoholic.
|
| For smoking, I just felt uneasy without it, like idk when
| you're anxiously waiting for something important.
|
| That's the physical dependence and was only the first two weeks
| and relatively easy to overcome. I got dizzy and other
| withdrawal symptoms but you can fight through that for a couple
| of weeks. The other part is the ritual to it. E.g. like most
| people probably brush their teeth once a day, smoking after
| eating is just something you do, give in once and you're back
| to physical dependence.
|
| Alcohol was different for me. Self medication. Once i solved
| the issues i was medicating (insomnia and stress) i... just
| stopped drinking and never missed it. The biggest adjustment
| here was getting used to not being drunk and figuring out what
| to do with all the time i had now.
| konfusinomicon wrote:
| It depends on the addiction. Opiate addiction comes along with
| flu like symptoms, insomnia, restless legs/arms AKA crazy legs,
| and an ever present anxiety that you really really want some
| that will make you do some weird shit just to get it. Other
| addictions are more subtle, some worse, but all of them I've
| experienced have the same feeling of stress/anxiety that can
| only be cured by the vice they are caused by. Many are all in
| your head, or, can be overcome by willpower, but definitely not
| opiates
| vmchale wrote:
| > Opiate addiction comes along with flu like symptoms,
| insomnia, restless legs/arms AKA crazy legs, and an ever
| present anxiety that you really really want some that will
| make you do some weird shit just to get it. ... Many are all
| in your head, or, can be overcome by willpower, but
| definitely not opiates
|
| Sure, but one can be dependent on e.g. SSRIs or SNRIs. But
| they aren't addictive!
|
| Dependence + addiction is a special problem with opiates, I
| think you can die from withdrawals?
| swirepe wrote:
| The two big dangerous things to withdraw from are alcohol
| and benzodiazepines. Opiates withdrawal won't kill you (but
| you'll want it to)
| DanBC wrote:
| You can't die from opioid withdrawal. It's unpleasant and
| many people need help. But it's not like alcohol dependence
| which can kill people if they stop suddenly.
|
| SSRI/SNRIs can be problematic. The difference is that SSRIs
| tend not to have the other features of dependence:
|
| Seeking the meds when you run low; preoccupation with the
| meds; continuing to take the meds even though you know
| they're doing harm.
| swirepe wrote:
| Addiction controls what you _want_ , regardless of whether you
| like the thing you are addicted to. That's what makes it hard
| to beat by just white-knuckling it; whatever strength or will
| you have gets redirected against you.
|
| You might enjoy some of the accounts in The Realm of Hungry
| Ghosts:
| https://www.google.com/books/edition/In_the_Realm_of_Hungry_...
| xtracto wrote:
| It happens to me with CocaCola. I have stopped drinking it, but
| when I waz i the process, the cravings it gave me were crazy. I
| NEEDED to have a coke.
|
| Btw, in relation to the article, there was a Reddit user who ar
| some point wanted to "just try" this heroin thing and his
| message history depicts very amazingly hiw he spiraled to
| addiction.
| the_af wrote:
| I'm currently a Coca Cola addict. It's not unbearable, but I
| really have strong cravings regularly. It's not thirst -- I
| don't want water, I specifically want Coca Cola.
|
| This beverage has no redeeming qualities, and I want to kick
| off this habit.
| recny wrote:
| It depends on the drug.
|
| For opiates and benzos it might manifest as stress and
| depression. For uppers, drowsiness and inability to focus.
|
| It's compounded by the fact that the reason you started is
| usually that you suffered from those things to start with.
| viraptor wrote:
| I found this quote pretty strange:
|
| > Despite the current false narrative, the addiction rate among
| people prescribed opioids for pain in the United States, for
| example, ranges from less than 1 percent to 8 percent.
|
| What's the threshold where it's a problem? 1% of prescription
| drug users getting addicted sounds like a terrible situation to
| me. Let alone 8%. Especially if they're already in a situation
| where finding a way to escape is tempting.
| ChrisRR wrote:
| That's exactly why prescriptions exist, so that doctors can
| limit the time taking the opioids and reduce the risk of
| addiction
|
| If anyone were left to their own devices and still in pain, I
| suspect a lot more than 8% would continue to take the
| painkillers.
| pessimizer wrote:
| If heroin were cheap and accessible to addicts, there would be
| no need to escape until the user were ready. It's so bizarre
| how laws against heroin get to be the Gallant against the
| Goofus of anti-pot laws when virtually all societal problems
| springing from heroin spring from the drug war.
|
| There would be few to no deaths, suffering, or crime associated
| with heroin if it were cheap and accessible, and if addicts
| were under the care of a doctor or social worker. It would be a
| mild burden to public health services tasked with helping
| people quit, but far cheaper than tobacco smoking or
| alcoholism.
| xzel wrote:
| Heroin is already relatively cheap and accessible to addicts.
| The bigger issue right now is the latter part, helping people
| get off the drug and contamination, ex. fentanyl. I agree
| with everything else though.
| criley2 wrote:
| :|
|
| > Hart presents himself as a model drug user. "I am now entering
| my fifth year as a regular heroin user," he writes. "I do not
| have a drug-use problem. Never have. Each day, I meet my
| parental, personal, and professional responsibilities. I pay my
| taxes, serve as a volunteer in my community on a regular basis,
| and contribute to the global community as an informed and engaged
| citizen. I am better for my drug use."
|
| Anyone who has plumbed the depths of addiction either with a
| family member or personally has spoken this exact paragraph,
| potentially word for word. It's a rationalization for addiction,
| and honestly the most common and basic one.
|
| Good luck to him as he descends through addiction. He's extremely
| educated and very assured of his self-perception so for him to
| hit Step 1: Realize you have a Problem, is going to be a lot
| harder than the average person.
| FDSGSG wrote:
| If he can afford it, a problem may not exist. Heroin use has
| few if any negative physical effects in the long term.
| JohnJamesRambo wrote:
| Death is pretty long term. Pardon me if I'm pessimistic on
| this topic, I just watched a Janis Joplin documentary.
| otherme123 wrote:
| Thing is, good heroin/morphine is almost free of side
| effects. Paracetamol, for example, is a lot more dangerous
| than heroin.
|
| Also, Joplin took heroin AND massive quantities of alcohol
| on the day of her death. It will be close to saying that
| when someone dies in a car crash while DUI, driving is the
| real and unique problem here.
|
| But the drug-war irrationality is better exposed by taking
| a look at weed and MDMA. Two quite safe substances
| (certainly more safe than alcohol), with clear medical
| applications, and forbidden just because some ignorant
| decided to put them in Schedule I. MDMA at the time of its
| prohibition was being used in psychotherapy with success in
| tens of thousands of patients [1]. Today, no medical use is
| recognized, and being in Schedule I (making it un-
| researchable), none will be. I wouldn't be too surprised
| that some country discover that it could be used as a
| treatment for depression or PTSD.
|
| [1] https://www.amazon.com/dp/0791418189
| JohnJamesRambo wrote:
| Okay sounds like you've got it all figured out. Good
| luck!
| nvilcins wrote:
| Death comes from _mis_use, which usually stems from
| _mis_information ("drugs are bad, let's not talk about
| them").
|
| People die when they over-dose (which more often than not
| happens because they don't know exactly what they're
| getting, or the purity of it) or mix with other substances
| that they shouldn't.
| FDSGSG wrote:
| Another common cause of overdoses which stems from a lack
| of education:
|
| A person quits for a while, decides to start using again
| and shoots up their usual dose for which they no longer
| have sufficient tolerance.
|
| If that person knew that this is a common way people end
| up killing themselves, they probably wouldn't make this
| mistake.
| maccard wrote:
| That's not a side effect of heroin, that's a side effect of
| overdosing. Death is also a side effect of overdosing on
| acetaminophen, and alcohol. Imagine if when I went to my
| local wine shop they made a mistake and sold me something
| that was 80% abv rather than 12-14% and I drank the bottle.
| Or my pharmacy gave me 5g acetaminophen tablets instead of
| 500mg, and I took 2 of them every four hours for a few
| days. Or my finely ground table salt was cut with some form
| of rodent poison. I'd be pretty dead in those cases most
| likely. Most illegal substances you have absolutely no idea
| what you're buying or how much you're buying unless you
| test it yourself. Yes, word gets around but that's no use
| to you if you accidentally take 10x a dose, or something
| that is just not what you were told it was.
|
| Legal substances also have lots of information readily
| available around them - if I go to my pharmacy and ask for
| ibuprofen, they will tell me the dosages in advance. If I
| go to my doctor and they put me on oxycodone, they will
| give me a dose that they think is safe, (and in theory, a
| plan to reduce my dependence on them) without judgement. If
| you develop an opiod addiction, your support options are
| much more limited.
| hlasdjlfhalwjk wrote:
| Switzerland started a program in 1995 where they give
| medical grade heroin to people suffering from addiction.
| From the people taking part in this program, none have died
| from heroin overdoses or due to toxic contamination in the
| drug.
|
| So heroin is actually pretty safe if used correctly.
| otherme123 wrote:
| Indeed. If one reads the adverse effects of heroin (e.g.
| in Wikipedia) and ignores the ones caused by dirty
| injection, lacing and overdose, you are left with no long
| term effects other than a blurry "brain impairment to
| make decissions". On the short term, respiratory
| depression. That's it.
|
| Not many legal drugs has such short list of side effects.
| Geee wrote:
| So, what's the problem then? Why is using heroin bad?
| FDSGSG wrote:
| Heroin habits tend to be incredibly expensive. Most people
| simply can't afford it, that's when the problems arise.
| maybeOneDay wrote:
| Black market incentivises dealers doing things like mixing
| fentanyl into heroin in order to make it vastly more
| profitable (fentanyl is cheap and incredibly potent), with
| the side effect of increasing its deadliness massively.
|
| Users often mix heroin with benzos and/or alcohol which
| increases the level of risk enormously. The vast majority
| of overdoses are caused by mixing CNS depressants in with
| heroin, not by heroin use alone.
|
| If you can't get a steady supply then withdrawals are
| vicious and can cause a host of other problems (crime in
| order to get money for more heroin being a commonly cited
| one).
|
| One of the ways that heroin itself can cause overdose
| deaths is relapses - users may take a dose that they were
| previously tolerant to. I believe this is still far less of
| a danger than combining with other substances.
| Geee wrote:
| Are there benefits in using heroin?
| maybeOneDay wrote:
| What would you characterize as a benefit? Medical,
| certainly. Recreationally, certainly (it feels good).
| Socially, I imagine so for some people and some doses.
|
| Here's a reddit famous account from someone claiming to
| be an opiate addict that some find enlightening/haunting:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/wnj2d/iama_heroin_
| add...
| pessimizer wrote:
| These are all symptoms of the drug war, not heroin
| addiction.
| hlasdjlfhalwjk wrote:
| That's kinda the point. Most drugs are not bad/evil in
| themselves. They can be used irresponsibly.
|
| Many classic drugs (as opposed to research chemicals
| which introduce small molecular changes to circumvent
| banns on another substance) are pretty safe or at least
| have a well known safety profile.
| hiq wrote:
| One source I've found about the long-term effects:
| https://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/research-
| reports/hero...
|
| "Repeated heroin use changes the physical structure and
| physiology of the brain, creating long-term imbalances in
| neuronal and hormonal systems that are not easily reversed.
| Studies have shown some deterioration of the brain's white
| matter due to heroin use, which may affect decision-making
| abilities, the ability to regulate behavior, and responses to
| stressful situations."
|
| I expected something more damning. Unfortunately, I feel that
| we don't have enough studies (incl. long-term ones) when it
| comes to recreational drugs.
| Solid_Applaud wrote:
| Worse: heroin destroys hippocampus function over time. If
| the hippocampus is damaged by disease or injury, it can
| influence a person's memories as well as their ability to
| form new memories. Hippocampus damage can particularly
| affect spatial memory, or the ability to remember
| directions, locations, and orientations.
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6758897/
| wccrawford wrote:
| Yeah, and he's putting out his experience as an example for
| others to point to and say, "If that guy could do it, so can
| I!"
|
| Personally, I've always felt I had a personality that is prone
| to addiction, so I've stayed away from even alcohol on a
| regular basis. (Though at one point I was having my favorite
| alcoholic drink every night... I stopped when I realized what I
| was doing.)
|
| Even breaking away from caffeine (again) is tough for me. Soda
| was also tough, and I ended up on soda water instead and still
| drink way too many of those.
|
| I've also spent too much money on mobile gacha games, but
| because I know my personality, I managed to keep it from
| spiraling out of control. (Some people would even say the
| amount I spent wasn't a big deal, but it was _far_ more than a
| single game is worth, so it 's a sign that I was going wrong.)
|
| Someone else asked how addiction feels, and I almost answered
| there, but didn't because I'm sure they meant _hard_ addiction
| that you need help to correct, and I haven 't been there. But
| as far as I've been, it's an almost-uncontrollable desire and
| subsequent rationalization and then capitulation. Each time.
| Fighting the feeling is depressing, even if everything else is
| going great. I only ever escape when I make myself feel worse
| about doing the thing than I feel from not doing it.
| major505 wrote:
| To be honest, is what I expect someone with a drug problem to
| say.
| CapitalistCartr wrote:
| Three years ago, I decided, for New Years, to try getting
| addicted to caffeine and alcohol. The caffeine was a rapid
| success, the effects of which which I still enjoy. After half a
| dozen bottles of bourbon, I gave up on the alcohol for a lack of
| interest/effect. Peoples bodies and neurochemistry are simply
| different.
| ohnemint wrote:
| > I decided, for New Years, to try getting addicted to caffeine
| and alcohol
|
| Why did you decide this?
| CapitalistCartr wrote:
| I wanted to better understand the experience. I've known
| several addicts in my family. My wife and I adopted a deeply
| addicted family member's son, who was born with severe
| problems from her drug use.
|
| Bear in mind, I am willing to take vacation from work and go
| cold turkey as needed. I do this a couple times a year for
| caffeine, just to be sure, and the headaches are brutal.
| superkuh wrote:
| It's easy to become dependent on caffine. But caffeine
| itself is not intrinsically addictive. It does not directly
| interact with the systems in the brain associated with
| predicting reward.
| coding123 wrote:
| > Some people don't know not to mix specific sedatives with
| opioids. For example, they don't know not to mix large amounts of
| alcohol or large amounts of antihistamines. Specific combinations
| can lead to respiratory depression, which can lead to death.
| Another point of ignorance involves people who buy street drugs
| and don't necessarily know if the drugs contain contaminants.
| That's the kind of ignorance I'm talking about.
|
| I feel like he just wrote off 450000 deaths from 1990-2019 with
| people don't know how to mix alcohol and opioids correctly.
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/data/analysis.html
| [deleted]
| mdip wrote:
| All I can say about this is "Good Luck with That".
|
| I have never been addicted to heroine, so I cannot speak from
| personal experience. But I have seen its impact first-hand,
| thankfully, a number of times I can only count with one of my
| hands.
|
| The way I explain addiction to my kids is the way it was
| explained to me by an addict (alcohol, Vicodin and others):
|
| (1) There's no difference between "Psychologically Addictive" and
| "Physically Addictive" -- he said this in the context that he was
| an abuser of alcohol, every day, but was not chemically addicted
| to it and required no medicine to quit, but it was easily as
| difficult as quitting Vicodin.
|
| (2) Addicts don't love their drugs more than their
| family/kids/morals -- your body _uses_ addiction to make you eat,
| drink, etc -- go without those things for long enough and you
| will start to sacrifice things that are otherwise more important.
| Imagine your desire to do this particular drug is substantially
| stronger than your desire to eat or drink.
|
| Having the benefit of a few decades away from childhood and been
| witness to some really incredible individuals' lives being
| flushed down the toilet, I don't believe either of those two
| statements to be sensationalized in any way. It's internalizing
| these things and understanding that the people _I know_ who
| became addicts were _very strong people_. One was a person I
| counted among the "Great Men"[0] in my life (and still do).
|
| Politically speaking, I tend to fall pretty narrowly on the whole
| "victimless crime shouldn't be criminal[1]", so my puritanical
| beliefs that you should "just stay as far away from that stuff as
| you possibly can" doesn't translate into support for the War on
| Drugs(tm). Personally speaking, I've watched people maintain a
| heroine addiction for _years_ , Vicodin for _decades_. In the
| early days, they managed OK. They all quit because the drug
| became _it_ --the single need that remained. That's what _it
| does_. People nearing this stage delude themselves into thinking
| it 's not affecting their lives/loved ones, but I'd be curious --
| with the benefit of hindsight bias -- at what point a former
| addict[2] would admit their drug problem was out of control.
|
| [0] My measure is not just a man who can be counted on to do the
| right thing when nobody is looking, but who will do the right
| thing when the outcome will/might serve him poorly.
|
| [1] A person should not be able to be convicted of a crime if the
| criminal and the only victim are the same person.
|
| [2] Recovering addict is the phrase most frequently used. One
| acquaintance of mine (who didn't do 12-steps/rehab) corrected me
| and said he's "not an alcoholic anymore" or a "former alcoholic"
| because he quit a decade ago and has no desire/temptation to
| drink (whole household is _extremely_ anti-alcohol; he couldn 't
| hide it if he tried) and feels that claiming to have a problem he
| doesn't have feels too much like being a "pity whore". He wasn't
| chemically addicted, either. Can't please everyone, I guess.
| heyflyguy wrote:
| I worked in an ad agency in the nineties that had a cocaine and
| amphetamine tidal wave going through it. I never realized the
| number of seemingly high functioning and reputable people that
| are utterly addicted. I don't love the article because I think it
| shows a statistical anomaly, but in that light, yes this is
| interesting.
| omginternets wrote:
| Let's check in on this guy in a few years.
| pif wrote:
| I'd like to understand where he buys his legal heroin. Because,
| if he is choosing to pour his money into the worst criminal
| businnes existing, either he is a piece of scum or he does have a
| drug problem!
| leetcrew wrote:
| kind of a weak jab. it's not that complicated to make heroin.
| morphine extraction is trivial; the conversion to heroin is
| just one more step. any chem major could probably do it if they
| had a way to source enough poppies without attracting
| attention. even if he does source his heroin through the usual
| channels, is that so much worse than the business practices we
| support when we buy clothes, iphones, meat, etc.?
| tonymet wrote:
| Let's see how he ends up in 10 years. Better yet, let's ask his
| wife and kids if they agree.
|
| Maybe he is the one out of 100k who can manage a Heroin habit.
| Well good for him, he can keep it to himself.
| rmac wrote:
| Man, I read this as someone who tried to use opioids and I just
| couldn't chip. It spiraled into full blown physical dependence. I
| guess i'm the type with an underlying psychiatric illness which
| drove my usage and denial.
|
| That there exists people like this person who can chip
| (controlled use of opiates) always intrigues me -- as this drug
| was the ultimate pathway to euphoria and thus I became the mouse
| hitting the button for more more more. If you're on the chipping
| path I hope you can find peace just for today.
|
| I am pro-legalization of all drugs with some FDA oversight on
| quality.
| cwmma wrote:
| My wife can have a cigarette once and a while when she drinks
| and it's no big deal, last time I did that (6 months after I
| had quit) it took me 6 or 7 years to quit again.
| rincebrain wrote:
| I've been given opioid prescriptions a few times in my life,
| and I've never found myself wanting to take them for their own
| sake or suffering from withdrawal afterward.
|
| It's probably some variable physiological response - hopefully
| one day we'll have a good way of profiling a priori which
| people may have difficulty with using opioids in a controlled
| fashion so people don't have to suffer to find out they're
| among the unlucky ones. (Or maybe we'll come up with either a
| new class of drugs to replace opioids entirely, or a cocktail
| to block the adverse effects...)
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Same. Never felt the slightest euphoria taking the prescribed
| dose. Maybe got a bit sleepy, but it's been so long I don't
| quite remember.
| seibelj wrote:
| I got prescribed Percocet back when they casually gave them
| away to teenagers who had their wisdom teeth removed, and did
| not like it. Not only was I constipated but it made me feel
| really lazy and itchy. Not a fan.
| fingerlocks wrote:
| Because it's not the ultimate pathway to euphoria for everyone.
|
| Some of us don't like the "sinking into oblivion" feeling of
| that class of drugs. I don't want to feel like my IQ has been
| sliced in half. Really hate it actually.
|
| The dragon to chase is of the functional businessman's variety-
| cocaine. I'd rather take something that enhances my life
| experience, turns conversation in liquid gold oozing from
| mouth. Opiates and barbiturates temporarily hide your problems
| under a blanket of haze, confusion, and constipation. No
| thanks.
| 3131s wrote:
| Yeah, I've done heroin, morphine, oxycodone, opium, and a few
| others in the past and never felt any pull to do them.
|
| But I love cocaine, psychedelics, and weed though, and I have
| been somewhat addicted to all three at different times in my
| life. I specifically wouldn't ever get drunk if I didn't have
| weed to go with it, as that's the only way to make alcohol
| any fun for me.
| tmp-20210218 wrote:
| yeah, cocaine doesn't have the awesomest rep either - a crack
| addiction is just another way of temporarily getting away
| from something problematic.
| mabbo wrote:
| I can barely control my use of caffeine. Without it, I turn
| into a raging psychopath. And I'm consuming more and more of it
| all the time.
|
| Heroin _terrifies_ me.
| bserge wrote:
| I would say caffeine is easy to quit, but I'm an alcoholic so
| I understand perfectly. It seems like you don't need it, yet
| you use it regularly.
|
| Try caffeine pills, they have a cleaner effect with no
| stomach/intestine troubles. Somewhat easier to quit, too.
| eurasiantiger wrote:
| Caffeine, or coffee? They are very different substances: one
| is a pure alkaloid with well-defined effects, the other is a
| concoction of hundreds, possibly thousands of active
| ingredients.
|
| Most relevantly, coffee contains a relatively large amount of
| Harmala alkaloids, which are a family of beta-carboline
| monoamine oxidase inhibitors commonly found in Ayahuasca
| brews (and named after one of its ingredients, Penganum
| harmala).
| vmchale wrote:
| > I guess i'm the type with an underlying psychiatric illness
| which drove my usage and denial.
|
| I think substances can be addictive on their own, which gets
| occluded by many on the "pro-drugs" side.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| As a teen I made opium from poppies around the neighbourhood.
| After smoking it once I threw the rest out. The intensity of
| how perfect it felt was alarming. I remember within minutes
| thinking I'll become addicted to it if I don't get rid of it.
| Despite that being a scary prospect, I kept feeling great the
| entire time. It really beats any bad feeling out of you.
| Incredibly creepy.
|
| I was a dumb teenager (I'm still not very smart) but I'm
| grateful I had the intuition to realize how dangerous it was.
| The only way I can describe it was that I felt the pleasure
| overwhelming my ability to reason, and that felt very
| disabling.
| tptacek wrote:
| You grew up in a neighborhood full of opium poppies?
| tanseydavid wrote:
| He lives next to next to the Land of Oz.
| likpok wrote:
| It may be legal to grow opium poppies in the US for garden
| or seed purposes, just not for the processing into opium.
|
| https://depts.washington.edu/hortlib/resources/wp-
| resource_s...
|
| Michael Pollan also wrote an essay about it (I think taking
| a slightly stronger position).
| tptacek wrote:
| I don't doubt it, but are they so common that I might
| walk by them in my own neighborhood? (I'm asking, I have
| no idea).
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| Yes, I still see them while walking around here in
| Victoria, BC. I have some seeds from a friend as well.
| They circulate and people grow them out of curiosity as
| well I guess. You've maybe seen them without realizing
| it.
| AnotherGoodName wrote:
| Perhaps Tasmania? Tasmania has legalized opium production
| and you'll see fields of opium poppies everywhere since
| it's the source of the majority of medical opiates. The
| reasons for Tasmania being the center of the western worlds
| poppy production are obvious. It's easy to ensure the
| exports to the rest of the world are done via controlled
| channels.
|
| This does lead to the weird situation where an entire
| population has easy access to opium should they want to
| raid nearby fields; the fields are lightly fenced with
| warning signs stating that it's bad for your health.
| Perhaps surprisingly to many Tasmania doesn't really have
| any issues from this. This may lend some credence to the
| above article - it takes more than just access to lead to
| issues for people.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tasmanian_opium_poppy_farming
| _...
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| Not full of them, but I've always been especially fond of
| plants, and poppies in particular because my mom grew some
| spectacular varieties. Through boredom and interest I
| discovered a home nearby was growing a variety of poppy
| which could be processed into opium. I took some seed heads
| at the correct growth stage on an evening walk, then
| processed them later.
|
| The process is very crude but works well for
| experimentation. I think if you were a serious opiate user
| it would probably be too inefficient and inconvenient to
| warrant over simply buying opium.
| dmitryminkovsky wrote:
| When I was 17 I had a bad cough and my mom gave me what
| turned out to be too much codeine cough syrup. An hour later
| I realized my cough was gone but I had spent all that time
| staring at my Windows ME desktop, in some sort of euphoric
| daze, repeatedly selecting and deselecting all the icons. For
| an hour! It was really, really creepy and deeply unsettling.
| And this was codeine, a "mild" opiate! Have aggressively
| stayed away from opioids ever since then.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| Ah, yeah - this is very much like my experience as well. I
| sat on my bed and just cycled through the same thoughts for
| a shockingly long time. Nevertheless it felt great. Very
| creepy.
| wittyreference wrote:
| Ever taken codeine again? You may have a genetic variant of
| CYP2d6 that makes codeine, in particular, hit you hard.
| It's not an effect common across opioids.
| dmitryminkovsky wrote:
| Nope never, or any other opioid either, fortunately. But
| thanks that's really interesting. Neither of my parents
| seem particularly affected. But who knows.
| koheripbal wrote:
| Opioids are insanely and ~~instantly~~ quickly addictive. I
| accidentally became addicted after knee surgery.
|
| When the pain subsided, I stopped taking them, and within a day
| I found myself curled up in a ball and wanting to rip my own
| skin off. It's really true when addicts describe it as "being
| uncomfortable in your own skin".
|
| The moment I realized I was experiencing withdrawal, I flushed
| the meds down the toilet and just suffered through it for a
| couple days.
|
| Never ever touch heroin. Stay away from prescription opioids
| unless it's really really needed, and make sure it's short term
| only.
| f1refly wrote:
| I can't confirm your experience at all. I've had a serious
| car accident after which they kept me on opium in the
| hospital for three days. After they replaced it with weaker
| pain treatment compounds I didn't have any desire to go back,
| despite how I was feeling when taking opium. I wouldn't say
| they're instantly addictive.
| [deleted]
| ChrisRR wrote:
| 3 days is a very typical prescription length to stop
| addiction kicking in
| mod wrote:
| I can confirm his experience via my brother's nearly
| identical experience. He asked for a non-addictive
| painkiller, as he knows he has an addictive personality. He
| was prescribed an opiod anyway, I don't recall which, for a
| serious abscessed tooth.
|
| After a couple of days he was experiencing identical
| symptoms as the GP.
|
| I'm not trying to chime in on how strictly we're
| interpreting "instantly," but for me I will definitely do
| my best to avoid opiods. Taking the prescribed amount for
| 2-3 days, and literally not taking the rest of the pills
| (both GP and my brother), and having serious physical
| withdrawals--that's fast enough that I would rather avoid
| it.
| csunbird wrote:
| Someone I know had a basic nose surgery (bone deviation) and
| then she experienced withdrawal symptoms after the surgery
| because of the anesthetics, which required intervention by
| professionals and she was unable to work for a month.
|
| Edit: Just to clarify, she was not prescribed any
| opioids/drugs to be taken post surgery, it was purely the
| anesthetics.
| wl wrote:
| An anesthetic would typically consist of something like a
| small dose of a short-acting benzo before surgery for
| anxiety, propofol (very short acting) for induction, an
| opioid for pain management, an anesthetic gas like
| sevoflurane to maintain anesthesia, pressors to bring up
| blood pressure if necessary, and a few other drugs that
| probably don't merit mention.
|
| Of these drugs, the only ones that might cause withdrawal
| symptoms would be the benzo or the opioid. The benzo, if
| it's even given at all, is going to be tiny. Even if we
| were to hypothesize that a single unusually large dose of
| an opioid could induce dependency, a surgery where the
| patient isn't even given opioids to take home wouldn't
| warrant such a dose in the OR.
|
| In short, your second-hand account makes no sense.
| csunbird wrote:
| To be honest, a lot of people, including the doctors
| themselves, doubted her as well.
|
| I am fuzzy on the details, because the person was just an
| acquaintance. There was a huge investigation on her
| history, looking for substance abuse. They found nothing.
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| They aren't instantly addictive, though: As in, I've had
| opioids prescribed, took as needed, and still have some in
| the cabinet that are probably expired.
|
| I've smoked opium a handful of times. It smells wonderfully.
|
| And yet, if I take any drug regularly, I'm using something
| with THC in it (hash or pot, in general). I currently do not,
| however, and tend to have a few drinks and get high on the
| weekends. Not a big deal if I don't, though.
|
| I've had medical grade heroin in the hospital (morphine
| didn't take care of the pain). No withdrawal, though I was
| wonderfully high. Haven't gone to a morphine habit.
|
| The prudent thing to do is not to say, "opioids are instantly
| addictive", but to give folks safe ways to detox from them
| and give folks information on signs of addiction - because
| not everyone has such experiences.
| TheAdamAndChe wrote:
| You're an outlier. The vast majority of people who smoke
| opium or experience euphoria from taking medical grade
| heroin will obtain the urge to do it more.
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| See, this is saying something else entirely. Also, do you
| have a source for this?
|
| Would I do opium again? Sure. It was fun. Would I do
| medical grade heroin or morphine again, under controlled
| circumstances with a nursing staff dosing me? Yeah. It
| was fun. Did I have some weird urge to go out and do it
| frequently? Nope. But to be fair, lots of folks drink on
| more than one occasion as well. They get high more than
| once. They might even have more than one drink or hit in
| one day. Simply wanting to do something again doesn't
| mean anything. I've done acid more times than I can
| count, and I wouldn't call it a habit. The only drug that
| I'd probably do more often if it were not dangerous to do
| too often is MDMA because it feels spectacular (better
| than opioids, to me anyway), but I'd not even call it a
| strong urge.
|
| This isn't addiction, nor is it anything uncontrollable
| in general.
|
| Unless you are implying that folks get uncontrollable
| urges, and in that case, please back that up with facts.
| Though I've met my share of addicts, most things just
| aren't instantly addictive. Even heroin isn't that way -
| especially if you actually improve an addicts like
| (hence, troops addicted to heroin in wars came home to be
| non-addicts).
| tanseydavid wrote:
| >> This isn't addiction, nor is it anything
| uncontrollable in general.
|
| With as much respect as I can offer I think you should
| consider the following notion, which in my personal
| experience is an actual fact:
|
| "Until and unless you have been an addict you truly
| cannot understand the experience. And subsequently you
| are not able to point out what is and is not addiction."
| memorysafety wrote:
| Asking for opinion: can one transfer experiences with
| non-drug addictions (videogames, promiscuity, social
| nets, etc) to the substance-abuse kind? How similar are
| these?
| wittyreference wrote:
| As a physician:
|
| No, the 'vast majority' do not. I've supervised medical
| grade opioid administration to more than a few people,
| both acutely and chronically, and *folks without a pre-
| existing substance use problem* do not often develop one,
| especially if it's over the short term. The idea that "I
| give you an opioid and then BAM I want more!" is highly
| divergent from my clinical experience.
| TheAdamAndChe wrote:
| As a physician, you should know that using opioids to
| experience euphoria and pleasure is drastically different
| from using appropriate doses to combat the effects of
| pain. It's the euphoria and pleasure that triggers
| operant conditioning and the accumulation of DFosB that
| occurs in the vast majority of addictions[1]. Only after
| receptor downregulation does withdrawal avoidance become
| a factor, but once that occurs, it doubles the strength
| of the operant conditioning.
|
| Use != Misuse, but use for pleasure is a direct precursor
| of misuse.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOSB?wprov=sfla1
| sneak wrote:
| > _Opioids are insanely and instantly addictive._
|
| This is the kind of FUD that TFA is specifically addressing.
| Namely, that this is not always a true statement.
|
| Of course, for many people, it is, which is why people make
| such sweeping (and incorrect) statements. Your warning is
| valid, your claimed facts are not.
| bostonsre wrote:
| The assertions that the are made in the article seem like
| something that should be backed up with studies and not
| anecdotal evidence from one person (even if he is well
| respected).
|
| It is an incredibly slippery slope for people to walk out
| on. It would be incredibly hard for someone to say whether
| or not they will spiral out of control if they try it and
| the consequences of becoming heavily addicted are life
| destroying. It seems like playing Russian roulette and I'm
| not sure it's a good thing to raise the idea that one can
| potentially manage it. Also, the person being interviewed
| could be one of the people that can't control it and will
| spiral out of control or him saying he manages it well and
| it's possible to do so could be a facade and he could be
| trying to do whatever possible to keep his habit alive, but
| we just don't know. Many people manage it fine for years
| without anyone knowing until they start their sharp decline
| towards bottom.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| >The assertions that the are made in the article seem
| like something that should be backed up with studies and
| not anecdotal evidence from one person (even if he is
| well respected).
|
| Wherw do you think he got these assertions? There have
| already been studies about how often heroin users are
| addicts or what the addiction rate of prescription
| opioids are.
| bostonsre wrote:
| From the interview, it sounds a lot like he got them from
| his personal experience. He mentions percentages, but I
| see no references to any sources. It matters what those
| sources are (e.g. if they are from Purdue pharma or the
| sacklers, it's probably BS).
| treeman79 wrote:
| A gun is always loaded. Even if it has no bullets.
| mod wrote:
| I think you're trying to argue GP's point, but you've
| only confirmed it, because you're misrepresenting both
| the facts and the traditional advice.
|
| "Treat every gun as if it were loaded" is the traditional
| advice, and is a wonderful attitude to have about
| firearms. But if it's not loaded, it's not loaded, those
| are the facts.
|
| Perhaps the same with opiods: treat them as if they are
| highly addictive, in a rapid manner. But if (for you)
| they aren't, they aren't.
| burnthrow wrote:
| Two things I don't like FUD around: My Linux and my heroin.
| read_if_gay_ wrote:
| So even if it's not true for everyone that's a practically
| useless observation because how are you going to find out
| it's not true for you without risking becoming instantly
| addicted?
| ch4s3 wrote:
| I don't have the reference at hand, but the rates of
| problematic use in the population seem to mirror alcohol.
| A small single digit percent of people will absolutely
| have a horrible problem, 8-10% will engage in disordered
| use, ~10% will over use in some way, and 80% will never
| develop a problem at all.
| read_if_gay_ wrote:
| Excuse the snark, but any chance it was funded by the
| Sacklers?
| ch4s3 wrote:
| No. There's a large body of research.
|
| Here's one showing only 5% of people filling opioid
| scripts go on to long term use.[1]
|
| Another older study citing 2% of US adults regularly
| using opioids, while a further 29% use them infrequently.
| Other more recent studies I seen hold this pretty
| constant. [2]
|
| Here [3] only 13% of elective surgery patients fill
| opioid scripts beyond 90 days, and "mental health
| disorders, and tobacco dependence or abuse were
| associated with prolonged opioid use". It's well known
| that people with one substance abuse issue tend to be at
| higher risk for developing others.
|
| You could go on and on finding studies that show that
| relatively few people with high risk medical/mental
| health history go on to develop opioid addiction after
| using these substances. There doesn't seem to be any
| support for the idea that the average person can take
| these drugs once and become "hooked".
|
| All that said, they are dangerous and have strong
| addictive potential so caution is warranted.
|
| [1] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11606-016-
| 3810-3?...
|
| [2]https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/
| S03043...
|
| [3] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii
| /S03635...
| jshevek wrote:
| That you cannot imagine an approach doesn't mean an
| approach doesn't exist. It may be possible to form a
| generalized understanding of an individuals
| predisposition based on testing with other substances,
| just as one example.
| read_if_gay_ wrote:
| You're still taking a substantial risk when forming that
| generalized understanding, and then another substantial
| risk when you start making conclusions from that general
| understanding.
|
| And for what?
| jshevek wrote:
| My point is only that you strongly implied a fallacious
| argument, which damages your ability to reason on a
| topic.
| read_if_gay_ wrote:
| Ok, so basically, since we haven't _proven_ the opposite,
| we can't be sure, regardless of how the situation
| appears. I think that's a weak argument in a general
| sense, but point taken.
| jshevek wrote:
| No, I'm not arguing that proof is necessary for
| certainty. I'm pointing out that the implied reasoning is
| akin to argument from ignorance. We don't have to take a
| position on a topic if we are ignorant, but we often do
| so when doing so can be used to justify existing biases.
| ardy42 wrote:
| > Opioids are insanely and instantly addictive. I
| accidentally became addicted after knee surgery.
|
| Is that true generally, or just for a subset of people who
| have some predisposition to addiction?
|
| While it could just be Purdue Pharma propaganda, I vaguely
| recall hearing that the "instant addiction" was a myth.
| However, people like you have experiences like yours, so
| there must be some truth to the "instant addiction" idea.
|
| Edit for downvoters: I think it totally makes sense for
| everyone treat opioids like a loaded gun, like another poster
| said, if some people are vulnerable to an instant addiction
| effect. I just want to clarify what the actual situation is
| (for me and all the other people who were told it was a
| myth).
| eplanit wrote:
| I've been prescribed oxycontin several times over the
| years, and never completed a single bottle. Couldn't wait
| to stop as the pain subsided due to the brain fog. I think
| at most I completed one third of one.
|
| Some people are definitely more prone or vulnerable to
| becoming addicted to it. Im lucky, I guess.
| fingerlocks wrote:
| Yeah it's a total myth. Not sure why you're being
| downvoted. My wife and I kept a bottle of oxy in our
| bathroom for a few years, taking it only occasionally. No
| one got addicted because neither of us wanted to keep
| taking it.
|
| A prerequisite for addiction is that one must believe the
| drug makes them feel "normal" or functional in some way. "I
| can't live with this pain - I need it."
|
| If instead you as a user go into the drug experience with
| the mindset that you are entering a temporary state, one
| that is reserved for special occasions, you're far less
| likely to become addicted.
| watwut wrote:
| It is not myth. Some people get instantly addicted to
| heroin, others can continue using casually for years. We
| dont really know what exactly is different, but it cant
| be psychological only. The withdrawal symptoms are
| physical, not just how you feel emotionally.
| fingerlocks wrote:
| Yes, it's a myth that they are "instantly" addicting. I
| don't deny the drug is powerful, but you have to want it.
|
| If it were true that it was instantly physically
| addictive, then literally every human being that has ever
| had any kind of surgery or been to the ER for trauma
| would be a rabid opioid zombie. But they aren't.
| watwut wrote:
| They dont give heroin im ER.
| fingerlocks wrote:
| Heroin metabolizes into morphine
| watwut wrote:
| That does not make it the same thing.
| Uberphallus wrote:
| It's a myth.
|
| My cousin is a social worker, dealing with addicts. I've
| done heroin myself. I know heroin addicts, though not as
| many as he does.
|
| We both agree: almost all addicts have a backdrop of
| broken families, poverty, unemployment, some kind of
| trauma or just a general lack of opportunities in life.
| Heroin makes all that go away... for a while. How could
| they NOT become addicted?
|
| The myth is about shifting blame from social inequality
| onto a drug. The addiction is but a symptom of a societal
| disease.
| watwut wrote:
| That is not mutually exclusive. Every single person
| living in 2020 knows dangers of heroin addiction. It is
| not starter drug happy person will try these days. You
| have to be seld destructive to even try.
| tanseydavid wrote:
| >> A prerequisite for addiction is that one must believe
| the drug makes them feel "normal" or functional in some
| way.
|
| Where did come up with this? This is not accurate.
| ufmace wrote:
| From what I've read, this varies hugely among the population.
| Some people seem to not be affected by them at all. Some
| people are able to use them short-term for pain relief and
| stop with no drama when the pain subsides. And some people
| get dangerously addicted even with a legitimately prescribed
| short-term dose for actual crippling pain. It seems it's
| often hard to determine which one a person is ahead of time.
|
| FWIW, good on you for recognizing that you're one of the
| third group and getting off of it entirely before the
| addiction gets even worse.
| kenneth wrote:
| I've only ever tried opioids after being a surgery. I was
| prescribed off oxy to take every 4h. Was supposed to take it
| for two weeks. Every dose knocked me out and made me feel so
| uselessly drowsy... I quickly dropped it to one a day and by
| day 3 I just stopped taking it altogether. Couldn't stand
| it... the pain was better than the feeling of being high. I
| ended up using barely 5% of the prescribed amount. Random
| acquaintances came out of the woodwork to ask to buy my
| pills. I just tossed them all... that shit was nasty and I
| didn't want it nor did I want to enable anyone.
|
| And I say this as someone who's plenty happy with drugs
| legalization, who likes the occasional MDMA, and who drinks
| plenty of alcohol. I guess I'm lucky I never run the risk of
| opiates addiction, because despite all that I have no desire
| to every touch the stuff again.
| wittyreference wrote:
| "Opioids are insanely and ~~instantly~~ quickly addictive."
|
| Do you have a source for this assertion? I'm just a physician
| with a particular specialty in medically managed (as opposed
| to procedurally managed) pain, and I've never seen a "I took
| it once and was instantly addicted." I don't mean to undercut
| your subjective experience, but I've seen a few folks on pain
| killers, and if what you described was more common than "very
| rare", I would have by now.
| codr7 wrote:
| It's all about the profit, synthetic opioids are designed to
| be as addictive as possible.
|
| I've been through plenty of addictions, but quitting Oxy
| after surgery is the closest thing to hell I've experienced
| so far.
| theli0nheart wrote:
| > _Opioids are insanely and ~~instantly~~ quickly addictive.
| I accidentally became addicted after knee surgery._
|
| They may be _instantly_ addictive for _you_ , but they are
| not for everyone.
|
| After I had a pleurodesis, the nurse sat me down in the chair
| next to the hospital bed and gave me a little controller I
| could use to release morphine into my saline solution if the
| pain became unbearable (and it did). It was the strangest
| sensation--I could 'feel' the pain, in a sense, but it was
| like I was on a different plane, and it didn't quite bother
| me.
|
| But to say it was instantly addictive--nope. Not at all. Have
| had no desire to try anything like that again outside of a
| hospital setting. Maybe some people are just not prone to it.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| When I read these sort of accounts, it helps to keep in mind the
| diversity of human condition, physique and psycology.
|
| There are people immune to some poison, people that don't feel
| pain at all, a woman which has two vaginas, there were people
| that never stopped growing, people that don't sleep, etc.
|
| Thats before we get into psycology and personal experiences that
| shaped them.
|
| I willing to believe that ther are some people who can abuse
| drugs, and not become adicts. However odds are I am not one of
| them, and its not worth finding out by experiment.
| aminozuur wrote:
| I remember the early days of the Silk Road market. The members
| posted thoughtful reviews of their orders, sometimes containing
| lab-tests results of the drugs they'd ordered.
|
| It was a small community whose members looked more like the
| Hacker News crowds than the meth heads you'd see in the news.
| jtxx wrote:
| yeah that was amazing. it felt like a lot of people on there
| were also fans of Erowid, which I now realize probably had a
| lot of the same people submitting experiences
| achairapart wrote:
| Meanwhile the Hacker News community has just flagged this
| "scandalous" article. How ironic.
|
| [edit]: My bad, now it's back!
| temp0826 wrote:
| Considering how early in the bitcoin days that SilkRoad came
| along, it makes sense that it was a more technically-minded
| crowd to begin with.
| thezoginator wrote:
| My dad used to say the exact same thing, until he lost his job
| his family, and his life. He used to pretend that he was
| "functioning", and that his drug use wasn't a problem. This is a
| classic example of someone who we will read about losing their
| job and life in 10 years or less.
|
| The only bit I will agree with is that addiction is not caused by
| the drug itself, and is typically the result of childhood trauma.
| With that drug use is not a solution for dealing with that
| trauma, dealing with that trauma directly through therapy and
| mediation is a much better solution.
| gnagatomo wrote:
| >The only bit I will agree with is that addiction is not caused
| by the drug itself, and is typically the result of childhood
| trauma.
|
| Traumatic experiences plays a big role on addiction, but purely
| chemical addiction should still be factored in. Heroine is
| extremely addictive not just because of traumatic experiences,
| but because it induces very high dopamine releases.
| originalvichy wrote:
| I've listened to Hart a few times on JRE podcast. His heart might
| be in a good place - trying to destigmatize/humanize drug users,
| but the flip side is he is making actually addictive substances
| seem like no big deal. Irresponsible.
| capableweb wrote:
| On the flip-flip side, he's one person spreading harm reduction
| about drugs that are currently frowned upon. If you look in
| society right now, you have people (and businesses!) marketing
| much more harmful drugs to people of all ages with fancy ads
| and more. Not a lot of people are reacting to that though.
| [deleted]
| BannedQuick wrote:
| I am a civilization user. I do not have a racism problem.
| refurb wrote:
| Drug addiction is a continuum not a binary state of being (addict
| or not an addict). Addiction can run from someone who uses every
| night after work because that's how they relax (and they feel
| like something is missing if they don't) to a person who
| compulsively uses to the exclusion of sleep and eating. And it
| can vary over an addicts life time.
|
| The one drug that has interestingly been demonized is meth. It's
| used as a prescription drug and was commonly used recreationally
| in the 70's. Now it's viewed as a one way road to destitution and
| death.
|
| Drugs are illegal so the media covers the train wrecks. The users
| who aren't train wrecks don't make the news.
|
| Can you imagine if alcohol was illegal and the only stories you
| heard about users were the people who drank themselves to death?
| You'd assume nobody could use alcohol in moderation, which isn't
| true.
| [deleted]
| f0ff wrote:
| When you rationalize your drug habit so hard you write a book
| oezi wrote:
| Obligatory link to "Drugs without the hot air" [1] which begs to
| differ. Heroin is terribly addictive and destructive.
|
| [1] https://www.uit.co.uk/drugs-without-the-hot-air
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Drugs-without-hot-air-illegal/dp/0857...
| ChrisRR wrote:
| This sounds like dangerous clickbait. It's entirely expected that
| someone whose job it is to study the effect of drugs would have a
| much better understanding of how to not become addicted
|
| His assertion the 70% of all drug users including alcohol and
| prescription users aren't addicted if anything seems extremely
| low to me. I'd say the vast majority of my friends drink alcohol
| and are more than likely on prescription drugs but I don't think
| any of them are addicts
|
| Which means that the other less common drugs must be a lot more
| addictive to bring the number down to 70%
|
| I get the point the article is trying to make, but its headline
| and opening paragraphs frame it more as a "decriminalise all
| drugs" article
| n4r9 wrote:
| > Which means that the other less common drugs must be a lot
| more addictive to bring the number down to 70%
|
| There's a confounding variable: the difficulty of obtaining
| drugs vs alcohol. This causes a selection bias and means that a
| higher proportion of heroin users are addicts than otherwise
| would be. You can't necessarily deduce that heroin is more
| addictive from that (although there are other ways I'm sure).
| leetcrew wrote:
| > His assertion the 70% of all drug users including alcohol and
| prescription users aren't addicted if anything seems extremely
| low to me. I'd say the vast majority of my friends drink
| alcohol and are more than likely on prescription drugs but I
| don't think any of them are addicts
|
| > Which means that the other less common drugs must be a lot
| more addictive to bring the number down to 70%
|
| I don't think your sample of friends is enough to support this
| kind of conclusion. n is small, there is likely selection bias
| at play, and you can't have perfect knowledge of what your
| friends do when you're not around. it's not uncommon for
| addicts to be able to keep it together for a few hours of
| socializing. I had a friend in college who would only have a
| single glass of wine when he was visiting family. for a while,
| they thought he was very responsible or just not that
| interested in drinking. the reality was if he had more than
| one, he wouldn't be able to stop. back at school, he got
| plastered every day and eventually failed out and had to go to
| rehab. addicts can be _very_ good at hiding things until they
| hit the tipping point where their life falls apart completely.
| dariusj18 wrote:
| This is like the textbook overconfidence that addicts have.
| They all think they have a complete understanding of their body
| and the chemicals they use.
| nobleach wrote:
| A few years ago, right here on HackerNews, I made some
| comment about heroin being extremely dangerous and addictive.
| I had a gentleman with a Throwaway account come at me with a
| "cool story bro, but I use heroin often, and I hold down a
| high-paying job" response. Basically, he told me that I'm an
| idiot and I should stop spreading FUD. I looked at his other
| threads like a year later, and the poor dude, sure enough is
| hopelessly hooked. I'm never one to say, "I told you so",
| especially not to someone who's now in such dire
| circumstances... but, WHY do people think that THEY are going
| to be the one to beat the odds? If you use a horribly
| addictive substance, don't be surprised when you
| become...addicted! The risk/reward is just too big.
| tmp-20210218 wrote:
| probably me, although i can't remember the password to that
| account, so you'll have to take my word for it. but yeah,
| from a perspective of a couple years on, heroin addiction
| is fucking terrible. i mean, heroin's nice and all, but i
| was an idiot ;)
| nobleach wrote:
| Dude, I'm just glad to hear you're alive! Hope you're
| doing well.
| biolurker1 wrote:
| Exactly and this spills over to gambling too. All addictions
| are the same and people try to convince everyone that they
| have been thinking about it wrong.
| np- wrote:
| While I do agree with your underlying point that it's likely
| less common drugs are dangerous, I just want to say that a lot
| of alcohol addiction and abuse is often completely hidden in
| plain sight, due to social and cultural acceptance and the way
| it's portrayed in media.
| SamBam wrote:
| > His assertion the 70% of all drug users including alcohol and
| prescription users aren't addicted if anything seems extremely
| low to me. I'd say the vast majority of my friends drink
| alcohol and are more than likely on prescription drugs but I
| don't think any of them are addicts
|
| Actually, I'm not sure. 30% of alcohol drinkers being addicted
| might be roughly right (though surprising to me as well).
|
| In the US, 50% of Americans hardly drink at all (under 0.15
| drinks/week). But 10% of Americans drink a staggering _75
| drinks a week_ , or over ten drinks a day every day (where a
| drink is a can of beer, glass of wine, or equivalent). [1]
|
| Of course you can't determine from that alone whether those
| people are clinically addicted, but it sound reasonable to me
| that most are. Further, probably some proportion of people in
| the other groups are also addicted, but not drinking nearly as
| much.
|
| So that's 10%, and only 50% of Americans are drinking at all,
| so that's 20% of drinkers are drinking 10+ drinks a day, and
| some unknown proportion have alcohol problems while drinking
| less.
|
| 1.
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/09/25/think...
| jboog wrote:
| Jesus, I thought I drank too much but it's still hard to
| believe 10% of Americans drink the equivalent of 10 drinks
| EVERY DAY.
|
| On my worst weeks when I think "i need to cut back" I might
| average ~3 drinks a day, maybe 5 on a holiday bender.
| slfnflctd wrote:
| From direct personal experience totaling well over a
| decade, 10 drinks is not hard to get to, especially for a
| larger person. 2-3 to get things going, and 1 an hour after
| that, for up to 7 hours. On weekends, I split it up; 3-4 in
| the morning & before lunch, then eat/sleep, then 6-7
| through the afternoon & evening. Beer usually seems to be
| easier on the system than anything else, but that may vary
| by physiology.
|
| Once the habit is ingrained and you become reliant on it to
| control your moods, 'cutting back' is a whole different
| proposition. My triglycerides are terrible, but other than
| that I seem to be ok, so why not just keep going? It's the
| easiest path, inexpensive, and most importantly, a LOT less
| hassle than dealing with the minefield of incompetence you
| encounter when seeking mental health treatment.
|
| I haven't given up completely on 'doing better'. But on the
| other hand, maybe that's not for everybody. We only have so
| much time here, how do we want to spend it? Stumbling over
| ourselves in an impossible quest for imaginary perfection,
| until we die anyway? Or enjoying ourselves the best we can
| given the dire circumstances?
| nouveaux wrote:
| Thanks for sharing.
|
| "I haven't given up completely on 'doing better'. But on
| the other hand, maybe that's not for everybody. We only
| have so much time here, how do we want to spend it?
| Stumbling over ourselves in an impossible quest for
| imaginary perfection, until we die anyway? Or enjoying
| ourselves the best we can given the dire circumstances?"
|
| I hope you do arrive at "doing better". It is likely you
| will enjoy yourself a lot more.
| svnpenn wrote:
| I think if you're drinking before noon you have a
| problem.
|
| Some mimosa with brunch is one thing, but if you're into
| pretty much anything else (beer, wine, liquor), you
| should probably stop immediately and take a good hard
| look in the mirror.
| red0point wrote:
| Consider doing _absolute_ abstinency for at least 6 weeks
| every few years.
|
| Really, not a single drink or sip.
|
| That way your liver has time to heal itself again, lest
| it will develop a cirrhosis, which will signifanctly
| decrease your quality and expectancy of life. If you have
| a cirrhosis of the liver, it's too late, you're going to
| die in at most 5 years, and it won't be pleasant until
| then, either.
|
| That's got nothing to do with "doing better",
| "perfection" or whatever, just hard facts.
| ChrisRR wrote:
| I'll admit that is an insane amount that I wasn't expecting,
| but something about those numbers just feels off. Like 10
| drinks a day? Many people don't even drink that much water
|
| Maybe we're getting a very different view of the US from the
| UK, but despite all of America's flaws and how weak the beer
| is, it seems so unexpected to me that 1/10 of people are
| opening a new drink every 90 minutes and somehow managing to
| hold down a job to be able to afford such a habit.
| [deleted]
| frakkingcylons wrote:
| To your second point, high functioning alcoholics are real.
| The bad effects take longer to manifest, but long term
| alcohol abuse makes up half of the 95,000 annual alcohol
| related deaths in the US.
|
| Source: https://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/features/excessive-
| alcohol-death...
| wyldfire wrote:
| I don't have any evidence one way or the other but the tale
| of the functioning alcohol addict is one that shows up
| frequently in popular culture: dramatic films and novels.
| The narrative is only advanced by a conflict that results
| in some kind of climax resulting in redemption or doom. But
| in real life people probably just plod on.
| kemayo wrote:
| On the subject of affording it, you don't have to spend
| _that_ much to drink 10 drink-equivalents a day. Buying
| low-end beer like PBR / Bud Light / Rolling Rock can be
| around $0.40-$0.60 per can, at which point your 10 drinks
| of the day is costing you around what a Starbucks latte
| does.
|
| Cheap hard liquor is even more cost-effective. You can get
| a big bottle of awful vodka for around $0.25 a "drink".
|
| That is to say, you don't have to be able to hold down a
| particularly good job to afford this.
|
| I _assume_ that as you drink more your tolerance would
| increase? As an occasional light drinker, I 'm pretty sure
| I'd be physically incapable of getting through that much
| alcohol in a day with enough time left to also attend a
| job.
| RandallBrown wrote:
| Is the beer weaker in the US than the UK?
|
| Most of the UK beer I've heard of is at a similar level or
| lower to US macro brews.
| 40four wrote:
| _"... how weak the beer is "_
|
| Funny, I've never heard someone take a jab at the strength
| of American beer. I'm curious what is the ABV of a normal
| beer you're used to in the UK? The 'commercial grade'
| American domestics tend to be about 5% maybe 4.5%. In the
| last decade though, 'craft'/ micro breweries have exploded
| so it's very easy to find stronger at any bar. In almost
| any convenience/ grocery store, there are plenty of 7%-9%
| IPAs and the like. I'll admit I like strong beer :) A lot
| of bars around my area will have some exotic options of 10%
| or more. I had one recently that was 13%! That's as much as
| a glass of wine. That being said, the large majority of
| folks are drinking beer that's 4-5%.
|
| As far as alcohol addicts go, I learned from a friend who
| had to take some court ordered 'rehab' classes, that (at
| least in the USA) something like 90% of all alcohol is
| consumed by only 10% of the drinking population. That means
| the dirty little secret they don't want you to know is
| basically the entire alcohol industry is propped up by
| addicts.
|
| Edit: I just clicked the WaPo story you guys were talking
| about, and that lines up with what I heard previously. Most
| people drink very moderately, but the top 10% are the cash
| cows for the industry.
| arpinum wrote:
| Its more a comment on how popular your light beers are,
| and they seem to be in the low 4% range. We also say your
| cars can't go around turns, don't take it too literally.
| Nbox9 wrote:
| It's definitely possible while holding down a job,
| especially if you consider its 75 drinks a week, which
| allows for heavier drinking on the weekend then during the
| middle of the week.
| DyslexicAtheist wrote:
| > Maybe we're getting a very different view of the US from
| the UK, but despite all of America's flaws and how weak the
| beer is
|
| _[laughs in Belgian Trappiste at the English ales]_
|
| Is beer in the US still as bad as it was 10 years ago? I
| understood it now has a huge craft-/micro brewery scene
| with some very drinkable APA/IPA's? Or is this just a tiny
| fraction of the market still?
| ChrisRR wrote:
| The perception from the UK is despite what seems like a
| growing trend in microbreweries, Americans still don't
| venture out much further than IPAs
|
| Edit: And as a lover of belgian beers I can only agree. I
| wonder why people even drink so many IPAs when there's so
| many different and delicious varieties of beers around.
| anonAndOn wrote:
| Because the easiest way to sell a crappy beer in the US
| is to dump a bunch of hops in it and call it an IPA? I
| jest there are 47 varieties of Pale Ale and 3 of
| something else at the supermarket these days, but it's
| not far from the truth.
| pdovy wrote:
| Good quality domestic craft beer and imports are
| typically very easy to find in most populated areas in
| the US in my experience. Granted I'm in a big city
| (Chicago) but the "big box" liquor store here has a whole
| aisle of Belgian imports, for example.
|
| That said, a quick googling shows that 2/3 of the
| American beer market is still dominated by non-craft
| domestics (AKA your cheap, watery lagers like
| Bud/Miller). Even amongst the craft segment it's
| definitely the case as another commenter pointed out that
| IPAs are overrepresented for whatever reason.
|
| I think where we're still really lagging behind is
| quality of beers at your average bar. If you know where
| to go you can find great selection but the average bar
| probably still has just a handful of decent non-domestic-
| lager offerings, likely in cans/bottles. In comparison to
| when I lived in the UK and it seemed like any corner pub
| would have a couple great draft ales .. it's not the
| same.
| ta11a wrote:
| I can't verify the 10%, but I can say 10 drinks a day is
| well below what I was doing in the height of my madness.
| That's one pint of vodka. And when I landed in a rehab
| center, 10+ drinks a day was more common than not when
| listening to the stories.
|
| A fair amount of the 10+ drinks isn't to "feel good" or
| "get drunk" once you're hooked. It's to stop the shaking
| and be able to minimally function.
| moron4hire wrote:
| I don't know. A lot of my "working-class" childhood
| acquaintances and extended family goes through at least 2
| six-packs of Miller Light in a night.
|
| Now, in the case of my particular family members, I
| wouldn't exactly say they don't have a problem. Most of
| them live on the edge of poverty, which would be much less
| of a problem if they didn't drink and smoke at least a pack
| of cigarettes a day.
|
| But most of these folks who drink massive amounts of the
| sort of beers-I-wouldn't-touch-with-a-ten-foot-pole are
| mostly functional in society. By that, I mean, they don't
| have a monopoly on family and money problems. Shockingly
| few people have their shit together in the way that we talk
| about when we talk about the dangers of addiction.
|
| Like I said, I don't know. It's not very clear/cut-and-
| dried to me.
| flatiron wrote:
| if someone drinks from 5pm-10pm one can of beer every 30
| minutes thats 10 drinks. they could easily wake up at 7am,
| hold down a job and rinse and repeat. a 30 rack of miller
| light (my beer of choice) is $22 which is 73 cents a beer
| so thats ~$7.50 a day on beer. obviously there are cheaper
| routes (buying $10 handles of vodka for instance). so at
| least in america, price really isn't a factor here. and
| holding down a job most likely isn't a factor since they
| are stone cold sober from when they wake until 5pm. i
| assume a lot of people silently live like this sadly
| bluedino wrote:
| >> if someone drinks from 5pm-10pm one can of beer every
| 30 minutes thats 10 drinks.
|
| The bars are open until at least 2, you know.
| ChrisRR wrote:
| Even if you ignore the price and how fast drinking once
| every half hour for 5 hours straight seems, that's 13.86
| units of alcohol every day. So 10% of the population are
| in a state of being permanently hungover?
|
| It just seems odd that in the UK, binge drinking is
| considered to be an issue, and yet a significant
| percentage of the US population is drinking the
| equivalent of a night out on a daily basis.
| jessebro wrote:
| You aren't hungover if you never stop drinking - which is
| the point.
|
| It's really, really prevalent in some industries. I've
| hired concrete finishers before (multiple times), and
| I've never NOT had a bunch of empty cans crushed up and
| hidden somewhere random on the worksite afterwords, even
| if it's only for a couple hours. When I worked with some
| writers years ago, they kept bottles of cheap scotch and
| 2 buck chuck in their desks, and had to replenish them
| regularly.
|
| The go to drug selection in tech skews our perception a
| bit (weed being incredibly pervasive, but
| lsd,shrooms,stimulatns far from absent).
| emteycz wrote:
| Don't forget about the amphetamines and cocaine... I
| actually think more than half of people in tech take
| something regularly
| mod wrote:
| I own a bar so I figured I'd chime in with some personal
| observations of my customers:
|
| The bulk of my customers drink 5-7 nights per week. We
| call them "regulars." They come every night when their
| shift ends, and most of them stay until close (although
| they are primarily service industry, so this is 5-7 hours
| per day). If they have a day off, they often show up
| earlier.
|
| For these people, I think that one drink every half hour
| is an understatement. They're having a beer/cocktail
| every half hour or so, and mixing in shots, jello shots,
| etc. If they have limited time, they will up their rate
| of consumption. They're after a specific result.
|
| I have no idea what percentage of the population they
| represent.
|
| We have a lot of other customers who we see maybe once a
| week, every other week. Some folks come in to eat our
| food special and just have a couple beers and go. Stuff
| like that.
|
| I think that you are probably in the latter group (or the
| non-drinking group) and so you don't see the former
| group. I very much agree that the heavy drinkers are not
| living normal lives; they ARE in fact permanently
| hungover (or should be--they learn to deal with it in
| various ways). It's a continuing problem with my own
| staff, actually.
|
| Anyway, they're out there, they're holding jobs and
| making children, and they undeniably have a problem with
| alcohol. But again, I have no idea what percentage of the
| population they make up. Maybe I'm seeing the worst of
| the problems--but I don't actually believe that.
| jboog wrote:
| When you're a high-functioning alcohol like we're talking
| you get to the point you can down a 12 pack of beer in a
| night and feel relatively fine the next morning. Maybe a
| slight headache or mild hangover but nothing like the
| bender hangovers non-alcoholics have where they are
| bedridden most of the day.
|
| I've since cut back a lot but in my worst post-college
| days I could drink the equivalent of 8-10 drinks in a
| night and feel perfectly fine the next morning as long as
| I got a decent amount of sleep.
| [deleted]
| lisper wrote:
| I was a teetotaler until my late 20s when I decided to
| try to develop a taste for wine for social reasons. Fast-
| forward 30 years and today my wife and I have a cocktail
| and a glass of wine most nights. That sounds like two
| drinks, but one day I started measuring how much alcohol
| I was actually putting in to the cocktails and they
| turned out to be triples. So technically we're having 4
| drinks a day. We get a slight buzz, but never feel
| impaired, never drink before dinner time, and never have
| hangovers. When we travel we will often go a few days
| without drinking at all and it's no problem. A few years
| ago I bought a blood-alcohol meter and have never
| registered above the legal limit, even immediately when I
| feel buzzed. The highest I've ever registered is 0.04.
| And over the years I've used three difference BAC meters
| with consistent results.
|
| I think the conclusion to draw here is not that having
| 4-5 drinks a day is no big deal, but that different
| people react to alcohol and other drugs differently. For
| some people, like me, it turns out to be no big deal. For
| others I'm pretty sure it would be a very big deal. A
| one-size-fits-all drug policy is never going to work.
| biolurker1 wrote:
| It's very well established that over two drink increase
| multiple cancer rates, just keep that in mind.
| n4r9 wrote:
| It's been estimated that during the "Gin Craze" of the
| early 18th Century, the average Londoner was drinking a
| pint of (strong) gin every three days.
|
| the-east-end.co.uk/the-gin-craze
| [deleted]
| n4r9 wrote:
| I'm also in the UK but I wouldn't be at all surprised if a
| lot of people's liquid intake is more from alcoholic drinks
| than non-alcoholic ones.
|
| I'm thinking of the office worker who might have a glass of
| orange juice, 2-3 cups of tea/coffee, then 2 pints after
| work most days.
| frakkingcylons wrote:
| So many comments in this thread are misconstruing Hart's
| arguments. He's not being open about his drug use in order to
| encourage everyone else to start using opiates and amphetamines
| willy-nilly. We can't just keep applying the same Reagan-era drug
| prohibition policies and expect anything to change.
|
| People are never going to stop using these drugs, so we should
| take steps to make their use safer. Thanks to widespread
| education, most people know the basics about how to drink safely
| (e.g. don't drink and then take NSAIDs). Because alcohol is sold
| legally, nobody has to worry about going blind or dying from
| moonshine. We should be applying the same principles to drugs
| like opioids. You should be able to buy them in precise dosages
| and know that they're not contaminated with something way too
| strong like fentanyl. People should be educated about unsafe drug
| combinations, which is the other major cause of overdoses.
| mdoms wrote:
| > He's not being open about his drug use in order to encourage
| everyone else to start using opiates and amphetamines willy-
| nilly.
|
| It doesn't matter if that's why he's doing it - that's still
| the effect.
| hapless wrote:
| "I am a heroin user. I suffer from delusions."
| CyberRabbi wrote:
| Can we ban "nautilus" from HN? This blog post is both clickbait
| and the post itself is deceptive and harmful to the general
| public. This is not the first time either.
| dionian wrote:
| I'm very worried about heroin addiction, but I am also worried
| about a pro-censorship culture. Reading the comments here, I see
| a lot of people worried about this 'dangerous' information. I
| think this kind of opinion is potentially dangerous, but I am
| very glad we are able to have it aired in public and discuss it
| rationally.
| Stronico wrote:
| The book Never Enough by Judith Grisel is a good addition this
| field, and probably this book.
|
| Short version - your body longs to be at equilibrium/homeostasis
| and drugs (alcohol, stimulants, opiates, etc) upset that
| equilibrium, so your body attempts to return you to your previous
| state.
|
| There is no free lunch, and a high will be accompanied by a low.
| The lows come in numerous and surprising forms.
|
| The book is significantly better than my description.
| mothsonasloth wrote:
| This is postmodernism 101, "there is no objective truth, we are
| shackled by subjectivity"
|
| This is dangerous!
| Out_of_Characte wrote:
| "If you're not wearing a mask, when we have this highly
| communicable disease, then you're potentially impacting the
| rights of other people."
|
| The same argument could be made for heroin. The point is that
| 'not wearing a mask' does not endanger someone's life in any way
| unless someone is infected with covid. yet the author suggests
| that not wearing a mask is "potentially impacting the rights of
| other people" Then surely the same argument could be made for
| people using heroin, you're not endangering anyones life by using
| heroin unless you're causing drug-related crimes. Which is the
| exact argument the government used to declare war on drugs. This
| is quite a contradiction by equavalency.
|
| The rest of the article is reasonable. I dont think he has said
| anything that fell outside the mainstream medical and
| psychological view.
| didibus wrote:
| > you're not endangering anyones life by using heroin unless
| you're causing drug-related crimes
|
| Are you saying heroin causes people to commit crime?
|
| > This is quite a contradiction by equavalency.
|
| I thought he meant it similarly. We created the war on drugs
| from this logic, yet do not have a war on people not wearing
| masks.
|
| You're right in that mask wearing is a tricky situation, and I
| think so is hard drug usage. He brushed that off maybe a little
| too quickly.
|
| I think smoking and covid masks are a better equivalence.
| Second hand smoking can cause you to maybe affect others, so
| areas where you are allowed to smoke were restricted. I see
| masks in a similar fashion.
| coldtea wrote:
| Well, needing to use a drug is already a drug problem (addiction
| or not).
| emsy wrote:
| Do insulin users have a drug problem? I think at the core of
| the issue is that our society generally regards psychological
| ailments as a personal flaw, rather than a health issue. (I'm
| talking generally, not about the professor from the article)
| gdsdfe wrote:
| insulin doesn't make you suck dick in an alley to get a fix
| [deleted]
| ChrisRR wrote:
| That's a false equivalence and you know it. Insulin is not a
| recreational drug
|
| This article is very clearly about recreational drug use
| emsy wrote:
| I was not talking about recreational drug use. Please read
| my full comment before replying.
| Solid_Applaud wrote:
| Yes, they do for the most part. Most insulin users are T2DM,
| and a large portion of these are able to get off of it over
| time.
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5357144/
| pessimizer wrote:
| Even worse, I think it's treated as a modern version of
| demonic possession, where the cure killing the patient isn't
| considered enough of a reason not to deliver the cure.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _Do insulin users have a drug problem?_
|
| Insulin users don't just need to have insulin for the sake of
| it. They have a medical issue that forces them to take it.
|
| > _I think at the core of the issue is that our society
| generally regards psychological ailments as a personal flaw,
| rather than a health issue_
|
| I think that our society tends to do the inverse: tends to
| see all kinds of personal flaws as issues beyond the control
| of the person.
| DanBC wrote:
| > Do insulin users have a drug problem?
|
| How many insulin users lose their jobs, lose their homes,
| turn to acquisitive crime or prostitution to fund their
| insulin habit?
|
| We can talk about how many people who use heroin this happens
| to, and how much it's caused by current drug prohibition
| laws, but it's more than zero.
|
| Decriminalisation makes a lot of sense but we need to be
| realistic about the harm caused to about 10% of people who
| become addicts.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _How many insulin users lose their jobs, lose their
| homes, turn to acquisitive crime or prostitution to fund
| their insulin habit?_
|
| It's _really_ difficult to disentangle this from the
| illegality of the drug.
| werber wrote:
| Unfortunately, insulin users in the United States are
| sometimes forced to turn to more nefarious means of getting
| money to support their body from dying. I've known 2 people
| who died that were unisured and broke who died from not
| being able to support their dependency on it. Universal
| Healthcare should cover those dependent on Insulin and
| Heroin
| adrr wrote:
| Drugs have a pleasure effect on the brain. Food does too. So do
| experiences or playing sports. Winning a sports game feels
| exactly the same as doing cocaine. Issue with drugs is the
| risk. Risk of damage to your body or your mind. But the other
| activities have associated risk. For example, I ski and
| including back country. I risk avalanches and injury. I've
| broken a rib and have countless other injuries. I have friends
| with permanent injuries and have seen deaths on the ski slope.
| No one says skiing is a national problem.
| slk500 wrote:
| Guy is regular heroin user a he is trying to prove that drugs are
| ok. Who's paying for this bullshit research?
| balozi wrote:
| Your mind is playing tricks on you, my dear. The biggest problem
| in addiction is the rationalization.
| king_panic wrote:
| Addiction engenders unresolved trauma. Can be drugs, shopping,
| sex, internet, or anything that gives you a temporary sense of
| relief from a deep underlying pain that usually forms in
| childhood.
|
| Check out the work of Gabor Mate. It's silly how simple it is.
| It's silly how misunderstood it is.
| drewmassey wrote:
| Oh man I've seen Hart making the rounds. The obvious privilege of
| being a tenured Ivy League professor aside, a few things jump out
|
| - Yes it would be nice if drugs were decriminalized ... but they
| aren't ... and the supply chain for heroin causes a lot of
| suffering in the world.
|
| - Shrugging and leading with "only 30% of people have addictions"
| is astoundingly innumerate. If there were a 30% chance of a
| potentially fatal outcome in almost any other context it would be
| a big deal.
| mrwh wrote:
| Yes, this. If 1% of airline passengers died we would ground all
| planes immediately. 30% is awful.
| say_it_as_it_is wrote:
| Your brain is physically changed the first time you use heroin.
| There's no going back to normal. There was the person who you
| were before heroin and the person who you are after using heroin.
| If you manage to quit heroin, ten years after kicking your heroin
| habit, you're still thinking about heroin. Twenty years later,
| you're still thinking about heroin. You never stop thinking about
| heroin until you die. Every painful event in your life triggers
| the impulse to reach for the heroin, just as you did the first
| time. You get to collect sobriety tokens and tell strangers how
| you've been living life on the straight and narrow. The only
| redemption you may find is by helping other people cope with
| addiction. Heroin addiction isn't overcome. You learn how to live
| with it.
| yboris wrote:
| Your brain is physically changed the first time you try a
| strawberry. There is no going back to normal. There was the
| person who you were before you tried a strawberry and the
| person who you are after you tried a strawberry. If you manage
| to never eat another strawberry, ten years later you're still
| thinking about what a tasty berry it was. You will fondly
| remember that taste until you die ...
| say_it_as_it_is wrote:
| I need to know where you get your strawberries, for a friend.
| yboris wrote:
| I just think it's a nice parallel. Drugs are experiences.
| Visiting Paris, or visiting a visually-inventive part of
| your mind while on LSD - from a certain perspective, these
| are the same thing.
|
| The claim that a drug changes your brain forever is
| trivially true - it is literally true of strawberries. Once
| you've had the taste, you'll likely remember the experience
| of tasting it (and if you're not too young, you might
| remember the place and people that were there during your
| first bite).
|
| For all the hysteria about the harms of drugs, we seldom
| hear a level-headed point of view about the possibility of
| them being a(nother) wonderful aspect of life.
| bigwheeler wrote:
| Weird that he claims to be a heroin user. Anyone that would write
| this and publish it to the world comes off more like a crackhead
| to me.
| Zenst wrote:
| Whilst I'm sure there are many functional `users` of heroin,
| there are many more who think they are functional and yet they
| are not and just don't see it themselves. I've lived near many
| heroin `users` and I will say that the biggest issue is that if
| they can lie about their habits to themselves, then others are a
| given. Equally, whilst they may not see their usage of as a
| problem, they neglect to see the impact upon others - be that
| antisocial noise, keeping odd hours so again, noise or shady
| dealer meetings in the streets that scare the parents across the
| road to not allow their kids to play out in the park near there.
| That's just the good part of the spectrum. Then you have those
| who buy on-line and feel like their not supporting criminal
| activities, well until heroin comes with a fair trade logo, or
| you know the farmer, producer and workers personally - it's easy
| to say you don't have a problem and yet create problems for
| others when you look at the bigger picture.
|
| As for knowing any functional, well I've seen many have
| functional phases would be the best I could attest to that from
| experience and out of about 30 heroin addicts I've endured in the
| past 2 decades, I'd say only 2 would be close to being classed as
| functional.
|
| Really gets down to if somebody who is using drugs can just stop
| and take a break every now and then, then in that clean period -
| still hold the same mentalities towards their usage and if they
| can come to the same conclusion - bravo as that is what I would
| call somebody with their head working well for them.
|
| What really is the issue for many drug users is the point in
| which the drugs use them - that's the turning point of addiction
| I'd say.
|
| Yet all that said, you can't help but accept that the brain is
| driven by chemical stimulus and there lays the hard barrier of
| having the will power to quite.
|
| I've personally never done heroin, no desire too as like a fine
| wine, I might like it and it is easier to miss what you never had
| and one step I've become very mindful never to take having
| learned from others, many who's lifestyle choices I had thrust
| upon me and I will say, not best neibours to have from my
| numerous experiences.
| peteretep wrote:
| Hot take: anyone writing articles about how they're sensibly
| using heroin is an addict in denial
| leetcrew wrote:
| not really a hot take, this is more or less the mainstream
| opinion. it's also unfalsifiable. you can take anyone who
| chimes in to say they use heroin responsibly as more evidence
| for your claim.
|
| personally I lean more in the direction that heroin and
| friends are significantly more addictive than most other
| drugs. but I have to say, if there were a sizable group of
| recreational users, they would probably know better than to
| ever say anything about it in public.
| Zenst wrote:
| > personally I lean more in the direction that heroin and
| friends are significantly more addictive than most other
| drugs. but I have to say, if there were a sizeable group of
| recreational users, they would probably know better than to
| ever say anything about it in public.
|
| Without a doubt, how else do they get introduced/exposed to
| such temptations otherwise.
|
| Pattern that usually follows is, cocaine, then onto doing
| crack as suddenly in their mind it's cheaper better high or
| other mental juggling to avoid having a break and carry on
| chasing that next level of high, building tolerance all the
| time. Then the comedowns, well whilst the highs may not
| seem as good and cost more to reach that level the
| downsides are less easier to adjust tolerance wise. So you
| find that chasing a line of heroin solves all that nasty
| crack come down and once in a while, you won't get hooked,
| after all you are able to do all that crack and your
| mentally strong and other decisions made whilst completely
| out of it on crack cocaine. So you make that leap, the odd
| bit becomes more and year on and your addicted. Coz prices
| and that, not long before your after that next level, so
| injecting for many becomes a hurdle that gets lower and
| more appealing and justified in crossing. You will just do
| it the once, case of only way to solve your needs as not
| enough to chase and sort the cramps. I've seen all this
| play out many times, heck even audio surveillance from
| chasing to shooting up to introducing new recruits into
| junkie club, via crack and then heroin. After all,
| opportunity to sort somebody out and charge them extra for
| sorting it, kickback from dealer and chance to share a hit
| - addiction makes people greedy and that greed plays out in
| doing what's best for them, if others freely bit that
| apple, they will certainly not stop them that hard. After
| all, how they themselves started doing drugs. Seen it play
| out just too many times and from start to coffin too many
| times and shocking how much goes on, ignored as society as
| a whole class the addicts as the victims and the dealers as
| the baddies in a clear cut way when I can attest that the
| lines are very blurred indeed.
| umvi wrote:
| > "My heroin use is as rational as my alcohol use"
|
| What an incredibly dangerous idea to promote. Do not mess with
| opioids. You think you are in control, until you are not.
| lostgame wrote:
| Ugh. Come on. Be part of the solution, not the problem. We
| should be promoting _safe use and harm reduction education_ ,
| not these bullshit blanket statements such as 'do not mess with
| opioids'/'say no to drugs', and stop using them quick.
|
| Otherwise the people who inevitably will/do use, only hear and
| have only heard, 'don't do it to start' or get ostracized
| instead of getting the help they need or the education they
| need to know when they are overdoing it or not in control any
| more.
|
| We also need more clinics and support for safely quitting or
| managing drugs and tools for it similar to what we have for
| tobacco.
|
| Shamefully, here in Canada, some of these clinics in Vancouver
| are getting _shut down_ , rather than more of them popping up,
| during the worst opioid crisis this country has ever seen.
|
| These closures are a direct result of a 'don't ever do/touch
| drugs' policy and the stigma and ostracization that come with
| it.
|
| Speaking from experience...education is better than 'don't'. I
| have had friends who have died from using drugs, and I have
| many, many friends who are regular users but not abusers - pull
| an insane variety of different full-time jobs. (And well!)
|
| The huge difference between these two groups of people for me
| is education (for instance, preexisting mental health
| conditions that would be made worse by a particular substance
| and the knowledge to avoid it), and having a support system,
| etc..
|
| It is fascinating and inspiring that someone has chosen to put
| themselves in the very vulnerable position of coming out about
| their personal use, and I believe the intention is to help
| remove the stigma around drug use, so education can be
| bettered. :)
|
| Edit: Maybe better to say 'Drugs can be extremely harmful and
| addictive. If you choose to use them, please be sure you are
| educated, safe, and have someone nearby.'
|
| In fact, that doesn't seem dissimilar to the surgeon general
| warnings on cigarette packs, anyway.
|
| What kind of warning labels will we see on cocaine, heroin, etc
| - in countries where its sale will inevitably be legalized?
| These are the kinds of statements we should be making rather
| than 'just stay away from opioids.'
| omginternets wrote:
| >We should be promoting safe use and harm reduction education
|
| Right, but this is harm- _denial_.
| umvi wrote:
| > We should be promoting safe use and harm reduction
| education
|
| _for existing users_. We should not tempt people who would
| have otherwise never used them with false fantasies that they
| will be able to dabble and remain in control without getting
| addicted
| [deleted]
| balozi wrote:
| Alcohol is not any better.
| whatshisface wrote:
| Metaphysically maybe but physically, not really.
| ajkdhcb2 wrote:
| Alcohol literally destroys your brain and gives you
| dementia. It is objectively more physically damaging than
| opiate usage.
| omginternets wrote:
| This is dose-dependent. You're comparing alcohol _abuse_
| to heroine _use_. That 's not a fair comparison.
|
| You should also examine the proportion of heroin "users"
| who become abusers. You should then do the same
| comparison for alcohol use.
|
| I'm willing to entertain the notion that the risks of
| heroin are overblown. I'm even willing to believe it.
| What seems entirely _unsupported_ by evidence is the
| notion that alcohol and heroin are in remotely the same
| league.
| ajkdhcb2 wrote:
| Look at the data on those who have chronic pain: they are
| prescribed opiates at high dosages daily (equivalent to
| extreme abuse), and doctors think this is acceptable.
| Heroin is essentially just an opiate. They do not show
| effects as bad as life-long alcohol users, nor obviously
| abusers. A lot of socially acceptable alcohol use would
| be called abuse if society was fair about it.
| omginternets wrote:
| >they are prescribed opiates at high dosages daily
| (equivalent to extreme abuse), and doctors think this is
| acceptable
|
| That's an orthogonal concern. That being said, I don't
| understand your reasoning.
|
| Firstly, this _is_ opioid abuse. Granted, the
| responsibility for this abuse falls on the prescriber
| rather than the user, but it is nevertheless a
| pathological pattern of use.
|
| Secondly, you've substituted "heroin" for
| "pharmaceutical-grade opiates" in your argument. The
| irony is that this supports my position more than yours
| because it demonstrates that the slope is particularly
| slippery, even with _medical-grade_ opioids. This point
| bears repeating: the addictive and toxicological
| potential of opioid _medicine_ is greater than alcohol.
| The trend is even less in your favor when we return to
| the topic at hand: _heroin_.
|
| I share your concern about opioid-based medication, but
| this argues against your point.
| ajkdhcb2 wrote:
| You didnt say anything at all in this comment about
| physical consequences, so I am lost in the discussion.
|
| Doctors are rationally ok with such prescriptions because
| the effects are not as bad as alcohol.
|
| Simply put: opiate abusers and users don't need liver
| transplants or get such severe brain damage; alcohol is
| more damaging in a myriad of ways for both uses and
| abusers. There is plenty of data supporting this, and it
| is valid to use data regarding medical grade opiates.
|
| The risks of heroin are almost entirely side-effects of
| the war on drugs rather than the drug itself.
| omginternets wrote:
| Good grief, yes it is.
|
| It's not nearly as addictive. It's not nearly as deadly. It's
| much easier to control dosage. It has modes of consumption
| that are non-pathological.
|
| This is typical of the distorted anglo-saxon view of alcohol
| as a tool for getting flat-out drunk. This is not how most of
| the world relates to alcohol, nor is it a healthy
| relationship with it.
|
| Honestly, this says more about you than about booze.
| Uberphallus wrote:
| > It's not nearly as addictive.
|
| Strangely I know more ex-heroin addicts than ex-alcoholics,
| and there are way more alcoholics out there, but that's
| just anecdotal data I guess :)
|
| > It's not nearly as deadly.
|
| Maybe if you leave out all of the DUI and accidents where
| alcohol played a role, you'd be right, but overall alcohol
| causes way more damage than heroin. While David Nutt ranked
| heroin as more addictive than alcohol, overall he found
| alcohol more harmful.[0] Precisely because even though it
| doesn't harm one as much as heroin, it's way more likely
| that you harm others with alcohol.
|
| > It's much easier to control dosage.
|
| Actually no. Lots of things affect gastrointestinal
| absorption of alcohol. Just compare a few shots on empty
| stomach vs after a meal. Also don't get me started with the
| absurdly long and not always obvious list of drug
| interactions that alcohol has.
|
| Heroin, assuming known purity, will work roughly the same,
| either snorted, smoked or injected. If you make a point
| about its purity, that's a consequence of its legal status.
| Most, if not all of the interactions are self-evident
| (other CNS depressants).
|
| > It has modes of consumption that are non-pathological.
|
| I guess you have preconceptions about what heroin use
| implies. How is unwinding after work a pathological use of
| heroin vs whiskey?
|
| > Honestly, this says more about you than about booze.
|
| Ah, ad hominem to finish, a classic.
|
| [0] https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-11660210
| omginternets wrote:
| >Strangely I know more ex-heroin addicts than ex-
| alcoholics, and there are way more alcoholics out there,
| but that's just anecdotal data I guess :)
|
| Indeed it is! You conveniently ignore all alcohol
| consumers _except_ the ones with dependency problems.
|
| >Actually no.
|
| Actually, yes! You're arguing that there is variance in
| absorbtion, and you are right. That is different,
| however, from e.g. the LD50 or the ability of people to
| measure dosage accurately.
|
| >I guess you have preconceptions about what heroin use
| implies.
|
| You're conveniently ignoring that non-pathological use of
| heroin is extremely small. It's a rounding error when
| compared to alcohol usage. You are cherry-picking.
|
| > Strangely I know more ex-heroin addicts than ex-
| alcoholics, and there are way more alcoholics out there,
| but that's just anecdotal data I guess :)
|
| Good thing this has been formally studied
|
| >Maybe if you leave out all of the DUI and accidents
| where alcohol played a role, you'd be right [...]
|
| Yes, and people with pools in their back-yards experience
| more drowning. Color me surprised.
|
| You're also leaving out all the incidental damage from
| heroin use in your analysis. Shall we factor in drug-
| related murders? How about secondary complications like
| pneumonia?
|
| Again, cherry-picking.
|
| >Ah, ad hominem to finish, a classic.
|
| An observation, actually. I've rarely seen this level of
| bad-faith argumentation.
| Uberphallus wrote:
| > Indeed it is! You conveniently ignore all alcohol
| consumers except the ones with dependency problems.
|
| Actually a significant part of alcohol users have
| dependency problems, roughly 10% as someone already
| mentioned.
|
| > Actually, yes! You're arguing that there is variance in
| absorbtion, and you are right. That is different,
| however, from e.g. the LD50 or the ability of people to
| measure dosage accurately.
|
| So... no? Unless you ignore all that I said, that is.
| Active to LD50 ratio for alcohol it's 0.1, for heroin
| it's 0.17, in the same ballpark. When you factor in the
| variability of oral administration, alcohol is way more
| dangerous. Most overdoses in heroin are due to fentanyl
| or changes in purity; in case of alcohol it's due to
| wanting to get drunk fast, and doing it too fast (plus
| interactions).
|
| > You're also leaving out all the incidental damage from
| heroin use in your analysis.
|
| There is a lot of it, it's just that alcohol is bigger.
| People on heroin don't usually go driving or picking up
| fights, they're usually just lying on the couch.
|
| > Shall we factor in drug-related murders?
|
| I wouldn't factor anything external to the use/abuse of
| the substance, like its legal status. It'd be interesting
| to compare them with roughly 25% of vehicle deaths that
| can be attributed to alcohol.
|
| > How about secondary complications like pneumonia?
|
| Which was already accounted for in Nutt's analysis.
|
| > An observation, actually. I've rarely seen this level
| of bad-faith argumentation.
|
| I could say the same, it feels like you have a horse in
| this race, pun intended.
| vmchale wrote:
| It's less addictive.
| JoelMcCracken wrote:
| I read this a few hours ago and didn't decide to comment then.
| But I just have to.
|
| I just lost my brother-in-law to heroin overdose. He overdosed
| because he went into rehab, came out, and then used far more than
| his body could tolerate. This is unfortunately common. Not
| because he mixed it with alcohol or antihistamines or whatever.
|
| Overall, his entire life has been extremely tragic. He was a good
| guy at heart. He was a hard worker and did good work in general.
|
| However, he did did A LOT of crazy things. He was the poster
| child for "your emotional development stops at the point you got
| addicted to heroin". He basically acted like a troubled 13 yr old
| in a 40 yr old's body. This craziness has caused a LOT of
| problems over the years, especially for his daughters.
|
| I get that the popular notions of drug use are wrong, but when is
| that _not_ true of anything? Drug use does itself cause a lot of
| problems. While some people may be able to use them without any
| issues, many cannot.
|
| The way a lot of this is phrased, it makes it sound like drugs
| are fine and there is a conspiracy to demonize them. While the
| popular notion of them isn't perfectly balanced, it is not the
| case that they are just fine for people to use.
| ewokone wrote:
| Same here.
|
| This article is way out on facts. This guy should better read
| some science based books like the of Gabor Mate, 'in the realm
| of hungry ghosts'. Inside this books it is well explained in
| detail, if drugs create addictions, why humans take drugs, what
| happens to the brain on drugs, what happens in long term usage
| and what somehow all users share in common, from their
| emotional journey. Its about getting love, feeling seen,
| feeling rewarded, ..from friends, next one's and society itself
| or more often, in the search for rest from trauma and
| depression....
|
| Damn nautilus this article was reputation hurting.
| moreranchplease wrote:
| The fact that they're illegal and you don't know the dose is
| why this happens though.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| No. It is very simple, even common, to know exactly what the
| dose is and still OD. Look at any prescription opioid. The
| labels on those bottles are very accurate. People still OD
| and die.
| frakkingcylons wrote:
| The circumstances of the overdose are important though.
| Many of them occur because the victim consumed it with
| another respiratory depressant like alcohol.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Exactly. The level at which one might "OD" fluctuates. So
| even if you know the dose, you can be wrong about your
| ability to handle it.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| What do you mean by common and what would you wager the
| ratio is between dosing errors and unintentional OD with
| known doses? 1:10? 1:10,000?
| unishark wrote:
| One explanation I've read is that heavy addicts build up such
| a tolerance that they need dangerously high doses in the
| first place. If they quit for awhile like in this story,
| their tolerance drops and what they could previously handle
| now kills them.
| aphextron wrote:
| More lives have been destroyed by alcohol than have ever even
| tried heroin. What you are describing sounds no different than
| an alcoholic. The whole point of this article, and Dr. Hart's
| research in general, is that it's not ok to demonize some drugs
| over others just because they are culturally accepted.
| Addiction is addiction, and there's zero evidence to support
| the fact that heroin is any more addictive or dangerous than
| alcohol.
| zigh wrote:
| You will not be able to say this if heroin is as accessible
| as alcohol. It's easy to test objectively which one is more
| addictive.
| happy-go-lucky wrote:
| My hypothesis is that there is always a thin line between
| drug/substance abuse and doing them in moderation.
|
| > The way a lot of this is phrased, it makes it sound like
| drugs are fine and there is a conspiracy to demonize them.
|
| Those who cry foul at the imagined conspiracies may already be
| deep in the throes of an addiction.
| chordalkeyboard wrote:
| I agree that "conspiracy" is loaded and inappropriate in this
| context. But the GP is referencing a social phenomenon that
| exists: https://archive.org/details/ceremonialchemist00szas
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| I'm sorry to hear about your brother-in-law. I've met many
| people who have had similar issues with alcohol. And yet,
| myself and many people are also able to use it in balance, in a
| way that contributes positively to our well-being.
| fossuser wrote:
| Yeah, the piece reads like a rationalization by a drug user
| still in the early stages of a problem.
|
| We'll see how things turn out in the end (maybe I'm wrong), but
| I'm pretty skeptical of a positive outcome.
| bsder wrote:
| Yeah, I tend to place a lot more stock in the vast legions of
| musicians who can't agree on anything but are almost
| unanimous in "Look, just don't do heroin. _Any_ drug but
| that. "
| sibeliuss wrote:
| The fact that he started only 5 years ago is a conspicuous
| detail -- I keep googling trying to find _why_ he started in
| the first place, but haven 't found that question asked.
| There seems to be some shadow material expressing itself in
| the form of a book.
|
| I know my own problems, way back when, really got going at
| around the 5 year mark, and turned from weekend fun to every
| day need. If I hadn't have met my partner who helped pull me
| out I'm not sure where I would be right now. Knowing what I
| know from personal experience, this book seems reckless to
| me.
| cambaceres wrote:
| Don't take this wrong, but I'm pretty skeptical of a positive
| outcome of your life too. We all die in the end.
| Cerium wrote:
| Snarky comments generally get down-voted. I would like to
| take a look at your point though. Is death the outcome of
| life? I don't buy a computer to wait for it to break, even
| though that is the inevitable outcome. The meaning of life
| is not to have an opportunity to die.
| iamacyborg wrote:
| I guess that would depend on whether you believe there's
| a meaning to life in the first place.
| emteycz wrote:
| Why do you need meaning? Have fun!
| pvitz wrote:
| Agree! When he said that he meets his parental, personal
| [...] responsibilities, I thought I would like to hear if his
| partner and his children think the same. Maybe everything is
| really fine, but more often, the drug user doesn't realize
| how his (ab-)use affects his closest environment.
| undecisive wrote:
| Reminds me of a quote from Love Actually:
|
| > Hiya kids. Here is an important message from your Uncle Bill.
| Don't buy drugs. Become a pop star, and they give you them for
| free.
|
| ... except in this case the message is don't do drugs kids, but
| "grown ups" should (as defined as a state of maturity where you
| know how the drugs behave, know your limits and can balance your
| experimentation with fulfilling your societal obligations)
|
| I see this as a bit like speeding. The government sets fairly
| arbitrary speed limits for different types of road. They do it
| based on what they think the majority of people can cope with,
| versus the likelihood of risks, vs the need to get from A to B in
| a reasonable amount of time. The government hasn't been amazingly
| scientific about the speed limits, and don't take into account
| time of day, traffic, weather conditions etc. A healthy, fully-
| alert person can probably go at 150% of the speed limit on an
| ambient clear day on an empty road - and do so perfectly safely.
| But that isn't the message they give people, because it would be
| impossible to assess person-by-person, minute-by-minute.
|
| And yet, some would consider the above information to be
| recklessly given, because some people will on read "go at 150% of
| the speed limit... perfectly safely" and take that as my advice.
|
| So the question is, should it be legal to travel at any speed,
| provided you feel like you're doing a good job of it? In both
| cases, misjudgement can be disastrous for yourself and the people
| around you (and innocent bystanders too)
|
| And when you are talking about something that can alter your
| perceptions, you would surely need a non-drug-taking associate
| with you at all times who could give you an honest blow-by-blow
| assessment of where you are dropping the ball as a "normal" human
| being, and where your drug-fuelled failings are happening?
|
| When the potential downsides so vastly outweigh the benefits, I
| can understand why laws take the side they do. That said, I
| absolutely do think that there are massive downsides to making
| drugs illegal when taken responsibly. Countries should be
| realistic about what they can and can't do. If they can't
| eradicate drug use - and most countries can't - they need to put
| effort into safeguarding above incarceration.
|
| But I think that's the consensus anyway on most social issues.
| And it seems to be a lesson that governments globally are very
| slow to learn.
| Pulcinella wrote:
| This is not a particularly hard hitting interview. I wish the
| interviewer pushed back more against Dr. Hart. E.g. do some
| digging on who funds his research. Push back against minimizing
| the opioid crisis.
|
| A lot of these questions are real softballs.
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| A functioning heroin addict does not exist , he might just be an
| outlier.
| ddelt wrote:
| I wish I'd see more discussion and analysis like this over the
| recreational use of anabolic steroids (read: not for professional
| sports or contests, but rather for physical appearance).
|
| You want to talk about some shit that gets demonized for no
| reason? Testosterone replacement therapy is legal, but if you
| decide that you want to use an extra 100mg, suddenly it's a
| criminal offense and you are a bad person. For what? Wanting to
| have bigger biceps or train harder in the gym? What is the
| alternative? Drink alcohol which has a measurable death rate per
| year, or smoke some legal cigarettes and second hand smoke poison
| countless people?
| insickness wrote:
| There's a good book on this called Better Than Well that
| discusses the use of medicine for life improvement rather than
| treating disease. One of the most interesting chapters was on
| amputees by choice, people who want to cut off a limb to become
| handicapped. Doctors were left with the painful decision of
| helping these people achieve this or having them do it on their
| own in a much more dangerous way. While most would agree the
| behavior of amputees by choice is in some way pathological, it
| presents an interesting question about whether people have the
| right to do to their own bodies what they want and the role of
| medicine in helping them achieve those aims.
| fire7000 wrote:
| You can go to a doctor and get them to prescribe the same
| hormones to change you from a girl to a boy. Tell them it's
| for gender re-assignment and they will send you home with a
| lifetime supply
| diegoperini wrote:
| Is there a testimony of someone who went through such
| surgery? What's the mindset of a person who really needs
| his/her limbs removed because of such urges?
| burnthrow wrote:
| I would never do it, but there's some convincing evidence
| (the experience of eunuchs) that castration evens out the
| male/female longevity difference.
| hnick wrote:
| One possible cause is
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_integrity_dysphoria but
| there are related conditions with other names.
|
| I saw an interview years ago on TV and someone was saying
| it felt like that appendage was not part of their body, it
| belonged to someone else. It was so mentally uncomfortable
| they'd rather remove it.
| fire7000 wrote:
| No alcohol won't give you the growth you want. The alternative
| is a horse steroid Boldenone undecylenate
| fire7000 wrote:
| Your biceps will shrink after your cycle and put you into a
| depression in combination with having low testosterone. It's
| not a good place.
| rkachowski wrote:
| slightly OT, but in what situations can anabolic steroids be
| used recreationally?
| huffmsa wrote:
| This'll get downvoted, but it strikes me how hypocritical it is
| that you can say you don't feel comfortable in your body
| they'll put you on test blockers and estrogen replacement to
| help you look like how you identify, but saying you think you
| need to look like Adonis is illegal.
|
| Controlled use of anabolic steroids is demonstrably safe and
| effective.
| thgaway17 wrote:
| Who is the "they" you're referring to? Both groups in your
| example need therapy, not hormones.
| huffmsa wrote:
| Doctors
| pfortuny wrote:
| But... he gives no counter-research references to the research he
| critizices... so I'll pass on this one.
| Hnrobert42 wrote:
| Yeah. I am disappointed in Nautilus presenting such a
| controversial position with no scrutiny and very few probing or
| challenging questions.
| Babiker wrote:
| > Hart reports that more than 70 percent of drug users--whether
| they use alcohol, cocaine, prescription medications, or heroin--
| do not meet the health criteria for drug addiction.
|
| I don't think it's about health criteria. It's about whether you
| want to add yet another item to things you depend on just to feel
| normal.
|
| Also, the need is a symptom of a real issue that needs to be
| addressed instead of just numbed and berried i.e., unhappy at a
| job or a situation etc that needs to be addressed.
| yladiz wrote:
| > Hart strives to "present a more realistic image of the typical
| drug user: a responsible professional who happens to use drugs in
| his pursuit of happiness."
|
| I think this is likely wrong. I guess it partly depends on the
| definition of a "drug user" (like, does it include alcohol
| drinkers) but I would be very surprised if most heroin users are
| responsible professionals - how can you do anything when you're
| high on heroin? I'd go so far as to say that saying people that
| are addicted are "typically responsible professionals" is a
| little disrespectful and downplays the reality of those that are
| actually afflicted with addiction, as it feels like it's just
| pushing the "burden" onto the drug user, which reinforces
| negative stereotypes and makes it harder to get people on the
| side of treating addiction as a health issue and not a moral
| failing.
| mellavora wrote:
| Friend of mine is from Pakistan. He says that the guys who
| drive heavy trucks through the mountains always take heroin
| first.
|
| Helps them keep calm when navigating a road which has sections
| only marginally wider than the truck, with a 500m drop on one
| side.
|
| I'm not promoting DUI (lost too many friends that way, mostly
| from OTHER people DUI'ing and hitting them), just saying that
| there are professions where the people engaged think that
| dulling the fear/panic response is worth the reduced reaction
| times.
| biolurker1 wrote:
| That must be the definition of urban myth
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Are you sure he's not talking about charas?
| jimmaswell wrote:
| > but I would be very surprised if most heroin users are
| responsible professionals - how can you do anything when you're
| high on heroin?
|
| The rock scene of the 80s comes to mind. Lots of them did it af
| the time while they were touring.
| waterhouse wrote:
| The Guns N' Roses song "Mr. Brownstone" is essentially about
| this (brownstone being slang for heroin). It seems it worked
| for some time, but eventually... I get up
| around seven Get out of bed around nine ...
| I used to do a little but a little wouldn't do it So
| the little got more and more I just keep tryin' to get
| a little better Said a little better than before
| ... Now I get up around whenever I used to get up
| on time
| rkachowski wrote:
| From my reading, alcohol drinkers are absolutely included in
| his definition of a "drug user" and the exact same objection
| would apply - how can you do anything when you're drunk on
| alcohol?
| detritus wrote:
| I've actually often used booze to power beyond sense and get
| extra work done at the end of a day, however there is a HUGE
| proviso - it has to be design work, or stuff that I know
| inside out and could do blind-folded anyway. Anything to do
| with programming or logic and I became a useless head-
| scratching moron, going around in ever tighter circles of
| stupidity.
|
| Design work though? There was many a time I awoke the next
| morning and had a dread-chill panic thinking I'd need to get
| some project done, only to find I'd not only done it the
| night before, but I'd actually not hate it. Which, as a
| designer at the time, was high praise. Sure, there might be
| some rough edges or stupid typos, but the overall work would
| be Great, by my standards at least, so after a quick review,
| would be ready to go. I used to refer to it as 'free work'.
|
| I guess letting go is more of a useful trait in design.
|
| I'd not recommend it for doing work in critically-important
| fields, obviously!
|
| - ed last line
| Uberphallus wrote:
| Same. I tried coding tipsy, especially after colleague
| farewell meals, and I never did anything good. At most I
| gave funny code reviews to people.
|
| For most of my life I also cooked sober. But when I started
| cooking tipsy, I began preparing meals I could have never
| believed I made myself. My current lasagna recipe is an
| absolute bomb and it's been perfected over a dozen drunken
| cooking sessions. Even Italians asked me for the recipe.
| detritus wrote:
| Oh! Don't get me started on tipsy cooking.
|
| Main problem there is replicability. My partner often
| gets annoyed at me when she asks if I can cook some nice
| thing I'd recently made, only for me to umm and aaah
| because I didn't write down the exact ingredients... .
| Mediterraneo10 wrote:
| > how can you do anything when you're drunk on alcohol?
|
| The statistics for alcohol consumption in the Nordic
| countries in the 19th century are staggering, adult males
| were basically drinking hard liquor all day every day as they
| went about their work. Alcohol definitely has its effects on
| the body and is a huge safety risk, but apparently men were
| still able regardless to run their farms, build the buildings
| they needed, chop wood, etc.
| wingerlang wrote:
| On the other hand the government had to step in and make
| alcohol restrictions because of the abuse.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systembolaget#History
| [deleted]
| nicoburns wrote:
| I've never taken heroin, but I've heard that it is quite
| possible to work while high on it. Partly because the high
| isn't quite like other drugs that give you a high. Which is
| apparently one of the reasons why it's so easy to become
| addicted: at first you can feel pretty normal and competent
| while on it.
| throwaway_du wrote:
| I used drugs recreationally until I had children. During this
| time I knew many colleagues that used drugs every week. Some
| used amphetamines and mdma at parties. Some used morphine
| substitutes day time during the weekends, and on a few
| occasions some were high during work hours (the last few hours
| on friday). They were very productive. Just because you use a
| hard drug does not mean that you have to take a large dose. I
| would argue that most people will be more productive with a low
| dose of amphetamines. On the other hand, I think no one codes
| better with alcohol. It all depends on the drug.
|
| For several years I made a living playing poker, and I played a
| lot better with morphine in my system. It made me more patient
| and focused. I even tracked my results in different databases
| (with pokertracker) to compare my results while high. I made
| almost 10% more while high, and this is over hundreds of hours
| played.
| treeman79 wrote:
| Bio parents of my adopted child used them recreationally.
| They used them all through kids childhood. Really screwed em
| up.
|
| Every single person in group homes and foster system had same
| sort of tale.
| pksebben wrote:
| Does that mean the substances are to blame? IMHO, people
| who would create a responsibility for themselves (child)
| and then ignore that responsibility have problems above and
| beyond how they recreate. Their indulgence is a symptom,
| not a cause.
| dijksterhuis wrote:
| Here's a better definition (imo):
|
| > A typical drug user is someone who uses drugs.
|
| It's impossible to neatly encapsulate every single type of drug
| user into a "typical" category. Everyone is different.
|
| Some people use drugs. Others don't. Some people can use drugs
| recreationaly, others can't (including myself).
| avisser wrote:
| > how can you do anything when you're high on heroin?
|
| It is a straw-man to assume that drug users are high during
| work. There are plenty of hours in the day. Erowid puts the
| duration of a heroin high at 2-4 hours.
|
| https://erowid.org/chemicals/heroin/heroin_basics.shtml
| swirepe wrote:
| 8 hours for sleeping
|
| 8 hours for getting your $80 for the day to get high
|
| 4 hours to get high
|
| 4 hours for...I don't know, working on a novel or something
| S_A_P wrote:
| Im not sure how I feel about this. I do think that Dr Hart is
| probably right in an academic sense. What I worry about is that
| reality is messy. I think in the spectrum of people in the world
| there are likely people who can take heroin and only take it once
| in a while. He may even not be glossing over the harm drugs do in
| his life(I dont know him so I wont make that judgement).
|
| I know if I had a ready supply of clean heroin I would probably
| not just take it once in a while. Ive never done heroin, and that
| is because I know how much I like hydrocodone and its much weaker
| chemical cousins. I also know 2 people severely harmed by heroin
| use.(Brothers in fact) Maybe if they had a regimented way of
| copping it and safe supply of needles one of them wouldnt have
| Hep C now.
|
| The real problem with treating opiates or other drugs as a public
| health problem is that the US does _not_ have that sort of
| infrastructure set up to deal with the problem. Why do you think
| the police are called in now for drug problems(non criminal)?
| There is literally nobody else to deal with it. I dont agree with
| locking up addicts, but is checking them into a hospital with no
| insurance a viable option?
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| I used to know an engineer who used cocaine, heroin and drank a
| lot. He definitely wasn't performing at his best and the long
| term outlook wasn't good. But he was able to hold his job and
| didn't miss work more often than other people with other health
| issues like cancer or back problems.
|
| This definitely convinced me that it doesn't make sense to pull
| drug users out of productive society and either fire them or put
| them to jail. It's just very unproductive that makes things only
| worse.
|
| It would be much cheaper to treat their addiction while they are
| working.
| goat_whisperer wrote:
| I'm all for re-thinking drug policy, but normalizing heroin use?
| Hell no. It's gonna catch up to this guy one day -- he says he's
| good now but just wait until he feels like he needs to stop.
| juskrey wrote:
| It did not take a while to understand all drug experiences are
| deeply fake comparing to living full life. And if they enrich
| you, you life is probably fake.
|
| Like in Russian group Splin lyrics: "Ia naiavu vizhu to, chto
| mnogim dazhe ne snilos', He iavlialos' pod kaifom".
|
| Rough translation: "I see the things in reality, others don't
| even when dreaming, when getting high"
| ZoomZoomZoom wrote:
| Isn't it ironic that you provide a quote from Vasilyev, who's
| not exactly known for being straight edge? Moreover, this is a
| line from a song about love from first sight, which itself is a
| specific kind of an altered state of mind.
| juskrey wrote:
| I am not making any idols here. The quote just comes to my
| mind now and then, when reality, so to say, happens.
| insickness wrote:
| I used to smoke weed every day. At the end of the day after
| work, I would vape until I was fairly intoxicated. Almost
| everything was better on weed--sex, food, television, etc. I
| would be out with friends and look forward to getting home and
| smoking weed. In essence, it made being bored fun. But I
| started to question who I really was when I smoked weed. I was
| in a different state mentally, a state that in many ways was
| disconnected to my sober state. Almost as if I were a different
| person.
|
| I eventually completely quit because it seemed like a black
| hole in my day and in my life, where the sober me just lost
| valuable time and focus. It also dampened my motivation. Part
| of it may have been physiological, I would be less focused the
| next day. But part of it was also that compared to being on
| weed, life was just not as enjoyable when I was sober. I did
| not like that contrast.
| rkachowski wrote:
| The same could be said about any experience from reading
| fiction, watching movies or enjoying art.
| juskrey wrote:
| I must say I've stopped watching movies too, and reading most
| fiction (except at least 100 years old), after diving deeper
| into life.
|
| Certainly not only drugs are fake or toxic.
| [deleted]
| globular-toast wrote:
| I recommend David Nutt for more logical analysis of drugs and
| their dangers. Essentially the way drugs are classified makes no
| sense and is mostly a result of corruption and political,
| religious and even racist ideologies.
|
| Drugs have had a profound effect on my life. Like many, I started
| with alcohol - the most boring and most dangerous drug there is.
| I later used cannabis, which I decided had an overall negative
| effect on my life, and MDMA. The latter I only used a few times
| but it changed me. I don't need to take it any more but it has
| improved my life no end. Now I only use caffeine (in tea and
| coffee). I haven't used other drugs for almost two years at this
| point (my last drink was around May 2019 and it ruined my sleep,
| as it always does, for the last time).
| jack_riminton wrote:
| I saw this guy on Rogan and his claim that opioids weren't
| addictive just isn't born out by the facts
| oreally wrote:
| I get that you need outlets, but drugs are the worst you can
| choose amongst the many other outlets you have today. At least go
| play video games - at least you'll still be able to recover. With
| drugs you're risking so much of your health. Make the smart
| choice kids.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Yo, no one uses NDMA for that shit. You mean MDMA.
| konfusinomicon wrote:
| It's only a problem when you don't have any right?
| joemazerino wrote:
| This is legitimately dangerous reporting. Heroin is ranked in the
| top 3 of addictive chemicals and all this article reports about
| is this anecdotal nonsense. I've too many friends to Heroin to
| know the reality of the drug.
| lucideer wrote:
| > _dangerous_
|
| Stigma around drug use is dangerous. This is extremely evident
| from the state of treatment of heroin addiction in society
| today.
|
| I don't really see how challenging this stigma is more
| dangerous than pandering to the status quo here.
| capableweb wrote:
| I think you're missing the point of the article a bit. Everyone
| knows Heroin is dangerous and it's iterated on in the article
| as well. Only responsible and healthy individuals should self-
| use drugs, generally speaking.
|
| Then you can also argue that you might not have lost your
| friends only because of Heroin the substance, but also how
| people with heroin addiction is "treated" and frowned upon in
| society.
|
| I think what the article is trying to say is that harm
| reduction is a much more human and possibly effective approach
| to fighting real addition. Compared to other ways, which some
| of them include "there is no such thing as responsible drug
| use, it's all addiction" and treating people as such.
| hackermailman wrote:
| Anybody who thinks this harm reduction strategy works should
| go visit cities that have employed it for years like
| Vancouver, Canada where there are legal shooting galleries
| everywhere, no arrests for personal amounts, and prescribed
| heroin that thousands of drug addicts have been on for 10
| years now and the problem gets worse everyday. There used to
| just be a contained area of people passed out all over the
| street now it extends to the rest of the city. There is even
| a drug takers union that demanded treatment options be
| removed from drug taking clinics as 'it shamed drug users'.
|
| So if you create an accomodating and encouraging area for
| taking heroin you will find it surges in population when
| heroin is freely available and detox discouraged. Everybody
| points to the European model but they must have done
| something different than just harm reduction, like proactive
| policing breaking up open air drug markets and shutting down
| slums teeming with addicts forcing them into detox.
| Dma54rhs wrote:
| I live in Europe where drugs are legalized. Definetly it
| doesn't mean anti social behavior is "legalized" what often
| at least seems the case with Nort American progressive
| cities. People are treated as adults and are expected to
| act like ones.
| valuearb wrote:
| Heroin is still illegal in Vancouver. Only a handful of
| addicts get free heroin.
|
| And because it's illegal most addicts have to pay high
| prices for heroin of unknown potency, and frequent laced
| with Fentanyl. That directly leads to overdoses and
| hundreds of deaths, along with street crime to fund
| expensive habits.
| hackermailman wrote:
| It's been decrim unofficially for personal use for 5
| years now, now officially decriminalized
| https://www.rcinet.ca/en/2020/11/28/vancouver-votes-to-
| decri...
|
| Every bus stop since March last year in the drug slums
| also has instructions where to get prescribed opiates.
| Area only got worse
| valuearb wrote:
| Decriminalization isn't legalization. Not only is it
| still a federal crime to buy and use, but it's also
| illegal to sell. And illegal heroin is still cut with a
| variety of substances leading to more overdoses and
| deaths.
| slavik81 wrote:
| From your link:
|
| > The Vancouver motion however for the moment has no
| force in law.
|
| A municipality doesn't have the authority to
| decriminalize drugs. They're just requesting the Federal
| government to act. It's not official, though it could
| eventually be.
| kgwgk wrote:
| > Only responsible and healthy individuals should self-use
| drugs, generally speaking.
|
| Exposing oneself to developing a heroin addiction seems a
| somewhat irresponsible and unhealthy thing to do.
| rovr138 wrote:
| I think the tone of the article is dangerous.
|
| That coupled with the fact of how heroin is treated in
| society makes it worse. On top of that, add that not everyone
| that uses it is healthy and responsible, makes it even worse
| providing some bad validation. And then, not everyone is
| capable of making the distinction between fun or addiction
| early on when an addiction is starting.
|
| I too think it's dangerous.
| mdip wrote:
| > That coupled with the fact of how heroin is treated in
| society makes it worse.
|
| So this is sort of a problem with treating the thing
| "Heroin" as bad, versus treating the Heroin Addict as bad.
| Society makes it worse, mainly, by tossing addicts in jail
| and I'm generally against drug laws as they stand[0]. But
| making "everything legal" doesn't reduce the impact of the
| law on drug users as much as you'd expect. At least,
| anecdotally, every addict that I've known personally has
| had run-ins with law enforcement _because of their drug
| use_ but having _nothing_ to do with the drugs, themselves.
| In one case, a friend ended up with an "impeding traffic"
| charge when he fell asleep in the left-turn lane at an
| intersection.
|
| The story, as it was told to me, was that he chased a few
| Vicodin with a single beer, which resulted in him
| registering a 0.03, but he fell asleep in an intersection
| with his foot on the brake pedal. Despite this, he _passed_
| the field sobriety test, but the officer judged him to be
| intoxicated, and he was arrested. Apparently he was
| supposed to get a blood test; he was taken in early on
| Saturday and held until Monday, but they didn 't do the
| test until he was "on his way out". It turned up nothing
| and he got out with a lawyer bill.
|
| [0] I'm convinced that things are _so bad_ /ineffective
| right now, that I'm pretty close to support of all-out
| decriminalization (of possession), simply because it
| reduces the impact of addiction on the addicted.
| valuearb wrote:
| Heroin isn't dangerous.
|
| Illegal heroin is very dangerous.
| capableweb wrote:
| The tone is dangerous? What does that even mean?
|
| The article is an interview with a Heroin user. It's as
| dangerous as an interview with a sex-worker. The
| interviewer even seems to bring up some interesting
| counter-points to the interviewee.
|
| In the end, the interview is just providing a voice for the
| person getting interviewed. Are you saying that
| interviewing people who might do harm to world is
| dangerous?
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| Well, after all, interviewing a sex worker is dangerous
| too. People might have a bunch of sex and catch some
| nasty diseases.
|
| I think that's the logic, anyway. It's ironic that most
| people here are in the camp of "decriminalize drugs! Oh
| wait, no, not these drugs, just some drugs."
| 3131s wrote:
| I would hope people here recognize that legalization
| together with smart regulation is far preferable to
| decriminalization.
| coryrc wrote:
| As Portugal shows, decriminalizing drugs _reduces_ their
| use. The position you are mocking is actually consistent.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| Fair point. But, if something isn't criminal, then it
| should be fine to read about people doing that thing --
| which is all that this article is. Railing against it
| like it's somehow an affront to post it seems neither
| productive nor fair.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| Portugal has a much more comprehensive set of programs to
| get people off hard drugs than any of the US
| jurisdictions that have decriminalized (or stopped
| enforcing through executive action) hard drugs.
| jboog wrote:
| I'm not sure we can take the results of a single
| experiment in an incredibly homogenous tiny country in
| Europe to mean an outcome is replicable across the world.
| capableweb wrote:
| Indeed. The "experiment" in Portugal is not proving it
| works everywhere, but shows it can work, which indicates
| we should study it further and possibly deploy it in more
| countries across the world, to see if it works elsewhere
| and if we could possibly make it even more effective.
|
| While Portugal is probably the most famous example of
| decriminalizing working in humans favor, it's not the
| only example, it has been employed in other states too.
| Netherlands has de-facto decriminalized all drugs (in
| practice, not in law), Czech Republic has decriminalized
| all (most?) drugs as well.
| akiselev wrote:
| We can, however, easily take the opposite conclusion:
| drug criminalization has been an unmitigated disaster in
| almost every country it's been tried short of a few
| incredibly homogenous countries like Japan and countries
| for which no real data is available like North Korea.
| rwmj wrote:
| It's a disaster in Japan and North Korea too, albeit in
| different ways. In North Korea the state manufactures
| some very nasty narcotics and distributes them as a way
| to gain foreign currency with the "nice" side effect of
| destabilising those places they export to. Japan has a
| plainly crazy attitute to cannabis, with people losing
| their careers and being socially ostracised over the most
| passing association with the drug.
| ordu wrote:
| _> Only responsible and healthy individuals should self-use
| drugs, generally speaking._
|
| The funny thing I've been reading the article and the tone of
| it reminded me of heroin addicts who was not hit by their
| addiction heavily yet. I mean, Carl Hart thinks he is a
| responsible user, that he have an ability to decide for
| himself. It doesn't seem so for me. It is hard to tell,
| having as a data only one interview with him. But... you
| know, I'm an addict also, a nicotine one. I know how it is.
| First ten years of my addiction I though that there is
| nothing wrong with that, it costs some money and gives an
| urge to smoke sometimes, but it brings some benefits too. A
| few years ago I stopped smoking, after a month of abstinence
| I saw no benefits in smoking at all. My abstinence lasted for
| a couple of years, now I'm smoking again. Seeing no benefits
| at all.
|
| I know what I'm speaking about, I know the signs, I see the
| signs, and I see Carl Hart as a fellow addict, though with a
| different substance.
|
| I drink alcohol sometimes, and I know that I'm not an addict.
| Even despite the fact that sometimes I want to drink. A wish
| to drink is a warning sign of course, but I see no other
| signs. Like a despair coming with the thought that now it is
| not the good time to drink for some reasons. I have no ideas
| about benefits of being drunk: it is a funny state of mind,
| but mostly annoying, I'm really stupid when drunk, I see my
| stupidity and can do nothing to it. An addiction is a special
| state of mind, I believe one (i.e. me) could feel it as
| distinct from other states. Though it takes some learning,
| one needs to become an addict and to stop using an addictive
| substance of his choice. If Carl Hart wanted to prove that he
| is not an addict, he should stop using heroin for a couple of
| years, and then try to state his freedom from an addiction
| with a straight face. While he is using heroin for just five
| years and didn't tried to stop, I'd never believe his words
| that he is not an addict. When it would be 10-15 years or 5
| years of abstinence, I'll probably believe his word on it.
| chimprich wrote:
| > I drink alcohol sometimes, and I know that I'm not an
| addict.
|
| > If Carl Hart wanted to prove that he is not an addict, he
| should stop using heroin for a couple of years, and then
| try to state his freedom from an addiction with a straight
| face.
|
| So by that logic... we should only believe that you're not
| an alcohol addict after you stop using alcohol for a couple
| of years?
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| Indeed. Why do you think this is a gotcha? Do you think
| the comment's author hasn't thought of that?
| chimprich wrote:
| Why do I think it's a gotcha? Because there seems to be a
| double standard: ordu is allowed to innately know that
| they are not an alcohol addict, but the author of the
| article is not extended the same courtesy.
|
| I don't know if ordu has thought of that, but they don't
| appear to have from their comment.
|
| I find the idea that the only way to know if you're not
| an addict is to give up for a period of years to be very
| problematic. Most definitions of addict suggest they are
| unable to control their compulsion, but I couldn't see
| any indication of that from the article. If the author of
| the article can sustain occasional use while maintaining
| a high profile job (science professor), their use doesn't
| appear to be out of control.
| ordu wrote:
| _> ordu is allowed to innately know that they are not an
| alcohol addict, but the author of the article is not
| extended the same courtesy._
|
| Yeah, something like this. I'm not entirely sure that
| alcoholic addiction would be just like a nicotine one,
| but I believe it would be similar enough for me to detect
| it. If I'm right I might hope that my experience with
| nicotine could be generalized to alcohol.
|
| Maybe unrelated to a discussion of "is a period of
| abstinence is revealing", but I rarely drink alcohol, and
| a year or two without a drop of alcohol is a normal to
| me.
|
| _> Most definitions of addict suggest they are unable to
| control their compulsion, but I couldn 't see any
| indication of that from the article._
|
| I see no indication that he is able to control it. He is
| like "I want to take heroin, so I'm taking it". It is a
| very popular stance for addicts. When I tried to control
| my nicotine addiction it mostly ended with "I do not want
| to control". Even now I do not want to control, though I
| now see the difference between "I do not want to control"
| and "I want to smoke". I do not want to smoke and do not
| want to control my addiction.
|
| When plane uncontrollable falling to a ground due to a
| failure, a pilot could state that it is his intention,
| and therefore the fall is a controlled one. People often
| do something like this, but for an addict it is a symptom
| by itself.
| cirgue wrote:
| > The funny thing I've been reading the article and the
| tone of it reminded me of heroin addicts who was not hit by
| their addiction heavily yet.
|
| Having known someone who was a responsible, highly educated
| adult with a fantastic career who died of a heroin
| overdose, this whole article sounded eerily familiar.
| shmageggy wrote:
| Do you know whether this person's overdose was due to an
| escalating addiction or due to mixing with other
| substances or impurities? That's the distinction the
| article is trying to make
| cirgue wrote:
| It was due to an escalating addiction, not impurities.
| duxup wrote:
| What is the success rate of folks who use heroin with some
| effort to not be addicted ... and what is the cost of getting
| them out of the cycle of addition? and what is even the
| success rate of getting them out of that cycle?
|
| The impact of failure to somehow prevent yourself from being
| addicted can be catastrophic ... even if you are successful
| in getting them out of the cycle of addition. And that impact
| can extend WAY beyond the individual.
|
| I'm open to the possibility that some drugs really can't be
| used responsibly by enough people that they absolutely should
| not be legal.
| mannykannot wrote:
| > Only responsible and healthy individuals should self-use
| drugs, generally speaking.
|
| This not a very helpful observation, as we all know that this
| is far from what happens and is not going to become the norm.
|
| Furthermore, quite a lot of people became addicted to opiates
| through acting seemingly responsibly (at least initially
| taking the drugs under the supervision of a doctor whom they
| could reasonably assume was looking out for their best
| interests) and in the persuit of better health.
|
| I should add that Hart himself punted on this issue when the
| interviewer touched on it. In the interview, he does this a
| lot - for example, when the interviewer raised the question
| of physical addiction, Hart merely discussed the
| physiological basis, without touching the obvious issues it
| raises for the concept of responsible use. It may be telling
| that, in his description of himself as a responsible user, he
| avoided saying anything about this particular issue.
|
| > Then you can also argue that you might not have lost your
| friends only because of Heroin the substance, but also how
| people with heroin addiction is "treated" and frowned upon in
| society.
|
| This is also rather beside the point, as, while the way
| addiction is treated is also a problem, it is not an issue
| except where there is already a problem with addiction.
|
| That aside, there is such a thing as responsible addictive-
| drug use (including, but not necessarily limited to, people
| with chronic pain that only responds to such drugs) and the
| way we respond to addiction today is in many ways ineffective
| and in some ways very harmful. One cannot make a very good
| argument for reform, however, on the basis that some people
| can use some of these drugs responsibly.
| lazide wrote:
| Who decides that someone is a responsible and healthy adult?
| Do we have any data on how many responsible and healthy
| adults try heroin?
|
| Anecdata and broad brush strokes of course - In my experience
| anyway, the actually responsible and heathy adults I know
| haven't felt the need to use heroin. The people who somehow
| are able to delude themselves into thinking they are
| responsible and healthy while obviously in crippling mental
| and/or physical pain, have - and it's been devastating to
| them.
|
| I've had prescription opioids before (hydrocodone, codeine,
| morphine) during medical emergencies. The feeling of peace
| and calm is amazing - which is exactly why it attracts people
| in pain and suffering, destructively so in many cases. It is
| difficult to know if that feeling is going to be magnetic or
| repulsive to you until you try it. It happens to be repulsive
| in my case (I know it's a trap), thankfully.
|
| It's a complicated story of course, and bad outcomes tend to
| get the press. Better treatment (including in many cases
| mental health treatment) is definitely needed.
|
| It is not the only substance like this - alcohol, tobacco,
| amphetamines, and others have track records of similar
| problems.
|
| Pretending that anyone and everyone could self evaluate and
| go for it without a decent percent of them having major
| problems for them and those around them is unfortunately just
| not a good idea.
| capableweb wrote:
| > Who decides that someone is a responsible and healthy
| adult?
|
| You do. It's not up to someone to decide, you're
| responsible for your own body and your own decisions to
| improve/harm it.
|
| I don't think they are saying advising governments to setup
| some sort of screening process for this. It's more for the
| people who are interested in the drugs themselves. When I
| first started getting interested in drugs, many pushed the
| idea that I should be psychologically healthy first (mostly
| because my first interest was psychedelics and I have good
| and well-meaning friends). I think that's what the article
| is trying to signal here.
| jessebro wrote:
| The problem with that attitude is when the body count
| gets high enough, there is incredible pressure to 'do
| something' - because enough people are terrible at
| judging this (or don't have the right friend group, or
| whatever) that we end up with huge crime problems,
| destroyed lives, and other social ills.
|
| The libertarian 'you can do what you want and it's your
| own responsibility' is great until the people who
| obviously made the wrong decision stop quietly owning the
| results of their decisions and start murdering random
| people for money to fund their habit.
|
| An argument can be made that the answer is free heroin
| and mental health treatment of course, and maybe it is
| the right answer. It seems hard for societies to accept
| however, outside of some very niche locations
| (Netherlands) though.
| valuearb wrote:
| You don't have to murder anyone to fund a legal drug
| habit. Legal drug habits are easier to treat.
|
| Some might not even have a drug habit if not for illegal
| drugs laced with addictive substances they didn't even
| know were there.
| lazide wrote:
| Oxycodone is legal [albeit controlled]. There are plenty
| of pill doctors that will prescribe oxycodone to anyone
| that doesn't look like too big of a mess. A cousin of
| mine stole oxycodone from my grandmother when she
| couldn't afford the ever increasing costs of her
| spiraling out of control oxycodone habit. People have
| murdered and gone bankrupt acquiring oxycodone, and
| continue to do so.
| [https://www.pharmacytimes.com/news/pharmacist-killed-
| after-r...]
|
| If you're saying 'I meant it should be legal to buy over
| the counter for cheap and/or given away for free', then
| that might decrease the number of people being robbed for
| it - but doesn't seem to decrease the number of overdose
| deaths, area crime rate, or urban decay by as huge an
| amount (or maybe it just concentrates it?), at least
| based on the experiment in Vancouver, BC, Canada's lower
| east side. The Netherlands is also problematic, and not a
| solved problem. [https://www.areavibes.com/vancouver-
| bc/downtown+eastside/cri..., and overdose deaths have
| continued to skyrocket in Vancouver
| [http://www.vch.ca/Documents/CMHO-report.pdf] despite
| harm reduction, decriminalization, and other means.
|
| Areas like San Francisco with de-facto decriminalization
| also have major problems with people, for lack of a
| better word, rotting of neglect on the street - something
| that I've also seen first hand in Vancouver. I also have
| friends who have seen this first hand in Seattle.
| Resident complaints around muggings, being assaulted
| unpredictably by unstable mentally ill people (on drugs
| or not is hard to say, but there is a high correlation
| with this and these areas in my personal experience) are
| hard to ignore.
|
| This isn't a solved problem, and I'm not advocating for
| 'lock them up' policies - but pretending this will all be
| cool if everyone can walk down to the corner store and
| buy heroin if they think they're up for it isn't helping
| anyone either.
| pharrington wrote:
| Oxycodone was the #1 recent example of patients and even
| doctors being lied to about the addictivene potential of
| the drug. For well over a decade, pharmaceutical
| marketers (from Purdue Pharma especially) straight up
| falsely claimed that habitual use of Oxycontin would not
| lead to opioid dependency.
| lazide wrote:
| Which is a very near mirror to Heroin, which was created
| as a less addictive/problematic alternative to Opium.
|
| Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but that doesn't seem to
| address my core point?
|
| Legality can reduce some negative effects, but it isn't a
| cure-all. There are also a lot of people that should just
| not use opiates or bad things will happen, and we can't
| predict who those people will be reliably until it is too
| late.
|
| So please don't use opiates unless you really really need
| to, and be aware of the dangers.
| valuearb wrote:
| It's easy to predict who will have problems with opiates,
| very few go from 0 to 100 without skipping steps. Just
| license the users.
|
| Commit any infraction, drive or work heavy machinery
| while under the influence, your license is suspended
| until you complete rehab. Do it too many times and it's
| suspended permanently. Use while unlicensed, it's jail
| time.
|
| This way there is a progression. We don't have to waste
| police resources on those who can handle it. The minority
| who can't are directed into rehab to deal with their
| issues first, and only the minority of that group who
| fail to shake up get jail time.
|
| Meanwhile crime is down because drugs are affordable. New
| addicts are down because kids aren't getting laced drugs.
| Deaths and overdoses are down for same reason.
|
| And it all costs society less, less police, less crime,
| less hospitalization and less death means less taxes.
| valuearb wrote:
| People rob and murder people for all sorts of reasons.
| But drug addicts have to commit fewer crimes if their
| drugs are cheap and easy to get.
|
| And legal drugs have known potencies, and aren't mixed
| with other more addictive drugs.
|
| Don't compare decriminalization to legalization, they are
| entire different things. Decriminalization still suffers
| from higher addiction and death rates because selling the
| drugs is still illegal.
| the-dude wrote:
| And it seems to have worked ( source : Dutch and old
| enough to remember what it seemed like in the 80ies ).
| lazide wrote:
| Interestingly enough - all crime (including in the US
| with it's war on drugs) has dropped dramatically since
| the 80's. Lots of theories about leaded gasoline phase-
| outs, etc. but it's a complex multi-variate problem.
| Merely having the issues about use widely known (and the
| initial round of people super susceptible to it) can also
| cause many people to shy away, with significant decreases
| in abuse.
| the-dude wrote:
| Dutch coffeeshops keep large amounts of people away from
| 'regular' drugs dealers who carry coke/heroin besides
| weed.
|
| Economic tide : the 80ies was a different time with lots
| of youth unemployment in NL/NWE.
| ardy42 wrote:
| >> Who decides that someone is a responsible and healthy
| adult?
|
| > You do. It's not up to someone to decide, you're
| responsible for your own body and your own decisions to
| improve/harm it.
|
| That's obviously not that black and white. If it was,
| then breathalyzer interlocks wouldn't be a thing, for
| instance.
| foogazi wrote:
| breathalyzer interlocks are not there for heroin or for
| your body
| capableweb wrote:
| IID/BAIIDs that gets installed in vehicles are often
| installed to protect other peoples life, not your own.
|
| I was thinking in the context of "Should I be able to use
| drugs", which we normally leave up to the individual to
| decide, except for _those_ drugs that we don't leave up
| to the individual to peruse on their own.
| ardy42 wrote:
| > IID/BAIIDs that gets installed in vehicles are often
| installed to protect other peoples life, not your own.
|
| Yeah, but that's just an example. If you were about to
| make a suicide attempt, you could be involuntarily
| committed, and the only person's life being protected
| would be your own.
|
| The point that I was trying to get at was that black and
| white individualist statements like:
|
| >>> You do. It's not up to someone to decide, you're
| responsible for your own body and your own decisions to
| improve/harm it.
|
| ...paper over some important complexities of real life.
| There are many, many cases where people have
| responsibility for others (and I'm not just talking about
| legal responsibility, even though my examples all
| intersected with the law in some way).
| dfsegoat wrote:
| They all work by increasing dopamine. But 'Addictive
| potential' does vary by drug, and by the person [1].
|
| 'All substances of abuse self-administered by humans that can
| result in addiction are believed to exert their reinforcing
| effects by increasing DA in the nucleus accumbens (NAc)'
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3050051/
| nimbius wrote:
| Fully agree.
|
| Carl is a white collar professor. The worst thing that can
| happen if his drug indulgence becomes a problem is he knocks
| over the water cooler or loses his job.
|
| I work a blue collar job servicing heavy diesel engines. Casual
| hard drug users are aggravatingly cavalier to work alongside.
| They forget important things constantly. They show up late and
| lose things often. You'll spend all day repeating things
| they'll never retain and at the end of the month they will lose
| a finger or toe or suffer a massive back injury and get fired.
| The back injury usually turns the casual heroin into constant
| endless heroin.
|
| Drug tests exist in my field for a really valid reason and it
| has nothing to do with having a problem but becoming one.
| Grustaf wrote:
| Well, how many people will see this headline and rush off to
| a back alley to buy a shot of heroin from some junkie?
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| There's a balance to be struck.
|
| You can't just lie to people and tell them that everything
| is deadly or they're gonna question everything else you've
| said. That's basically what DARE was.
|
| I know a chainsaw is dangerous. But listening to every
| Youtuber lecture me about how I have lock out tag out to
| change a lightbulb my own home and every Redditor jump at
| the opportunity to engage in a monologue about how I should
| wear safety classes when I use a screwdriver sure lends a
| lot of legitimacy to the people who say their dad never
| wore PPE and retired with all his limbs so it must be fine.
| TheAdamAndChe wrote:
| Several years ago, I read about the significant nootropic
| effects of nicotine and spent time on forums that
| downplayed the potential negative impacts. I ended up
| trying it and became addicted for years.
|
| Social contagion can have significant effects on social
| issues like this.
| fouc wrote:
| I tried the gum and the patch for nootropic purposes. I
| even had to cut up the patch into smaller pieces to get
| the proper dosage. It was hard to get the dosage down
| enough, and I just mostly ended up feeling really
| twitchy. It didn't seem worth it and I didn't notice any
| real boost in the mental realm that a good nap wouldn't
| give me.
|
| Did you get addicted to the gum or the patch?
| TheAdamAndChe wrote:
| I vaped. I've also taken adderall and enjoyed it, so our
| neurochemistries are probably different.
|
| That's something important to consider when reading about
| experiences on the internet. There are people who are
| relatively resistant to addiction. When they talk about
| their experiences, they make it sound like it's no big
| deal, and it's not to them. But that's not how it is for
| everyone.
| filleokus wrote:
| Heh, same happened to me. I managed to get hooked on
| Nicotine gums after reading about the nootropic effects.
| After a while I moved on to snus (Swedish smokeless
| tobacco) due to expense/hassle of getting the gums.
|
| Nowadays I have a pretty big nicotine consumption and
| probably extremely marginal nootropic effects.
| xibalba wrote:
| I've experimented with nicotine (in the form of gum)
| myself, but haven't really observed much in the way of
| benefits. Did you see benefits? What form(s) were you
| using? How did you end up quitting?
|
| (I was turned onto this after listening to an interview
| with Dr. Peter Attia [haven't yet made up my mind on
| whether he is a huckster])
| TheAdamAndChe wrote:
| I personally didn't experience benefits, just side
| effects. I started with vaping, then moved to smoking.
|
| To quit, I switched to vaping for a few weeks, then
| tapered the nicotine concentration to zero over the
| course of a month or two. Cigarettes have MAOIs which
| make it more addictive which is why I switched.
|
| I was irritable for weeks and still get the urge to smoke
| sometimes(it's been over 5 years since I quit). I don't
| recommend starting.
| matwood wrote:
| > Dr. Peter Attia [haven't yet made up my mind on whether
| he is a huckster])
|
| I've listened to him off and on, and think he's ok. He
| tests on himself pretty relentlessly, and still sees
| patients (though it's a boutique practice). He also
| appears open to new ideas as new research presents
| itself. And while crazy people can come from anywhere, he
| also has all the proper credentials.
|
| There's this guy who hates him lol:
| https://www.libertariannews.org/2016/03/07/dr-peter-
| attia-re...
|
| Finally, if you haven't already, you should find the
| podcast episode where he talks about Theranos. Pretty
| wild that he was asked to join and turned Holmes down.
| stefan_ wrote:
| By that logic, we need to ban cooking shows - the habit
| reinforcing qualities of food are well known and obesity
| is a leading cause of health issues. It looks like you
| got off easy since your "drug" of choice nicotine has
| entirely negligible negative effects on an organism of
| the size of a human - it's a neurotoxin that in the
| quantities we use it for recreationally can't even harm
| insects (much like caffeine!).
| TheAdamAndChe wrote:
| > It looks like you got off easy since your "drug" of
| choice nicotine has entirely negligible negative effects
| on an organism of the size of a human
|
| You are right. I ended up with easily maintained
| hypertension and the urge to smoke that probably will
| never go away.(While on it, I also had significantly
| worse anxiety, decreased sleep quality, and bubbly urine.
| I definitely don't recommend trying it)
|
| But the social dynamics between it and heroin are the
| same. If we normalize its use and downplay its risks,
| more people will use it. And the physical and social
| harms from heroin use are far worse than nicotine.
| tmp-20210218 wrote:
| I mean, genuinely, i'm thinking about it right now, however
| i had a serious heroin habit until recently.
| jboog wrote:
| That's not the problem though.
|
| The issues is "drug decriminalization" people treating
| addictions like it's not a real problem for many people.
|
| Many of these folks want it to get to a point where you can
| quite easily buy heroin and suffer no legal consequences.
|
| I'm not saying our drug laws are just or can't be reformed
| but the fact that heroin is illegal prevents a LOT of
| people from using it. How many people will then use, aided
| by these pronouncements that "Heroin isn't actually that
| addictive!" and ruin their lives?
|
| We already have an opioid epidemic in this country that has
| destroyed communities.
|
| There's a middle ground between our terrible war on drugs
| and the naive "make it all legal and experiment with
| heroin!"
| woeirua wrote:
| The decriminalization folks recognize for the most part
| that addiction is real. The difference is that they want
| to use taxes on legal drug sales to fund rehab clinics
| and treatment programs. The people who want to maintain
| the status quo want to throw users in jail and forget
| about them. We already know for certain that throwing
| people in jail does not solve addiction. So why wouldn't
| we at least try the alternative?
| conradev wrote:
| The central point of the article is actually not "let's
| decriminalize drugs". It is "drug addiction is not brain
| disease", which seems like a reasonable argument to me.
|
| I don't know if you read it, but it also talks about how
| many deaths are from bad education (not understanding
| drug interactions, i.e. between two depressants), and bad
| drugs (i.e. lacing heroin with fentanyl) with no easy way
| for users to test their drugs.
|
| It further goes on to discuss that addiction treatment in
| the US is terrible precisely because it focuses on the
| drugs as a pathology and does not consider the holistic
| person or helping the person solve their underlying
| problems.
|
| Progressive drug policy isn't "legalize it all", it is
| "prevent needless deaths and treat addiction properly".
| It has been for some time. Here are garden variety
| articles I found about these policies being implemented
| in the wild:
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2019/01/04/allow-
| festiv...
|
| https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-
| announcements/statemen...
| 4eor0 wrote:
| Most advocates for decriminalization I've encountered
| have a platform of using taxes for counseling and
| addiction services.
|
| The middle ground you seek is already defined clearly.
| Are you sure your perspective here is as informed as it
| could be?
| jfoutz wrote:
| > There's a middle ground between our terrible war on
| drugs and the naive "make it all legal and experiment
| with heroin!"
|
| I wholeheartedly agree. a couple google searches showed
| buying alcohol for a minor was a $1000 fine, but heroin
| possession for personal use is $20000 and a year in jail.
|
| I think there's room to scale back the penalties and
| still be a deterrent. I think there's room to scale up
| addiction recovery.
|
| Hell, keep the horrible penalties, but waive them if the
| accused, with counseling and whatever other support makes
| sense, can stay clean for a year.
|
| So much of the system is about papering over problems
| rather than fixing the root cause.
| rflrob wrote:
| > I'm not saying our drug laws are just or can't be
| reformed but the fact that heroin is illegal prevents a
| LOT of people from using it. How many people will then
| use, aided by these pronouncements that "Heroin isn't
| actually that addictive!" and ruin their lives?
|
| Do you know a lot of people who have expressed to you
| that they would use heroin recreationally if only it were
| legal? My gut is that the number isn't large.
|
| My impression of the evidence from places that have tried
| decriminalization (eg Portugal) is that the number of
| people who use and then are able to get their lives back
| on the rails is higher than the extra people who use
| because it's decriminalized.
| jboog wrote:
| You genuinely believe that there is no large group of
| people curious about trying a drug that supposedly offers
| the most euphoric feeling imaginable "better than sex" as
| many have claimed?
|
| What if people tell them it's not addictive? And now it's
| not illegal?
| valuearb wrote:
| Why would illegal stop them from trying heroin if someone
| thought it better than sex?
|
| What illegal does is make it far more likely to die from
| using heroin.
| Natsu wrote:
| > Why would illegal stop them from trying heroin if
| someone thought it better than sex?
|
| Lack of access (or not knowing how to access it) comes to
| mind, among many other reasons.
| valuearb wrote:
| Illegal drugs increase addiction rates because drugs are
| often cut with different drugs. How many heroin addicts
| were created by lacing lesser drugs with more addictive
| ones?
| Shared404 wrote:
| Tobacco is legal, and also illegal to tell people it's
| not addictive, at least in any sort of marketing sense.
|
| Also, my understanding of most drug legalization is that
| the intent is to legalize usage/possession, _not_
| distribution. This is done with the intent to make it
| easier /safer to gain treatment and decrease addiction.
| bjourne wrote:
| Decriminalized isn't the same thing as legalized.
| Legalized means that you will have multinational
| companies promoting heroin nonstop through massive
| advertising campaigns. That would completely change
| peoples' usage patterns. Like how many people would smoke
| if tobacco was legal? Answer: many.
| webkike wrote:
| That is not necessarily true. Alcohol and tobacco are
| legal and there are massive restrictions on how they are
| aloud to be advertised. The point being made here is that
| not many people would by more of it if they felt that
| purchasing it was not going to put them in legal trouble.
| For example, how many people do you know that do
| whippets?
| reaperducer wrote:
| _Well, how many people will see this headline and rush off
| to a back alley to buy a shot of heroin from some junkie?_
|
| How many people are going to storm a national capitol
| because of what they see online?
|
| It all sounds farcical and easy to dismiss until you
| actually put some thought into it.
| lostgame wrote:
| Dunno about you, but I have never bought drugs from a
| junkie, but, of course, through dealers, who - in my
| experience, more often than not - do not actually use many
| of the substances they sell.
| Grustaf wrote:
| I haven't actually bought or even used any illegal drugs
| at all, my point was just that I don't think a lot of
| people will be inspired by an article like this to try
| heroin, unless they were already considering it.
|
| Most people that fall into heavy addiction are probably
| driven there more by chaotic circumstances than
| intellectual considerations.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| When I was in high school I toyed with the idea of trying
| heroin due to how it was described in health class. Never
| did, though.
| mrtweetyhack wrote:
| How many people are flat-earthers, anti-vaccine? Somebody
| will take this article, make it viral by picking out one
| sentence. Bam! Heroine and meth become legal.
| wellthisisgreat wrote:
| people who are familiar with less dangerous drugs may
| easily become more inclined to try heroin after reading
| this
| Bodell wrote:
| I want to agree with what your saying but with a caveat.
|
| Years ago I was an office manager at a battery supply
| warehouse (car batteries not AA's). We had an employee that
| had started working for us for about 6 months when it became
| vary apparent that he had a drug problem. Because his brother
| also worked there we knew that he had suffered a major car
| accident, was in crippling debt from the medical bills, and
| developed a pain pill habit as a result. He was only 19 at
| the time.
|
| The issues that involved the work place were things like
| being consistently late, taking 2-3 hour lunch breaks and
| coming back high. So high, that he could not perform basic
| job tasks like counting a pallet of battery cores. My biggest
| concern was that he was licensed to use our fork lifts and so
| I had our warehouse manager do his best to keep him off the
| forklifts.
|
| At this point I recommended to my boss that we fire him for
| the repeated offenses, as well as recommend that he seek drug
| consoling. I felt bad for him. He had a problem. He needed
| help. But he did not need to be working at that job for his
| and others safety. My boss and my boss' boss, on the other
| hand, decided it was best to send to him to a "random" drug
| test, so that when the fired him they could do so with
| indisputable cause. This did not work, he disappeared for
| many hours, despite the drug testing facility being just down
| the street, and the results came back clean. I know that
| people have many ways of faking drug tests. I suggested again
| that he be fired for the offenses and not the drug test.
| Again my bosses disagreed and sent him to two more "random"
| tests each week after that.
|
| The employee in question got wise to this. He knew what they
| were trying to do. So he went to a therapist and got a
| declaration of temporary disability. My company then had to
| pay him his full wages for 6 months with out him needed to
| come to work.
|
| And I sat back and laughed at my bosses, as the unemployment
| claim would have be nominal by comparison.
|
| edit: not sure why this would be down-voted. It is just a
| real story, relevant to the thread. I was only suggested that
| waiting for test results when possible danger lurks was not
| the right course of action. i forgot to add the employee did
| come back after his psychological disability ran out. And of
| course they sent him to take a drug test again. He failed
| that one and was fired.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> Carl is a white collar professor. The worst thing that can
| happen if his drug indulgence becomes a problem is he knocks
| over the water cooler or loses his job.
|
| No. The worst that can happen to him is that he is pulled
| over by a cop in the parking lot. Gets charged with
| possession of heroin. Goes to jail for a couple nights, then
| looses his job/pension/car/house/wife/kids (in whatever
| order) and winds up on the street. Regardless of the
| biological realities of heroin, the realworld criminal
| consequences of regular heroin possession can be worse.
|
| And I have yet to meet any longterm drug user who hasn't on
| occasion sold some to a friend. Get caught "dealing" and you
| will face an entirely different legal regime.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Everyone wealthy enough doesn't sell. They just share.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Most "dealers" are actually charged with 'intent to
| distribute', a crime that doesn't require evidence of
| money changing hands. Giving drugs to your friends, even
| for free, will result in basically the same drug charges
| as if you were selling. The law is setup this was
| specifically to avoid the need to money evidence. The
| cops only need to see you hand over the drugs. They don't
| need to _also_ see you receive any money. (Actually, you
| don 't even need to hand over the drugs. Possess a large
| amount, or a smaller amount divided into little bags, and
| that will be enough for intent to distribute.)
|
| Many street-level drug dealers will still separate the
| drug and money handovers between different people. This
| isn't to avoid legal issues. It is to avoid the money
| being seized when the cops move on the guy they see
| handing over bags of drugs.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Consider me better informed now. Thanks.
| soperj wrote:
| I don't know if you've ever worked a blue collar job with a
| drug user, but what they were saying is that the Carl isn't
| going to lose a limb, kill himself, or worse, kill me on
| the job as a professor because he's on drugs. That can be a
| very different story working on a drilling rig for
| instance.
| batmansmk wrote:
| One dude left his 3 and 5 yo kids in his locked car for a
| full hot afternoon with no water while using in the heroin
| den in my appartment complex in San Francisco. He was not a
| bad guy, just a totally confused person. When we told him
| what could have happened, he realized his mistake. We never
| saw him again.
| khalilravanna wrote:
| His whole point is you can use drugs _and_ keep up all your
| normal daily responsibilities. He states this several times
| as the definition of "functioning". If you show up to work on
| drugs you're not functioning and that's not what he's
| advocating for.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| basch wrote:
| But, the response here seems to be "this is too dangerous an
| idea to talk about, or consider" which seems really shitty.
|
| It's been 45 years since it was first established that heroin
| CAN be used safely when accompanied by a social ritual. Part
| of the problem IS the mindset and stigma around addiction,
| and that "insanely addictive drugs" have full power over
| people, and there is no ability to moderate their use, which
| is false. People are either 100% sober or a social pariah.
| The response in these comments mostly confirms this sort of
| black or white thinking. Maybe somebody should ask if its the
| lack of social ritual / social controls causing the problem,
| not the drug. Maybe society is failing otherwise responsible
| drug use by making all users outcasts. Or is a spectrum and
| complex interaction of multiple issues, and not just drugs.
| "This is too dangerous of a conversation to have" puts us in
| danger of not having productive conversations.
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20201111183716/https://www.harva.
| ..
| steve76 wrote:
| Someone hooks your wife, or kid, or parents to junk and
| ruins their life. They're a protected class. All those
| police and soldiers protect them.
|
| If addicts get to do that, why can't I do the same to them?
| Instead of heroin, I'm going to go after a genetic cancer
| cure, or see what applications of Bell's Theorem I can
| create on human cellular mitosis and quantum biology.
| fbelzile wrote:
| Not defending drug use at work, but if you're to be fired it
| should be for the performance related issues you mentioned
| caused by the drug, not because of the drug itself.
|
| Edit for more context:
|
| Depending on the drug, substances consumed outside of working
| hours would still show up in a drug test. Firing someone for
| something they do outside of work shouldn't be acceptable.
|
| If you can prove they consumed drugs that would impair their
| ability to perform their job during working hours, that'd be
| a valid cause for dismissal. Drug tests don't measure that
| precisely enough though.
|
| Not to mention, drug tests are not infallible. They can come
| back positive for morphine if you eat a poppy seed bagel in
| the morning [1].
|
| [1] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/poppy-seeds-alter-drug-
| tes...
| mfer wrote:
| In many places there are safety issues to deal with. You
| have to be proactive to avoid an incident.
|
| Here's a non-drug related one. In many places road
| construction companies will disallow workers from wearing
| headphones. This is because of the heavy machinery and you
| need to hear the beeps of a machine backing up. Drivers of
| those do not have good sight around the machinery and large
| trailers. Headphones on can mean not hearing a warning
| sound and being struck and possibly killed.
|
| Are wearing headphones a problem? Do you want to fire
| someone until an accident happens?
|
| Part of the proactive nature to this is insurance
| companies. If there aren't strict safety policies that are
| enforced than insurance companies won't cover companies.
| When accidents occur they have to pay out and want to avoid
| that.
|
| Drug use has been proven to cause certain issues depending
| on the drug that can have safety impacts at work sights.
| This can costs lives and money.
|
| This is why it becomes a big deal in certain fields.
| jackric wrote:
| Stupid analogy, the worker can be told to remove the
| headphones during paid hours, non-compliance makes you
| fired. We are talking about whether what you do outside
| of work, that is isolated from work, should get you
| fired.
| mfer wrote:
| A few things.
|
| First, I'm attempting to describe how the system works
| rather than give my opinion on how it should be.
|
| Second, the headphones situation is meant to illustrate
| how safety plays in. This isn't a "what if" example.
| People on job sites wearing headphones have died because
| they missed the warning tones. I am aware of one case,
| personally.
|
| Safety is a big deal. It plays into the insurance
| companies who drive much of the policies and practices.
| They are driving the things they do to keep their costs
| down. Insurance companies often try to be pretty
| methodical in what they do to keep costs down. It's not
| just random ideas but looking at cause/effect
| relationships.
|
| Third, many drugs have effects outside of the time they
| are used. It's not just the impact of the drug while one
| is on it but how it affects them in the time they are not
| on it, as well. From a safety perspective that cannot be
| discounted.
|
| From the standpoint of the companies and the people
| involved, if you want to do drugs than work elsewhere.
| Safety is a higher priority.
| jackric wrote:
| I agree Safety is the top priority. Don't risk people
| with drugs traces in their blood; it may degrade their
| competence. Also don't risk a guy that didn't sleep last
| night working - his competence will be degraded.
|
| I proposed my catch-all solution for this in another
| comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26183297
|
| My ideal is we just ensure competence - guy who smoked
| weed last night may be more competent than a clean guy
| getting divorced. Test the competence
| mfer wrote:
| A lot of this is driven by insurance agencies and data
| from investigations of events. I don't have insight into
| that. Insurance companies, these days, tend to be very
| data driven.
|
| It would be great if there was a way to test for
| competence. Some drugs cause long term issues with
| decision making and being able to see what's likely to
| happen. This reminds me of a job I had years ago framing
| houses. I remember some of the work men firing nails from
| a nail gun into a nearby woods. An area where
| neighborhood kids happen to play.
|
| That's poor decision making and a liability. How do you
| test for complex things like that?
| fbelzile wrote:
| In this case, the grounds for dismissal are for wearing
| headphones during working hours. Drug test results can be
| positive for things done outside of working hours.
| [deleted]
| mfer wrote:
| Drugs, in many cases, outside of working hours can have
| effects during working hours.
|
| Many software developers working for companies have
| agreements that they can't compete with their current
| employer on what they do while employed there. It's
| something employees give up while employed somewhere.
|
| In the name of safety, many jobs with safety issues have
| to give up certain things (i.e. drugs) while employed
| there.
| vinger wrote:
| It is not because it affects their job performance it is
| because the test they use can't measure if things were
| done a minute ago or 3 weeks ago.
| Natsu wrote:
| Drugs still affect people during working hours even if
| used off-duty.
|
| I had to mummify a guy's hand because it was sliced open
| by glass, once. They were airlifted to the hospital
| because the bleeding couldn't be controlled.
|
| Another guy was doing something unsafe with his forklift,
| probably because he was in a hurry, right before
| Christmas, it rolled over on him and he died.
|
| That's why we couldn't keep people who were careless for
| any reason around. People could, and did, die for a
| moment of carelessness.
|
| You're asking for more of this kind of story.
| jackric wrote:
| I have a solution to prevent this, which doesn't
| prejudice Mike for having a bit of weed 2 weeks ago
| camping. Also it will filter out those unfit to work from
| _legal_ medication, or tiredness.
|
| Make workers do a 30 second ability test before going on
| shift. Design the test to measure reaction speed, short
| term memory, etc.
|
| [follow up thought] - Test must be immune to
| practice/muscle memory. Don't want a drunk passing the
| test through familiarity, then performing shit on the
| job.
| laurent92 wrote:
| Serious question: Can we design a test for
| "getthereitis"? Most often, people would pass the test,
| but then misjudge and, in the case of Christmas, hurry up
| to "get there" (hence the name) and underestimate a risk.
| Ability is 10/10 but judgement is 2/10, and it is hard to
| verify that their mindset is calm.
| snovv_crash wrote:
| Proactive vs reactive? If you can tell someone will cause
| an accident, you don't wait until it happens.
| [deleted]
| minitoar wrote:
| How can you tell they will definitely cause an accident?
| vorpalhex wrote:
| The same reason you're not supposed to drive or operate
| heavy machinery on a wide variety of medications,
| including legal and over the counter ones.
| minitoar wrote:
| Sure, but op is talking about someone who uses controlled
| substances outside of work. If they're not under the
| influence of a substance at work, then it's not the same
| situation you are talking about.
| edgyquant wrote:
| The effects of almost any narcotic last for 72 hours at
| least. Not as intense, for sure, but there are still
| symptoms.
| Kaze404 wrote:
| Should people who drink get fired because they might
| drink on a Sunday and come back hungover?
| mattnewton wrote:
| If they are putting other people's lives at risk, maybe!
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Depends on what they are responsible for.
|
| Airline pilots, I believe, have a no-drink-within-X-hours
| rule. I'm not sure whether X is 12, 24, or more. So even
| one drink the night before a morning flight would be
| prohibited, even though logically a single drink with
| dinner the night before should be a non-issue.
| minitoar wrote:
| "8 hours from bottle to throttle"
| vinger wrote:
| The effects can last a lifetime but saying any narcotic
| will last for at least 72 hours doesn't take into
| consideration dose, weight, history isn't even closely
| true.
|
| Did you know eating a poppyseed bagel will cause a
| positive for heroin for upto 60 hours afterwards while
| doing a small amount of heroin will not show up on that
| same test.
| Bootvis wrote:
| What kind of person is willingly going to significantly
| increase the loss of life or limb?
| minitoar wrote:
| Not sure what you're talking about here. If someone is
| falling down drunk, k, get them out of the machine shop.
| mattnewton wrote:
| Because they showed up on depressants that are known to
| inhibit your ability to operate heavy machinery?
| minitoar wrote:
| How can you tell they are on depressants? Did you drug
| test them?
| mattnewton wrote:
| I can see where you are going with this, and I am aware
| of the problems with drug tests and largely agree they
| are over-applied. But I don't know of an alternative to
| these imprecise tests in many cases.
| biolurker1 wrote:
| This is really going overboard personal freedom. It reminds
| me of arguments like Clinton's "what is, is". No, having
| heroin addicts at work is not OK even if they perform well
| because it's very clear that they will not perform well
| very soon and you don't need to wait for that as an
| employer.
| ryanmarsh wrote:
| I'd like to know the word that describes the sort of
| cognitive dissonance in your comment.
| vntok wrote:
| Denial?
| mdoms wrote:
| Do you have the same attitude to other safety procedures?
| If an electrician routinely, consciously failed to check
| the mains had been turned off before working do you think
| he shouldn't be reprimanded until he electrocutes himself
| or someone else?
| [deleted]
| minitoar wrote:
| I know how to tell if mains is off -- use a multimeter.
| Please provide a citation for the safety procedure for
| determining if my electrician has used drugs that might
| impact his judgement.
| mdoms wrote:
| You're moving the goalposts.
| minitoar wrote:
| Not sure what you mean. I believe mine and op's point is
| that you have no objective criteria for determining if
| someone is impaired. The criteria for determining someone
| didn't follow safety procedures is well defined.
| GordonS wrote:
| The author is not suggesting you take heroin at work, any
| more than it would be acceptable to drink alcohol at work.
| ryanmarsh wrote:
| Are we equating alcohol with heroin?
| Toutouxc wrote:
| Shouldn't we? Alcohol ruins more lives and causes more
| injuries and damage than heroin.
| biolurker1 wrote:
| Just because it's used by a vast number of people.
| Getting rational, for every 100 alcohol and 100 heroin
| users who do you think is in better health shape?
| GordonS wrote:
| But how much of that is not because of the actual drug
| itself, but rather because the drug is illegal?
| GordonS wrote:
| My point is the _opposite_ , that from a social
| perspective, "just" alcohol is a serious no-no during
| work, especially if working with machinery etc.
|
| Although realistically, alcohol is probably one of the
| worst from a work safety perspective.
| mdoms wrote:
| The article does this numerous times.
| GordonS wrote:
| I read TFA, and didn't see any such mention. I've gone
| back to it with the search tool, and still don't see any
| such thing. Would you mind pointing to where these
| numerous points are please?
| mdoms wrote:
| Really, dude?
|
| > Hart reports that more than 70 percent of drug users--
| whether they use alcohol, cocaine, prescription
| medications, or heroin--do not meet the health criteria
| for drug addiction
|
| > "My heroin use is as rational as my alcohol use," Carl
| Hart writes
|
| > Let's just talk about alcohol first. When you're at a
| wedding reception, alcohol serves as a social lubricant.
| People are more gregarious. They talk, they interact. The
| same is true with cocaine at parties, heroin among
| friends, or opium among friends, NDMA among lovers.
|
| > It's just like with alcohol. Most people drink alcohol
| on a regular basis, but they don't become physically
| dependent
|
| > I don't know a term. I simply mean people who take
| drugs, like alcohol users, somebody who may have a glass
| of wine or two every night for dinner, whereas somebody
| else may only drink on the weekend. It's a wide range.
| And the same can be true with cocaine or heroin
|
| > Why do you use heroin? > That's like saying, "Why do
| you use alcohol?"
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Drinking alcohol at work is acceptable in many office jobs.
| Getting drunk is mostly not.
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| Hard agree. I've lost some loved ones to meth, and it tears up
| whole communities. When I was young I was lax about drugs, but
| after seeing the same story over and over...drug addiction is
| real and it hurts.
| ajkdhcb2 wrote:
| You just threw out your own anecdotal nonsense.
|
| Responsible drug users are invisible to society and to
| judgemental people like you. You have no data to discredit it.
| ericol wrote:
| > Responsible drug users are invisible to society
|
| Even more so, _nobody_ wants to hear about responsible drug
| users, because that'll contradict the general discourse.
| vntok wrote:
| _Responsible drug users_ sounds like an oxymoron. Is there
| any data that shows those people even exist?
| wzkhstfx wrote:
| > Responsible drug users sounds like an oxymoron. Is there
| any data that shows those people even exist?
|
| I mean, there's the billions of people who manage to
| consume alcohol without it interfering with the rest of
| their lives and the lives of others. Don't pretend that one
| substance that alters perception and behavior somehow isn't
| a "drug" in the same way that many others are just because
| of its legal status.
|
| But if you mean drugs that are illegal, yes, there are also
| plenty of responsible users of those too. My wife and I
| have taken MDMA together a few times and it has been
| transformative for our relationship. As well as sharing our
| love for each other it also helped us talk about difficult
| subjects, something which I found hard for a long time, and
| as a result I am now better at talking about hard things
| when sober too. I think most people would say that going on
| a date night is a "responsible" act of relationship
| maintenance and I don't see what we did as any different,
| except much, much more enjoyable than a cocktail and meal.
| Every time we were careful with dosing, made sure we had no
| other responsibilities, and so on. It's as responsible as
| quality time with each other at a cafe.
|
| I recognise that the production of illegal drugs is
| damaging and awful, but that's the fault of our legal
| framework. In the same way that producing soft drinks or
| beer isn't necessarily damaging nor should be producing
| drugs that are currently illegal.
| sdeep27 wrote:
| How about the 150 million people every day that drink a cup
| of coffee and head to work?
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| The article mentions ~70% of users of any drug are not
| addicts, and surely you know somebody who is both
| responsible and drinks alcohol.
| ericol wrote:
| Obviously this is highly anecdotal, but for the 5 years
| that I lived in Spain, I was a regular drug user.
|
| With the exception made of MDMA & speed (That I'll consume
| both on occasions) I was consuming weed, hash and mushrooms
| on a weekly basis.
|
| And everybody on a certain group of friends was doing the
| same. We had a surplus of mushrooms, as we had somebody in
| our group (A neurobiologist) growing them.
|
| 13 years ago I came back to Argentina, and then stopped
| consuming cold turkey.
| bserge wrote:
| I am one. I have used a lot of stuff, anything I could get
| my hands on (not "just 'cause", I'm trying to find
| something to fix specific problems).
|
| And in the end, it's only alcohol and nicotine that have me
| firmly in their grasp. Perhaps it's just the ease of
| access.
|
| I believe I could quit nicotine, but not alcohol. I don't
| even drink a lot. But I do, regularly. I've used way more
| addictive stuff, and I could go out and buy it tomorrow,
| but I don't. Kind of funny how it works.
| varispeed wrote:
| The dangers of the drug mostly come from its legal status and
| that it is being adulterated with various substances in the
| unregulated market. People also don't get a leaflet that they
| can consult on the strength or dosage so often they overdose.
| Medical grade heroin is not as dangerous as people supporting
| prohibition would like it to be. You can take clean heroin for
| decades and be perfectly fine. This would rather not apply to
| alcohol or other legal drugs.
| johnyzee wrote:
| I would say the main danger is the crippling physical
| addiction (as well as psychological, but that is harder to
| quantify) it causes in a substantial amount of users.
| tanseydavid wrote:
| >> You can take clean heroin for decades and be perfectly
| fine.
|
| This seems to me to be a excessively myopic way of thinking
| about it. To the point of amounting to rationalization.
| andrei_says_ wrote:
| May I recommend the rat park experiment and possibly the work
| of Gabor Mate as a way of establishing context for addiction.
| frakkingcylons wrote:
| It's not anecdotal, and he's not just talking about heroin.
| He's been involved in pharmacology studies for over 20 years.
|
| I wish people didn't dismiss Carl Hart immediately out of hand.
| Prohibition has never been a successful strategy. People are
| going to buy drugs no matter what. The biggest problem we have
| with drugs in the US is that people are uninformed about safe
| drug use and they are unable to easily verify the purity of the
| drugs they buy.
| 4eor0 wrote:
| Yes, let's have your anecdotal experience be the basis for
| curbing speech.
|
| I've lost dozens of friends and family to alcoholism and drunk
| driving.
|
| I can't really get behind the cherry picking; society is being
| damaged in other real ways to a much greater extent than
| heroin, yet we find the ennui to overlook them; freedom of
| choice, speech, too expensive to bother, political authority...
|
| Portugal has the model we should adopt and let this be as
| solved a problem it can be.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| >all this article reports about is this anecdotal nonsense.
| I've too many friends to Heroin to know the reality of the drug
|
| The experiences of your friends is anecdotal. This article
| discusses the mechanisms of the drug, both the physical and
| personal cause of addiction, the common factors that lead to
| death, and the rate of users that end up addicted.
| maybelsyrup wrote:
| Sorry, I call BS. First, ranked by whom? Besides internet
| listicles, I mean. Second, those rankings, valid or not, are
| _always_ a mix of legal and illegal drugs, with legal ones like
| alcohol, nicotine, and benzodiazepines sitting above heroin,
| morphine, and opium. Not to mention caffeine, which we begin
| feeding to children at extremely young ages alongside the
| amphetamines we pump them full of if they have trouble paying
| attention when locked in a classroom all day.
|
| Third, as someone else says below, stories about your friends
| are also anecdotes. (I'm sorry, genuinely, that they died.) You
| don't know "the reality" of heroin because there are a litany
| of such realities - and here's a scientist telling you about
| his. The thousands (more?) who use heroin like my aunt uses a
| snifter of brandy at Christmas don't appear on anyone's radar
| because they're not dying and they're not rocking the boat. I
| could go on and on about the lives lost or ruined by alcohol in
| my family tree alone, let alone just "people I know", but I'm
| not terrified and calling to ban alcohol.
|
| Finally, that so many people on a web forum whose userbase is
| wealthier, whiter, and way more privileged than the population
| at large rushing breathlessly into a post to call a black man
| (from the ghetto of Miami FL, no less) who uses small amounts
| of opiates "dangerous" is, excuse me, pretty effing rich. I
| thought tech-libertarians were supposed to be less reactionary.
| fnordsensei wrote:
| I know that the EU and WHO at least rank drugs by
| harmfulness.
|
| On the WHO lists, alcohol ranks below heroin and the like,
| but not far below, and certainly not as low as cannabis.
|
| Harmfulness seems largely irrelevant for legislation.
| codingdave wrote:
| I've heard that statistic before, that 70% of drug users aren't
| addicted. But I've also heard that the 30% who do get addicted is
| less about good practices, and more of a genetic trait - if you
| have the brain chemistry to get addicted, you do. Most people
| don't, but 30% is non-trivial. If you are given a choice of "70%
| chance to feel good for a few hours with a 30% chance to ruin
| your life.", it doesn't feel like good odds to me. There surely
| are safer and more reliable ways to enjoy your life.
| vagrantJin wrote:
| I've done my fair bit in the underbelly of night-life and not a
| single drug has caught me out.
|
| Partly because I may have a weird pleasure in feeling like crap
| the day after and likely because I view life as contempt for
| misery. No matter how terrible I feel - I'll crank out the work.
| f430 wrote:
| This article is just sheer irresponsible. Heroin especially now
| is risky because so many dealers are cutting it with Fentanyl and
| the users won't even know the difference until its too late.
|
| Our blind catering to individual freedoms is really unbecoming
| and I question why this author wanted to bring attention to
| himself and his own private struggles.
|
| I thought the UBC professor who faked being indigenous and doxxed
| Asian Canadian students for being white supremacist and
| threatened another professor topped it.
|
| Just what in the hell is going on with North American academia
| and educators? How did it fall from grace like this?
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| How many of you want to decriminalize drug use? Be honest --
| raise your hand.
|
| Now, how do you square that with almost everyone here universally
| claiming that these _words are dangerous_?
|
| > _The statements that make people mad are the ones they worry
| might be believed. I suspect the statements that make people
| maddest are those they worry might be true._
| loves_mangoes wrote:
| Hey there! Hand raised, and happy to disagree =)
|
| Giving people the autonomy to live their life, means there are
| many dangerous things you can say about things that are legal,
| and should be legal.
|
| I believe people should be responsible enough to drive a car,
| drink alcohol, and with or without prescription take a drug
| without risking a prison sentence.
|
| Now my advice is: It's not okay to drive while extremely tired,
| it's not healthy to drink yourself uncounscious (even if you're
| not an alcoholic), and you should probably continue to not
| treat heroin lightly.
|
| I'm okay with all those things being legal. I'm not okay with
| people equating legal with safe. Of course words can be
| dangerous. That's why we call them out, but that's not a reason
| to send people to federal 'technically your life is not over'
| prison.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| Happy to hear your disagreement! (Also, please have a
| wonderful day this fine Thursday.)
|
| The thing is, wouldn't you agree that if something isn't
| criminal, then it should be fine to talk about the act of
| doing that thing? Because that's all this interview seems to
| be.
| umvi wrote:
| Ok, cigarettes are legal.
|
| Say I am a prominent professor at a university and I write
| an article about how I use cigarettes responsibly and how
| I'm not addicted and that tons of people use cigarettes
| without getting addicted. I also note that it's a great way
| for me (and implicitly others) to find happiness. I then
| publish my article to influence millions.
|
| So then what's wrong when critics say my article is
| dangerous and caution readers to take it with a grain of
| salt?
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| Mm, perhaps I should change my mind on this one.
|
| I suppose my root objection is that such warnings are
| incredibly boring, because everyone in the world knows
| that both heroin and cigarettes are dangerous. We're not
| living in the era of cigarette advertising; surgeon
| general's warnings are required by law.
|
| But that's a different sort of objection than the one I
| started with.
| loves_mangoes wrote:
| Thank you, a wonderful day to you too!
|
| I think it's completely okay to talk about drugs, creating
| taboos around dangerous things has rarely been helpful in
| the past.
|
| However, I think people's reaction to this piece shows
| what's missing: more warnings around it than seem entirely
| necessary to the average person. You just don't want
| today's lucky 10,000 [0] to come away with the impression
| that heroin is a pretty casual thing, and while the fact of
| talking about it is great, the words themselves can be
| dangerous if they promote unsafe behavior without adequate
| warnings.
|
| All that being said, I have to admit that people might be
| over-reacting a smidge to the interview, but I can't really
| fault them. I haven't personally lost anyone to heroin
| addiction, but I imagine I might read the article less
| generously if I had.
|
| Cheers!
|
| [0]: https://xkcd.com/1053/
| achairapart wrote:
| I can see addiction like unpaid debt.
|
| Just like everyone may need a bank loan (which is totally
| socially acceptable), sometime you may need a
| happiness/energy/relief/whatever loan.
|
| The thing is, just like a money loan, you should be ready to pay
| your debt after. The day you think you can run away without
| paying, it's where the trouble begin.
|
| This is true even with alcohol: Go to a party, drink a few
| glasses. One or two more. Have fun. The day after you pay it with
| a little (or even big) hangover. Just drink a lot of water and
| you will be ok.
|
| Obviously this is more difficult with some drugs. They are
| dangerous because they are more subtle, somehow you think you're
| still in charge, until it's too late and your debt is out of
| control.
|
| Now, I'm aware that this is quite complex, but still I wonder how
| many people there are out there who can self-control themself and
| diligently keep their debt in order.
|
| I guess, compared to "meth-heads" and other rock bottom abusers,
| they just don't make the news. Plus they may want to avoid a lot
| of social rejection.
| mettamage wrote:
| I disagree with this view. I think the metaphor captures some
| elements of the experience, but it doesn't capture enough.
|
| A craving feeling arises to have fun. The craving exists there
| because it feels nice. This also implies that you feel less
| nice than you'd like to feel. This craving doesn't happen that
| often, but often enough that you're curious about taking drugs.
|
| You try cocaine. Suddenly you feel energized and amazing, this
| is how you always want to feel! The effect wanes after 20
| minutes, you take it again and you feel amazing. You're
| starting to do this every weekend. Cocaine gets associated with
| the craving feeling for fun.
|
| After a few months, whenever you feel like your normal self, a
| craving feeling arises. This feeling is now a mix of wanting to
| have fun and wanting cocaine.
|
| The thing is, where I think the debt metaphor breaks down is
| that this increase in craving acts a bit different than actual
| debt.
|
| Many addicts feel strong cravings for years afterwards, and it
| only very slowly decreases. Once hooked again to the substance,
| it's easily back to previous all-time high levels.
| Psychologists claim that in conditioning processes, it's
| impossible to delete conditioning (called extinction). So you
| can never truly repay our debt.
|
| Moreover, once your craving is extinct (for as much as
| possible) it's really only dormant in reality. Make one wrong
| move and you're quickly back to rock bottom. With debt, if I
| pay back my debt of $50K, then splurge for another $1K, I am
| not back in debt with $50K. This is however how addiction
| works.
|
| Finally, the debt metaphor doesn't capture the
| uncontrollableness of cravings that are arising. You have no
| free will in what spontaneous thought or feeling arises. This
| is quite easily seen when you're sitting still and try to do
| nothing: your mind will still chatter away, you'll still feel
| things based on that chatter. In quite a few cases it's
| impossible what your mind will show you next. The same is true
| for the cravings that an addict gets with a drug. Sure, the
| craving will arise when one starts to talk about it, but it may
| also arise when somebody twitches their leg, because the muscle
| tension is super vaguely associated to a memory when one was
| partying with the drug, but the person is not even aware of
| that association or that it's part of a memory.
|
| Disclaimer: I'm not a drug addict, but based on my personal
| life experiences, I think it's fair to say that I have enough
| experience how it must feel like (I experience a mild pull to
| alcohol, a strong pull to caffeine and an overwhelming pull to
| videos and video games).
| achairapart wrote:
| The description of your craving process is both fascinating
| and horrifying. Well, mostly horrifying. Is there a
| scientific name for this very process?
|
| I'm not a drug addict either, but I can relate with some of
| it about my cigarette smoking habit (it's actually an
| addiction, I know).
|
| As for the metaphor, "every weekend" looks already like an
| enormous amount of debt to me.
| mettamage wrote:
| Yea, I'm talking from the perspective of an addict or in-
| between addict during that sentence. From their
| perspective, every weekend is fine. Moreover, I know one
| (exactly 1) acquaintance that has done cocaine for more
| than 30 years every weekend and only in the weekends. So
| arguably he wasn't addicted, not in the psychopathological
| sense where he wasn't functioning in society (he was, I
| think he did construction work).
|
| Unfortunately, I don't know enough (anymore) on the science
| of craving, most of what I wrote is actually what I've
| noticed because of meditation and self-reflection, so it's
| a very subjective account. Though, what I stated about
| conditioning, that is scientifically proven, you can read
| the wiki of operant and classical conditioning.
|
| > The description of your craving process is both
| fascinating and horrifying. Well, mostly horrifying.
|
| In certain forms of mindfulness meditation you're asked to
| observe your sensations in your body. In practice this can
| translate to observing whatever craving you're experiencing
| :P
|
| Let me think a bit what areas of research might be
| interesting to account a bit for my subjective
| experience...
|
| - Wanting and Liking from Berridge's lab [1].
|
| - Research on how to make slot machine's addictive [2]
|
| But those ideas are a bit more circumstantial I believe.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivational_salience
|
| [2] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/247926701_Addi
| ctive...
| swirepe wrote:
| I liked the way you framed drug use as temporary happiness
| loans. That's very insightful.
|
| >Now, I'm aware that this is quite complex, but still I wonder
| how many people there are out there who can self-control
| themself and diligently keep their debt in order.
|
| The analogy breaks down a bit here for me.
|
| Before I had a cat, I couldn't understand how people could pay
| so much for veterinary bills. After I got a cat, I could see
| myself spending more on her than I would spend on myself. Like,
| what's the point of having money if not to make my cat happy?
| My relationship to _money itself_ changed. Self-control isn 't
| a factor.
|
| I'm stretching this analogy, but I wonder how many drug users
| with their happiness debts in balance have really just reframed
| their happiness finances around their addiction.
| achairapart wrote:
| There is a scene in the movie The Consequences of Love by
| Paolo Sorrentino where you find out one of the secrets of the
| mysterious leading character:
|
| The first Wednesday of every month at 10am he shot himself
| heroin.
|
| It's one of his extremely methodical routines. It can be seen
| as an habit, but you can't truly call him an addict.
|
| If you reframe your happiness around your drug use you're
| already addicted. The question about my original post was
| more like: Are there people who have a drug habit without the
| addiction? If yes, how many of them are there?
| gist wrote:
| > Carl Hart is a neuroscientist and Ziff Professor of Psychology
| at Columbia University--he was the first tenured African-American
| professor of sciences at Columbia.
|
| This starts off reading like one of those spam emails of the past
| where some claim was made backed up by 'and my
| brother/sister/father/friend' 'is a professor at Harvard' (or
| similar) to get you to take it as authoritative and serious. [1]
|
| The issue with drug use is the outliers. Just like the issue with
| driving fast is the driver who is not you it's not about what you
| or most capable drivers can do under the best circumstances and
| driving a well equipped and responsive modern car it's about 'the
| other guy/gal'.
|
| [1] What is the name for the logical fallacy here?
| kneel wrote:
| This man will eventually die of overdose, calling it now. It's
| one thing to be a user, it's another to be a delusional user that
| thinks they're immune to addiction.
| werber wrote:
| I've done heroin a handful of times and enjoyed it. The last time
| I did it was laced with fentanyl and I nearly died. I don't agree
| with everything in this article but I've lost so many friends to
| laced heroin, and they were addicted and I really believe they
| would have somewhat normal lives after their addiction. The
| demonization and misinformation surrounding the drug is
| staggering, I wish we treated it more like alcoholism, for a lot
| of people it's not instant addiction, but for some one sip or
| snort and they're on an isolating and destructive path that could
| kill them. People don't have a way of knowing the equivalent of
| one shot of alcohol in heroin because it's illegal. There is no
| way for most people to consistently and rationally use it and
| most people have no interest in doing so. But for the minority
| who are going to throw caution to the wind (which at one point in
| my life included me) I strongly believe we should remove as much
| risk as possible
| cryptica wrote:
| My experience with drug users in the workplace is that the drugs
| make them seem more empathetic in a superficial way but in fact
| reduce their real empathy in the sense that they're less likely
| to help others in need; when they do help others, it's often to
| get attention to boost their personal image so that they can get
| more money and/or power.
|
| I think drug use also encourages people to seek out more thrills
| in their personal lives. It takes away their ability to enjoy a
| simple life and makes them greedier for endorphins. I wouldn't be
| surprised if the current narcissistic, monopolistic corporate
| economic environment is a result of heavy drug use among
| executives. They can never get enough money or power because they
| can never get the life satisfaction that their brains need to
| match the highs provided by drugs; even given the fact that their
| regular life experiences are far better than the average person;
| it still doesn't compare to the drugs. The best possible life
| experiences they can get don't meet their new baseline for
| happiness. Drug use also seems to encourage cheating and other
| unethical behaviours since these behaviours deliver a natural
| high (alas, it still falls short of their drug baseline).
| lmilcin wrote:
| I am Coca Cola and coffee user. I am not addicted. That is, until
| I try to leave it for a while and then even if I succeed it still
| takes a lot of willpower.
|
| Addiction is a force that counteracts your will power. You may
| not have drug problem but you _are_ an addict if you feel
| compulsion to use the drug.
|
| Today you may have enough willpower to counteract that force to
| consume more alcohol or drugs. But the next day may be worse, you
| may find some family or work problem and your will power may
| decrease enough that you will run into drug problem and have
| really hard time getting rid of it if at all.
|
| It is called slippery slope for a reason.
| Etheryte wrote:
| I'm not entirely sure if I follow the narrative here, perhaps
| you can clarify what you mean. Occasionally I have a beer,
| either socially or to try out a new beer -- does this make me
| an addict? I would argue no, this alone is not a good
| definition. I don't have a better definition myself, and surely
| this is a subject many people have put a lot of effort into
| figuring out, but I don't think this approach has merit.
| lmilcin wrote:
| It is up to you. People have different levels of willpower
| regarding different things.
|
| Don't dismiss power of addiction just because you "don't have
| a problem now". Our willpower levels change so what isn't a
| problem now may become another day.
|
| You may loose your job and have hard time finding new one and
| try to use something that has been giving you comfort to
| lighten your day. And because your "bigger" worries you may
| not be paying attention to it or you may need that extra
| comfort so much you will just say "yeah, it will not hurt if
| I do this for a while". This is frequently how these things
| start. It doesn't happen that you are completely normal one
| day and die hard alcoholic or drug user the next.
|
| Now, I wouldn't call what you described even remotely close
| to a problem. I also consume alcohol socially and even
| privately. I pay attention to whether I "crave" alcohol and
| when this happened I cut it instantly.
|
| I have a test for this. Even if you don't drink alcohol, are
| you constantly thinking about it?
|
| If you are not using but constantly thinking about it it
| means there exists a force (addiction) that you are currently
| able to overcome.
| nicoburns wrote:
| I think their key point was that you don't ever really know
| if you're an addict until you try to stop for a prolonged
| period.
| Spinnaker_ wrote:
| I've been hearing about Carl Hart for a while. I can't find an
| answer to if he's ever tried stopping heroine use?
|
| I would expect one of the first things to come up in a the
| conversation would be something along the lines of "yeah, I took
| a break for a month last year. It was easy, I had no cravings or
| other problems."
| pid_0 wrote:
| I don't have a problem I can stop whenever I want!
|
| God this is so stupid. Please, stop amplifying this nonsense.
| supr_strudl wrote:
| >When you're at a wedding reception, alcohol serves as a social
| lubricant. People are more gregarious. They talk, they interact.
| The same is true with cocaine at parties, heroin among friends,
| or opium among friends, NDMA among lovers. It enhances empathy,
| openness, and forgiveness, all of these pro-social attributes.
|
| Please, don't take this horrible advice. Drugs are harmful and
| can do fatal damage to you and those around you. I mean, is this
| guy advocating drug use? It sounds like he wants to justify his
| dependency.
| quattrofan wrote:
| Do you drink alcohol? If so you're a drug user... We've just
| decided for myriad, commercial, political and historical
| reasons to legitimise some and make others illegal. Note I
| never used the word "scientific" in that sentence.
| supr_strudl wrote:
| I don't drink alcohol. The best advocates of drug use are
| drug users. They're quite passionate about it. Where I come
| from, they make fun of you if you don't drink and sing a song
| about how you're "too weak to drink." Every occasion calls
| for a drink: childbirth, Friday, getting married, getting
| divorced. It is so common that you're the weird one for not
| drinking.
| swirepe wrote:
| For what it's worth, I don't think it's weird that you
| don't drink alcohol.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Bavaria? (Oh I see your profile. I've been to NG some years
| ago - my uncle's family is from Maribor I think)
| diegoperini wrote:
| It doesn't look like an advice but a simple, neutral
| observation of the pluses. Of course there are also minuses but
| this quote doesn't seem it rejects those.
| yboris wrote:
| Coffee, chocolate, and sugar are drugs. If a drug is a
| substance that affects how your mind functions, then water is a
| drug too. There is no definition of "drug" that cleanly
| separates the (currently) illegal substances from those that
| are legal.
|
| The world is full of chemicals that affect us, some more than
| others. People self-medicate all the time (alcohol, coffee,
| chocolate, sugar); I see no problem with (after learning and
| carefully experimenting) broadening one's set of "self-
| medication" tools.
| darkerside wrote:
| I'm glad this has been flagged. This is the WOMM of putting
| dangerous shit in your body.
| 5600k wrote:
| While slinging a cat has always been a disturbing analogy to
| me, in this case I think it's appropriate; you can't sling a
| cat without it hitting a popular rockstar that did heroin or
| similar at small or varying doses, was convinced they had it
| under control, and their careers slowly and then quickly
| tanked. I also have friends and acquaintances whose lives were
| ruined by it or they died early because of it.
|
| I'm glad this made it front page news given that the northwest
| coast of US now gets hard drugs, so maybe one of them will
| think twice about being a full-on grade A dumbass.
|
| Also remember: with legality especially in a rich
| entrepreneurial country comes business which lobbies, funds
| studies, etc. Pot strived for many years for legitimacy, and
| once they got it, it exploded all over the US.
| Icathian wrote:
| Since you called it out specifically I figure you might be
| interested to know the idiom is actually "swing a cat.
| Definitely a disturbing mental image, I agree.
| swirepe wrote:
| 'Slinging cat' is slang for selling methcathinone.
| Interestingly, this doesn't change the meaning of your first
| sentence.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methcathinone
| kardianos wrote:
| I agree. I consider the ability caring for children to be
| integral to life. I consider things that interfere with that
| (getting drunk, high, unresponsive for periods of time) bad.
|
| If you don't have or want kids, you're missing what made you
| and was given to you.
| rand_r wrote:
| We need a more nuanced discussion of "drugs". The word drug is
| about as useful as "chemical". The biggest evidence that we've
| been lied to and manipulated by the media and the government is
| that "drug use" is even a term.
|
| Addiction, as the article says is more complicated than any
| drug and is factor of a person's life situation in general.
| Look at the work of Gabor Mate for a better understanding of
| addiction.
| sneak wrote:
| The section you quoted didn't give any advice.
| achairapart wrote:
| How is that you can totally talk about social
| media/sugar/porn/whatever addiction but when there are drugs
| there is always someone screaming "OH MY GOD LOOK THIS GUY IS
| TALKING BAD THINGS CALL THE COPS!"?
| ballballball wrote:
| Rationalization is a helluva drug.
| moreranchplease wrote:
| I agree with him. Only a small percentage of people who do
| cocaine become addicted. It's almost always those who are trying
| to escape shitty circumstances. While heroin is dangerous the
| uncertainty of what you're getting and its strength is the cause
| of most deaths.
| Bakary wrote:
| Grossly simplified, there are two very broad categories of users.
| Those who use in an assertive way because they are confident and
| naturally inclined to try new experiences tend to do quite well.
| Those who use to escape don't do well.
| jeofken wrote:
| A life hack for anyone here trying to quit is using lent which
| has just begun, to both set a time limit and to externalise
| quitting. "I'm giving X up for lent" isn't so daunting, and
| something you can tell people.
|
| Changing your environment is also a good idea - if nothing else
| move change room to sleep in and move furniture to new places,
| and you've got a new "place".
|
| I use it to quit my daily beer habit. Kindest regards to you
| internet friend who struggles with addiction.
| mrwh wrote:
| My only direct experience of opioids is a one week prescription
| for percocet after surgery. It got me through, and probably was
| safer short-term than taking massive amounts of Tylenol. But I
| was glad to stop taking it. It felt insidious: it didn't make the
| unpleasantness go away so much as remove my ability to care about
| the unpleasantness. Everything felt fine, kind of light and
| bouncy. I can easily imagine being trapped in that.
| altcognito wrote:
| Because one person _thinks_ he has it under control at this time,
| I don 't see how advocating for wider acceptance of drug classes
| that have killed and destroyed the lives of millions every year
| is even a story that deserves a platform.
|
| This was a good story to flag.
| yboris wrote:
| It is interesting to me how ready we sometimes are to dismiss
| others' self-reports. This is akin to doctors in early 1900's
| (and even now) simply ignoring women's self reports of pain.
|
| When a person reports something about their own life and
| internal state, you need to have overwhelming evidence before
| you can dismiss what they are saying. On what grounds do you
| dismiss the author's claims about their life? He clearly has
| his life well-enough-together to get an essay published in a
| reputable science magazine.
| altcognito wrote:
| I'm not dismissing his account, so you should read my comment
| closer.
|
| I don't think I would use getting published as evidence that
| somebody "has their life together". Again, I don't care if he
| does have his life together. It may entirely fake, it can be
| temporary, and it can be one account.
|
| Look, I'm wholly for the idea of not shaming people who use
| drugs. I am also wholly against treating drugs which have
| established track records of destroying lives as recreational
| or not a problem when used regularly, especially to avoid
| personal problems. So I'm strongly against publishing essays
| which tell a soft story to play down the millions of other
| stories, which this absolutely does.
|
| Why doesn't he talk about how this impairs his motor or
| thinking? Is he somehow magic, isn't the entire point to
| alter his conciousness? No, it's all positive about drugs.
| Ridiculous. Why doesn't he point to the side effects? Using
| alcohol as an example of how "harmless" drugs are is obscene.
| Alcohol destroys millions of lives every year as well.
|
| If he wants to sell tolerance of people's choices in the name
| of the freedom to ruin your own life, then so be it. Don't
| soft peddle me bullshit.
|
| Could we have a story about all the men and women who had
| their entire lives destroyed by drugs as a counter example?
| yboris wrote:
| We _do_ hear (literally) hundreds of stories about how
| drugs destroy lives. Growing up in the US, there would be
| nearly a yearly assembly where we were told about
| (exaggerated) dangers of drugs. One story was "a mother
| put her child in the oven" and other horrors.
|
| Hearing an opposing point of view is a breath of fresh air
| for people who are fed up with the one sidedness and
| hysteria.
|
| Stories distort reality. They oversimplify and hide
| details.
|
| Think about a parallel: pizza. People in the US are
| notoriously (unhealthily) overweight. Should we be
| hysterical about someone who says "I can eat pizza without
| going overboard"?
| altcognito wrote:
| Comparing heroin to unhealthy eating is an interesting
| take.
| munificent wrote:
| If I try to synthesize the ancedotes in this thread, it seems:
|
| 1. Some people do not seem have an addictive response to opioids.
| It's roughly in the same safety category as alcohol and weed.
|
| 2. Some people become nearly-instantly profoundly physically
| addicted to the point that it will inexorably destroy their
| lives.
|
| The only way to figure which category you're in is to try it and
| find out. There's a personal liberty principle argument that if
| you are in the first category, you should have access to opioids
| just like you have access to other pursuits of happiness. But the
| inability to determine _whether_ you 're that category induces a
| significant risk at the aggregate level. People die and everyone,
| even those who can take opioids safely end up indirectly dealing
| with the negative consequences in terms of rising healthcare
| costs, dealing with homeless drug users on the street, etc.
|
| I can think of three philosophical approaches to this:
|
| * Communal: Say that since some fraction of people will be
| grievously harmed by opioids, the greatest good for all is to
| prohibit them universally. We ask the safe users to sacrifice the
| harmless positive experience to protect the unsafe users from
| harm. This is nominally what we do now by outlawing them.
|
| * Libertarian: Acknowledge that even trying is a roll of the dice
| and that if you choose to roll them, you have to take the
| consequences. This is effectively what we do now since the law
| enforcement is so ineffective.
|
| * Technological: Research a way to determine whether you can take
| opioids safely without having to try them. Imagine a test your
| doctor could give you that says "Yes, you'll be physically
| addicted." That increased certainty would remove much of the
| stigma of use, and make it easier for those that are at risk to
| stay away because they know they really are likely to get
| addicted.
|
| I don't usually lean towards tech solutions to societal problems,
| but this seems like a case where having more insight into an
| individual's physiology would help everyone make better choices.
|
| (Personally, after receiving fentanyl during a medical procedure,
| I am absolutely certain I should never be given easy access to
| opioids.)
| alexashka wrote:
| There's an excellent recent Joe Rogan podcast episode on Spotify
| with Carl Hart - the fella in this article, for those who want to
| get a more comprehensive understanding of his position.
|
| He's basically for personal freedom _and responsibility_ , drugs
| included.
|
| His position is really hard to argue with, given the disaster
| that alcohol prohibition and this 'war on drugs' has been.
|
| The word heroin has triggered a lot of comments here - just
| because you've known someone who has ruined their life and feel
| strongly about it, does not make you qualified to draw
| conclusions on the effects of drug use at large.
| crescentfresh wrote:
| More recently he appeared on the Toure Show podcast:
| https://play.acast.com/s/toureshow/dr.carlhart-idodrugs
| etempleton wrote:
| All the luck to him. I have seen enough of heroin use second hand
| to know that this is how it starts and is rationalized for many.
| Some people spiral immediately, others after a few years, others
| after a decade. Eventually, if you keep using, it will catch up
| to you and you risk losing everything.
| wuxb wrote:
| Just ask the man two questions: Would you like to give heroin to
| your children, relatives, and colleagues. Would you like to pay
| for them if they don't have the money to get enough doses in
| their life? Many "leaders" I know tell people "this company is
| great". But they ended up sending their kids to other (better)
| places.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-02-18 23:02 UTC)