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.
I am a heroin user. I do not have a drug problem
351–360 of 692 posts
Re: I am a heroin user. I do not have a drug problem
#352Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
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.
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).
Re: I am a heroin user. I do not have a drug problem
#353Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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])
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.
Re: I am a heroin user. I do not have a drug problem
#354Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
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 ho…
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...
Re: I am a heroin user. I do not have a drug problem
#355Re: I am a heroin user. I do not have a drug problem
#356"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…
> 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.
Re: I am a heroin user. I do not have a drug problem
#357Earlier quoted context omitted.
How can you tell they will definitely cause an accident?
What kind of person is willingly going to significantly increase the loss of life or limb?
Not sure what you’re talking about here. If someone is falling down drunk, k, get them out of the machine shop.
Re: I am a heroin user. I do not have a drug problem
#358Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 t…
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 w…
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.
Re: I am a heroin user. I do not have a drug problem
#359All 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.
Re: I am a heroin user. I do not have a drug problem
#360Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, how many people will see this headline and rush off to a back alley to buy a shot of heroin from some junkie?
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 the…
> 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.