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I am a heroin user. I do not have a drug problem

m.nautil.us

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Re: I am a heroin user. I do not have a drug problem

#521

Post by renewiltord »

nostromo wrote: post #514
renewiltord wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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/…

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.

Re: I am a heroin user. I do not have a drug problem

#522

Post by ecmascript »

king_panic wrote: post #471
ecmascript wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Yeah it's like if people would put nicotine in every product, it would most likely make smoking harder to quit as well.

Re: I am a heroin user. I do not have a drug problem

#523

Post by cafard »

jimz wrote: post #489
renewiltord wrote: post #414

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 addicti…

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 o…

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.

Re: I am a heroin user. I do not have a drug problem

#524

Post by ajkdhcb2 »

omginternets wrote: post #488
ajkdhcb2 wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>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 "ph…

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.

Re: I am a heroin user. I do not have a drug problem

#525

Post by jackric »

mfer wrote: post #517
jackric wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

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

Re: I am a heroin user. I do not have a drug problem

#526

Post by Kaze404 »

renewiltord wrote: post #414

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 addicti…

> 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.

Re: I am a heroin user. I do not have a drug problem

#527

Post by memorysafety »

tanseydavid wrote: post #402
Broken_Hippo wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>> 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."

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?

Re: I am a heroin user. I do not have a drug problem

#528

Post by hellohello1 »

umvi wrote: post #463
renewiltord wrote: post #414

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 addicti…

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.

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.

Re: I am a heroin user. I do not have a drug problem

#529

Post by mywittyname »

spaetzleesser wrote: post #510
bane wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

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.

Re: I am a heroin user. I do not have a drug problem

#530

Post by tshaddox »

renewiltord wrote: post #414

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 addicti…

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.
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