I am a heroin user. I do not have a drug problem • Hacker News Board

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

#551

Post by say_it_as_it_is » Thu, Feb 18, 2021, 7:51 PM UTC

yboris wrote: post #193

say_it_as_it_is wrote: post #161

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 painf…

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 ...

I need to know where you get your strawberries, for a friend.

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

#552

Post by foobiekr » Thu, Feb 18, 2021, 7:55 PM UTC

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 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.

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

#553

Post by filleokus » Thu, Feb 18, 2021, 7:59 PM UTC

TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #253

Grustaf wrote: post #204

Earlier 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?

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.

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.

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

#554

Post by moreranchplease » Thu, Feb 18, 2021, 8:00 PM UTC

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.

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

#555

Post by confidantlake » Thu, Feb 18, 2021, 8:00 PM UTC

mavsman wrote: post #351

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.

Absolutely. 8% is incredibly high.

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

#556

Post by jeofken » Thu, Feb 18, 2021, 8:00 PM UTC

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.

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

#557

Post by mmlkrx » Thu, Feb 18, 2021, 8:01 PM UTC

amvalo wrote: post #531

mmlkrx wrote: post #283

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 p…

Fake story -- that's way too fast.

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...

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

#558

Post by pseudalopex » Thu, Feb 18, 2021, 8:07 PM UTC

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/…

That doesn't mean quitting was easy for them.

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

#559

Post by Noctem » Thu, Feb 18, 2021, 8:07 PM UTC

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.

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

#560

Post by ordu » Thu, Feb 18, 2021, 8:09 PM UTC

chimprich wrote: post #509

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. Why do you think this is a gotcha? Do you think the comment's author hasn't thought of that?

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 probl…

> 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.