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Drug users use a lot of drugs

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Re: Drug users use a lot of drugs

#71

There's recreational drug users, and then there's recreational drug users. Turns out some people I know who microdosed amphetamine took doses exactly in the ballpark of what doctor would prescribe them.

There always are, for any drug.

There is the person that uses amphetamines to get high SAT scores, high college grades and stops after landing a FAANG job.

There is the person using alcohol as "social lube". Never drinks alone, never gets wasted.

There is the person using LSD and other party drugs few times per year or less in a controlled setting

And then there are the extremely addicted people. And everything in between. It's a sliding scale. People need to be educated to learn the risks and recognize harmful behavioral patterns.

Simply telling people "drugs are bad for you" might be the abridged version of the truth. But is as effective as the "war on drugs" in reducing drug abuse.

Re: Drug users use a lot of drugs

#72

Drug processing in the body can sometimes be surprising. I learned recently about first pass effect which means the drug heads first to the liver and only what passes through is available to the body. So if one ups the dose and the liver processing is saturated a double dose can deliver much more punch than two single ones. The body has many non-linear features and extrapolating several orders of magnitude is often n…

Yep, this is why "boofing" (intrarectal) dosing has found rising popularity in the 'research chemical' scene over the past couple decades.

The liver's effects on drugs is really fascinating. Grapefruit has a chemical that can inactive liver enzymes, so some drug addicts regularly drink grapefruit juice to 'get more bang for their buck'. Plain old black pepper (in large doses) inactivates a different enzyme IIRC.

There are also some interesting anecdotal cases of people who claim to have found regimens of essential oils, which when consumed at the right schedule saturate liver enzymes to the extent that otherwise inert substances can produce recreationally psychoactive effects.

Source: i have a morbid fascination with the 'frontier non-medical drug use' communities and follow their subreddits (/r/researchchemicals and /r/peptides being among the most interesting). There a lot of people who choose to make themselves guinea pigs quite recklessly and, thankfully for scientific advancement and future harm reduction, post in-depth reports of how these novel chemicals or preparations effected them. Recently, broad cheap availability of novel benzos have led many posters to deep addictions of such great magnitude that they struggle to convince doctors assisting with detox that they've actually been consuming equivalents of 1000x typical prescribed doses... until the doctor gives them massive doses of valium to detox and they still have severe seizures.

Re: Drug users use a lot of drugs

#73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It shouldn't be hard for a grownup to read his texts even if that were true.

It's not that it's hard to read his texts, and sometimes there's still some good stuff in there. It's that once someone shows bad judgment you have to think about how that manifests, and that manifests in poor thinking that's well-disguised. Once you know a clock is broken don't use it to tell the time.

Yeah, I guess I somewhat deliberately misinterpreted you. I should know better...

I'm pretty sure you've been lied to about this though.

That Twitter link is mostly unreadable, but what's in human font size is just vague gossip from some angry dude on Twitter.

Re: Drug users use a lot of drugs

#74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've read a lot of his stuff and have never heard about that. Would you want to provide a link that supports your claim, so I can make an informed decision about continuing to read his generally good, substantive, and interesting content?

There's some leaked emails where he plainly states he's chasing that audience. https://web.archive.org/web/20210217195335/https://twitter.c... I wouldn't say he's racist but it's almost worse. He didn't think about how this would go down, which is to say, when you court an audience that has a reputation of being overtly racist, your audience will become more and more racist, driving good people out.

I read through the comments he made in the images attached to those tweets, and I don't personally find what he's saying there to be especially problematic. I certainly don't read anything he's saying there as being motivated by racism, hatred, or alt-right political views.

I still really appreciate you backing up your post with a link and the chance to dig into his sources. Thanks for the link.

Re: Drug users use a lot of drugs

#75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that it's hard to read his texts, and sometimes there's still some good stuff in there. It's that once someone shows bad judgment you have to think about how that manifests, and that manifests in poor thinking that's well-disguised. Once you know a clock is broken don't use it to tell the time.

Yeah, I guess I somewhat deliberately misinterpreted you. I should know better... I'm pretty sure you've been lied to about this though. That Twitter link is mostly unreadable, but what's in human font size is just vague gossip from some angry dude on Twitter.

I also followed up on the link. I was able to open the image links in separate tabs to get them to load. There's a whole bunch of commentary from Scott there that I'd say is worth reading to understand where impassionata is coming from. I don't personally agree with their take, but there _is_ actual substantive content at the link.

Re: Drug users use a lot of drugs

#76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was incredibly lucky. I got to a point where I felt like I wanted to stop (which happens often to a lot of addicts), which coincided with an opportunity to move far away from my hometown, and then also coincidentally found myself surrounded by a fantastic support system. It’s the addict equivalent of flipping a quarter 50 times and having them all come up head. As for a general answer to your question, there isn’t…

Can you provide more details on what the "fantastic support system" consists of?

I found myself in a very accepting friend group of people that didn’t use drugs and (for my situation this was key) didn’t know where to get them.

Aside from that, there was no shaming and very little drama. Essentially, my previous situation was that I was surrounded by extremely abusive family and dangerously messed up friends. I more or less made friends with “normal” people, got away from a really bad situation and it all just sort of… worked out.

There’s absolutely no secret sauce or trick in my getting clean. I can’t count the number of my old friends that tried stuff like I did and it didn’t work out.

It was literally just luck.

Re: Drug users use a lot of drugs

#77

Somehow he managed to ignore the data showing that a non-trivial percentage of people with KLUTS get it after only doing doses comparable to the psychiatric dose, and sometimes after only doing it once or a handful of times. https://erowid.org/chemicals/ketamine/ketamine_article2.shtm...

I'll add my anecdote to the pile. I don't use ketamine a lot (it is not very good for headaches, pretty good for dulling a mosquito bite until it fades away naturally, excellent for dancing). I've taken about 1000mg over the course of several months, at irregular intervals. While it is somewhat higher than Scott's 280mg/month, it's not an order of magnitude higher. Certainly nowhere near 90,000mg/month. I can report…

Yeah I think I gave myself some minor bladder damage just by drinking iced mint tea (since it's such a strong diuretic), so I can't imagine I'd react well to ketamine even in small doses.

Re: Drug users use a lot of drugs

#78
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a source for that? Beyond the NYT piece, which is so laughable it does hit pieces a disservice by being grouped with them.

The NYT piece didn't even say that; it said that he supported genocide (??), which is similar, but I don't remember it saying that he courted neo-Nazis. (Or was that one of the heavily-implied things I was oblivious to?)

Perhaps it was more implying they were welcomed?

> The voices also included white supremacists and neo-fascists. The only people who struggled to be heard... were “social justice warriors.”

Re: Drug users use a lot of drugs

#79

Somehow he managed to ignore the data showing that a non-trivial percentage of people with KLUTS get it after only doing doses comparable to the psychiatric dose, and sometimes after only doing it once or a handful of times. https://erowid.org/chemicals/ketamine/ketamine_article2.shtm...

I'll add my anecdote to the pile. I don't use ketamine a lot (it is not very good for headaches, pretty good for dulling a mosquito bite until it fades away naturally, excellent for dancing). I've taken about 1000mg over the course of several months, at irregular intervals. While it is somewhat higher than Scott's 280mg/month, it's not an order of magnitude higher. Certainly nowhere near 90,000mg/month. I can report…

> pretty good for dulling a mosquito bite until it fades away naturally

Applied topically? Or in the sense that the anesthetic disassociative effects dull most sensations?

Re: Drug users use a lot of drugs

#80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stimulants suppress your appetite but they also make you clench you jaw and grind your teeth involuntarily.

You mean amphetamines, not stimulants in general. I've seen people do much worse when they mix this shit with alcohol, the worst offender that is still perfectly legal

What non-amphetemine stimulants are people doing recreationally?
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