Drug users use a lot of drugs • Hacker News Board

Re: Drug users use a lot of drugs

#171

Post by m-ee » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 6:50 PM UTC

eurasiantiger wrote: post #121

m-ee wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless this is a regional thing I wonder where the doctor even got that idea, I wasn't even aware people snort meth until now. Meanwhile I walked past two people lighting up after leaving a job interview in soma last week. Any doctor who's worked in the ER or psych ward in SF would be familiar with how its used, meth induced psychosis is very common around here.

No such thing as meth-induced psychosis. Yes, people might appear psychotic while under the influence, but that is not psychosis in the clinical sense. The few that do lose their rationality lose it because they don’t sleep for weeks. They likely also live in an unsafe environment which keeps them in a perpetual state of survival stress. Survival stress + not sleeping + stimulants —> psychosis. Very rarely any of the…

I'm not a medical professional, maybe my terms are off but that's what I've seen it called in the media. In any case people are admitted with what appears to be schizophrenia only to end up perfectly lucid a bit later once the drugs have worn off.

Re: Drug users use a lot of drugs

#172

Post by newbie789 » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 6:50 PM UTC

collyw wrote: post #112

newbie789 wrote: post #32

Former meth addict here. > The average crystal meth addict uses about 500 mg a day. And they snort it, which probably produces about double the peak plasma level as taking it orally. So they're getting the equivalent of 1000 mg oral amphetamine daily... 500mg sounds about right, but from my experience the most common route of administration (in the western United States at least) is smoking, not snorting. Because so…

Having been an addict, what's your views on legislation?

I personally support legalization of recreational drugs and the expansion of education, harm reduction, and rehabilitation. The fear of going to jail never stopped any of my friends from dying by accidental overdose.

Re: Drug users use a lot of drugs

#173

Post by neolog » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 6:56 PM UTC

newbie789 wrote: post #170

neolog wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How long does a high last? How many uses during a normal day? e.g. 125 mg 4x daily or all at once or something else? Does it keep you from sleeping?

The “this feels good” part of the high typically lasts maybe 1-3 hours, after which you smoke more. The actual stimulant effect lasts much, much longer, maybe 12ish hours. That part very heavily depends on the dose size and quality, tolerance and your individual response to it. Yes, it keeps you from sleeping. At my peak I didn’t really have much use for the concept of separate days since I was normally awake for ~72…

Thanks, that's interesting.

I wonder how much the lack of sleep is what causes the problems, versus other effects of the drug.

Re: Drug users use a lot of drugs

#174

Post by randomopining » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 6:57 PM UTC

loves_mangoes wrote: post #86

peanut_worm wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What non-amphetemine stimulants are people doing recreationally?

2C-B. Cathinones and other pyrovalerones. Some people even seem to enjoy absorbing Coffee through their nose.

How do you do coffee through your nose lol

Re: Drug users use a lot of drugs

#175

Post by newbie789 » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 7:01 PM UTC

sizzle wrote: post #166

newbie789 wrote: post #32

Former meth addict here. > The average crystal meth addict uses about 500 mg a day. And they snort it, which probably produces about double the peak plasma level as taking it orally. So they're getting the equivalent of 1000 mg oral amphetamine daily... 500mg sounds about right, but from my experience the most common route of administration (in the western United States at least) is smoking, not snorting. Because so…

Congrats on your sobriety. Any advice or insights on how you quit that you’d like to share for anyone struggling with addiction here?

Don’t believe that sober people are good people or that addicts are bad people. That shame is a trap that will keep you there and it’s not even based in reality. If you’re struggling with addiction and you’re worried about yourself, that feeling is a reminder that you’re categorically worth saving.

Not everyone has to do the 12 step thing. My experience with NA was very limited but I quickly figured out that I didn’t fit in there. If you’re feeling out of options, it’s probably worth checking out because it does seem to work for a lot of people. However if it doesn’t work for you, you don’t have to give up. At the end of the day the goal is to not do a thing, whatever way you get there is fine.

Re: Drug users use a lot of drugs

#176

Post by cwkoss » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 7:09 PM UTC

herbst wrote: post #144

cwkoss wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, to share some of my favorite morbid findings: --- Melanotan is a peptide that increases skin pigmentation. Some people have tested it to the extreme, and the pictures are some combination of funny, terrifying and "at what point is this racially offensive blackface?". Also supposedly causes erections similarly to sildenafil . https://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/3gxjem/before_and_afte... --- The etizolam not wo…

When MDPV made rounds in my friends circle, and someone found interest in the substance it always ended in some kind of increasingly paranoid flash until some dramatic breakup 2-3 weeks later. Like one that took a train driving for hours out of the country getting increasingly paranoid until he found himself, phone and money somehow lost, on the trains toilet to flush down a lot of MDPV (literally thousands of doses)…

Glad you were able to keep it moderate.

I think it would be a very interesting (and horribly unethical) hypothetical test to lock individuals in a their own rooms with sustenance, entertainment, and a baggies of moreish substances, force them to dose a few times, and then leave them for several days and see how much remains at a the end. Maybe offer a cash prize based on weight remaining.

I think this could likely measure executive control, long-term thinking and willpower pretty effectively. That you were able to dabble without sliding down the slippery slope probably indicates something positive about your mental fortitude.

Re: Drug users use a lot of drugs

#177

Post by newbie789 » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 7:12 PM UTC

neolog wrote: post #173

newbie789 wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The “this feels good” part of the high typically lasts maybe 1-3 hours, after which you smoke more. The actual stimulant effect lasts much, much longer, maybe 12ish hours. That part very heavily depends on the dose size and quality, tolerance and your individual response to it. Yes, it keeps you from sleeping. At my peak I didn’t really have much use for the concept of separate days since I was normally awake for ~72…

Thanks, that's interesting. I wonder how much the lack of sleep is what causes the problems, versus other effects of the drug.

Not eating and not sleeping absolutely wrecks your body. Pair that with a general increase in risky behavior (for example, sexually) and you’ve got a recipe for a bad time, eventually.

I’m not aware of meth (or its metabolites) being particularly toxic to the cells in the human body (as opposed to cocaine for example, which is directly cardiotoxic if I remember correctly), my understanding is that the bad stuff tends to be the result of behavior that it induces.

Re: Drug users use a lot of drugs

#178

Post by cwkoss » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 7:17 PM UTC

varispeed wrote: post #127

cwkoss wrote: post #66

I think another major factor that this article didn't point out is drug purity - and what those specific impurities are. Particularly with drugs like meth, which can be manufactured clandestinely by people who don't understand chemistry well, there are a lot of intermediates or potential reaction byproducts which are orders of magnitude more cardiotoxic or otherwise more harmful than pure methamphetamine. And that's…

> Illegal drug manufacturers have a moderate economic pressure to increase purity, but - short of not immediately killing users and losing your customer base - they have little economic incentive to ensure that the impurities that remain in the final product are safe or inert. From the time of alcohol prohibition, it was the government that was introducing contaminated batches that killed people. It was done for prop…

I totally believe that there have been instances where governmental actors have intentionally poisoned drug supplies, but I don't think that's the majority of cases.

Watching Vice documentaries about clandestine manufacturing and the conditions they work in, it is not hard for me to believe that the most frequent cause is just lack of will and chemistry talent in order to purify a substance.

Cleaning inert cutting agents out of drugs is fairly easy because the molecules are often dissimilar. But when manufacturing drugs, there are often steps that have probabilistic products that are very similar.

Hypothetical example: you end up with 99% MDMA but 1% something that is very structurally similar but has no recreational value and is cardiotoxic. These molecules are so similar that the only way to separate them are challenging and expensive: such as multiple rounds of recrystalization and chromatography. Only a tiny portion drug buyers will notice the 1% cardiotoxic byproduct (access to GCMS testing?), so there is no economic incentive to do these final expensive cleaning steps.

Re: Drug users use a lot of drugs

#179

Post by newbie789 » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 7:17 PM UTC

Fnoord wrote: post #150

anon9001 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for sharing. A lot of people on this board have experience with prescription stimulants. How would you say the experience of "doing meth" differs from taking amphetamine orally? Was a typical experience for you "smoke meth, study or write code all night"? I like prescription stimulants, but it's hard for me to imagine anyone wanting to take overdose-levels of stimulants for fun, so I'm probably missing somethi…

> If the supply chain for meth wasn't so poor, I'd probably try it once to see what all the hype is about. As a former smoker and user of various drugs (mostly legal at the time), I highly recommend against usage of highly addictive drugs such as tobacco, heroin, cocaine, and also (meth)amphetamine (there's a difference between physically and mentally addiction here, and there's a good comparison of about 20 differen…

> FWIW, I used amphetamine once, and have been prescribed on Ritalin. That one time I used amphetamine I felt like the biggest asshole in the world.

This made me laugh! I don’t remember where I heard it but a phrase I’m a fan of is “amphetamines cause intense feelings of competency.”

Re: Drug users use a lot of drugs

#180

Post by milkytron » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 7:40 PM UTC

randomopining wrote: post #174

loves_mangoes wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2C-B. Cathinones and other pyrovalerones. Some people even seem to enjoy absorbing Coffee through their nose.

How do you do coffee through your nose lol

I would imagine snorting really fine grounds, similar to how people use tobacco snuff.