My question is this: if the rats knew that taking the morphine after moving to the park would keep the withdrawals away, would they have still taken the water?
Drug addiction: The complex truth
11–20 of 139 posts
Re: Drug addiction: The complex truth
#12"When Alexander’s rats were given something better to do than sit in a bare cage they turned their noses up at morphine because they preferred playing with their friends and exploring their surroundings to getting high." Well, AFAIK, this doesn't happen with most humans struggling with addiction to hard drugs. Addicts will neglect everything, namely social activities, in order to get what they need.
Addiction is a topic that has been poisoned by deliberate Drug War propaganda. Almost everything about drugs on TV shows, which are paid to include it in their content, is government approved propaganda.
But wait, it gets worse: Non-addicted people are sent for "treatment," in order to avoid jail. So there is a whole industry of quack medicine diluting and poisoning the real science of addiction.
The Drug War is the foundation on which most of the prison industry, and most of the budgets of police departments rests on, plus whole federal law enforcement agencies, large segments of Homeland Security, etc. Truth is a low priority. Question everything you think you know.
Re: Drug addiction: The complex truth
#13Does anyone really think "one try ... is enough to get us hooked"? They can't know any overt functional drug users if that's the case. Cocaine in particular isn't instantly addictive. If anything on the few occasions I've used it, it actively put me off.
"If anything on the few occasions I've used it, it actively put me off."
Cocaine can't have actively put you off that much if you did it again a few times. Reminds me of the joke "Quitting smoking is easy. I've done it lots of times."
Re: Drug addiction: The complex truth
#14Kind of on topic: I was surprised to find out that Nicotine is thought to be more addictive that Heroine... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicotine#Dependence_and_withdra...
I find that nicotine's addictiveness is due to legality. That being said, I quit the various opiates much easier than cigarettes.
Re: Drug addiction: The complex truth
#15I have previously commented on this topic on HN, but since it's back i'll go again.
As a medical student I was taught that addiction is a spectrum. Each drug falls somewhere on that spectrum in terms of addiction potential, (And as GotAnyMegadeth comments, Nicotine is more addictive than Heroin) and every person has some prior probability of becoming addicted, due to the complex interplay of social/biological factors that go into the nature of an addiction).
Okay - so Heroin is less addictive than Nicotine. We know this. People understand this if they think about the nature of addiction. Doctors are taught this at medical school. Community mental health, nurses and doctors talk to lots of people who have tried hard drugs and never got into them.
But what is the destructive potential of trying heroin and becoming addicted? Obviously much greater than with nicotine (Although nicotine products may well result in your death one day too).
This information isn't particularly new, and certainly hasn't been buried by the powers that be in an attempt to strengthen anti-drugs arguments (at least in Australia)
Re: Drug addiction: The complex truth
#16I have previously commented on this topic on HN, but since it's back i'll go again. As a medical student I was taught that addiction is a spectrum. Each drug falls somewhere on that spectrum in terms of addiction potential, (And as GotAnyMegadeth comments, Nicotine is more addictive than Heroin) and every person has some prior probability of becoming addicted, due to the complex interplay of social/biological factors…
Nicotine is less addictive than heroin only in one measure of addictiveness. There are others, e.g. reinforcement, in terms of which, both heroin and cocaine are more addictive.
And with regards to the article, this is nothing new. Who hasn't caught onto the fact that anti-drug materials exaggerate everything and are full of lies (LSD is bad apparently).
Re: Drug addiction: The complex truth
#17Does anyone really think "one try ... is enough to get us hooked"? They can't know any overt functional drug users if that's the case. Cocaine in particular isn't instantly addictive. If anything on the few occasions I've used it, it actively put me off.
"If anything on the few occasions I've used it, it actively put me off." Cocaine can't have actively put you off that much if you did it again a few times. Reminds me of the joke "Quitting smoking is easy. I've done it lots of times."
Why does this need to be the case?
I guess for most people it is more like "there's so many movies about this stuff and famous people take it, it MUST be good, I need to try".
Re: Drug addiction: The complex truth
#18"When Alexander’s rats were given something better to do than sit in a bare cage they turned their noses up at morphine because they preferred playing with their friends and exploring their surroundings to getting high." Well, AFAIK, this doesn't happen with most humans struggling with addiction to hard drugs. Addicts will neglect everything, namely social activities, in order to get what they need.
As far as you know. Firstly, the study is about the onset of addiction from one single experience with the drug. People that take a drug once and decide to not do it again don't attract the same social and media attention as heavy users. Similarly, if functional users of hard drugs exist, you are unlikely to hear about them. This is one of the effects of the drug prohibition: it hides a lot of data. More worryingly,…
This. People assume that all opiate users are crackheads committing armed robbery. Many are highly skilled, highly paid professionals.
I must confess a certain amount of cognitive dissonance seeing middle-aged men in tailored suits scoring heroin on the street!
Re: Drug addiction: The complex truth
#19Kind of on topic: I was surprised to find out that Nicotine is thought to be more addictive that Heroine... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicotine#Dependence_and_withdra...
I find that nicotine's addictiveness is due to legality. That being said, I quit the various opiates much easier than cigarettes.
As a smoker, I wish it was illegal tomorrow. Then I could buy one or two smokes every now and then, but I would have to go well out of my way.
Re: Drug addiction: The complex truth
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
As far as you know. Firstly, the study is about the onset of addiction from one single experience with the drug. People that take a drug once and decide to not do it again don't attract the same social and media attention as heavy users. Similarly, if functional users of hard drugs exist, you are unlikely to hear about them. This is one of the effects of the drug prohibition: it hides a lot of data. More worryingly,…
This. People assume that all opiate users are crackheads committing armed robbery. Many are highly skilled, highly paid professionals. I must confess a certain amount of cognitive dissonance seeing middle-aged men in tailored suits scoring heroin on the street!
These days there is no need for that. They can just visit a "pain clinic" and get a prescription.