31–40 of 90 posts
I can't see any good reason why someone would go to so much trouble to defend heroin, other than to assume that this is some kind of PR requested by establishment and/or intelligence groups which profit from heroin grown in places like Afghanistan (or, in the previous era, India).
Sounds like no one should defend H because no one defends H.
Had a good friend who was educated, healthy and ran his own business. He died from an heroin overdose shortly after selling off most of his business assets to pay for his addiction. Yes, this is one anecdote. But I bet you my anecdote is a fuck load more common than that of the successful New York business man cited in the article.
Addiction is a weird beast. As I understand it is has two parts: 1. Physiological dependence as evidenced by tolerance and withdrawal symptoms; and 2. Psychological addiction. (2) can manifest itself in many ways that go well beyond drugs--gambling, adrenalin junkies, even Farmville. The danger of some hard drugs is that they can, for some unfortunate segment of the population, be a potent mix of (1) and (2). Further…
I also wonder how his control of heroin would hold should he lose his job or his wife.
Isn't the danger of such drugs in the things they whisper to your ears when you're beholding the abyss?
According to this article[0] the street price of a dose of heroin is $10-$25 dollars. However, that street place is suffering 40-50 times inflation[1]. If heroin were relieved of price inflation, a dose would cost between 20 cents and 63 cents. Compare that to cigarettes. I once heard from a foreign cigarette manufacture that the cost of manufacture for a pack of cigarettes if 50 cents. A pack of cigarettes contains…
You seem to be implying that markup applied above production cost (for any product and for whatever reason) is immoral. ("Inflated" or "inflation" is the wrong term anyway but it makes no difference here)
its not immoral (for an entity should be allowed to price their product at any price they want to), but i want to believe that a free market _should_ control abnormally high markup, so that all produce will cost only slightly more than it takes to produce it.
I think addiction has less to do with the 'drug' and more to do with the person. Be it heroin, pain killers, sex, gambling, smoking, or alcohol segments of society are able to use these in a way that does not interfere with their own life or those of people around them. There are also people who use these as a means of escape or have limited coping resources. It is not that the cigarette is bad, or the pain killer is…
Addiction is a physiological dependence. It has much more to do with your body than your personality.
Addiction is a weird beast. As I understand it is has two parts: 1. Physiological dependence as evidenced by tolerance and withdrawal symptoms; and 2. Psychological addiction. (2) can manifest itself in many ways that go well beyond drugs--gambling, adrenalin junkies, even Farmville. The danger of some hard drugs is that they can, for some unfortunate segment of the population, be a potent mix of (1) and (2). Further…
But the term 'addiction' does not correspond to any natural scientific category. Because unless it is made impossibly rare and unlike our folk concept, any definition will drag in all routine motivated behavior to the point where a lot is included which we all like and find healthy and normal.
There is no actual distinction between 'physiological dependence' and 'psychological addiction.' The relevant phenomena are all psychological and all have biological basis - just as one's behavioral responses to hunger, dehydration, embarrassment or sexual arousal do. Avoiding withdrawal might be more or less motivating depending on the drug - for example, cocaine doesn't really have much of a withdrawal compared to heroin. But the fundamental reason people use heroin isn't because of withdrawal, it's because they love it. The situation where one takes heroin simply to avoid symptoms is just not the primary mechanism of heroin addiction. And since heroin is the paradigm case for this kind of explanation, it is just generally not a good one. We have confused the different phenomenology of the cravings with a spurious major distinction between physical and ghostly causes, when we should really be considering the specific neural systems which are engaged by the different drugs.
I appreciate that what I am saying sounds controversial. If what I say is true, why do people keep talking about addiction? Because the word has an important function OUTSIDE of science - it applies a specific kind of pressure, an important feature of which is the appearance of being scientific. It is an implicit value judgement said in a scientific tone of voice, making it more legally and secularly palatable.
Addiction is nothing more than the pathologized version of desire or enjoyment. If you wish to cast shadows on anything people enjoy doing, simply call it an addiction. In particular if you wish to conflate social disapproval of an activity with a scientific judgement of unhealthiness, call the activity an addiction.
Suppose, for example, that a certain person goes to a bondage club on a weekly basis... so easy to make this into an addiction. Doing the same thing with 'normal' sex is just significantly harder. (Though still possible - in a situation where someone has an interest in pathologizing sex)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Addiction is a physiological dependence. It has much more to do with your body than your personality.
sure, physical addiction. But what drove those people to try the drug in the first place? its a set of circumstances - such as poverty, lack of other leasure activities etc.
Addiction is a weird beast. As I understand it is has two parts: 1. Physiological dependence as evidenced by tolerance and withdrawal symptoms; and 2. Psychological addiction. (2) can manifest itself in many ways that go well beyond drugs--gambling, adrenalin junkies, even Farmville. The danger of some hard drugs is that they can, for some unfortunate segment of the population, be a potent mix of (1) and (2). Further…
And yet, the exact same argument applies to alcohol and alcoholics. So, why take the risk of drinking and becoming an alcoholic? For some people who are genetically predisposed to alcoholism, this is exactly what prevents them from drinking, even though it's still legal. Yet, this small chance of being an alcoholic doesn't prevent anyone else from drinking alcohol, so why should it prevent people from doing drugs? It…
Nobody is actually saying that being an alcoholic is any good at all; that's a straw man. But we do have some level of cultural accommodation to and regulation of alcohol. By now we have nearly the same level of facility in dealing with marijuana, which is also a drug of abuse which is not that hard to use safely.
But every compound is unique. Taken in the ways they are almost always taken, alcohol and marijuana are pretty mellow and easy to dose and don't have wild side effects like immediately blinding you or shutting down your lungs if you screw up slightly. But they are not the same as each other and neither is the same as datura or belladonna. Many psychoactives are blow-your-head-off powerful tools that should never be used in the casual, vacuous party-time way that our culture likes to do for the last 60 years or so. And many, it's just prudent never to use at all.
Heroin is (or was) legal for UK hospitals to use in killing pain and I believe in its usefulness for that reason. But I am not going to defend high-dose, party-time heroin use as a reasonable and prudent practice any more than I am going to defend promiscuous, unprotected sex with many HIV+ individuals (which also has a very surprisingly low per-instance probability of doing anything - yet that is exactly how it continues to spread and ruin people's lives).
In any case, saying 'alcoholism is also bad' is certainly not a reason to suppose that heroin addiction is not bad.
Of my two friends who started using heroin as teenagers, both destroyed their pancreas by their early thirties. As of now (age 37), one of them has died from an overdose. The other is intermittently homeless.
Good friend died of an OD at 26. Three others I know who used to use struggled in life while on it. I know nobody who handled it well.