I was talking to my father yesterday on a way to a doctor's appointment (don't have my license right now and my wife couldn't take me) about heroin addiction. He isn't a doctor but is a trained scientist (physicist) and we were talking about opioid/heroin addiction (I have been addicted to opioids in some form of another for over a decade and am now on suboxone; his actual drug experience is that he smoked weed a couple of times in the 60s- but he has seen my addiction and that of other family members first hand as an impartial sober observer with an open mind (he is not some anti-drug person even though he has never used- his opinion is that doctor's should be allowed to dispense drugs to addicts to treat the disease- wither it means suboxone, methadone, or even heroin)). He stated that from his observation and from the research he has done into the subject he is starting to think that opioid abuse is a symptom and not the disease itself. He reminded me that correlation does not equal causation- even if the large majority of people that tried heroin got addicted (which maybe my friends are insanely lucky but that actually hasn't been the case- out of the friends I grew up with there was like 5 of us who tried it at least once, I am the only one who became addicted) that doesn't necessarily mean heroin causes it as in if you took someone and gave them heroin (a random person out of the population) that they would become addicted. It could be that there is some illness which makes people start using drugs (I've been using heroin for an example, but it could be other drugs as well) and inevitably become addicted.
I'm sort of starting to agree. I do think many many people who try strong opioids become addicted- but look at how heavy the stigma is, who tries it in the first place? I do feel like there was a factor in my neighborhood which would possibly explain why only 1 out of the 5 of us became addicted. I was an anti-drug war person, not just in the sense of not locking addicts up, but also that the drug war had demonized drugs. And I was thought of as highly intelligent by my peers, and at that time they looked to me for advice on anything dealing with science, pharmacology, etc. Then I had drugs as I got older because at first I had plenty of money, and therefore had them available, was considered the person who knew a lot about them etc. It was under these conditions they tried them. If they had gotten addicted I would feel tremendously guilty- but my point is I don't know they would have ever tried them on their own.
Is it possible that the reason we think of certain drugs as super addictive is that most well people don't want to try them in the first place? Just because we see most people that use heroin become addicted doesn't mean that it "caused" it. When they give powerful opioids to someone in the ER with a serious injury (often during their stay and an RX after) , although some people become addicted, it is actually a fairly low number. Do you think it is possible that there is an already present illness that causes people to seek out opioids and other drugs in the first place as opposed to a completely well person being given them becoming addicted?
I'm sort of starting to agree. I do think many many people who try strong opioids become addicted- but look at how heavy the stigma is, who tries it in the first place? I do feel like there was a factor in my neighborhood which would possibly explain why only 1 out of the 5 of us became addicted. I was an anti-drug war person, not just in the sense of not locking addicts up, but also that the drug war had demonized drugs. And I was thought of as highly intelligent by my peers, and at that time they looked to me for advice on anything dealing with science, pharmacology, etc. Then I had drugs as I got older because at first I had plenty of money, and therefore had them available, was considered the person who knew a lot about them etc. It was under these conditions they tried them. If they had gotten addicted I would feel tremendously guilty- but my point is I don't know they would have ever tried them on their own.
Is it possible that the reason we think of certain drugs as super addictive is that most well people don't want to try them in the first place? Just because we see most people that use heroin become addicted doesn't mean that it "caused" it. When they give powerful opioids to someone in the ER with a serious injury (often during their stay and an RX after) , although some people become addicted, it is actually a fairly low number. Do you think it is possible that there is an already present illness that causes people to seek out opioids and other drugs in the first place as opposed to a completely well person being given them becoming addicted?