Heroin: a unique, harmless substance...

[JessFR]

That's not entirely true. Yes, I agree there is a great deal of truth to it, but to a small extent in chemical terms, and a much larger extent in broader social context terms, there's a difference.

First, chemically heroin is one of the most euphoric opioids around. There are many types of opioid receptors and not all opioids behave exactly the same even once you account for dosage differences and ROA. It is also short acting meaning you don't have much time before withdrawal starts, and seriously not much time before withdrawal gets really bad. Which means you're more desperate to get more right away than you would be longer lasting opioids.

As for the broader context, the social realities which don't strictly speaking have to do with its chemical nature as the above does, the reality remains that heroin in addition to being generally more euphoric to most people, is more likely to be used IV. As it is the most readily accessible opioid that can be used IV remotely safely in the long term. Most others are pills, which are tricky and dangerous to IV. And plant matter which is virtually impossible.

The end result, considering the fact it is somewhat more euphoric and that the reality is it is more likely to be tried IV, and using IV is much more likely to cause serious addiction for various reasons, increased euphoria, speed of onset, how fast withdrawal hits. The end result is in my view that heroin is more likely to be the drug people get out of control with. Some of that is to do with its chemistry, most of it is not, but the end result is the same.

Many people including myself have managed to sustain opioid addictions without too much damage resulting with other opioids only for things to spiral out of control fast and hard with heroin. There's lots of reasons for it, but at the end of the day, that's what tends to happen.

I agree that socially there's a stigma to heroin born of ignorance. I do think it does tend to be worse than other opioids, but not nearly to the extent or for the reasons people think. But the opposite idea, that it's no different to others in its family isn't entirely true either. There is propaganda at work, and a LOT of ignorance. Most people define heroin as the worst of the worst and consider it a lot worse than meth, alcohol, and especially more than opioid pills, and that's horseshit. But I don't accept it's the same as other opioid habits the way you suggest.

 

[Keif' Richards]

Jess, I'm sorry, but I don't strictly agree with a lot of what you are saying. I think a lot of it is, unfortunately, subjective opinion. First of all, Heroin/Morphine are not "short-acting" Opioids, they are the prototypical Opioids and their length of duration is several hours. Fentanyl, for instance, is a shorter-acting Opioid. Heroin is not proven to be "more addictive" and I really feel that what you're doing is propagating myths that others have in turn propagated to you.

It's just not true. DiactetylMorphine is as popular as it is because Acetic Anhydride was in good supply. It all comes back to Morphine. Heroin and Morphine have been proven to be essentially indistinguishable. Please be sure about what you are saying before you say it. If it's an opinion. You cannot say "most people eventually fuck up more on Heroin than other Opioids" because to be honest, it's tabloid bullshit.

I am an English teacher and I'm not ashamed to say that I'm an Opioid user. I have issues from time to time, but Opioids are a part of my life and probably will be. Don't go around saying that Heroin almost always ends in ruin. Some people are functional and others are not. It all comes back to the person, not the drug. Some have control and some don't. That is the nature of life.

 

[JessFR]

To be honest, I think you're the one who should be cautious of subjective influences in your opinion. You sound oddly defensive to me. Like you're trying to convince yourself why you'll be fine when others haven't been. In my experience though, it's just a matter of time. But believe me, I truly honestly hope I'm wrong.

I already made my points, heroin and morphine are not what's being compared here. As I said, the reality is not all opioids are equally available, equally euphoric and can all be used the same ways. These are significant differences that fully account for the experience of myself and many others. You only need to have used lots of different opioids to tell the difference.

I wish you luck. I honestly hope you never have your life seriously fucked by opioid use, but like I said, I think it's only a matter of time for almost everyone who loves opioids, and virtually inevitable once you reach IV heroin. I truly hope you prove me wrong, but you sound like sooooo many others I've heard, and it didn't end well for them. Just the defensiveness alone makes me worry for you. This was never about you, I wasn't thinking about your future when I wrote my reply, not once. I am now, but I wasn't then.

it wasn't about it always ending in ruin, it was about if there are differences. You made it about you specifically. That concerns me because it makes me think you're in a position where you know many would tell you this will end badly. And I think in most cases most of us always knew on some level we were headed for ruin long before it happened and refused to believe it. I'm unusual, I wasn't one of those. I knew I was headed for ruin and kept going anyway cause I didn't care at the time. But most aren't like me, in my experience most unlike me did care about what could happen, but lied to themselves to keep using. So far I see nothing to make me think otherwise. I stand by my opinion.

Most of my point was that the social realities make most of the difference why heroin is worse. Morphine wouldn't be much worse if it were available as heroins replacement. But that's not the reality of most of the world.

But even chemically, there's still a difference.

Like I said, I wish you luck, I truly honestly pray I'm wrong. But I haven't seen anyone yet sustain an opioid habit in the long term once they start using heroin. And very very few who've done it with opioids at all. By long term I mean 15 years or more.

 

[hydroazuanacaine]

heroin isn't benign except addiction. it might not be a proven neurotoxin like mdma, but it fucks with the body and mind. makes you weak and foggy. there are even some proven negative physical effects like hormone imbalance.

 

[JessFR]

Not being free of ANY side effects or downsides whatsoever is not the same thing as being harmful. The measure is between this drug and other drugs. Not this drug and NOTHING. And on that measure the side effects you mentioned are relatively minor.

God I can't win, first I'm arguing the dangers and doomsaying then I'm arguing the opposite.

 

[shartito]

I think this thread has run its course. It’s turned into a debate where I don’t think anyone even knows what we’re debating anymore. I sure don’t.

 

[JessFR]

Agreed.

Closing arguments perhaps? I think we all are more or less in agreement here.

1. Heroin, in a physiological sense, is not toxic or poisonous when used within reasonable dosages. It's just a fact. Constipation can be a serious concern, but it typically can treated symptomatically without even ceasing Opioids.

2. Heroin can make your life much worse, depending on how you define good and bad. It's not the drug that ruins your life, it's the pursuit of the drug in favor of other life obligations that causes the problems. If you're an Alcoholic, for instance, you will be dealing with the same psycho-social issues, while also destroying your body from a physiological standpoint in the process.

There's no reason why we can't leave this open indefinitely, but if there aren't any arguments to the contrary, shall we move on?

I would have been quite happy for that post to have been the last.

 

[burn out]

I'm not trying to be a duck here, but there is so little difference between Heroin and other Opioids that it is hardly a subject worth debating.

This is false and to shartito I would say this is what we are debating. As JessFR pointed out, we are not debating heroin vs morphine in which case it is true there isn't a great deal of difference. But you claimed that the difference between heroin and other opioids (not just morphine) wasn't worth discussing and this is simply not true.

You cannot say there aren't significant differences between opioids. Heroin for example, is certainly more dangerous than weak opioids like codeine, hydrocodone, and dyhydrocodone. It is also less dangerous than fentanyl and other super potent opioids. So notice I am not saying prescribed opioids are good and heroin is bad, I am saying it depends on the opioid in question and heroin does tend to be among the more dangerous, largely due to its power, potency and capability of being IVed.

 

[burn out]

Not being free of ANY side effects or downsides whatsoever is not the same thing as being harmful. The measure is between this drug and other drugs. Not this drug and NOTHING. And on that measure the side effects you mentioned are relatively minor.

God I can't win, first I'm arguing the dangers and doomsaying then I'm arguing the opposite.

Nowhere in his post did he use the word harmful. He said it

- fucks with the body and mind.

- makes you weak and foggy.

- there are even some proven negative physical effects like hormone imbalance.

And therefore it's not benign.

I would say those are all true claims. I also don't think they are that minor. When people want to defend heroin, they like to compare it to drinking a liter of vodka a day or smoking meth every day, in which case it is true that the side effects of heroin could be considered relatively minor (aside from overdose risk). But are the side effects minor when compared with other drugs like smoking marijuana, or kratom or kava or drinking a reasonable amount of alcohol? I would say the side effects on heroin are at least on par with the side effects of other commonly used drugs.

 

[JessFR]

Nowhere in his post did he use the word harmful. He said it

- fucks with the body and mind.

- makes you weak and foggy.

- there are even some proven negative physical effects like hormone imbalance.

And therefore it's not benign.

I would say those are all true claims. I also don't think they are that minor. When people want to defend heroin, they like to compare it to drinking a liter of vodka a day or smoking meth every day, in which case it is true that the side effects of heroin could be considered relatively minor (aside from overdose risk). But are the side effects minor when compared with other drugs like smoking marijuana, or kratom or kava or drinking a reasonable amount of alcohol? I would say the side effects on heroin are at least on par with the side effects of other commonly used drugs.

You’re right, he didn’t say harmful, but he said “fucks with body and mind” which certainly implies it. Perhaps I jumped the gun with how I interpreted the post because of that phrase, but it’s a very vague suggestion to make so it’s hard to argue with it.

Eating too much salt could be said to “fuck with your body”. As for your mind. Well, addiction DOES fuck with your mind, big time. And heroin is highly addictive in nature. So I’m certainly not going to dispute that heroin fucks with your mind. It’s not so much that it does this directly relative to other drugs. I’d say most other drugs have more profound direct influences on the mind, but withdrawal is certainly caused by heroin and by extension the way THAT fucks with your mind is still because of heroin, so it’s still fair to say it’s heroin that has fucked with your mind.

And yes, I am comparing extreme use of heroin with extreme use of meth and alcohol. But I’d say that’s a reasonable comparison. Mild infrequent use isnt all that destructive with almost everything that isn’t outright deadly.

Nobody is going to say smoking isn’t extremely bad for your health, but one cigarette a couple times a year isn’t all that likely to shorten your life span. So heavy use is what’s being talked about anyway. In which case yes, relatively speaking, heroin is pretty safe in the ways I and some others have said it was. Overuse of acetaminophen is probably more physiologically harmful.

This is all based on relative risk. Marijuana isn’t entirely free of SOME risk. Judging it in that way isn’t realistic because it is comparing it with nothing at all. You can’t live your life exposed to a total risk of nothing at all.

 

[hydroazuanacaine]

heroin is harmful. not benign = not not harmful. not relative to another drug. OP says heroin is "a unique drug because it does NOT harm the body or mind in any way whatsoever." this idea has been expressed on bluelight before, but it's not true. heroin has harmful effects other than its addictive potential.

 

[JessFR]

Man this threads just going around in circles now.

 

[iseeunicorns]

I love this post. I try to explain this to my non-opiate user friends yet they still don't understand. They have no problem smashing MDMA/ cocaine / LSD / pills and god knows what else every weekend but when it comes to heroin its suddenly 'disgusting' and 'the most dangerous thing you could ever put in your system'

I even have friends who have tried crack and meth yet when they found out I took heroin for the first time they were disgusted in me and when i tried to explain that, when used in small doses and only sniffed, it's just as safe if not safer than the drugs they have used in the past.
One thing that gets to me a lot is people who look down on you for taking heroin when they have done every other drug (even some weaker form of opiates) because they think they have knowledge on it because they have watched a few films or whatever.

 

[JessFR]

They’re ignorant. I just try to avoid reminders of how stupid and ignorant most people are and ignore it when avoidance doesn’t work.

Many years ago I used to try convincing people they were mistaken, must have wasted SOOO much time exploring every conceivable approach to doing that. Eventually I realized it wasn’t actually possible.

 

[burn out]

You’re right, he didn’t say harmful, but he said “fucks with body and mind” which certainly implies it. Perhaps I jumped the gun with how I interpreted the post because of that phrase, but it’s a very vague suggestion to make so it’s hard to argue with it.

Eating too much salt could be said to “fuck with your body”. As for your mind. Well, addiction DOES fuck with your mind, big time. And heroin is highly addictive in nature. So I’m certainly not going to dispute that heroin fucks with your mind. It’s not so much that it does this directly relative to other drugs. I’d say most other drugs have more profound direct influences on the mind, but withdrawal is certainly caused by heroin and by extension the way THAT fucks with your mind is still because of heroin, so it’s still fair to say it’s heroin that has fucked with your mind.

And yes, I am comparing extreme use of heroin with extreme use of meth and alcohol. But I’d say that’s a reasonable comparison. Mild infrequent use isnt all that destructive with almost everything that isn’t outright deadly.

Nobody is going to say smoking isn’t extremely bad for your health, but one cigarette a couple times a year isn’t all that likely to shorten your life span. So heavy use is what’s being talked about anyway. In which case yes, relatively speaking, heroin is pretty safe in the ways I and some others have said it was. Overuse of acetaminophen is probably more physiologically harmful.

This is all based on relative risk. Marijuana isn’t entirely free of SOME risk. Judging it in that way isn’t realistic because it is comparing it with nothing at all. You can’t live your life exposed to a total risk of nothing at all.

Yes, "fucks with your body and mind" is vague but some of the ill effects of drug use can be hard to pin down and explain to people who haven't used the drug. I definitely agree with him in the sense that on paper, heroin can indeed look like a benign drug because it's not toxic to the liver, or kidneys, or stomach or anything like that. But as a former heroin addict, I learned that it was actually not so benign.

And I think that's exactly the point he was making. It's the sentiment that the OP expressed that heroin is unique in that does not harm the body or mind. As explained it is easy to see why someone might think this looking at heroin on paper, but in reality it's not the case. In my own case, I cannot even use heroin anymore because it results in so much respiratory depression that I literally have to struggle to breathe and start developing pain in my lungs. How's that for benign?

 

[burn out]

They’re ignorant. I just try to avoid reminders of how stupid and ignorant most people are and ignore it when avoidance doesn’t work.

Many years ago I used to try convincing people they were mistaken, must have wasted SOOO much time exploring every conceivable approach to doing that. Eventually I realized it wasn’t actually possible.

Yes that's very true you can't get people to give up their drug prejudices. I remember trying to convince people that heroin wasn't actually that bad but they would not listen. Funny thing is, looking back on it I think they were actually right. Maybe not right in the sense of thinking it was deadly poison but certainly right in understanding that it's far from harmless. As I got order I began to realize how damaging it can actually be on both a physical and spiritual level. Every time you shoot heroin that rush, you send your brain into a state of oblivion. Over time this effects the neural networks and you actually damage your memory and ability to reason abstractly. The addiction causes your brain to rewire itself and this is extremely harmful to you in the sense of your overall well being and behavioral health.

Also, if someone's dumb drug prejudice keeps them off heroin that's generally a good thing. The reason I got addicted to heroin was because I refused to believe in the stigma associated with it. Turns out I would've been a lot better off had I believed in the stigma and avoided it.

 

[JessFR]

Being wrong about what makes the drug harmful, even if the drug IS harmful in some other respect, doesn't make the person not wrong.

But yes, I agree with your underlying sentiment. I'm a serious heroin addict too, my addiction was responsible for me losing almost every last thing of any value I ever had in my life. Till I was a homeless pan handler, and worse. You won't get any argument from me that heroin and opioids in general aren't frequently extremely harmful and damaging to the lives of people prone to being addicted to them. And especially IV heroin use relative to other forms of opioid use.

That said, I'm still not willing to let falsehoods about the drug stand. I believe people need to know the reality of the situation. I don't accept propaganda as acceptable regardless of if it's simple dishonesty, or exaggerated truths, or deliberate omission of information because it isn't negative enough. I believe in the harm reduction philosophy of telling nothing less than the whole truth.

Lying to people in any way just creates an environment where if they already want to try the drug, as soon as they discover any part of what they've been told was in any way misleading, it's so easy to stretch that into thinking everything they've been told was wrong. Look at the DARE programs for example.

When you want to try a drug, badly enough to ignore the stigma surrounding something like heroin, it'll take nothing to provide a good enough excuse to disregard warnings. And that's exactly what happens when people are dishonest. Dishonesty includes being selective with the truth too.

Heroin as a chemical psychoactive substance has enormous potential for danger, but realistically, relative to other drugs, it is physiologically quite benign. It is also highly addictive and in its IVed form especially, not only highly addictive but provides a very small window for you to get enough money to buy more.

Nearly everything bad that happened to me came from the desperation caused by being addicted and needing to buy time before I got sick. Over and over. And I maintain that of the opioid class, of the attributes that vary from opioid to opioid, combined with the realities of its position and availability in society, heroin use has just the right mix of factors both chemically and socially to pose the greatest risk of its class.

The way I see it, that's the reality of the situation with heroin, and under or over selling any part of it intentionally even if you have good motives is dangerous and misguided.

 

[Erikmen]

I remember trying to convince people that heroin wasn't actually that bad but they would not listen. Funny thing is, looking back on it I think they were actually right. Maybe not right in the sense of thinking it was deadly poison but certainly right in understanding that it's far from harmless. As I got order I began to realize how damaging it can actually be on both a physical and spiritual level. Every time you shoot heroin that rush, you send your brain into a state of oblivion. Over time this effects the neural networks and you actually damage your memory and ability to reason abstractly. The addiction causes your brain to rewire itself and this is extremely harmful to you in the sense of your overall well being and behavioral health.

Also, if someone's dumb drug prejudice keeps them off heroin that's generally a good thing. The reason I got addicted to heroin was because I refused to believe in the stigma associated with it. Turns out I would've been a lot better off had I believed in the stigma and avoided it.

That's an interesting perspective, I agree with you. I have also tried heroin believing it could never make me an addicted because I tried it once, but then I felt I could do that again and again. I did it differently, I switched it to strong opiates from pharmacies and it took years for me to realize I was actually addicted to live my life with that extra motivation. And since I kept on living discreetly and working normally I couldn't accept things were getting out of control. Some people can have a functional life, and unfortunately in some of these cases you only realize you have problems when something bad happens, in my case it was too late.

I had lost so many years and the reason I feel like that is due to my emotional and spiritual growth. It seems as if it the process of growing and dealing with difficult situations had slowed down ever since I started to use opiates daily in order to cope with all sort of challenges. I can see that more clearly now that I quit and everything seems heavier, stressful and difficult. I once believed I could have lived under the blanket of opiates forever but I was wrong.

 

[burn out]

Being wrong about what makes the drug harmful, even if the drug IS harmful in some other respect, doesn't make the person not wrong.

But yes, I agree with your underlying sentiment. I'm a serious heroin addict too, my addiction was responsible for me losing almost every last thing of any value I ever had in my life. Till I was a homeless pan handler, and worse. You won't get any argument from me that heroin and opioids in general aren't frequently extremely harmful and damaging to the lives of people prone to being addicted to them. And especially IV heroin use relative to other forms of opioid use.

That said, I'm still not willing to let falsehoods about the drug stand. I believe people need to know the reality of the situation. I don't accept propaganda as acceptable regardless of if it's simple dishonesty, or exaggerated truths, or deliberate omission of information because it isn't negative enough. I believe in the harm reduction philosophy of telling nothing less than the whole truth.

Lying to people in any way just creates an environment where if they already want to try the drug, as soon as they discover any part of what they've been told was in any way misleading, it's so easy to stretch that into thinking everything they've been told was wrong. Look at the DARE programs for example.

When you want to try a drug, badly enough to ignore the stigma surrounding something like heroin, it'll take nothing to provide a good enough excuse to disregard warnings. And that's exactly what happens when people are dishonest. Dishonesty includes being selective with the truth too.

Heroin as a chemical psychoactive substance has enormous potential for danger, but realistically, relative to other drugs, it is physiologically quite benign. It is also highly addictive and in its IVed form especially, not only highly addictive but provides a very small window for you to get enough money to buy more.

Nearly everything bad that happened to me came from the desperation caused by being addicted and needing to buy time before I got sick. Over and over. And I maintain that of the opioid class, of the attributes that vary from opioid to opioid, combined with the realities of its position and availability in society, heroin use has just the right mix of factors both chemically and socially to pose the greatest risk of its class.

The way I see it, that's the reality of the situation with heroin, and under or over selling any part of it intentionally even if you have good motives is dangerous and misguided.

I agree that we shouldn't present misinformation to people to try to scare them away from heroin, but at the same time presenting true information can be misleading in depending on how it is presented. For example, when I read about heroin and read that it was physiologically relatively benign, I thought "Great. I won't overdose and I won't use it often enough to get physically dependent." Well I ended up doing both. But not only that, it wasn't even as physiologically benign as I had been lead to believe. As I said earlier, I developed breathing problems from it due to the respiratory depression and found it damaging to my brain. It also affected my hormones.

 

[Mafioso]

I think there is a lot of subjective use of the terms "psychologically" "physiologically" "harm" and "benign" in this discussion. People seem to be arguing that it isn't directly neurotoxic therefore in itself it is not harmful. This would seem to be ignoring receptor down regulation and changes in levels of neurotransmitters that occur with chronic use. The argument that a one time moderate dose will not cause permanent damage is irrelevant in my mind. I would dare someone to show me one drug in its purest form that does not meet these standards. Nearly every drug in its purest form can be used in a low dose without harm.

Personally I find the argument a bit irrelevant as well as misleading. Both sides seem to concede that there are safe and dangerous levels of use and that chronic or heavy use is always risky. The same argument can be made about almost every drug, opioids are not special in this regard.