gram a week is not bad. especially if your only doing it 1 day out of the week. It is not dominating your life. You are not changing your habits to do the drug. It is likely not affecting your relationships negativly, if anything, you probably do it socially. I think it would be more of a problem if you took that 1 gram and did it over 3 days rather than in 1 go. That said, in my opinion 1 gram a week done in 1 day of the week is pretty low usage, what I label recreational. This is a matter of perspective though, for some people that would be a lot. The same goes with any other drug.
2 examples I notice in my life:
Marijuana - I am a dailysmoker, from Cali, been smoking for the past 17 years. At my peak, in University, I was smoking about 7 grams a day, but I smoked blunts often and had access to cheap/free weed. I would start my day with a bong rip and end it the same way. I remember, one time, my roommate and buddy were chilling in the room, I had gone to sleep and they would just wake me to take a bong rip like every 20 - 30 min after which I would pass out again(It was my freshman year in dorms, had a lofted bed over my desk, they were chilling under and would pass the bong up). Now, I am a working professional(surprisingly) and on weekdays, I do not smoke until around 8 or 9 pm usually. My daily consumption on weekdays is between half and one gram. On weekends, if I wake and bake, I end up smoking all day, and will kill 3-7 grams in a day, so I usually try to be productive and not smoke until early afternoon. Even this use seems heavy to some/most people, but to me it is a dramatic reduction from what I used to use.
Heroin - I started using 10 years ago, back then I would use once a week at first, then it developed to a few times a week at which point I started getting withdrawls and then went to daily use. I would use a quarter gram a day at first, then a half gram, then a whole gram... I peaked at about 1.2-1.5 grams a day, that kept me nodding out all day longgram a week is not bad. especially if your only doing it 1 day out of the week. It is not dominating your life. You are not changing your habits to do the drug. It is likely not affecting your relationships negativly, if anything, you probably do it socially. I think it would be more of a problem if you took that 1 gram and did it over 3 days rather than in 1 go. That said, in my opinion 1 gram a week done in 1 day of the week is pretty low usage, what I label recreational. This is a matter of perspective though, for some people that would be a lot. The same goes with any other drug.
2 examples I notice in my life:
Marijuana - I am a dailysmoker, from Cali, been smoking for the past 17 years. At my peak, in University, I was smoking about 7 grams a day, but I smoked blunts often and had access to cheap/free weed. I would start my day with a bong rip and end it the same way. I remember, one time, my roommate and buddy were chilling in the room, I had gone to sleep and they would just wake me to take a bong rip like every 20 - 30 min after which I would pass out again(It was my freshman year in dorms, had a lofted bed over my desk, they were chilling under and would pass the bong up). Now, I am a working professional(surprisingly) and on weekdays, I do not smoke until around 8 or 9 pm usually. My daily consumption on weekdays is between half and one gram. On weekends, if I wake and bake, I end up smoking all day, and will kill 3-7 grams in a day, so I usually try to be productive and not smoke until early afternoon. Even this use seems heavy to some/most people, but to me it is a dramatic reduction from what I used to use.
Heroin - I started using 10 years ago, back then I would use once a week at first, then it developed to a few times a week at which point I started getting withdrawls and then went to daily use. I would use a quarter gram a day at first, then a half gram, then a whole gram... I peaked at about 1.2-1.5 grams a day, that kept me nodding out all day long. Now i use just over a gram a day, which to many people is a heavy habit(especially with the good dope we get). I especially notice this when I am around a friend who doesnt use regularly. In the time that I kill 300MG of dope smoking it(or IV, but that doesnt work for the example), my friend has only managed to smoke 50mg and is nodding out about to fall over, meanwhile, I am just getting over my kicks. The thing I noticed with dope especially, and this is probably similar with cocaine - your use will gradually increase without you noticing or wanting to admit it.
At one point when I had gotten up to a gram a day use, I was seeing my dealer every day and buying a gram. This impacted my life greatly, as I would spend a good amount of time every day scoring my dope(heroin dealers for the most part in my history have been horrible laggers, always 5 more minutes). This led me to eventually buying 3-4 grams at a time so I wouldnt need to see him every day, but this still killed too much time. I finally came to terms with my addiction and figured out the way to be most functional on it and keep my job was to minimize the time spent seeking out the drug. I graduated to buying between a half to a whole ounce at a time for personal use.
This is a fairly large sum of money to spend on dope, but doable if you are a working professional with a good paying job. By doing this, I was able to reduce my drug seeking time by probably 40 hours a month. First of all, the dealers who sell ounces are much more prompt than the ones who sell grams. Secondly, when buying at the ounce level, I generally got better product, closer to the source, more pure. There are some major issues you have to be careful about when doing this though... Firstly, be very careful, larger amounts of hard drugs are very bad to get caught with. I would never take my whole stash with me out of the house and when I was in the house, I would keep it all in 1 bag, only taking what I needed for trips. 2ndly, monitor your daily consumption very carefully. When you have a large bag, its easy to start using more and more. I started actually weighing out what I was allowed to use in a day so this wouldnt happen.
I have friends who have this problem so bad, they will not buy an ounce even though they can afford to. Rather, they go see a dealer every day for their daily dose. On top of everything, by doing this, they spent almost 2 times as much per gram as they would if they bought in bulk, but their will power was so bad, they chose this route - Major lesson from this - 1 gram a week used in 1 day is not too much or a problem as long as you are very careful about how you do it and about not increasing your use. It is very easy to fall into a pattern and next thing you know have a raging addiction. The best thing you can possibly have in these situations is a signifigant other or great friend or relative who know about your problem and care enough to make you stop. If I didn't have a girlfriend who cared, I would have probably died(literally, as she woke me up several times when I was nodding and would stop breathing early in my addiction).
At first she didnt realize how bad of a drug it was, so she let me use casually, like you are, but when she saw addiction taking hold she refused to let me use(now the fact that I hid it from her and continued using is a different story, but just not being able to use around someone you live with helps majorly control your additction - I would not be able to use in the evenings after work or on weekends when I was with her which helped a lot. I did get caught using many times over the following 10 years I was with her(and still am). This has created major problems with trust in the relationship and I do want to quit, but its a sickness and I keep relapsing.
Eventually I Will do it. I just need to cut out all connections to the drug or I will relapse when I quit again. Even going on these forums is enough to make me relapse. In fact, when it comes time to really quit for good, I am pretty sure I need to move to a new town, probably a new county or state, as I just know where to get dope all over this state which is pretty sad. On a plus note, I have come to a point in my addiction, where I will not use certain opiates because they just do nothing for me now.
Things such as vicodin or norcos, I have no desire to use, even if I am kicking full on. They are just too weak with my habit and for some reason, even when I am clean for several months, they still feel weak. my tolerance only goes down so much. In fact, at this point, I will not even use oxys, just need too many pills to get where I want to be. I need to dose 10 roxys at a time, just to get a buzz, would need 40-50 in a day to rival my dope addiction, and I dont make millions a year, so I can't afford this. The cost ratio to heroin for me is $1 of heroin gets me as far as $10 of roxy with the dope I get now. There is just no comparison.
I realize this turned into a big ramble, point I am getting at - Not a heavy habit, but can become one very easily. Be careful and if anything find a hobby that is healthy to replace this. If I had everything to do over again, I would not have started taking opiates at all, but the past is the past, we can't live in it. From what I am hearing now, its even crazier for the younger generation. People in highschool are smoking heroin like its nothing. When I was in highschool, I never saw heroin, it was very taboo. Even cocaine and speed were very rare, maybe only 1 kid used them. Now they are common place. When I grew up, we just smoked herb and took mushys