Yesterday I popped 10mg of hyrdocodone and felt pretty damn good. Lots of energy, talkative, and mildly euphoric. I catch a good buzz on between 10-15mg and anything beyond that gets me rather sick. I don’t take it very often but one time I took 50mg and was puking my guts out. Anyway, today I felt like popping some more but was out so it wasn’t an option. I recognize this is an ugly rabbit hole and what I’ve heard is that with regular use, 15mg soon becomes 30, which then becomes 60, etc etc. My question is how long exactly does it take for tolerance to build and is it possible to take responsibly. My impression is that it’s not. Any input is appreciated.
Any regular use of an opiate will cause your tolerance to go up and eventually lead to a physical dependence, that's the pesky thing about them.
That said, just how fast you get a tolerance and by how much you have to up the dose each time to still get the desired effects varies wildly between individuals. For instance, my initial tolerance was very slow to build. Took me longer than I thought (and longer than most people around me who used with the same frequency) to get a habit. Once you have had a habit, your body is ALWAYS quicker afterwards to catch onto the
substance again, thus risking unpleasant withdrawal symptoms, so you want to avoid developing one if you can.
As for the other, yes opiates can be, and have been used responsibly, ie in a non-addicted way, by many people. That's historically documented, that's documented by several modern-day studies ; it's simply a fact. HOWEVER. If you are already doubting your own ability to do so in advance, then you're probably not the best candidate for recreational use.
Also, again your individual response in terms of tolerance will make a huge difference to how often you can use without courting dependency. I'm slow to build up tolerance and quick to drop it, so I can 'get away' with more frequent use than most, and need less of a break in order to 're-set' whenever I feel my tolerance nudging up again. Somebody else following my regime might find themselves addicted or re-addicted in very short order. It is impossible to generalise on these things.
Golden general rule (pun unintended) is never to use more than max 3 days in a row and then take AT LEAST 3 x the number of days off as the number you've been using. Long-term non-addict users (and I know a few personally) tend to only use 2 - 3 times a month, max 5, and no more. If you think you can't stick that, don't try.