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RE: No withdrawals after long-term opiate use?

T

Trylobot

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Nov 20, 2015
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RE: No withdrawals after long-term opiate use?

This is in reply to a now-archived (locked) thread from 2011 that I find extremely interesting. There is now widely-available evidence, and current research, to support OP's claim. http://www.bluelight.org/vb/threads/579531-No-withdrawals-after-long-term-opiate-use?

This video explains it best: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ao8L-0nSYzg

Heartbreak (withdrawal from love): http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/this_is_your_brain_on_heartbreak

Essentially, if your environment is ideal, you will not need to connect with drugs, and will not go through withdrawal because you do not have a feeling of loss. However, if drugs were the only interesting thing going on in your life that you liked doing, and then you try to stop, you're going to go through withdrawal. You can even go into withdrawal from things that aren't drugs. It's because of how keenly you feel the loss, not because of any physical addiction. Weird, right? And completely contrary to commonly-accepted-as-fact wisdom, even among very smart people with tons of degrees.

Except... experimental research shows that this conventional wisdom may not hold up under the scrutinizing light of observation.
 
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The withdrawal symdrome is a real, physical thing -- you can remove brain cells from animals that are addicted to morphine and the individual neurons will show signs of withdrawal.

That being said, there may be polymorphisms or other differences that make certain individuals less prone to experience withdrawal.
 
The research suggests that every individual has the power to influence the degree to which they experience withdrawal.
 
It is now one hundred years since drugs were first banned in the United States. On the eve of this centenary, journalist Johann Hari set off on an epic three-year, thirty-thousand-mile journey into the war on drugs. What he found is that more and more people all over the world have begun to recognize three startling truths: Drugs are not what we think they are. Addiction is not what we think it is. And the drug war has very different motives to the ones we have seen on our TV screens for so long.

In Chasing the Scream, Hari reveals his discoveries entirely through the stories of people across the world whose lives have been transformed by this war. They range from a transsexual crack dealer in Brooklyn searching for her mother, to a teenage hit-man in Mexico searching for a way out. It begins with Hari's discovery that at the birth of the drug war, Billie Holiday was stalked and killed by the man who launched this crusade--and it ends with the story of a brave doctor who has led his country to decriminalize every drug, from cannabis to crack, with remarkable results.

Chasing the Scream lays bare what we really have been chasing in our century of drug war--in our hunger for drugs, and in our attempt to destroy them. This book will challenge and change how you think about one of the most controversial--and consequential--questions of our time.
Click to expand...
Reads like it's a remarkable book that I'll consider to read maybe, but opioids are really the worst drug class to use as an example anyways. The physical addiction is just too real, anybody who has gone through just minor withdrawal will confirm this for sure. The polymorphism thing is real and there are huge differences in the severity of the withdrawal syndrome, as well as the mental part plays a huge role, addiction memory, fear of withdrawals, fear of loosing the pain-killing drug of choice, whatever but it's a real physical thing. Many people have to titrate down very slowly and will still have some uncomfortable time. It's manageable with other, differently-acting drugs more or less and this once more confirms that it's a physical thing because if it was only about mental cravings then it would be a bit different.

Think there are two sides to the story. It's true that the general opinion about addiction etc. is severely skewed by the war on drugs stuff and experiments with suffering lab animals, but this doesn't make opioids non-addictive.
 
To my knowledge one of the only ways to dodge acute opiate withdrawals is with ibogaine, which I think is incredibly under utilized, but withdrawal is indeed a physiological thing, though some people become solely psychologically dependent and may not (at that point in time of their usage) withdraw horribly.
 
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