"How much do you have to be smoking to do that because anytime I've smoked some tar it always felt like I'd be uncontrollably nodding well before I would get sick. It seems like it would pretty hard to overdo it, unless of course you were carelessly smoking a bunch. I know when I'm smoking it I'm always overly cautious."
To add to my previous post, and in answer to your specific question "how much…?", from my personal experience it's very difficult to be precise about what dose or quantity causes an overdose when heroin is smoked. Unless you have access to pharmaceutical grade pure heroin and can be certain about the purity and strength of what you're smoking, then the question of how much is largely irrelevant.
I've smoked heroin habitually for over 10 years and have a lot of experience with the drug. I've overdosed on a number of occasions, mostly in the first three years before I developed a high tolerance. Each time I overdosed was when I smoked heroin (aside from one occasion Ive only smoked heroin). On one memorable occasion, when I'd first started smoking and had only been smoking for around a year, I had been waiting for my wife to go to bed so I could have a quick smoke. I hadn't smoked the day before, but I had smoked the day before that; my tolerance wasn't that high. I sat at the kitchen table and had a couple of quick big 'smokes'. I had no intention of having a lengthy session and wanted to be quick so as not to get caught.
After my second inhale I felt a massive pleasant rush and then a sinking feeling, which was so comfortable and beguiling i wasn't able to pull out of it. I'd collapsed face down on the kitchen table. I don;'t know how long I was alone in that situation, but obviously at some point my (ex)wife came downstairs and found me. This is all what I've been told, because my next memory after having a smoke was lying on my kitchen floor with a paramedic cutting off my shirt and preparing to inject me in the heart with an antidote… which didn't happen, because I woke up with a start and began babbling and trying to stand up. I was taken to the hospital, observed for a number of hours before being released. At the time I was off my head and the experience wasn't frightening. But when I sobered up the enormity of what I'd been through hit home; I easily could have stopped breathing and died.. and only after a couple of big smokes!
This is a genuine account. Do not think that you can't OD from smoking heroin.
Out of interest, why is this issue so important to you and why do you appear to minimise the dangers of smoking heroin?
I assume that being only 17, your opinion isn't based on experience; so what is your authority and why do you apparently so strongly believe in it?
Do you have another motivation for wanting to minimise the risks of drug use?
I find it hard to comprehend your position, particularly after so many experienced drug users have told you that your statements are inaccurate.
At times I wonder whether you're being deliberately provocative and trolling. I have no interest in being dismissive or demeaning anyone;s opinion; I'm only motivated by recounting my genuine experiences and cautioning new users on the risks of drug use.
Be careful and continue to be cautious with your smoking. Unfortunately I believe it to be a truism that no matter how cautious you are, any prolonged period of using heroin will inevitably lead to physical dependence, something which I don;t wish on my worst enemy.
I started using heroin when I was relatively old (33), as an alternative to combat alcoholism. Which sounds absurd, but actually makes much sense since in theory heroin is much kinder on your liver and kidneys and doesn't turn you into an obnoxious aggressive twat; and it doesn't make you aggressive or the type of drunken twat that alcohol does, but it is far more an insidious and life-destroying drug in other ways. It isolates you and destroys your motivation to maintain social relationships and work towards your ambitions. The danger of starting using heroin when very young is that you throw away your life if you become addicted and will never achieve anything. Every young person believes themselves to be invincible and I doubt any heroin addict believed that they would become addicted, It's natural to think that you won't succumb to addiction. I recall friends - who at first used with me, but stopped very early on - telling me that I was playing dangerously close to the playground fence…
…and then one day, without realising it, I was physically dependent. You 'can' overcome dependence, but what isn't nearly highlighted enough is that more pernicious than screwing up your social life and career, is the fact that prolonged heroin use destroys your body's ability to regulate endorphin production, sometimes permanently, at least for many months or years. It is the inability to feel normal pleasures (anhedonia) and social isolation which leads to frequent relapse and depression. Believe me, it's an intolerable, horrendous condition: one that won't kill you outright but will make life hardly worth living when it's at its worst.
