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Why do you think the heroin epidemic started?

Burnt Offerings said:
Damn, better than your kid being born? That's kind of sad actually

I've never understood people who've described the high from opiates in such a way. It's just not that good, IMO, and I'm someone who likes opiates a lot.
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I've been a junkie and I don't even like opiates at all. I don't even know how I got to the point I was getting dopesick. they're fucking boring.
 
There could be any number of factors contributing to this perfect storm. IMO, some are as follows:

Over prescribing of pain pills; reformulation of abuse-friendly extended release opiates; legalization of marijuana leading to Mexico's increased focus on heroin; decreased social stigma relating to opiates; increased availability and affordability; a zero-tolerance approach to pain in general; the niche subculture of heroin fed by enablers on social media (nodsquad); stringent regulations on the prescribing of narcotics; an uptick in methamphetamine use in the last 20 years, leading users to use H to come down; a generation who grew up hearing about PSA's about the crack epidemic who swore off cocaine; glorification of opiates by fans of musicians who were addicted to them; finally, sensationalizing of the issue by the media leading to moral panic, leading to a vicious cycle of heroin use seeming unavoidable which causes more use which media outlets then subsequently report on.
 
I have suffered with chronic pain from a disease I was born with and my doc started prescribing me oxy and then dilauded years ago. For a long time my quality of life was way better but as my tolerance increases and the amount the docs prescribe decrease due to fear of big brother, I have become terrified of the coming day I'll need to turn to injecting and then using heroin so I don't go broke. And I'm someone who had always said I would never use drugs like that. Never say never right. The misguided attempts at the government to clamp down on prescriptions is, in my opinion, a big reason for a lot of people using heroin.
 
Yup. They're "squeezing too hard" and as a result the "fish" is slipping out of their hand. Now, instead of our doctors giving us prescriptions, we're getting them from the Mexican cartels. Terrible state of affairs.
 
I don't think it's really that big of an issue. Yes, people OD on it. Yes, it can destroy your life. Yes, using it improperly spreads disease. But, work all of that being said is it really Amy worse than it was before OR is the media just giving it more air time? I lean toward the latter.Amy significant increase in heroin us is because of the government tightening restrictions and forcing people who wye following the law and getting there med the right way are now forced to find that relief in other ways. Just my 2 cents.
 
Phil.McKeer said:
Yup. They're "squeezing too hard" and as a result the "fish" is slipping out of their hand. Now, instead of our doctors giving us prescriptions, we're getting them from the Mexican cartels. Terrible state of affairs.
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yup. hit the nail on the head. i guess nothing was learned from prohibition of alcohol....

my gf has spinal stenosis, degenerative disc disease, neuropathy, fibromyalgia, IBS, chronic kidney stones... even more problems than i can remember.... and they took away her extended release pain meds (oxymorphone) and cut her down from 180 oxy 10's a month to 60... she was on that same dose for 10 years... she lasted a week before she started asking me to find heroin... which i did immediately of course. i just wish dope was still dope and not fucking fentanyl.

i have a friend who totally believes it is a plot to eliminate the white middle class in preparation for government take over.
 
I believe it all stems from 19th century medicine, particularly a period in the late 19th century known as 'the Great Binge'. (for real, look it up)

to be wealthy and idle in that time...
 
angieaje said:
Please answer only based on personal experience or from a friends personal experience.
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What else answer would you expect than "heroin feels damn good and it's easy to become popular".
Well ok, something that triggered the H use in Greece was the arrival of type 3 brown H.
Ill mention some lyrics about it
"In the beggining, dope was shooting and death
If I recall, 1984, brown arrived in small bags,
and healthy strong guys became junkies since then..."

And it's true. I would never do H if it wasn't for brown being so easily smoked, feeling efforic but doesn't make you nod.
 
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Pharmaceutical opiate abuse during the OxyContin days in the 2000s. People didn't see it as an addiction to a hard drug because they felt it was safe because the pills came from a doctor. When it was peaking in the late 2000s and the pain clinics were still booming with out of state customers who flooded the streets of other states with cheap pharmaceuticals. Because the product was there, many people got exposure to it that normally wouldn't notably those from the suburbs whos extent of drug use was partying with alcohol and marijuana and wouldn't dare do any hard drugs.

Slowly more and more people began experimenting with it and thought "this isn't as bad as everyone told me growing up, this makes me social and I like the way it feels". We all know how addiction takes hold from there. Use escalates in those who can't keep it to just using as a once in a while event and dependence is formed. Many of these new pharmaceutical addicts tell themselves "hey I'm not that bad, I would never do heroin".

Around the late 2000s, those with authority had decided enough was enough with all this perscription drug abuse and began efforts to try and curb the issue, hoping that cutting off the access to the addicts would force them to stop and they would ultimately have to seek treatment. OxyContin was forced to change their formula to a pill that was less abusable, pain clinics in Florida began to get shut down, stop accepting out of state patients and in general become much more regulated forcing them to no longer be so liberal with giving the medications that ultimately ended up on streets all over the country.

Due to all of this regulation, pills on the street became more expensive as time went on as the suppliers were no longer able to get the amount of pills they needed. Not only were the pills more expensive, people's suppliers who used to have them all the time now had to deal with droughts and shortages. This was what the authorities wanted and would hope would lead to people getting treatment, but anyone who knew anything about addiction knew what was going to happen.

People who strictly used pills began to not be able to get them often and when they could, they were more expensive then their habit could allow. This is when heroin comes into the picture. Those who said they would never touch the drug were given a choice to be sick, get treatment or buy the drug with so much stigma behind it. Eventually many of the pill addicts try it and say "hey its not that different, its much cheaper and I don't have to worry about my dealers not having this" and thus they switch to heroin and don't look back

As more and more pill addicts become heroin users, the negative stigma that those who once refused to try heroin had ends up getting dropped when they see how much cheaper (at first) and available the drug is and over the course of a few years, heroin use greatly rises and the media begins to inform the public and you ultimately have what we are seeing today which is labeled as an epidemic.

Probably nothing that hasn't been said already, but stems got me in that typing mood.
 
Now I remembered an other story some guy told me. They were going to the gypsies back then and bought like a shit ton of weed for very few money. Someday, the gypsies just said "weed is over, dope is here and it's cheaper if you want"... And yeah, I do think it was when the brown stuff came.
 
I believe one very isolated part of it, is economic. Us here in oz are big stim heads. We have been partying with our over-inflated paychecks from the now finished mining boom. Weve been living in la la land, feeling very little of what was the GFC.

Things go south though, and all you want to do is numb the pain and forget that you even exist.
 
Uhm shifty lives due to shifty policies by shifty politician's? Idk we don't have this problem in Euroland
 
There's a variety of factors. But to say there's not a heroin epidemic is just contrarian. Objectively a shitload more people are using opiates, dying from overdoses, etc. You could argue though that it's getting so much media attention because it's more wealthy white people now, and you wouldn't be entirely wrong, but there's more than that.

Heroin used to be an urban drug, there wasn't even availability in suburban/rural areas. Also led to a non-white stereotype of heroin users.

Then, of course, everyone knows the story of pain treatment guidelines being changed in the early 1990s to treat chronic non-cancer pain with opioids, which soon changed prescribing from Percocet to OxyContin after it was released with heavy marketing of its non-addictive nature.

This was necessary because the War on Drugs in the 80s/90s limited cannabis use among the chronically ill so much that some other medicine was needed, and that became opioids and benzos. 50 years of deficient endocannabinoid systems was finally becoming a public health crisis--it just looked like a pain crisis.

So fast forward 20 years and the states which are cracking down on opiate prescribing without easy/cheap cannabis access are the ones hurting the most from the heroin epidemic. Think about the states with the worst opiate problem (Rx or heroin)---Florida, Missouri, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York---and you'll see states which have no medical/legal cannabis access (or not a very accessible program). States like California, despite being in close geographical proximity to Mexico, don't have the same issues with heroin because of easy cannabis access. But it's still a problem everywhere.
 
Feel free to ignore me, I'm from the UK. In the 1960's and 1970's there were less than 100 people known to private doctors (for this was the only source of heroin/diamorphine) as heroin addicts. By the mid 1980's we had high unemployment and 250,000 addicts. That's my definition of an epidemic. Where did it come from? Heroin is wonderful to lots of people and the CIA needed money to secretly fund operations without that money going through the books.

Mass unemployment + blocker drug + money for CIA = heroin epidemic.

The UK's number of heroin addicts has never fallen since. Add in crack cocaine and its party time for the CIA and nefarious government policies.
 
smokedup said:
I believe one very isolated part of it, is economic. Us here in oz are big stim heads. We have been partying with our over-inflated paychecks from the now finished mining boom. Weve been living in la la land, feeling very little of what was the GFC.

Things go south though, and all you want to do is numb the pain and forget that you even exist.
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I think similiar factors helped drive the U.S opiate problem. The 80's and 90's economic boom was slowing and the cocaine & amphetamines party cycle was shifting. The dot.com boom burst. Then 9/11 happened, along with the subsequent wars. Anxieties increased.. Especially after the housing market collapse and the downturn of the U.S economy. People just wanted to numb themselves to this increasingly uncertain world we live in. All these problems are global now because our economies are alot more interdependent.
 
Heroin's strength (depending on the quality) and price (if good stuff than its cheaper and better than prescription stuff), also regulations on prescription opiates, and people losing there sources for prescription opiates, which means they switch to the cheaper and easier to get heroin. That's my view of why the "Heroin Epidemic" started.
 
Effect said:
Very similarly put as to how I described how this issue came to be. Surprised that more haven't explained it in this way.
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Oh definitely .... I agree with everything you guys posted. When I commented on smokedup's comment I was only attempting to make further macro connections with concern to the broader issues driving drug consumption habits in America and the broader world.
 
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