What is the life expectancy of a non-IV opiate user if they started using at 18yrs?

[FunctionlJnkieGal]

I've been taking opiates daily for nearly a decade now, but I don't use needles. How old would I live to be if I continued my habit til I die? My diet is just "okay" at best. I'm what you would call a junk-food vegetarian. The thing is, I keep hearing that there's no such thing as an old junkie, but look at William S. Burroughs. He made it to his mid-80's at least.

 

[HeadphonesandLSD]

Your odds aren't that great honestly, out of the group I used opioids with I consider myself the most educated on the topic of drugs. Even begin careful I nearly ODed and died multiple times, here is one example: http://bluelight.org/vb/threads/804...e-mg)-(Alprazolam-6mg)-Experienced-On-the-roa

While opioids aren't really harmful to the body in the fact that you can maintain on a certain dose for years most people can't control themselves and keep chasing the nod. At a certain point you can just fall out and die. I've seen it happen to so many folks. There is also the danger of using something like fent or heroin while in massive w/d and over doing it. People say they'll never jump to H, never jump to the needle, but all it takes is one bad night where you can't find your DOC and next thing you know you're using H or needles every day because it has become normal.

I'll put it another way; I discovered Oxycontin around age 17 or a little before. I am now 31 and only a few weeks clean of opioids (methadone). I've buried most of the people I used with and there were so many people. I cared about all of them. The only junkie friend I have left still using nearly lost his life early this year, is lucky to still have his right arm, and is still suffering the depths of a raging habit. Out of all the people that died he probably should have been the first to go but somehow he always managed to live. He was the person that gave me the Oxycontin, he was the person doing drugs with me in the trip report I linked, and the only reason I still tolerate him the one time a month he shows up is due to the fact that I've known him so long and he's really the only one left from those days. There are a few more but they either cleaned up ages ago, are in the methadone/sub program or never had too much of a problem to start with. Those of us that still use drugs together moved on to other substances and won't even allow discussion of opioids to happen in our presence and we're all very open to the idea of drug use. It's just too hard to talk about when most of your social circle is buried and you're only in your early 30s.

Quit while you're a head. If you're going to take drugs for fun there are plenty of less harmful and more fun substances out there. I'd love to nod off and feel that warm glow again, don't get me wrong, but I know where that path will lead me.

 

[Tikhil]

Better question might be, what are the chances your quality of life remains tolerable over the long term? I've seen many overdoses, including my closest friend, but more often I simply see peoples lives melt into something horrible. Functional users become less functional, then not at all. At that point, they either find a way out (long, painful road after years of use) or they learn to tolerate the shell their life has become.

There are exceptions to every rule, and I'm sure some of them post on here. But live the life long enough and you will see what i mean, you will see proud people reduced to rubble, and many with a passion for life succumb to a much too early death.

I don't preach, its not in my nature, to some this is a worthy trade for the high, for others it is not. I find myself somewhere in the between, so i'm not one to judge, but thats my realistic take on the opi world.

 

[shartito]

Hey headphones.

Sorry if I’m hijacking the thread but I read your trip report. If you had to estimate, how many mg of oxymorphone did you rail that day?

Back on topic, OP it’s hard to say. You could live to be 70. Or you could get a hot spot of fent next week, and OD. A lot of it is luck. You’re playing Russian Roulette these days.

But the quality of life will suck. Even if you live a long time, it will not be a good life. You will lose friends, alienate family, suffer financially, and that’s best case scenario.

 

[HeadphonesandLSD]

Hey headphones.

Sorry if I’m hijacking the thread but I read your trip report. If you had to estimate, how many mg of oxymorphone did you rail that day?

I am unsure because I didn't observe him but if I had to estimate it was somewhere around 40mg, maybe more, with a lot of oxycondone combined with it in addition to the benzos. It sounds very irresponsible in retrospect but I did not handle any pills that day and he was passing the plate to me so often that I lost count of how much I had consumed. At some point in there I blacked out so who knows how much I partook in without remembering. I'm also not sure if he was mixing entire pills or not, as he was just throwing them in a pill crusher with roxis. I do know that we started that day with a bottle full of them and by the time I dropped him off at home he only had two left.

At the time generic ERs were cheap, he got over 200 15mg oxycodone pills and xanax bars a month for almost nothing (they were prescribed) and we were flush with cash. I had a big tolerance at the time and I have no doubt that it would have killed me otherwise. Also, since we were snorting all of them there is no telling how much was either wasted or simple dripped down to my stomach. Thankfully oxymorphone is less effective orally otherwise I'd be dead.

On another night where I did handle pills I consumed about 20 or 30mg of oxymorphone and would OD again. Again, this was the result of irresponsible use of a benzo in combination with it. I blacked out, kept forgetting that I had just did a line, and upon waking up the next morning discovered that I had done way more of my stash then I intended. This was a common problem for me in the middle of my heavy use. I would often intend to save a certain number of pills for the next day but wake up to find I only had a couple left.

 

[Jabberwocky]

I've been taking opiates daily for nearly a decade now, but I don't use needles. How old would I live to be if I continued my habit til I die? My diet is just "okay" at best. I'm what you would call a junk-food vegetarian. The thing is, I keep hearing that there's no such thing as an old junkie, but look at William S. Burroughs...

It all depends on how you use. Most long term users either use small amounts infrequently or basically go the maintenance route, dosing enough to be stable but not constantly pushing the envelope in terms of the nod.

OD, particularly with the current state of dope in the US, is certainly a big and very real concern. However in my experience what does far more damage is how opioid users are stigmatized and largely criminalized, particularly when it comes to heroin users and those who get their fix through less than legal means. The kind of shit that is required to maintain a habit with a highly illegal substance is far more detrimental than the actual effect of the drug (short of OD of course).

Look at the case of people prescribed heroin in Switzerland and the UK. They tend to live pretty normal lives despite their use of injection/serious opioids. But in their case they aren’t risking arrest, black market contaminant, financial ruin, etc. And when used like the Swiss do, in safe observed use setting where they can revive someone who ODs, there is even less risk involved.

 

[BeachBum4u]

I've been taking opiates daily for nearly a decade now, but I don't use needles. How old would I live to be if I continued my habit til I die? My diet is just "okay" at best. I'm what you would call a junk-food vegetarian. The thing is, I keep hearing that there's no such thing as an old junkie, but look at William S. Burroughs...

You mention daily use, does that mean you are a pain management patient? If so and if you take your meds basically as prescribed, there's no reason why you can't live a long and healthy life. I personally have been a patient for over 35 years and aside from my problems I have causing the need for the meds in the first place, I'm in pretty good shape. It's when you deal with street drugs or seriously abuse stuff is when you can get into trouble. Be safe OP.

 

[kleinerkiffer]

Od -> DC

 

[FunctionlJnkieGal]

I try to stay away from street drugs if I can. You never know what could be mixed in it. But you're definitely right, toothpastedog. The majority of issues that result from being a functional heroin/opiate addict is the legal issues and the unfair reputation you could get. None of that is the fault of the functioning junkie. That's societal stigma for you. Good point made.

 

[spacejunk]

do you count black market pills as "street drugs"?
because a lot of those are fakes with fent and god knows what else in them, especially in north america at the moment.
hell - look what happened to prince.
i daresay if that could happen to him, it could happen to any opiate user - especially in the US and canada.

if you're worried about longevity, opiates are probably not a good class of drugs to be into.
i don't mean to sound sarcastic or glib in saying that. it's just putting it bluntly.

i simply think the risks are too high for anyone buying dope or pain pills on the black market - price and supply fluctuations inevitably force a lot of users to change their DOC, sometimes onto stuff they'd prefer not to be using, just to stay well.

for example, if your only choice is between taking fent (or fent analogues) or being sick, you're probably going to go for the fent.
if the fent doesn't kill you, you'll just end up with a jacked-up tolerance, so next time you get high, you'll need more pills than normal, have to take more everytime - increasing the pressure of how difficult it is to remain a "functioning junkie".
the more it takes to keep you out of WD, the more pressure you feel to get high - and the more likely you are to end up desperate...

that's just one hypothetic situation - but tolerance tends to increase over time, for various reasons anyway. opiate addiction is just a game of diminishing returns.
the more you take, and the longer you take it, the less it does.

i don't mean to lecture you or sound patronising or condescending, but i've been through 10 years of opiate addiction and it's not something you really want to be considering a long-term part of your life if living a long life is something you aspire to.

to be fair though, i'd say the same thing about cigarettes - even more so, actually, for smokers.
you can minimise the harms of drug use, but serious addiction is dangerous, especially with illegal supply, as others have noted.
fentanyl and other chemical-weapon strength opioids that have flooded parts of the world make it extremely dangerous, and the amount of people dying reflects this.

the safest way to be an opiate addict, as toothpastedog says, is to be on some kind of maintenance program.

 

[FunctionlJnkieGal]

No, don't apologize. I appreciate what you have to say. I've been an addict for nearly a decade myself so I just thought I'd ask if anyone knew. I guess it is rather silly of me to ask that question if I have no intention of quitting any time soon.

 

[spacejunk]

it's a fucking hard thing to do, but there is life after addiction, and it can be a very much better life than when you were weighed down by a habit.

look, i'm no straighty-180 sobriety preacher or anything like that, but i know how hard it is to consider life without opiates, when you're addicted. seems impossible.
but it is worth it.

you mention diet - there's a a whole lot of things that you tend to neglect when you're using.
i'm vego too, have been for about 20 years, but i used to eat pretty badly at times when i had a habit.
junk food is cheap and takes no effort to prepare, so lots of addicts settle for that.

i think when i'm clean i need other stimuli to make me feel good - and healthy, wholesome food makes you feel good in the sense that your body responds well to a good diet, and eating it is pleasurable.
when you have a habit, drugs tend to be the sole provider of those good feelings - and not much else can get through, at least in my experience - good or bad.

 

[LucidSDreamr]

Depends....if u drink or do benzos with your opiates....not very good odds. If you smoke fentanyl....not good odds.

It depends on how far u push your highs...some like to nod and others just like to get opiated.

I am not aware of a single seasoned user that has never ODed...so it just a matter of someone else being there to save your life

 

[Tikhil]

Depends....if u drink or do benzos with your opiates....not very good odds. If you smoke fentanyl....not good odds.

It depends on how far u push your highs...some like to nod and others just like to get opiated.

I am not aware of a single seasoned user that has never ODed...so it just a matter of someone else being there to save your life

This is so true, my best friend, whom I had become convinced could handle anything, died less then two months into a pretty light opiate habit. There was casual mixing of downers involved, no surprise, but it was a simple dose of a new brand of poppy seed tea that ended him. That itself resulted from running of his DOC at the time, and switching to something that seemed safer on face. No one saw that coming, and i'm sure he had no concept he was putting his life at risk. A love of opiates, especially when dependent, has a way of clouding ones judgment, and causing risks. So death is always possible.

But for me, the key point will always be the nature of opiates as always delivering diminishing returns, until their use produces an utterly unremarkable "high" and is mostly used to stave off the discontinuation symptoms that are always just a few hours off. I don't miss having a habit, though at the time I could not imagine life without it.

 

[JessFR]

It's interesting. This question feels so foreign to me.

Me as well as pretty much all the opioid addicts I've been close to (and it's probably worth noting pretty much all of us were IV heroin addicts) never really had any concern for how it might shorten our lives. If anything the idea that we might die earlier is seen both by me and others I know as an added motivation rather than a deterrent.

Hearing an opioid addict worried about how their use might shorten their life span, well, like I said it's foreign to me.

The drugs themselves shouldn't really shorten your life span at all. Except through the risk of OD which can't easily be estimated in terms of a time frame, opioids aren't particularly physiologically harmful.

The lifestyle that comes with using, and withdrawal, and the substantial likelihood that you will NOT stick with your current level of use but will probably escalate, in practice means opioid addicts have generally been associated with pretty early deaths. But no, that risk isn't inherent to the drug use itself. Just everything that goes with it.

 

[SirTophamHat]

i don't think a non IV opiate user has any reason to live a shorter life than a normal person. opiates are pretty benign when you don't abuse them and if you aren't IVing then you have a lot less risk for acquiring infection or disease.

 

[vacuole]

The thing is, I keep hearing that there's no such thing as an old junkie, but look at William S. Burroughs...

I almost LOLed at that, not in any condescending way but because I remember reading about how miserable Burroughs was in the later years of his life.

The dude was an exception, and not a very good one at that; if you don't nip this in the bud early on, you won't ever know what it's like to live a life where you FEEL things. I'm not one to preach as I still use kratom maybe 2-3 times a week, but I did get that down from a daily opiate/opioid habit that nearly destroyed my marriage and my life and any motivation to make things better for myself. I never went the IV route, but don't let that fool you into thinking you're just so much better off than those worthless junkies; you're still a junkie, still beholden to those pleasure and comfort receptors, and you're still young enough to make a change and learn to live life without being a slave to this lifestyle.

 

[EphemeralOutlet141]

Like many others have said, it's akin to playing Russian roulette. You could be lucky like me, not to brag, and never experience a fatal (and I chose that word for a reason) OD. I could die tomorrow though.

Opiates don't hurt your insides as much as your outsides, that's the thing about them. I quit my job because it was a vicious cycle of drug abuse just to get through the long days, then some at home to calm down, rinse and repeat. I came too close to losing the woman I love because of my habit. My family as well. Most of my friends cut me out when they found out what I was doing. Hell even strangers at my old job started to look at me differently.

I've tried nearly every major opiate and before I knew it I was copping H from the same damn person I bought pills from. I hit rock bottom and I still struggle with heroin. It's not an outright toxic monster like amps for example (IMO), it's more like a disease that infiltrates your mind and slowly envelopes it.

I'm not nearly as seasoned as other posters here, but I've ridden the rollercoaster more than once. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't right now.

 

[FunctionlJnkieGal]

LucidSDreamer, I'm on a strict regimen of taking 15mg of ms contin daily but I indulge once a weekend and take 300mg and might have a strong drink or 2 plus smoke plenty of dro along with it, so hopefully I'm not physically damaging myself TOO much. JessFR, I wouldn't say I wanna live to be ancient or anything anyway. As a matter of fact, it wouldn't bother me too much if I died in about a decade if I haven't accomplished any of my goals by then or if my life doesn't improve the way I'd like it to. Vacuole, the reason why I don't use needles is there's just too many aspects of using them that are off-putting from the health risks to the changes in morality observed in people. The only animosity I might have towards certain individuals I've known who IV is this: All of my once trustworthy fellow addict friends insisted that it saved them money to use it that way, yet it wasn't til they switched to needles when they decided to rob me (but these were mostly IV meth users). I only know 1 or 2 people that IV H, so maybe its just something about IV meth use that turns robs them of any sense of right and wrong. No offense to meth users, but in my personal experience with people that use meth, I noticed they would rip people off without feeling any shred of remorse. I've actually had junkies rip me off who were so overtaken by guilt that they paid me back eventually. I can't say the same for the many tweakers I've known.

 

[Handbag]

Is there a'web user 4 dummies,' site 4 sum1 who dosnt even have facebook? Pleeeze.