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How bad is the opioid epidemic in your area?

Fornax55

Fornax55

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Jun 17, 2010
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I'm from the Pacific Northwest, not Vancouver, but Nanaimo which is just a ferry ride away and sometimes I think it's like a little piece of East Hastings just detached and grew into a small city.

I - and nobody else, for that matter - can't recall the last week that's gone by without someone I know dying. Prior to this opioid epidemic I hadn't actually known anyone who died. Just in the last few months I've had my roommate OD (he was resuscitated) an ollllllld friend of 10+ years OD, a VERY close friend died just a couple weeks ago...

and those are just the people I'm close to. A friend will post a status on FB with a RIP and a new name as pretty much a daily occurrence now. Oh yeah, and there's only like 80,000 people in this town.

How bad is it in the rest of Canada and the US?
 
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Bad. In the us. The worse thing is that we keep things like kratom ibogaine safe sites and drug testing illigal. Our Hardline approaxh seems to be working so well doesn't it?
 
Oh definitely, sending non violent drug offenders to prison where they're either eaten alive or come out with the rather die than go back mentality, works great. Not to mention small time guys can make big time connects in the penn
 
Unfortunately it's pretty bad in my area as well. The closest biggish city near me, now this is a stat I read somewhere, that 20+% of the population used opiates on a regular basis. I don't remember if there was an age group associated with it but I found that utterly astounding. Could that actually be true? One in every 5, damn that's like one person in every family, sort of. Is it possible it's a true stat?
 
I'm up here in Vermont, but I'm a native of the Merrimack Valley in Masachusetts, Lowell specifically, which is a town known more for its drugs than anything else. It was the first planned textile city in the United States and as we all know, we don't make a lot of that shit here anymore. A lot of what you see in Masachusetts is symptomatic of the Northeast in general, from New York City upward. That is, it's a major dichotomy of rich and poor. Mass is known for its wealth, liberalism and well-established legacy of superior higher education, but those who don't sip from that gilded cup are typically poorer than fuck.

The gilded lifestyle that I've described, the Harvard, Boston College, nice cars and well manicured central parks are pretty much unknown to a large portion of the population. I know the Heroin epidemic is a relatively recent development in a lot of the country, but Heroin and Cocaine have been mainstays of New York and Boston for decades. NYC is the hearth region of dope and we've always had a symbiotic connection to that culture. The difference between where I'm from and Vermont, however, is that the distribution on a retail level is actually controlled by white users, as opposed to a well-established network of Dominicans or PR's. I don't need to explain what this means for the scene. A bunch of unnecessary bullshit, runaround, lies and bad business. I wouldn't use dope in Vermont if it were the last place to get dope on earth.

But yea, there are junkies everywhere in Burlington; everywhere.
 
I don't know, Mr. Richards. If you talk to the right people in Burlington you can get bags from NYC or NJ before it has been stepped on (again). VT dope sucks but it's all about who you know. I was getting top shelf medications and drugs in 2011/2012 when I was big big into it back there.

Btw, send me methadone :D
 
LucidSDreamr said:
Bad. In the us. The worse thing is that we keep things like kratom ibogaine safe sites and drug testing illigal. Our Hardline approaxh seems to be working so well doesn't it?
Click to expand...

If a president candidate who isn't too afraid to admit the war on drugs was a mistake, and commits to pouring all the resources that are being wasted on the 'DEA' into something that actually means something and has a positive impact on the US. I'd marry some random American just to vote for that person.
Everyone ought to realize by now it's a lost cause and only stimulates criminality and violence.. Too bad many folks are rather ignorant when it comes to 'drugs'. Fucking propaganda.

Legality would have a gigantic positive impact on the world. Drug addicts would be able to contribute to society way more than now, and quality control would save so many lives. I can't believe every one who governs the us is too chickenshit to admit it's not a real war. The violence, fent dope OD's and every fucking thing that happens cause of shady dealers, or cartels.. Well Imo the idiot that declared war on fucking chemicals is responsible and the blood of everyone who died needlessly because of it is mostly on their hands.
/end rant

Anyway, here it's not so bad. I don't really associate with opiate addicts even though I am one. Lol. Though I don't know many users, only met 2 in the 2 times I was in rehab. I imagine there are far less opiate addicts here. Or maybe it's because I avoid being in that scene as much as I can. Idk.
 
The worst thing is that stigma is so damn wrong. Like you said damn propaganda. I've known doctors, lawyers, and other professionals with major addictions. They had everything but were still junkies.
 
I think it's somewhat overblown. It's certainly slowing down where I live
 
I think it's getting better in some areas and worse in others. The st Louis area is really being hit hard by it. We've got a federal judge facing heroin charges, and charges that he knowingly let many distributors off easy.
 
bptubbs said:
I think it's getting better in some areas and worse in others. The st Louis area is really being hit hard by it. We've got a federal judge facing heroin charges, and charges that he knowingly let many distributors off easy.
Click to expand...

You're honor...motion to tie off?....this court is adjurned for a ten minute recess
 
Lmao maybe I shoulda got arrested lol made more contacts in the courtroom. Forgot to mention we had another one od. St Louis is going to hell. Was reading earlier that in my county alone there were 9 million opiate pills dispensed legally. That's enough for 30 pills per resident.
 
I'm in a big city (San Antonio, TX)

The side of town I live on (we'll say North for easy reference) the epidemic exists, mostly in the form of pharms. And the pharms are becoming more and more of a commodity. Harder to get, higher prices. There is some heroin, but you have to look for it, and know the right people.

Every now and then if I venture to the other side of town (South), it's a completely different world. It's a heroin wasteland. The economy is depressed for these residents and their demographic, nobody works, and they fill the days loitering, selling, buying, using. It's crazy, it really is, how travelling 10-15 miles will produce such a pronounced difference in what you see driving around.
 
CJ, ased on posts I've read, I don't believe we're too far away from each other, and I'd agree, the opioid problem does seem a bit overblown. I'd say meth is hands down the biggest problem, not only in my area, but in Alabama in general.
 
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Here in Salt Lake City, heroin has always been a problem since I was like 18 (im 31 now) .... but I think its obviously gotten worse since the epidemic..... billboards and advertisements puting out anti-opiate propaganda, methadone clinics opening up all over, and doctors getting busted for overprescribing. They had to enact a friggin state of emergency in the section of the city where drugs were sold on the street, it was so rampant you would just see scores of people shooting up right out in the open , cops right there watching, but too many people doing it for them to really stop it.... crack and black tar sold in little pea sized wrappers, by hondorans who can be male or female ages 14-80 ... i've seen pregnant girls selling dope there ... after months of trying to shut down "the block" they finally succeeded and i think they did so by mostly just doing illegal search and seizures and doing whatever the police wanted to shut it all down. .. . helicopters flying overhead, street cameras and police RV's everywhere
 
PNW here---i live in a redneck part of WA. Meth is a bigger problem in the sense of pervasiveness, but there is at least one opioid od a week. I've lost two best friends and my gf just od'd (she lived though, thank god).

Most everyone here who does h alsp fucks with meth, but not the other way around. There is also a huge script problem, there were lots of bogus pain clinics in the area several years ago.

Im smoking tar rn
 
1 methadone clinic / 13000 people in my city (2 hours away from Toronto)
 
In my part of NC it ain't got too bad yet, at least not compared to other places. We've had problems with prescription painkillers since I was born (everybody knows one pill head who hits everyone up for Vicodin right after a surgery or injury. I tried to tell him Vicodin will fuck up your liver if you don't extract it and he should get in a buprenorphine/methadone clinic but he's content with his 30yr+ addiction, surprised his liver is still functioning after all that APAP). The price of pills has gone through the roof, dealers are starting to focus more on h + pills rather than methamphetamine which used to be the big seller around here (I personally never fucked with it because I have a bias towards it and the quality is shit), other drugs are somewhat cheaper due to decreased demand, doctors who can give Suboxone are completely full, even if you have very serious pain with proof doctors are so scared of the DEA most refuse to give anything except tramadol and nowadays even small time pot dealers sell H. We are in dire need of a county needle exchange and more Suboxone docs. In the nearby cities it's gotten pretty bad because dipshit dealers lace their H with fent analogies they know nothing about. I have yet to lose a friend to it and am very thankful for that. I'm just glad I never got into H and don't use painkillers that often anymore, I love that opiate high too much which is why I gave it up. I hope stuff gets better for y'all sorry to hear you're losing so many people.

Did it get WAY worse in other areas as well when hydrocodone changed to C II? It seems like pillheads and chronic pain suffers who bought their meds from the black market dealers have both suffered from this idiotic move by the DEA. Most of them couldn't afford stronger stuff (mainly because the demand for Oxy and stronger prescription pills was and is so high they're worth way more than their weight in gold) so they'd buy NORCOs/Vicodin off the street because there was so much out there you could get a lot cheap but when the supply decreased and the price skyrocketed due to the schedule change (about the same as Percocet now which has always been too expensive here) most of those who could afford it changed over to Percocet/OxyContin to get a stronger high/more relief for their money those who couldn't either ended up cut off cold turkey or had to switch to H because it's the only thing they could afford.

Lets all give the DEA a round of applause, for doing such a wonderful job with this. Seriously though what a fucking joke the tax dollars wasted on those useless tyrants could be used on things that actually have benefits like methadone/buprenorphine clinics, overdose kits, rehabs, mental health services, needle exchange programs and education + harm reduction. But no we have to continue this futile war on drugs. Fuck the DEA, if you pieces of shit are monitoring this fuck you! your entire agency is useless and should be disbanded.
 
In the UK and it's mad to read about the situation in the US.

Here we have only weak pharmas, usually only codeine or dihydrocodeine, both easily available, but stronger opiates like oxycodone are rarely found.

Of course there are heroin addicts but there is no epidemic of heroin use, if anything I believe heroin use has slowly decreased through the generations.

I myself am partial to some dihydrocodeine now and then when the mood hits and I like my benzos too, but I chip and easily stop for weeks or months at a time.

I'm also pretty much an outliner as most drug users here prefer cocaine and MDMA rather than downers like opiates and benzos. I only use downers to self-medicate pretty much.

I'm also pretty certain there are many high functioning opiate addicts with good jobs who you'd never suspect used, but by their nature they're discreet so it's hard to guess how many there are. It's certainly a lot less than in the US though.

One trend we are sadly getting from the US is smack cut with fentanyl. It's been all over the news recently and it's becoming more common. However police take it very seriously and are doing everything they can to catch anyone involved in the fentanyl trade.
 
In the Midwest, meth still takes the cake, but friends are OD’ing nonetheless. The heroin we get here is not tar, nor is it east coast powder. It’s this rock like shit. I’ve encountered some suspect fent-analogs as well.
 
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