the great debate: Is responsible, controlled, "successful" opiate use EVER possible?

[Renz Envy]

I would have to argue that so long as opiates aren't your drug of choice, you're in the clear from addiction.

But as soon as you begin talking about opiates as the best of drugs, you're addicted. I love opiates, but I have trouble finding a productive reason to use them.'

I will maybe take a painkiller once a month or 2 months. But I dislike what it does to my overall motivation.

 

[spacebound]

i used to think i had my use under control, but i honestly don't. i only use 2-4x a week but lord knows i would do it more often if i could. i went through the period where i used every day, and i can say i am past that; however, i still love opiates A LOT.

 

[shady4091]

I consider myself a classic example of how easy it is to fall into opiate addiction. I was, I think 17 the first time I got high on an opiate. I took four Tylenol 3's (30mg Codeine each) from my dads medicine cabinet just wanting to get fucked up after breaking up with my high school sweetheart. It was immediate relief, I couldn't believe how good I felt compared to how shitty I felt earlier that day. It was, without a doubt, love at first sight.

My use for the next year or so was very sparse as I had no connects to anything. Every once in a while I might stumble upon some T3's or 5mg Percs but I was ALWAYS looking. It wasn't until I read about the CWE method and OTC codeine that my use spiraled out of control VERY quickly. It was classic. Twice a week turned into four or five times a week turned into everyday. And it wasn't just me, I got my roommate into it as well and he fell into an everyday routine just as fast as I did (luckily he never moved on to anything stronger). I'd say from the first time I did a CWE to using everyday took about two months. We would rotate picking up bottles at the drugstore to keep our heat down. We would bribe friends to pick up bottles for us when they refused to sell us any-more. We would drive two, three, four towns over to hit up their drug stores.

This continued for about 2 years, then I discovered Poppy-pod tea. I realized that almost every other garden in my town contained poppy pods and I'd never noticed it before. So by the cover of darkness, every night I would go garden raiding, filling up grocery bags of poppy pods and making them into tea. Then winter came and I had picked damn near every pod within a 10km radius.

Then I read about Poppy-Seed Tea. Same story as with the Codeine but I didn't tell anyone about it this time. Not because I didn't want the company, but because I didn't want the competition. We only had one grocery store that sold them and I'll be damned if I was going to share them with anyone else. It took a lot longer to get full on addicted but only because I'd buy them out of seeds and they wouldn't restock for sometimes up to two weeks.

Then I moved to the city. Unlimited seeds. Immediately fell into everyday use, and continued for almost two years...

In response to the question at hand: If you enjoy the feeling of opiates, and have a solid connection to them then addiction is inevitable in my opinion.

 

[charcoal]

however, i still love opiates A LOT.

I love them too, a lot, and they are my preferred drug (I either use benzos or opioids) however I have one personal rule: DON'T GET PHYSICALLY ADDICTED. It's worked for 11 years so far. That said, if it were to rain oxy for months on end, I'm not sure what would happen. I suspect I'd just get bored. I prefer functioning rather than hopped up on goofballs all the time.

 

[DumbPenguin]

Been using opiates for about 4 years. My trick is to never seek them out. I don't really hang out with an opiate crowd, but occasionally I'll get offered them. I'd say if you like doing opiates and you hang around people who do opiates, then it would be really hard to not go overboard. But if you hang around people who don't use opiates, then when they come once in a while, they're that much better.

 

[Beerman]

I did it, for 3 years, using heroin (snorted) or codeine (oral) once or twice a week, or once a month, or once every other week, depending on what drugs I could score apart from weed, sometimes amphetamines, sometimes mdma, sometimes lsd... and depending on how I was feeling that weekend so I could chose one drug to "use".

I treated opiates as the other drugs EXCEPT knowing that they were extremely physically addicting, so knowing that, I've never used them for more than 2 days in a row.

The problem started when I got into a deep deep deep depression, and then I started to use heroin every day, I didn't mind to get addicted, I could afford the habit, and it was the only thing that produced me instant relief, allow me to go to work (in small doses), to sleep, to live... after a couple of weeks I started IVing it, it was bliss and it was a time I was switching from snorting to IV, to ending IVing every single dose. Then I realised on what the heck I was doing, that I had no reason to do it any more, and I successfully tapered heroin to 0, after a month I got deeply depressed again, I relapsed, so I decided to get help and started a maintenance program.

Now I'm on subs for 1 year and a half, now 0.1mg a day, tinny dose, I'm trying to taper, and I still use heroin (IVed) once a month or every two months, and when I do it I do it for only one or two days, with minimum WDs, and subs help a lot of course...

CONCLUSION: If you know from the beginning that you are going to go through HELL -using "medium" half life opiates (like heroin, codeine..)- for using those drugs for more than 2 days in a row, doing this more than once a week, if you KNOW this and you DON'T do it, I guess is perfectly possible to do a controllable, responsible and successful use of opiates.
And never ever DO NOT use opiates for depression, (despite I've read that they are studying bupe to use it for depression... whatever) if you are depressed, get help, I know opiates may seem the easiest and fastest way but at the end is the hardest.

Cheers.

 

[ErikTheRed]

My issues with opiates have always been money/supply related. I led a highly functional life with an IV heroin habit... until money became an issue and I couldn't maintain any longer.

There are some government sponsored programs (in Holland I believe?) where addicts are given regulated amounts of heroin ampules and methadone for the longer gaps of time and for the most part these people live productive lives. That being said, tolerance is an inevitable issue. There's only so long where you can keep increasing your dose again and again.

 

[Tommyboy]

Not off the bat. I used recreationally for a while, and then became dependent. It took a while after that to finally cut down my use to once a week. My life no longer revolves around copping dope, but I really like getting my nod on a few times a month.

I believe that most people have to get addicted, and then after a while find a way to manage their use. Nobody goes from rare use to moderate use. They go from rare, to moderate, to everyday. From there they get clean, or go back to moderate use. That doesn't mean that they won't get strung out again though.