has anyone else realised how fucked drugs are??
I mean I'm on meth which is another story altogether but look at the pattern in here...everyones lives are totally fucked because of drugs/ life without drugs is always going to be better than a life with all druhgsa re is just a crutch...i know my life and situation is more fucked than most...but i see a consistent pattern here of everyone being a loser....harsh but its true.the HR effort here is admirable but at the end of the day... we all need to quit. and dissuade young ppl from every trying it
There are no such thing as good or bad drugs. They're a chemical. They have neither good nor bad intentions or qualities. Your personifying an inanimate object.
There are humans who make poor decisions for a variety of reasons. From my time engaging with dysfunctional drug users and from reading the literature on the subject it is clear that the vast majority of dysfunctional drug users have suffered from being exposed to stress hormones during the pre and post natal development. In other words their mothers were stressed during and after the pregancy. That's why problem drug use is across the strata of our society. Rich, poor, educated, professionals to the homeless and uneducated. If your mum suffered serious stress during pregnancy then it's a serious predicator for problem drug use.
Many of the very dysfunctional drug users also suffer from other problems like FAS - Fetal Alcholol syndrome which is a big issue. Kids who were born in the 1970s and 80s were born into an environment rich with alcohol. Many of the problem drug users have serious dysfunction in their families. Physical abuse, sexual abuse. Broken families suffering from the consequences of unemployment, deaths in the family, poor physical health (diabetes, cancer etc).
There is a body of work that says when you subject a baby to cortisone (stress hormone) you fundamentally change the structure of the brain (the glia). This effects two key areas (among many others) -
Toll Likereceptors in the glia and the hypothalamus which releases dopamine and serotonin. I believe a marker to future problem drug use is ADHD / hyperactivity. The work of Dr Gabor Mate shows a distinct link between stress in early childhood and dopamine/serotonin related disorders like ADHD. Especially seeing that it affects children at a critical point in their education social development. I suffered from it, as did my brother and many other of peers who engaged in drug use.
I suspect that had we been able to sit down and focus on our school work we would have had lead completely different lives. Instead the pain an discomfort caused by the constant release of proinflammatory cytokines, a lack of regular dopamine meant that we were primed for drug abuse. The moment we consumed a drug that released chemicals that mimic or cause the release of these neurotransmitters we were hooked.
I remember drinking at the age of 13, taking pharmaceuticals and shooting up soon after. There is no normal reason for a 13 to take drugs. I took drugs because, now that i can look at back and reexamine those old memories, that i suffered a lot in my early childhood from mysterious symptoms. Lots of cold and flu like symptoms, lots of anxiety and depression the moment i entered puberty (so sudden like, like a button was pushed).
Indeed the the work of Watkins and Hutchinson have shown that baby rats exposed to these hormones are addicted from birth whilst the control rats weren't. They discovered that if you suppressed TL4 function in the abused rats that they would cease using opiates. TL4 activation causes depression, anxiety at low levels and fever, inflammation, pain - flu like symptoms at high levels.
For opiates it is clear that heroin is actively activating TL4. What i'm saying is that heroin is causing the withdrawal symptoms you feel when you've stopped taking heroin. See heroin breaks down into two metabolites - M3G and M6G.
For decades M3G was thought to be inactive. Whilst M6G was where the good shit was. It got you high. Basically what M3G is doing is activating TL4. It causes it to produce pro-inflammatory cytokines which in turn are making you sick. You just don't know it because M6G is just way more powerful in its effect. The problem is that the pro inflammatory cytokines build up and up and up and up in heroin addicts. This is why you get tolerance to opiates. It's not that your body is "getting used to it" it's just that the M6G is needed in far greater quantities to mask the effects of the ever increasing quantities of M3G.
Your not withdrawing. It's not the absence of heroin that is causing the pain. It's a product of the heroin itself. If you were able to take agents that broke down these cytokines you could effectively avoid "withdrawals" completely. (thats why they're not withdrawals". In fact if you could make heroin that had no M3G in it you could make an opiate that has no "withdrawals" (
hmmmmmm....). To make it easier i'm calling it "dope sickness" from here on in.
It takes 3-5 days for M3G to be metabolised - which is the average duration of dope sickness In that time you go through the pains of heightened levels of these cytokines without any of the pain relieving abilities of M6G. If heroin didn't have M6G and you injected pure M3G you'd go into being dope sick immediately. Thus there are several companies racing to develop drugs that suppress TL4 for the use in opiate addiction, methamphetamine addiction and MS. See MS
It would appear that methamphetamine "withdrawals" work in a similar way (and in fact interact with opiod receptors and such). That's why TL4 suppressing drugs like Ibudilast are currently being trialled. Animal studies show it as an effective tool in treating the acute phase of opiate "withdrawals"
Problem drug use is not a choice. We graviated to the drug use because we were essentially sick from birth. You had as much choice of using drugs as you did picking your sexuality. It is genetics and environment.
That's why the current environment of treating drugs a criminal law matter as opposed to a health problem is an utter disagree. In a 100 years we will look at the authorities today in the same we look at the Victorians from the 1800s.
From my personal experience, no wants to be high constantly unless there hurtin pretty bad. No one wants to go into withdrawals because you can't get on and no wants to be constantly having to find money and drugs just so you can feel fucking normal. No one wants to be mentally ill whilst going through this sort of stuff but most people with problem drug issues have a history of mental illness - its one of those pissers that just makes a bad situation even worse.
However for people with problem drug use, meth, heroin whatever it is, I'd strongly recommend suboxone. Its a synthetic opiate but trust me. After being addicted to speed, meth, heroin and many other drugs, that suboxone will help stablise you. The regular dosing at a clinic. The meeting with doctors and nurses to help you start getting your life back on track, it all helps. I'm not saying you'll be drug free and never take something naughty again but going on the program really helps getting you stable and into a pattern of reponsible behavior. Sadly though places on these programs, prescribers and chemists for when you graduate to takeway dosing are limited. But give it a thought
Canberracrack