You are referring to OD alone as if that is the only danger. You are missing MY point that calling daily heroin use healthy and safe (as done collectively in this thread) is justification to keep using heroin. You do you, man but lets not pretend heroin isnt a lifestyle with side effects
Well as I said before, it's well recorded that a LOT of famous Victorians used opium/laudanum or similar M based product for 20,30 or 40+ years without incident. It hadn't really been calculated until the 1990s when people began to realize that it was quite common. It's just that it wasn't highlighted. If someone took laudanum, we only KNOW because of diaries or in works where the writer highlighted their own use.
I agree that even when done properly, rotating sites, IV is not good - whatever the medicine. Of course, things like insulin are not intended for IV so one can inject into many more places and one CAN do that with opioids without much loss in potency - only loss of initial rush.
But opioid use in itself it safer than almost all of the legal psychoactives. I was surprised to learn that Virginia Woolf use laudanum for decades. It was only because a biographer of Vita Sackville West found a diary entry in which she mentions that VW had brought 2 large bottles of laudanum with her when the 2 went on a romantic holiday together.
It would be rather hard to find a contemporary diarist who would think to mention that their partner had brought a whole box of paracetamol with them. It just was not an issue considered worthy of mention.
I'm not suggesting that VW was stoned for a decade (if so, I reckon she would have been more cheerful) BUT it's quite possible that one reason she DID take it was to aid her mental health. After all, a hugely successful and acclaimed writer who fills her pockets with stones and walks into a river is evidently quite UNHAPPY.
That said - Orlando (1928) might have resulted in some flak, even in the Bloomsbury Group.
Maybe in 100 years paracetamol will be considered a drug of abuse and researchers will seek out any records of famous people using it? Funny that opium has been freely available throughout multiple empires, for over 800 years... only demonized for 100 of those years. I might add that it's toxic & dependence-forming potential was known and it's known that some successful Roman professionals were dependent and it WAS used for the purposes of suicide... especially amongst apothecaries.
There is historical information of apothecaries facing financial ruin using it 2000 years ago. Not for them hemlock, corn cockle, spurge or the other unpleasant poisons. Don't forget that Roman courts could impose HUGE fines ( mean multi-sesterii amounts) BUT if the convicted party (man as woman had little place in Roman law) could avoid the fine if they committed suicide within 28 days... so their was an active market for fatal intoxicants.
Also, I guess, the Roman custom of using lead acetate (sugar of lead) to sweeten cheap wine also promoted a society in which an awful protracted death could be avoided with the application of an appropriate toxic agent. Indeed, those Roman herbalists were very well aware of the best exit...
