Bupe Suboxone can ruin your life

[Hexenstahl]

@jasperkent
Btw, I think this guy has either a top notch heroin connect, or can afford a private doc who supplies him with pharma opioids, because I'm surprised he hasn't died of a fent overdose considering that your country has basically been flooded with that shit. I mean even oxys on the street aren't oxys anymore if they don't come within blisters. Lol if I was his student or colleague I'd ask him if he can hook me up with some good shit

 

[burn out]

You have misunderstood my statement then. I have never said that people didn't become addicted. I only said that addiction wouldn't be perceived as an issue if those who are dependent on their medication could easily afford it. They only struggle because society keeps drilling into their head that being dependent on the most effective antidepressant is somehow an issue, while drinking a toxic liquid that was never intended for human consumption, but for conservation, is "okay". Just look at the euphemisms surrounding alcohol. "Social" drinking, "social" lubricant, "tongue loosener", etc...those are absurd things and not what I have said.

Well, you said that people wouldn't struggle with addiction and you are still saying it. It's not true. People struggled with opium addiction throughout history. Obviously nowhere near to the degree they do in environments where it is illegal and very expensive but even before that, some people who became addicted to opium wanted to end their dependence on the drug but found themselves unable to do so. Others succeeded but suffered horribly in the process. I, along with most other people would consider that "struggling". They would also consider it an "issue". So I suppose our disagreement here is really over the meaning of the word "struggle". To me, being dependent on opiates can be a struggle for some people even when supply is not an issue. You appear to disagree.

As for alcohol, you describe it as a "toxic liquid never intended for human consumption". Can you see the irony? On what bases are you able to determine whether alcohol was or was not intended for human consumption? Many people throughout history have consumed alcohol, in reasonable amounts, without damaging their health in any significant way and feel they benefited from it. Alcohol is considered health promoting in Chinese traditional medicine for example, as long as it used properly and not consumed to excess.

Those aren't health issues, those are simply entirely reversible endocrinal dysregulations that cease to exist upon either a) stopping opioid use or b) making use of novel substances like ultra low dose naltrexone which gets rid of almost all side effects that I know of. I have pointed this out earlier in this thread in connection to the often occuring OIH.

Low dose naltrexone is interesting but its largely irrelevant if we are speaking in a historical context because it's a very new development and most people are still unaware of it. You can't tell someone who struggled with side effects from opium in 1860 that its their own fault because they didn't utilize low dose naltrexone.

Yes, they find it difficult because they do not understand WHY they are actually dependent. The reason they have initially, subconsciously gravitated towards opioids in the first place (what expressed itself as mere innocent curiosity actually had a much deeper, neurobiological reason) is because opioid addicts suffer from a lack of endogenous opioid peptides being produced in their synaptic cleft. The exogenous consumption of opioid substances is therefore the brain's natural attempt to counter this lack of production. This is what modern medicine fails to see, and therefore opioid addiction is seen as a "disease" (truly absurd), rather than the body's attempt at self-medication. Our ancestors knew this and that is why they never in the history of humanity have prohibited its use, until the 1930s. Our entire approach to addiction medicine is based on completely false presuppositions and therefore fails. You are trying to fight against your own neurobiology (which is always bound to fail) and that is why sobriety never lasts ad infinitum.

China had already outlawed opium 200 years before 1930. Our ancestors understood more about the medicinal effects of the opium poppy, yes but they also understood its harmful effects.

They were prohibited for purely religiously motivated reasons (puritanical movement that arose out of the calvinists) on the one hand, and profit driven motives on the other hand (the pharmaceutical industry wanted to have sole monopoly on the production of opioid medication and wanted to take that power away from individual, decentralized, family owned pharmacies that operated independently from each other). There was never a rational cause behind prohibition. This anti-drug movement was always driven by the pharmagiants and their useful idiots which happened to be religious people (surprise, surprise).

Why would they want to outlaw it when they could simply mass produce the cheapest opiates and corner the market? They would make way more money if people were allowed to buy as much opiates as they wanted. The laws against opiates ruin many of what would be their best customers. Also, I doubt China making opium illegal had anything to do with Calvinism.

Me too, so what? Why do people always point that out as if that means something. Oh look, I am a former heroin addict that used to slam that shit into his veins, so my opinion bears some heavy weight guys. Y'all better listen to me...

Anyway, gotta go to the maintenance clinic now and get my new script. Have a nice one...

Hexenstahl

Why the hostility? Don't you realize I am on your side here for the most part? I agree that most of the harm that comes from opiates is due to the laws against and I think opium should be legalized and heroin addicts should be able to obtain prescription heroin from doctors if they so wish.

I bring up my heroin addiction to illustrate the fact that I am speaking from experience when I say there are harmful effects of long term opiate usage and not simply assuming it based on the stigma associated with the drug. Care to explain how that isn't relevant?

 

[burn out]

Where I am bupes come with such a pamflet (paper you get with tablets?) that as one medical professional told me, it's hard to see how anyone would take them after reading it. So even they sometimes do add or remove some parts with changing editions of same, it's always shows bupe as it is, very harmful shitty drug. I'll be sure to translate it when I get it in my hands next time.
One of things that was added and than removed is possibility of fatal liver failure, I guess as that shouldn't occur with normal use but list of side-effects and health problems it causes is still far longer and worse than with most drugs. For example compared to tramadol I would say it's at least a few times longer and more fucked up.

In fairness you are promoting one of, if not, the most dangerous classic psychedelic. I've smoked and snorted 5-meo-DMT and while I do appreciate "bright white light" effect and find it unique and interesting I would worry less if I hypothetically gave a few tabs of BDF to someone and explained how to use it safely than a bagie with a few strong doses of 5-meo-DMT. And argument that 5-meo-DMT doesn't kill you but suffocating with a tongue or vomit is just...not right.

I pretty much agree with this but only in context of current perception of mentioned drugs by most people, well most people smoking it. If I have treated cannabis in my teens and for a good part of my life as a potentially dangerous substance, like any drug, and not as absolutely harmless and even healthy substance risks and consequences of use would be minuscule. This way I'm on board with you, all opiates I have used trough my life probably caused me less damage than being a huge stoner. Thing is that both myself and many other cannabis lovers I know were bombarded from young age with info about good sides of cannabis and hardly any negative sides. And both myself and many of those found it isn't that harmless, most of us took 10+ years to realize that. I remember how back in the days just about any online place I participated, hell even some health professional I know, all talked how cannabis is demonized without good reason and you can basically use it consequence free. And funniest thing is that since the beginning of my drug use I've always been most informed and practising HR to biggest extent with most drugs compared to just about anyone, while I kind of didn't even consider need for HR with cannabis. Tho here my HR practices really failed was etizolam & coke but that's another story.

The same is true for me actually. That's why I don't see marijuana as an inherently bad substance. The problem is that when I was young I lacked wisdom and had also been bombarded from an early age with insane pro-marijuana propaganda. Everyone behaved as though there were drugs and then there was marijuana, as if they were in two separate categories and drugs were a serious thing but marijuana was harmless. I remember in high school drugs education they handed out these anti-marijuana pamphlets but even these failed to really explain the risks of marijuana. The best they could come up with was that made it impaired concentration and memory a little bit and might make you care less about your physical appearance. I thought, well if that's all the price I have to pay for such a pleasurable high sign me up! I'll take that bargain.

I suppose the risks and harms of marijuana were quite poorly understood back then and I can sort of understand why, as it is certainly more difficult to explain them then to explain how for example if you use heroin you will probably become addicted and could die from an overdose.

 

[Hexenstahl]

So I suppose our disagreement here is really over the meaning of the word "struggle".

Actually no. What I'm trying to say the ENTIRE time here is that people who perceived their use as a "struggle" did so because society put the suggestion into their mind that being dependent on a substance which your body (not so) obviously uses to self-medicate, is somehow problematic, which puts severe psychological pressure on the user because drug users are human too and humans are social animals who are subject to group/peer pressure/expectation. So instead of telling the drug user to find peace and come to terms with his use, society vilifies his medicine AND the user for being dependent on his medication. THIS is the source of the struggle. It is a conditioned, taught response, and not a natural reaction arising out of itself. Drug use being problematic is a relatively modern phenomenon that is little more than a century old, compared to millenia of non-stigmatized use. That is a historical FACT.

You see, the reason I'm saying this is because I used to think like many other self-loathing drug addicts too. I used to be like so many other brainwashed "must become sober at all cost" drug users, until I finally made peace with the fact that I will need my opioids for the rest of my life to feel well and function and that was an incredibly liberating feeling! Now, instead of feeling like the devil is on my back, I have the feeling that my opioid is my companion who helps me both through tough times and also enhances an already good mood to make the day even better than it already is.

As for alcohol, you describe it as a "toxic liquid never intended for human consumption". Can you see the irony? On what bases are you able to determine whether alcohol was or was not intended for human consumption?

There is no irony here. On what bases I am able to determine whether alcohol was or was not originally intended for human consumption? Simple, archaeology proves that. The earliest discoveries of ethanol traces were found side by side with humans, but no trace was found IN the body. Only later did archaeologists discover increasing amounts of ethanol WITHIN the bodies they found as the timeline passed by. This suggests very strongly that ethanol was originally invented/discovered for use as a conservatory substance, until the west came to the "great" idea to consume it and incorporate it into their culture.
Opium on the other hand is completely different. In fact the naturally occuring exogenous opioids of Papaver Somniferum so closely mirror our own endogenous opioid peptides, that one can't help but speculate that this divine plant was practically made to be used by us. It is the plant-twin of humanity. It mirrors us much more deeply and closely than even cannabinoids do. Comparing opium with alcohol therefore is completely ludicrous.

Alcohol is considered health promoting in Chinese traditional medicine for example, as long as it used properly and not consumed to excess.

Chinese traditional medicine makes many claims that have been debunked by science as not health promoting at all and this is one of them. Scientists have used in one experiment (wish I still had the link to the study as it had lots of interesting information that I originally wanted to include in my comment here) ever-decreasing amounts of ethanol to react with cell cultures and see if there is such a thing as a hormetic dose (a dose small enough to transform a substance which formerly acted as a poison, to a substance acting as a healing agent) of ethanol and the result was very sobering (no pun intended): there is NO such thing as a non-toxic level of alcohol. No matter how miniscule the amount of alcohol, it ALWAYS ends up being cytotoxic. It literally damages every single cell it comes into contact with and since the molecules of ethanol are small enough to bypass the blood-brain-barrier, alcohol comes literally into contact with the brain long before the liver even has the chance to filter out a single toxin. Heroin, interestingly, also has small enough molecules and/or is lipophilic enough to bypass the BBB, so it also gets directly into the brain before the liver can metabolize it, but compared to alcohol it does absolutely no damage whatsoever to the brain cells or any other cell in the body.

So it's completely irrelevant what chinese traditional "medicine" says about alcohol, because it is obviously not up-to-date with science. In fact the argument you have just used is a logical fallacy and is known as "appeal to tradition". You should avoid using logical fallacies if you want others to take your arguments serious. So much for making absurd statements...

Low dose naltrexone is interesting but its largely irrelevant if we are speaking in a historical context because it's a very new development and most people are still unaware of it. You can't tell someone who struggled with side effects from opium in 1860 that its their own fault because they didn't utilize low dose naltrexone.

Perhaps you should read again what I have written in that sentence, especially what I have written under "a)". Maybe you'll then realize that I am very much aware of the obvious fact that naltrexone was not around in 1860. Actually, I should have also included a "c" in that sentence: dose reductions. The endocrinal effects of opioids decrease dramatically when they are below a certain threshold. I myself still remember how the only endocrinal side effect I had while tapering down to a certain dose was nothing more than a lack of libido, due to low testosterone. The lethargy and avolition completely vanished. This is a well known fact in pain medicine.

But since we are not exclusively talking about history (to which you want to reduce this discussion in order to limit the amount of arguments that can be used in favor of opioids), the mention of naltrexone to combat these endocrinal dysregulations without lowering the dose, is just as valid as tapering or completely stopping the intake of opioids. After all, more and more pain docs are using ULDN for exactly these kind of things along with other benefits like tolerance reduction, etc.

China had already outlawed opium 200 years before 1930.

For purely ideological reasons. Just because those reasons weren't of a calvinistic origin doesn't mean that it somehow invalidates my argument. Btw, I'm talking on a global level here, so please refrain from focusing on statistical outliers and blowing these outliers out of proportion in terms of historical significance. China has prohibited Opium for its own (irrational) reasons, but we are talking about the worldwide prohibition of Opium and opioid medications and its consequences which really started to take off in 1930 onwards.

Also, before anyone comes here with this age old, long debunked, stupid argument that China prohibited Opium because it enslaved them: cut the fucking bullshit. BRITAIN had enslaved China, and not Opium. Opium had been used in China for ages with no issues whatsoever, until the british pressured the chinese state to give the british crown the exclusive privilege of providing the chinese people with opium. They basically monopolized the opium market and sold the chinese their own opium back! Then when the chinese rebelled, the british cut the supply and caused mass suffering. Opium isn't to blame here, but the inhuman treatment of ruthless british politicians towards the chinese people.

but they also understood its harmful effects.

I can find Paracelus, among other medieval and acient authors, mentioning opium as being capable of causing death when taken in excess, but show me just one of these sources mentioning being dependent on opium as counting as a harmful effect. There is none, because the whole concept of "addiction" didn't even exist. You can't even find this word in really old dictionaries. Do you understand what that means? As Wittgenstein said famously: The limits of my language means the limits of my world.
Think about what that means for a second before you reply.

Why would they want to outlaw it when they could simply mass produce the cheapest opiates and corner the market?

Because it is not entirely about profit, it is also about power and control. That is something I have forgotten to explain in my comment, even though it is an aspect that is perhaps even more important than the profit motive. The system in which we live wants people to be continuously stressed and depressed, as this makes something possible that in behavioural psychology is known as fear conditioning. But you can't really do that when people are content (nearly) all the time, so you must achieve monopolistic control over that substance which provides contentment with the push of a button and ideally limit its use only to purely physical ailments. So, profit as I mentioned, is definitely ONE motive, but I believe that the aspect of power and control over the human populace is a much bigger one. You can ofc disagree with that notion if you like, but I stand with that statement (unless you can convince me otherwise because I am open to other viewpoints if they make sense to me).

Why the hostility?

People often mistake my combative writing style as hostility, which it really isn't. If that is how you perceive it, fine, nothing I can change about that. I'm not going to act like someone I am not just because a small minority here in this forum wants to be treated with kid gloves.

and heroin addicts should be able to obtain prescription heroin from doctors if they so wish.

Do you need a prescription for alcohol? ALL drugs must be available to adults in pharmacies just like in the 19th century without the need for a precription. No drug "epidemic" existed back then due to the unregulated sale of drugs, and no drug epidemic would exist today. I don't want to be forced by an overbearing nanny state to go to a doctor and be dependent on the judgement of a third party, when I know myself and my needs much better and should be able to just walk into a pharmacy like in the good old days and tell the kind gentleman in there to please give me a gram of this and a gram of that without having to "show da paperz please". If I want some good ass snowwhite, or flirt around with Lady Brownstone, then I should be able to buy it by the gram without having to do any explanation whatsoever. An ID check is all that should be necessary. Nothing more. No more regulations, no more red tape, no more doctor explaining (he should be only there to give safer use advice and perform medical checks and procedures), no monopolies and no more of that "but it's just for your own good"-hypocrisy by society!
We have tried out all of this in the past and it didn't work. It's a failed experiment.

 

[DeathIndustrial88]

Y'all would enjoy this book. I think it should be required reading for doctors, lawmakers, and anyone else whose decisions affect the lives of drug users:

https://www.npr.org/2021/01/15/955631394/drug-use-for-grown-ups-serves-as-an-argument-for-personal-choice

I actually wrote an email to Dr. Carl Hart several months ago, thanking him for sharing this perspective & asking if he knew if there was anything I could do or participate in to help, but he never did answer. lol Still appreciate his work though.

 

[Man67]

Tooth decay seems to be caused only by transmucosal application of buprenorphine, since pain patients getting bupe don't seem to suffer from this adverse health effect. It could be avoided if bupe for OUD was approved for transdermal or intravenous application.

Buprenorphine: Drug Safety Communication

FDA is warning that dental problems have been reported with medicines containing buprenorphine that are dissolved in the mouth.

www.fda.gov

They could at least warn people who are supposed to take it sublingual.

 

[Hexenstahl]

They could at least warn people whu are supposed to take it sublingual.

I completely agree.

 

[Frog Dreams]

Apologies to anyone I have offended in this thread.

I didn't mean any offence.

I've thought about what @SpiralusSancti said and he / she / they're right. Everything is a matter of perspective.

It is not for me to say that the world would be better off without recreational opioid use. I retract that statement.

@Hexenstahl, I told you that you were speaking for others but - upon reflection - so was I.

I will rephrase the statemen: I am better off without recreational opioids in my life.

I don't hate heroin. I love it. But, I love it so much it interferes with what I really want in life.

That is my experience. You are your own unique being.

I want 5-meo-DMT in my life, but that is just me... and you are just you.

I was being arrogant. I'm sorry.

 

[Hexenstahl]

Apologies to anyone I have offended in this thread.

I didn't mean any offence.

I've thought about what @SpiralusSancti said and he / she / they're right. Everything is a matter of perspective.

It is not for me to say that the world would be better off without recreational opioid use. I retract that statement.

@Hexenstahl, I told you that you were speaking for others but - upon reflection - so was I.

I will rephrase the statemen: I am better off without recreational opioids in my life.

I don't hate heroin. I love it. But, I love it so much it interferes with what I really want in life.

That is my experience. You are your own unique being.

I want 5-meo-DMT in my life, but that is just me... and you are just you.

I was being arrogant. I'm sorry.

@DeathIndustrial88
Hey my friend, it seems you were absolutely right in our discussion we had in our PM recently: some people DO come around and are willing to change their views. You have taught me a valuable lesson buddy.

@Frog Dreams
It's ok. You don't need to apologize to me. You had a certain perspective and it changed. I can't tell you how often this exact thing happened to me in life. In fact it happened so often and at such deep levels that I sometimes ended up being utterly confused about who and what I actually am. I'm not being hyperbolic here.
I think it is unfortunate that you like heroin so much that it interferes with what you really want in life. This why I said that sobriety is actually a good thing for some people out there and you seem to belong to that group. I am the exact opposite of you. Not having opioids in my system interferes so much with my life that I can't live it and everything grinds to a halt.
I wish you all the best and hope you achieve your dreams and desires how YOU see fit. Find your own path, step into your own footprints...

Warm regards,
Hexenstahl

 

[Frog Dreams]

some people DO come around and are willing to change their views

Reading that fills my heart with joy and makes every mistake I made in this thread worthwhile.

I wish you all the best and hope you achieve your dreams and desires how YOU see fit. Find your own path, step into your own footprints...

Likewise.

Much love.

-Frog

 

[jasperkent]

@jasperkent
Btw, I think this guy has either a top notch heroin connect, or can afford a private doc who supplies him with pharma opioids, because I'm surprised he hasn't died of a fent overdose considering that your country has basically been flooded with that shit....

Well, he  is a neuroscientist and he conducts drug studies in labs so I assume that he has access to unadulterated drugs. In Drug Use For Grown-Ups he expresses a healthy fear of street drugs. He's no dummy. I'm sure he has a reliably safe source. Yeah, I envy him!

 

[vlzinspace]

yall writin a fuckin novel in here

 

[tarman]

I've always jumped off of buprenorphine like within a week or two after quitting h every time. This time, I'm like 3 weeks into buprenorphine, and for the last 4 days, I've cut my dose down from 8 mg down to a solid four or four and a half. I have a scale that goes to the thousandths place so I actually weigh the pills. From what I've read, they suggest dropping a milligram or two every three or four days and I think that that's fair. I feel okay on 4 mg, which to be clear I just landed on yesterday. So I'm going to do 4 mg today, and 4 mg tomorrow, although just a little bit less since my scale is so precise. Then this week I'm going to go down to three then two, then jump with some kratom and some clonidine and some gabapentin. But yeah buprenorphine sucks because it totally triggers anxiety coming off of it. I mean I don't know, with the gabapentin and clonidine and some kratom, I should be all good. I've done it before several times and there's always a moment or two on the third or fourth day where it seems bad, but once you make it past that hump, you're all good. Anyway I'm rambling sorry.

 

[Man67]

J

I've always jumped off of buprenorphine like within a week or two after quitting h every time. This time, I'm like 3 weeks into buprenorphine, and for the last 4 days, I've cut my dose down from 8 mg down to a solid four or four and a half. I have a scale that goes to the thousandths place so I actually weigh the pills. From what I've read, they suggest dropping a milligram or two every three or four days and I think that that's fair. I feel okay on 4 mg, which to be clear I just landed on yesterday. So I'm going to do 4 mg today, and 4 mg tomorrow, although just a little bit less since my scale is so precise. Then this week I'm going to go down to three then two, then jump with some kratom and some clonidine and some gabapentin. But yeah buprenorphine sucks because it totally triggers anxiety coming off of it. I mean I don't know, with the gabapentin and clonidine and some kratom, I should be all good. I've done it before several times and there's always a moment or two on the third or fourth day where it seems bad, but once you make it past that hump, you're all good. Anyway I'm rambling sorry.

Just tell me one thing mate. Is your life in danger of overdose? If not, try to tapper down bupe for good.

 

[burn out]

Actually no. What I'm trying to say the ENTIRE time here is that people who perceived their use as a "struggle" did so because society put the suggestion into their mind that being dependent on a substance which your body (not so) obviously uses to self-medicate, is somehow problematic, which puts severe psychological pressure on the user because drug users are human too and humans are social animals who are subject to group/peer pressure/expectation. So instead of telling the drug user to find peace and come to terms with his use, society vilifies his medicine AND the user for being dependent on his medication. THIS is the source of the struggle. It is a conditioned, taught response, and not a natural reaction arising out of itself. Drug use being problematic is a relatively modern phenomenon that is little more than a century old, compared to millenia of non-stigmatized use. That is a historical FACT.

You see, the reason I'm saying this is because I used to think like many other self-loathing drug addicts too. I used to be like so many other brainwashed "must become sober at all cost" drug users, until I finally made peace with the fact that I will need my opioids for the rest of my life to feel well and function and that was an incredibly liberating feeling! Now, instead of feeling like the devil is on my back, I have the feeling that my opioid is my companion who helps me both through tough times and also enhances an already good mood to make the day even better than it already is.

Yeah, I understand that you are saying that. The problem is that it's not true or at least it's not the whole truth. You seem unable to acknowledge that. You apparently had one perspective, then you swung all the way in the opposite prospective. Have you considered the truth might actually lie somewhere in between?

Can you acknowledge the fact that opiates might have negative effects on someone even in a context where opiate use is legal and socially acceptable and said person might still have difficulty in stopping opiates despite their negative side? If not, I don't know how I can get through to you.

Yes, I agree with you that the bulk of the horrible suffering relating to opiates in our society stems from their illegality. However, I know from my own personal experience that opiates are not without side effects of their own. You don't seem to have experienced the negative side yet and perhaps you never will. Some people are content to take opiates their entire lives and never develop any major issues from it. However, for other people the opiates stop working after a while. The drug that once made happy , content and energetic instead starts making them depressed and lethargic. Then it's still a difficult process to get off of them. Certainly there are worse things, I try to tell people opiate addiction is a manageable condition and if you find yourself addicted to opiates, rather than despairing I would say be thankful you don't have a more serious health condition. But we must acknowledge that it is a condition some people struggle with.

Another thing I've noticed is that you have a tendency to state things as absolute fact with zero supporting evidence. For example, your claim that drug use being problematic only started a little more than a century ago is a historical fact in all caps. What do you even mean by that? That no one ever suffered as a result of drug use until about 100 years ago?

There is no irony here. On what bases I am able to determine whether alcohol was or was not originally intended for human consumption? Simple, archaeology proves that. The earliest discoveries of ethanol traces were found side by side with humans, but no trace was found IN the body. Only later did archaeologists discover increasing amounts of ethanol WITHIN the bodies they found as the timeline passed by. This suggests very strongly that ethanol was originally invented/discovered for use as a conservatory substance, until the west came to the "great" idea to consume it and incorporate it into their culture.
Opium on the other hand is completely different. In fact the naturally occuring exogenous opioids of Papaver Somniferum so closely mirror our own endogenous opioid peptides, that one can't help but speculate that this divine plant was practically made to be used by us. It is the plant-twin of humanity. It mirrors us much more deeply and closely than even cannabinoids do. Comparing opium with alcohol therefore is completely ludicrous.

Once again, no sources. It is my understanding that alcohol was discovered multiple times throughout history by different groups and it wasn't only consumed in the "west". I also fail to see how comparing alcohol and opium is "completely ludicrous".

Chinese traditional medicine makes many claims that have been debunked by science as not health promoting at all and this is one of them. Scientists have used in one experiment (wish I still had the link to the study as it had lots of interesting information that I originally wanted to include in my comment here) ever-decreasing amounts of ethanol to react with cell cultures and see if there is such a thing as a hormetic dose (a dose small enough to transform a substance which formerly acted as a poison, to a substance acting as a healing agent) of ethanol and the result was very sobering (no pun intended): there is NO such thing as a non-toxic level of alcohol. No matter how miniscule the amount of alcohol, it ALWAYS ends up being cytotoxic. It literally damages every single cell it comes into contact with and since the molecules of ethanol are small enough to bypass the blood-brain-barrier, alcohol comes literally into contact with the brain long before the liver even has the chance to filter out a single toxin. Heroin, interestingly, also has small enough molecules and/or is lipophilic enough to bypass the BBB, so it also gets directly into the brain before the liver can metabolize it, but compared to alcohol it does absolutely no damage whatsoever to the brain cells or any other cell in the body.

So it's completely irrelevant what chinese traditional "medicine" says about alcohol, because it is obviously not up-to-date with science. In fact the argument you have just used is a logical fallacy and is known as "appeal to tradition". You should avoid using logical fallacies if you want others to take your arguments serious. So much for making absurd statements...

Alcohol can clearly act as a healing agent, case in point it is a recommended treating for antifreeze poisoning. You seem to be struck in black and white thinking. Your viewpoint consists of alcohol bad, opiates good. Rather, I would encourage you to look at each substance as having its own unique virtues and drawbacks. Which substances is best to use then comes down to the individual and the needs of their situation. For example, if someone is suffering from antifreeze poisoning, alcohol is a superior healing agent than opium. If someone is suffering from pain after surgery, opium is clearly superior.

Chinese medicine is by no means the only arena in which alcohol was/is considered potentially beneficial. Whether or not it is toxic to cells isn't the only criteria on which it must be judged. Even if it is toxic to cells, if the overall effect on the whole human being is positive, then it is health promoting. Many people throughout history have used alcohol in this way without suffering any serious harm as a result. You can argue it was less beneficial than they believed, but you can't deny that no great harm came to them. Furthermore, modern science is its own tradition and plenty of scientific studies have indicated alcohol may have health benefits. For example this study found that small amounts of alcohol may actually be beneficial to the liver https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/14/12/2493

Perhaps you should read again what I have written in that sentence, especially what I have written under "a)". Maybe you'll then realize that I am very much aware of the obvious fact that naltrexone was not around in 1860. Actually, I should have also included a "c" in that sentence: dose reductions. The endocrinal effects of opioids decrease dramatically when they are below a certain threshold. I myself still remember how the only endocrinal side effect I had while tapering down to a certain dose was nothing more than a lack of libido, due to low testosterone. The lethargy and avolition completely vanished. This is a well known fact in pain medicine.

Even if that is so some people are tempted to take more opiates than is good for them.

But since we are not exclusively talking about history (to which you want to reduce this discussion in order to limit the amount of arguments that can be used in favor of opioids), the mention of naltrexone to combat these endocrinal dysregulations without lowering the dose, is just as valid as tapering or completely stopping the intake of opioids. After all, more and more pain docs are using ULDN for exactly these kind of things along with other benefits like tolerance reduction, etc.

I am simply trying to point out the fact that opiates have some actual legitimate downsides. If LDN solves many of those issues, great.

For purely ideological reasons. Just because those reasons weren't of a calvinistic origin doesn't mean that it somehow invalidates my argument. Btw, I'm talking on a global level here, so please refrain from focusing on statistical outliers and blowing these outliers out of proportion in terms of historical significance. China has prohibited Opium for its own (irrational) reasons, but we are talking about the worldwide prohibition of Opium and opioid medications and its consequences which really started to take off in 1930 onwards.

Also, before anyone comes here with this age old, long debunked, stupid argument that China prohibited Opium because it enslaved them: cut the fucking bullshit. BRITAIN had enslaved China, and not Opium. Opium had been used in China for ages with no issues whatsoever, until the british pressured the chinese state to give the british crown the exclusive privilege of providing the chinese people with opium. They basically monopolized the opium market and sold the chinese their own opium back! Then when the chinese rebelled, the british cut the supply and caused mass suffering. Opium isn't to blame here, but the inhuman treatment of ruthless british politicians towards the chinese people.

But why would anyone be against opium even for idealogical reasons if it was completely wonderful and had no negative effects?

I can find Paracelus, among other medieval and acient authors, mentioning opium as being capable of causing death when taken in excess, but show me just one of these sources mentioning being dependent on opium as counting as a harmful effect. There is none, because the whole concept of "addiction" didn't even exist. You can't even find this word in really old dictionaries. Do you understand what that means? As Wittgenstein said famously: The limits of my language means the limits of my world.
Think about what that means for a second before you reply.

So you're saying opium didn't cause dependence or withdrawal back then?

Because it is not entirely about profit, it is also about power and control. That is something I have forgotten to explain in my comment, even though it is an aspect that is perhaps even more important than the profit motive. The system in which we live wants people to be continuously stressed and depressed, as this makes something possible that in behavioural psychology is known as fear conditioning. But you can't really do that when people are content (nearly) all the time, so you must achieve monopolistic control over that substance which provides contentment with the push of a button and ideally limit its use only to purely physical ailments. So, profit as I mentioned, is definitely ONE motive, but I believe that the aspect of power and control over the human populace is a much bigger one. You can ofc disagree with that notion if you like, but I stand with that statement (unless you can convince me otherwise because I am open to other viewpoints if they make sense to me).

I have considered this as well actually. On the one hand, it seems they don't want people to be happy. On the other hand, though wouldn't opiates be a good way to control a large portion of the population? For example, when I was addicted to opiates I would have done just about anything to get them. If the government had said, here just work this job and you will earn just enough money to afford a small apartment and an endless supply of opium, I would have jumped at the chance.

People often mistake my combative writing style as hostility, which it really isn't. If that is how you perceive it, fine, nothing I can change about that. I'm not going to act like someone I am not just because a small minority here in this forum wants to be treated with kid gloves.

I just want you to keep in mind here that I am on your side here. I think opium is a very misunderstood plant that has a myriad of benefits and that historically people understood its medical and spiritual benefits a lot better but today it has been slapped with a stigma that prevents any serious discussion of its use, outside from purely for physical pain.

Do you need a prescription for alcohol? ALL drugs must be available to adults in pharmacies just like in the 19th century without the need for a precription. No drug "epidemic" existed back then due to the unregulated sale of drugs, and no drug epidemic would exist today. I don't want to be forced by an overbearing nanny state to go to a doctor and be dependent on the judgement of a third party, when I know myself and my needs much better and should be able to just walk into a pharmacy like in the good old days and tell the kind gentleman in there to please give me a gram of this and a gram of that without having to "show da paperz please". If I want some good ass snowwhite, or flirt around with Lady Brownstone, then I should be able to buy it by the gram without having to do any explanation whatsoever. An ID check is all that should be necessary. Nothing more. No more regulations, no more red tape, no more doctor explaining (he should be only there to give safer use advice and perform medical checks and procedures), no monopolies and no more of that "but it's just for your own good"-hypocrisy by society!
We have tried out all of this in the past and it didn't work. It's a failed experiment.

In an ideal world, all drugs would be legal and there would be very little abuse of them. However, I try to take a more practical approach and from a realistic point of view it's not going to be legal to walk into a pharmacy and buy 10 grams of heroin, 4 grams of methamphetamine, 50 xanax bars and 2 grams of MDMA any time soon. I don't think we as a society are mature enough to handle that anyway, which is why I think drugs should be legalized in stages. I think first all natural plants should be legalized including opium. For people who want to shoot heroin, they can get a medical card or something where they have to get it from a doctor but it's not denied to them. They just basically have to go get a medical checkup (and this would primarily be used as a means to offer them help for any medical problems they may have) and sign a bunch of paperwork and then they can go get their heroin. That way you couldn't just walk into a store and buy it. There needs to be some kind of requirement. Don't you see how if drugs were legalized outright, the media would start broadcasting stories of people being horribly irresponsible with them and people would demand action and we'd end up right back where we are now? There has to be some kind of restriction.

 

[Eligiu]

Yes.

Because I don't know your back story this advice is directed at pain sufferers in general.

Opiates should be IN FACT about the last thing you try for pain with the exception of emergency pain associated with sudden traumatic accidents, short term pain like somebody recovering from a surgery, or to prepare for surgery itself.

Especially the fact that your pain is chronic, the very first thing this tells me is that opiates are a MISERABLE choice for this. Endorphins (read: boring sweaty exercise) are the go to for this, because it's the chemical (or rather, the entire complex class of chemicals) for which the rest of your complex brain metabolism is meant to work. Nothing will ever work better on your brain.

If exercise proves inadequate, opiates aren't even your next choice, assuming chronic pain. Then your next one will be something like acupuncture, reiki, diet, sleep, homoepeathy, Chinese medicine, herbal medicine. Which will take years to explore.

Even having exhausted these possibilities, which have been documented to rival opiates for pain management in terms of efficacy, your next stop still won't be opiates...next it's the safer drugs like caffeine, asperin.

In fact opiates only really becomes interesting in the case of people, again assuming chronic pain, that are in so much pain that they are having trouble sleeping.
Because otherwise desensitising you to the pain is actually counterproductive. It is focus that provides relief from pain. Numbness is a hackish way to go about it.
This is for people with war injuries, farm injuries, sever cancers, ....things that most of us won't get except near the end of our life.

But even that doesn't make sense, because after a few nights without sleep you go insane. And insanity generally blocks pain.

So no, unless you're a war veteran. Or unless your wife was in the same car accident as your best friend and your dog. Or unless you just got stabbed in the eye last night I'm afraid opiates are actually a terrible choice for long term pain management. Having gone the insanity route myself, I'd rather go through that again if I get another injury than deal with the actual side effects of opiate use which you list as anxiety and yes...pain, to which I'll add constipation, itchy skin and societal judgement? Choose life.

I'm on suboxone (buvidal) and have been for 2 years. I've been on suboxone 4 other times, and I can say with certainty that the only time my pain has ever truly been managed is when I've been tapering off suboxone and on low dose bupe.

This is talking as someone with Ehler's Danlos Syndrome - I can sprain joints just getting up from sitting down, or walking down the street. It's a connective tissue disorder, and you're entire body is connective tissue so if you imagine all your connective tissue hurting at the same time that's what EDS pain is like.

I implement other stuff alongside my opiate maintenance therapy and I am *primarily* on it due to my relentless opiate addiction if I'm not on maintenance therapy, I will take any opiate I can get my hands on as much as I can and for as long as I can. It's a recipe for disaster for me.

But buprenorphine is not a new form of pain relief. Low dose bupe is widely spoken about in the EDS groups im in as a form of treatment, and i notice the different between hi and low dose bupe and pain relief.

I wish I could go back on low dose but they don't let you stay on it for that long.

I think it's reductive to tell people that opiates have no use in their pain management regiment. It just shouldn't be their only resource for management.

 

[Hexenstahl]

Once again, no sources.

Because you never asked for sources lol. My reference is Dr. Christian Rätsch's book "Enzyklopädie der psychoaktiven Substanzen", but I don't know if that book was ever translated into english.

I also fail to see how comparing alcohol and opium is "completely ludicrous".

It is ludicrous for the reasons I have mentioned.

Alcohol can clearly act as a healing agent, case in point it is a recommended treating for antifreeze poisoning.

The first-line treatment option for ethylene glycol poisoning is actually Fomepizole and only if that isn't available will doctors use ethanol, because the use of ethanol itself carries risks for the reasons I have mentioned. Just because something is used as a treatment option doesn't mean it's actually a "healing agent". The chemicals used in chemotherapy kill off the cancer, not because it acts as a healing agent, but rather because the patient gets acutely poisoned. Now, what the leaflet doesn't tell you is that it also kills off a whole bunch of healthy cells with it. Cancer patients who have undergone chemotherapy therefore haven't been healed, they have survived. That same principle is true with using ethanol. One poison is replaced by another poison. This is actually the reason why chemotherapy is HUGELY controversial in medicine and doctors have lost their licenses because they have spoken out against it and have shown how in most cases it is actually the chemo that kills the patient and not the cancer. That is why I will never do chemo in case I ever get cancer. I'll just use full-spectrum cannabinoid oil and that's it.

our viewpoint consists of alcohol bad

Alcohol IS objectively bad. I'm not saying this lightly btw. Few things in life are objective.

For example, if someone is suffering from antifreeze poisoning, alcohol is a superior healing agent than opium.

That doesn't make alcohol a "good" treatment option though. That's a bad choice of comparison. Why not compare alcohol with fomepizole, which is actually what is used in such a case and not freaking opium. Fomepizole is used as a first-line treatment for a good reason. Back when it didn't exist, alcohol was used, but not because everyone was convinced of how much of a powerful healing tool it is. It was because there was no other option around, so the doctor always takes the treatment that causes the LEAST HARM. That's the reason fomepizole was invented in the first place, because doctors wanted to get rid of the toxic effect ethanol has on the patients.

Also, as a quick side note: antifreeze poisoning is literally the ONLY area where ethanol has some kind of a marginal therapeutic "merit" and even then only as a secondary option. Now, what you are doing is taking this incredibly rare medical occurence (45K reported cases in the US in 2015, which is like what, 0.013% of the populace?), which only happens in isolated cases (suicide, homicide, lab accidents) and then take this ridiculously miniscule area of medicine where alcohol MAY be used as a treatment option and blow its role out of proportion to make it look like alcohol is this potentially great medicine that we couldn't live without because, uuuuh, look at all these numerous.....uuuuh....antifreeze poisoning...
Yeah that's where the argument starts to collapse. Alcohol isn't medically important because it can potentially save the lives of 0.013% of the US population and even then we already have a much better treatment option. Alcohol is simply redundant. Period.

If someone is suffering from pain after surgery, opium is clearly superior.

...and depression, and schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder, and and and...
I suggest you read a little bit about opioids in older medical literature (like opioids in mental illness which I have referenced earlier in the thread) to see the incredibly wide array of use in medicine that opioids can be successfully used for, with minimal side effects compared to the incredibly side effect prone ADs and NLs being used today. Opioids have been reduced to only physical pain, but that doesn't mean they cannot be used in other areas of medicine too.
This substance has incredibly useful psychoactive properties that are being completely ignored by modern medicine.

Whether or not it is toxic to cells isn't the only criteria on which it must be judged.

I suggest you look what is actually within a human cell and what those cells do in the human body, and perhaps then you will realize how a substance being cytotoxic actually affects the whole organism upon harming those cells. Also, as I have already mentioned, alcohol is not just cytotoxic, it is also neurotoxic and hepatotoxic. The long-term implications of that are severe. What more do you want? Isn't that toxic enough for you? That is in my opinion enough to judge alcohol. It is only useful for certain chemical reactions in the lab and as a preservative (and perhaps some other uses I'm unaware of), but neither body nor the mind needs alcohol. It is therapeutical for neither of those two. Sure, it is unfortunately recreational for the majority of people, but I think that is only the case because most people in our society are unaware that we have other substances that have a better recreational value and also a much better safety profile. Admittedly, the former is subjective (some like alcohol, others prefer weed, then again some people like low dose acid, etc.), but the latter cannot be argued about.

if the overall effect on the whole human being is positive

How does alcohol have "an overall positive effect on the whole human being"?

Many people throughout history have used alcohol in this way without suffering any serious harm as a result. You can argue it was less beneficial than they believed, but you can't deny that no great harm came to them.

That's not the point though. We aren't talking about what causes the greatest harm, but about harm itself. Even if you don't consciously notice it, alcohol is even in its smallest amounts toxic. The fact that it bypasses the BBB makes it even worse.

For example this study found that small amounts of alcohol may actually be beneficial to the liver https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/14/12/2493

Correlation ≠ causation. The study doesn't take that into account, on top of it not being randomized, placebo controlled and double-blind or even peer-reviewed.
Furthermore, the study estimates the alcohol exposure across the patients' lifetimes via a self-created tool they call LACU (Lifetime Alcohol Consuming Unit). Let's ignore for a second the fact that the tool has neither been replicated in its use nor peer-reviewed to test its scientific validity. How is this obscure "Unit" even defined and measured??? This is where the study completely falls flat on its face. Is 1 Unit considered to be 2.09 x 10^3 mL/week, or is it only 0.0016 x 10^5 mL/week? How much percent alcohol per litre had been drunk on average? Questions upon questions. These are just a few reasons this study is qualitatively low.

Even if that is so some people are tempted to take more opiates than is good for them.

SOME people always end up overdoing things. That doesn't negate the meritorious value of the substance. See, I was always addicted to opioids because I immediately noticed the beneficial and therapeutic effect it had on me. I had periods where I overdid it with the heroin and the positive effects started to diminish (it was around 1g a day), so I started to gradually reduce the dose to a level where the positive antidepressant effects would again shine through (around 0.5 to 0.7g/day). Yeah, some people can't do that but that's not the fault of the opioid. That was ofc all before I discovered ULDN. That stuff is such a game changer.

I am simply trying to point out the fact that opiates have some actual legitimate downsides. If LDN solves many of those issues, great.

Ofc they have, but those downsides are only a) temporary in nature and b) can be solved either through modification of dosage or by use of modern substances like NMDA antagonists or ULDN. Also, I'm comparing these temporary downsides to the permanent health hazards of alcohol.

But why would anyone be against opium even for idealogical reasons if it was completely wonderful and had no negative effects?

I am admittedly no expert in chinese history. I do not have the full picture of what exactly happened during that period and who all the big players were and what their (ulterior) motives had been. All I know is that rational reasons could not have been the cause of prohibition because China had hundreds if not thousands of years time to prohibit opium consumption, but somehow only got the idea to ban it pretty late in history. It just doesn't add up...
Also, again, I'm not saying opioids have absolutely no negative sides. I'm just saying they are not toxic substances and whatever "harm" they cause, it is completely reversible, so don't start to twist my words in such a dishonest way.

So you're saying opium didn't cause dependence or withdrawal back then?

Ugh.....no...no I'm not saying that...

On the other hand, though wouldn't opiates be a good way to control a large portion of the population?

No they are not because everybody would immediately know who the king is and where his castle resides and the rulers would very quickly end up in a torch and pitchfork scenario. The art of successfully ruling the masses consists not of brute force (I mean it does work, but only for a short time), but of division, deception, confusion and indoctrination. If people don't know who the true ruler is, they won't know whom it is that is causing all the trouble. That is a very complex topic though and I have been accused of being a conspiracy theorist (not that I care) for implying that powerful people seeking to increase their power do exist, and since that is kind of off-topic, I don't wanna go into that direction here.

I try to take a more practical approach and from a realistic point of view it's not going to be legal to walk into a pharmacy and buy 10 grams of heroin, 4 grams of methamphetamine, 50 xanax bars and 2 grams of MDMA any time soon.

Who would have thought in the 19th century that it would be realistic to eventually end up where we are now? Never underestimate the system's inbuilt entropic tendency. History has shown us more than one time that things can turn around VERY quickly and VERY radically in relatively short periods of time.

 

[gordonliddy]

This is talking as someone with Ehler's Danlos Syndrome

There's still no hope in dope. Opiates don't treat pain or depression.

 

[SpiralusSancti]

There's still no hope in dope. Opiates don't treat pain or depression.

What do they treat than, sorrow? What do you think most people in the world use opiates for? To treat diarrhea?

 

[TheUltimateFixx]

I cannot speak on bupe, but I can tell you after a 3 year opioid addiction, i bit the bullet and wailed in detox for 5 days. Point is, i did not feel normal until like 9 months later. Just saying dont give in, it might seem like you are permanently fucked becsuse of the time frame but you arent. my brain chemistry took literally forever to heal but now it feels like i never touched opioids ever. Youll get there eventually, just be healthy and sleep deep (where your body actually heals)

Yes, the general time frame for your dopamine production to re-set to normal baseline is about 12 - 14 months. A lot of users are unaware of this, undergo detox, then feel like shit after the physical symptoms have subsided, conclude 'well if this is how I'm gonna feel off it forever F that' and go right back.