Opioids Opiates dont seem addictive to me- addictive potential exaggerated?

[Tchort]

Opioids gets a bad rap because they induce physical dependence so quickly. It can take years of heavy drinking to develop a nice case of the DTs: a few weeks of daily heroin use will leave you dopesick when your supply runs out.

Someone who has regularly been taking 20+ mg. of Xanax or Klonopin a day is a bit more than "pseudo-dependent" and may suffer far more than a rebound effect if they abruptly discontinue usage. Same for heavy users of GHB, GBL, booze, barbituates, etc. As I said above, it takes a bit longer to get physically hooked -- but once you do you're REALLY hooked.

I find myself naturally agreeing with Burroughs who through intuition derived the basis for opioid addiction decades before the scientific community at large (who in his day still held to the moral theory of addiction).

I see addiction, with the way I define it, as use of opioids or Nicotine that begins with sporadic or recreational use, followed by regular use, followed by compulsive use, followed by dependancy, followed by the change in metabolic setup that makes this chemical process and the drug necessary to maintain a normal metabolic state (no fight-or-flight reaction when the drug is leaving the system, withdrawal symptoms, etc).

The symptoms that develop from compulsive use of Benzodiazepines, Barbiturates, sedative-hypnotics, GHB-GBL-1,4BDO, etc) are simply the result of a rebound effect, not withdrawal symptoms. GABAgerics do not produce a physiological change in the metabolism that makes the chemical process and drug a necessity. Excessive GABA agonism and front brain depression is maintained via compulsive use, when the drugs leave the system the rebound effect sets in- excessive front brain stimulation, Dopamine/Seratonin/Norepinepherine level issues, etc that are common with compulsive activities (sex, gambling). Same thing for stimulants like Cocaine and the Amphetamine class, only in reverse.

If you have allergies, and take an anti-Histamine all spring and summer, everyday, multiple times a day, then stop taking the anti-Histamine, you will have exaggerated symptoms of allergy: nose will leak fluid, eyes will itch and leak fluid, etc as a rebound from excessive and constant Histamine suppression.

This does not mean that anti-Histamines cause dependance or addiction. In the same way I believe the same process given for Anti-Histamines is the same for stimulants like coke and depressants like alcohol- not the process and system of addiction that is present with opioids and nicotine.

I agree, and might add that the "chipper" who only uses on weekends but then spends the week counting the minutes until Friday's dose is already habituated. Physical dependence, as you said, is only one part of the issue. And of course psychological dependence can be considerably harder to kick than the physical stuff. Lots of junkies get clean and stay clean for years before succumbing to those nagging cravings which persist long after the dependency has been overcome.

Well, I think that with people who have compulsive behavior whether its gambling, sex, Cocaine, Meth, etc can be treated similarly. Opioid addicts do develop the same compulsive behavioral problems and physiology as the former people do: only, the opioid addicts have 2 other complicated problems to deal with- physical dependance and change in metabolic setup to, as Burroughs called it the Morphine metabolism. I've read interesting things about the way opioid receptors change and function over time from excessive opioid use and addiction vs just dependancy, and long term vs short term addiction.

QFT. Although I might use "dependency" to define the physical dependence and "addiction" to define the psychological addiction. A regular long-term meth user may well be addicted without being dependent. A long-term chronic pain patient who uses her Fentanyl patches and Roxis for breakthrough pain is almost certainly dependent without being psychologically addicted to the high those drugs can produce.

It's really just semantics, you say meth addict, I say compulsive meth user.

I wonder if iatrogenic addiction rates are actually as low as the estimates given by the AMA and co. I know that Purdue Pharma lied about how few patients develop addiction to OxyContin after being treated with it for a legitimate medical need (I think their estimate was like 1% ). Though the official percentage accepted by the establishment isn't much higher than that..

 

[phatass]

opiates are extremely addictive... period...

 

[Sentimental]

Different folks, different strokes.

My brother never understood why people did opiates so much, he never had a really good experience with them, slight relaxation being all he ever got from it. But with me, give me a bottle of hydrocodone and a box of neon gummi worms and I'll have the time of my life.

 

[bearmtn]

I tried 120mg of oxycodone the other day (crushed and swallowed it as usual), it just made me fairly relaxed, but I definitely felt far from overwhelmed. I feel totally in control on opiates, unlike other drugs. I would not hesitate to say take 120mg oxycodone then say go to a family dinner, nobody would even know I am on them because they don't effect me very much, they just mellow me out, make me placid and relaxed.

Any thoughts?

Yeah, I have a thought. You claim you're opie naive and you chewed down an OC 120 (very hard to get these days) and had minimal effects??? Sorry friend, I don't buy it. Even when I had been parachuting and snorting 280mgs daily for over a year, I would have still been "euphorized" big time by chewing a 120 first thing in the morning.

 

[Cane2theLeft]

Ahhh, so people/rats who are completely happy and content with life are less likely to become drug addicts...Even more mind blowing

Seriously, though, psychology does seem like one of those sciences where any half-wit could become the Gauss of his field.

It is very logical but still, the medical community believed that regardless of their circumstances they will become addicted. They did endless experiments with animals in cages hooked up to self-injection apparatuses and saw their increasingly compulsive use as evidence that the drugs themselves were addicting.

Alexander did many variations of his experiments and in one of them he would get the rats in cages sufficiently hooked on morphine and then introduce them to the colony. He found that the majority of the rats willingly endured withdrawal (despite available supply) instead of continuing their use. He saw this as indication that the environment/other circumstances were more of a factor than how "addictive" the drugs are.

His findings are not "mind-blowing", especially to us familiar with drug use. What they are is a counter-argument to those who say that exposure to drugs alone is sufficient to produce addiction (NOT just physical dependence).

 

[RxobbyOC]

okay, there is a really simple explanation to this whole thing.you really arent to fond of the opiate high, so you dont use opiates everyday.you wont become psychologically addicted to to something that gives you a feeling you really dont enjoy that much, and since you don't use them daily, youre not going to become physically addicted to them either.


obviously,point blank.wtf is everyone freaking out about.
if someone LOVES opiates(like myself), they will become mentally addicted to them, making them want them daily(like myself, again), and the daily usage is what brings on a phsyical addiction.



i didnt even bother reading every page of this thread because the answer is simple and no one on the first page got it.










xoxoxo,R

 

[Miss Hollywood]

Is this OP serious???!!!

Yeah, that's what I said the first time I tried heroin!

"Ohhhh noo!! Not ME!!! I'll NEVER GET ADDICTED!!!"

8)

Here I am a year and a half later without...

My apartment

My car

Lost tons of friends

I could go on and on...

This dude needs to walk a mile in my shoes!!!

 

[bighooter]

all i can say is poppy pod tea is no way near as addictive as people make out it is.

+ the high isnt exactly amazing considering how much effort and foul tasting tea you have to chug down and heave with every swig.

 

[Binge Artist]

Alexander did many variations of his experiments and in one of them he would get the rats in cages sufficiently hooked on morphine and then introduce them to the colony. He found that the majority of the rats willingly endured withdrawal (despite available supply) instead of continuing their use. He saw this as indication that the environment/other circumstances were more of a factor than how "addictive" the drugs are.
).

This part does seem counter-intuitive. But I think a fairly obvious problem here, is that the rats probably wouldn't know that their withdrawal symptoms are being caused by lack of morphine.

 

[Nibiru]

all i can say is poppy pod tea is no way near as addictive as people make out it is.

+ the high isnt exactly amazing considering how much effort and foul tasting tea you have to chug down and heave with every swig.

you can cook it down into a solid mass and roll it into balls and eat it. Makes it a whole lot easier to stomach. Possibly more addictive as a result.

I've never seen a person get addicted to pods. I gave my junkie dad some of the strongest fucking stuff ever and it didn't even keep him from getting sick.

okay, there is a really simple explanation to this whole thing.you really arent to fond of the opiate high, so you dont use opiates everyday.you wont become psychologically addicted to to something that gives you a feeling you really dont enjoy that much, and since you don't use them daily, youre not going to become physically addicted to them either.


obviously,point blank.wtf is everyone freaking out about.
if someone LOVES opiates(like myself), they will become mentally addicted to them, making them want them daily(like myself, again), and the daily usage is what brings on a phsyical addiction.



i didnt even bother reading every page of this thread because the answer is simple and no one on the first page got it.

Best response so far. I got it, I just should have responded in blunt, straightforward terms like you did right there, instead of trying to sound smart, which I am usually not.

 

[Cane2theLeft]

This part does seem counter-intuitive. But I think a fairly obvious problem here, is that the rats probably wouldn't know that their withdrawal symptoms are being caused by lack of morphine.

They sweetened the morphine so the rats would prefer it over the water (they were in water bottles the rats could freely drink from in the colony as self-injection apparatuses were infeasible and the rats strongly love the taste of sugar). The rats would STILL choose the withdrawal over the morphine because when they had the opportunity to exercise, mate, "socialize" and so forth the morphine would interfere. In the cage they'd relief their distress pharmacologically; in the colony it was a barrier to their happiness and they routinely chose the harsh withdrawal over the interference. I don't think this is counter-intuitive if you look at the whole context instead of only looking for aspects to support YOUR view on the subject.

This was seen in humans as well as I demonstrated in the first part and you can't argue they don't know the heroin will relieve their withdrawal. In Vietnam a substantial amount of servicemen developed severe heroin habits and upon returning to the US very few continued their use despite availability and of those who did, the majority had substance abuse issues prior to going to Vietnam.

QED

 

[Binge Artist]

QED

So comical to hear a psychologist use that expression...

BTW, I enjoy your recent posts. I've been trying to find more information on Alexander's research so that I can respond more intelligently.

 

[Eight0Eight]

you can cook it down into a solid mass and roll it into balls and eat it. Makes it a whole lot easier to stomach. Possibly more addictive as a result.

*cough* you can also boil it down, precipitate the morphine out, then acitalize(sp?) it up to diamorph*cough*

Thats the best poppy tea, IMO..:D

 

[sonic]

Opiates are very deceptively addicting. I did them for several years before becoming a daily user. I was able to use for 30-60 days at a time and then just stop and only experience a minor comedown. The problem was, I eventually developed a taste for the opiate high and it seemed no other drug could match it. So I inevitably became psychologically addicted to opiates well before I was physically addicted. Once I finally had a good source and could start using daily, I let myself become addicted. I'm sure everyone's story is different, but that's how it played out for me.
Yes, I do think their addictive potential is exaggerated, that's why doctors still prescribe opioids to people and they expect their patients not to get addicted. It certainly doesn't happen over night or over a week or even over a month. It took me like 3-4 years of recreational use before I was hooked.
Don't think you're immune. If you've been addicted to alcohol before, that shows you are prone to addiction.

 

[Johnny blue]

To me this idea makes much more sense than addiction as a catch all word for dependancy, compulsive use, regular recreational use, or just 'Liking' something a lot. Chocolate addicts, gambling addicts, sex addicts, etc are simply people with a compulsive use problem: identical to the compulsive use problem of stimulant and depressant users, and opioid 'chippers'.

Compulsive use is hardly "liking something a lot". It has been proven in the case of compulsive eaters that there is a release of dopamine while eating. Even to the point where they grow a bit of a tolerance and to acheive the same release, requires more food. Tell someone with a gambling or sex addiction that its just a compulsion as their wives leave em or they lose their house.

To be completely honest to me it doesn't make a difference what title it has. I do however feel that you may be trivializing these issues a bit. While they may not be as detrimental as a full blown heroin addiction these are real addictions and shouldn't be classified with the occasional user. Sorry to derail the thread but I felt I had to say something.

 

[Cane2theLeft]

So comical to hear a psychologist use that expression...

BTW, I enjoy your recent posts. I've been trying to find more information on Alexander's research so that I can respond more intelligently.

I'm far from a psychologist; I'm just a student who studied journalism and political science with a focus on international relations for 3 years who in the last year and a half transitioned to taking pharmacology courses and presently I'm taking the requisite courses for a certification in drug and alcohol counseling. It is a psychology/social work-based major but I am FAR from a psychologist.

Anyway, I was doing a little reading and found a pretty good article if you're interested. It is a secondary source (I don't recall where I found the primary text of his experiments) but a decent summation of the tests.

In recent years Alexander was heavily lobbying for changes in Canadian drug policy due to his findings and accordingly this particular article contextualizes his results and their applicability to drug policy and addiction treatment.

A bit of review:

Rats in Rat Park and control animals in standard laboratory cages had access to two water bottles, one filled with plain water and the other with morphine-laced water. The denizens of Rat Park overwhelmingly preferred plain water to morphine (the test produced statistical confidence levels of over 99.9 percent). Even when Alexander tried to seduce his rats by sweetening the morphine, the ones in Rat Park drank far less than the ones in cages. Only when he added naloxone, which eliminates morphine’s narcotic effects, did the rats in Rat Park start drinking from the water-sugar-morphine bottle. They wanted the sweet water, but not if it made them high

My last points:

In a variation he calls “Kicking the Habit,” Alexander gave rats in both environments nothing but morphine-laced water for fifty-seven days, until they were physically dependent on the drug. But as soon as they had a choice between plain water and morphine, the animals in Rat Park switched to plain water more often than the caged rats did, voluntarily putting themselves through the discomfort of withdrawal to do so.

Rat Park showed that a rat’s environment, not the availability of drugs, leads to dependence. In a normal setting, a narcotic is an impediment to what rats typically do: fight, play, forage, mate. But a caged rat can’t do those things. It’s no surprise that a distressed animal with access to narcotics would use them to seek relief.

This is a letter in response to the article from one of the researchers (not Bruce K. Alexander)

Morphine probably stimulates the nucleus accumbens no matter what mood people are in. However, other parts of the brain seem to channel the signals coming from the nucleus accumbens and they change the signal, modify it, or even block it, depending upon other concurrent brain activities. Frustratingly for brain researchers, human pleasure responses depend upon myriad circumstances that are difficult or impossible to control in the lab. Rat Park just changed one variable (social housing), and the whole morphine-brain-pleasure model fell apart.

-Rober B. Coambs

I sum up his findings like this- you give any person morphine, even repeatedly, even for a length of time (which is often the case treating cancer, chronic nonmalignant pain, etc.) its not only not necessarily going to "cause" addiction but its unlikely. It IS only likely to "result" in addiction when the person is in some form of distress... whatever form that may take. However this is such a complex issue that is affected by culture, religious belief, social network, finances, physical health, and a potentially endless list due to the variability of factors in any individuals lives.

This translates to a demonstration of the ineffectual nature of current drug policy that treats addiction like a disease caused largely or wholly by exposure to the drug and the conditioning from such. Another great psychologist (oh god! Another pseudo-scientist! *gasp*) Stanton J. Peele has written extensively about how alcohol and drug use is drastically different by culture further demonstrating that its the environment not the drug.

He has focused on European countries like Spain or France that have a higher per-capita consumption of alcohol than the US but less societal problems from its effects (i.e. drunk driving, alcohol being a factor in crimes like domestic violence, etc.). In those European countries children or teenagers are introduced and taught drinking habits with glass of wine at dinner with their family. This is how they are introduced to it and this is how their views on it are formed. In America alcohol is forbidden fruit until an arbitrary age is reached and for the majority, their introduction to it is in parties binge drinking until vomiting all over each other.

Europeans are introduced to alcohol at the family dinner table while with Americans its pseudo-hazing-style massive binge drinking on the weekends.

Then other countries have the availability of alcohol and barely drink.

Alexander and Peele just feel that addiction is less a disease of the brain than a product of the conditioning, condition and environment.
________________________________

Sorry for the long post, I wanted to get the thoughts out.

 

[garuda]

*cough* you can also boil it down, precipitate the morphine out, then acitalize(sp?) it up to diamorph*cough*

Thats the best poppy tea, IMO..:D

Yea and at the end you have spent hours and $70USD worth of pods and chemicals to produce 20mg of heroin, and thats IF you can acquire acetic anhydride which is a watched chemical. Not to mention all the glassware and other equipment you will need.

Seriously we have gone over this so many times here, extracting morphine from pods is flat out impractical, period. If you want an injectable product just buy it, if you want a low dose oral product buy pods.

 

[AnonAbuser]

I drink occasionally, but i have been into a couple bad binges, basically when i turned 21, i drank 15-20 beers/shots a night for over a month, a couple different times. And never have I felt withdrawals, and never have i felt the need to drink at work. And currently the last time I had a drink was in february. So I really dont see how alcohol is addicting at all, even when you drink large amounts for long times, because I have done this and it did not start feeling addicting at all. So why do people even consider themselves "alcoholics" when alcoholism isn't real, its more like people who get up in the morning and start drinking and are in a drunk stupor all day and can't function.

 

[Nibiru]

^this is not true. some of the worst alcoholics I've seen ever were not always in a stupor, completely drunk, but relatively tolerant to it and just constantly drinking. Often, if they had enough money, they would wind up really fucked up by the end of the day, but they would always need to drink something in order to keep from feeling shitty.

Some people will develop a physiological dependence on alcohol, and some people won't, but from what i have seen, it takes quite a while in most cases for this dependence to build up. But believe me, it happens, and when it happens, it is definitely as real an addiction as any other. Some people are more prone to it, and some people practically not at all, but it doesn't mean it won't happen. It's just a fairly sneaking addiction that has to come from years of drinking in a lot of cases, not just months.

 

[Tchort]

Compulsive use is hardly "liking something a lot". It has been proven in the case of compulsive eaters that there is a release of dopamine while eating. Even to the point where they grow a bit of a tolerance and to acheive the same release, requires more food. Tell someone with a gambling or sex addiction that its just a compulsion as their wives leave em or they lose their house.

To be completely honest to me it doesn't make a difference what title it has. I do however feel that you may be trivializing these issues a bit. While they may not be as detrimental as a full blown heroin addiction these are real addictions and shouldn't be classified with the occasional user. Sorry to derail the thread but I felt I had to say something.

I was describing the ways people in general use the word 'addict'- in general American lingo, it is perfectly acceptable to use the phrase "oh I'm addicted to this cheesecake".

Compulsive behavioral issues are very serious problems with dreadful consequences. I didn't mean to imply they are any less serious than opioid/nicotine addiction, just that they are different, and deserve recognition as such, just as opioid/nicotine addiction does. For a long time (and up to the present day) all compulsive drug users and addicts are treated the same: locked down in a psyche ward or rehab facility and given Clonidine/Valium/Ibuprofen. Alcohol, Meth, Heroin, the health care system mostly doesn't care unless you have outrageously good insurance. '

My point is that grouping all of these problems together under the catch all word 'addiction' is detrimental in a variety of ways to all of those involved, the people with the problem or perceived problem, their loved ones, etc.

Compulsive gambling, sex and upper/downer use is in many cases more harmful to the mind, body, wellbeing and life of the person and those around them when compared to opioids. They all deserve proper research and individualized treatment.