Physical Changes are certainly taking place in the brain and whether you wish to call them
harm or not they are certainly detrimental to your ability to deal with life. You are hijacking your brains reward center with an extremely euphoric substance thus dampening all other life experiences. Your statement down plays the physiological and psychological changes to the brain that take place even with periodic use. Assuming such a premise of not getting addicted doesn't even take into account the way the brains reward pathways work.
If you enjoy heroin then you are programed to repeat the process over again and most likely will. Now whether it takes you fast or slow is dependent on a number of factors.
A Case in point. I recently had a friend who used heroin with us for 15yrs without ever getting addicted. He could take it or leave it but over time his usage slowly increased and his ability to feel pleasure from and deal with life decreased. Eventually he was confronted with a tough period in life... money and marriage problems.
He had trained his mind slowly over time to associate heroin with pleasure. As his mindset darkened partly due to the self perpetuating nature of addiction.. i.e.. Problem-escape-euphoria-depleted pleasure center-depression exacerbated by the problem that one first sought to escape and a cascading effect of problems- followed by an increased desire to replace the problem and the low with the euphoria once again.
He eventually began to rely on heroin more and more. He had slowly over time rewired the pleasure center of his mind. He was hooked after over 15yrs of successful periodic use. Last time I saw him he was not doing too well. He had always felt above it and had made fun of our addictive tendencies but it caught up with him.
It is simply how our brains and instincts were wired to help us survive by increasing our desire for sex, food or any other pleasurable activities deemed necessary for survival. Science even proves that this powerful process even circumvents and negates your frontal lobes ability to reason that the activity is not actually necessary. Now we can argue over whether these physical changes in the brain are damage or not and at what point they actually occur all day but on to your next statement.
ps: being addicted on it's own is not harmful, that's why Methadone can be prescribed a lifetime, though it in fact is physiologically more addictive than Heroin - Methadone also does not cause any harm to both body and mind. (Opioids in general are a unique group of harmless substances: cf. notice the distinction between Opioids and Opiates, between semi-synthetic and fully synthetic - fully synthetic Opiates are (can be) harmful. Examples: Heroin and Methadone are semi-synthetic, Fentanyl or U-4 (Pinky) f.e. are fully synthetic, also Oxycodone is an harmful Opiate because it can cause major internal bleeds, more specific stomach-bleeds, and this while being a Morphine-mimetic, yet Morphine is semi-synthetic and not in any way harmful)
They have been saying this garbage on bluelight since 2000. As a 20yr heroin/methadone addict. I can say that this is BS. I have chronically low T, other HPA-axis and adrenal fatigue problems, Thyroid problems, depression, anxiety and cannot sleep more than 3hrs at a time.
I can assure you that methadone and other narcotics mess up your teeth by drawing out calcium(even cases of opiod osteoporosis), absorption problems and by causing chronic dry mouth.
Heroin and methadone also greatly decrease REM sleep, which causes a whole host of psychological, cognitive and memory formation issues that aren't yet fully understood.
You may call the rewiring of your pleasure center as harmless but I would rather not suffer extreme long term anhedonia...
I always love when people try and divorce psychological from physiological when our psyches and perceptions are so intertwined with biological processes.
Note at this time the brain and endocrine systems interactions aren't even fully understood.
Also the long term GI tract issues associated with opiate use greatly affect the bodies ability to digest and absorb nutrients.
You can say there is no physical damage being done all you want but you are quite simply wrong. Long term changes(damages) to the brain and body do take place and can take years if ever to repair themselves.
All of these systemic changes only increased my desire to artificially stimulate my pleasure pathways with an exogenous source(heroin) because it was a failing infected system.
There are no free rides.. Your body is a temple and you cannot even pretend to understand all the symbiotic relationships between your bodies various systems and mind but you can continue to keep playing the heroin game and delude yourself all you want.
I am only saying this so passionately because I was once a naïve 19yr old scrolling bluelight, who did not truly understand how addiction worked(physiological changes) and believed after hearing such statements that I was above it all and could successfully use without consequences.
P.S also I believe you meant to say that diamorphine is semi-synthetic because morphine, as you incorrectly stated, is in fact a naturally occurring opiate.
