What Vietnam Taught Us About Breaking Bad Habits

THC2LSD said:
It probably was very easy, but Mexico wasn't as big a source as Turkey or southeast Asia, also Nixon demanded Mexico spray the poppy fields with paraquat.A white 19 year old kid from bumfuck, middle of nowhere america fresh back from Vietnam would have a hard time approching some hardcore gangsters to cop some wholesale pure heroin.Nearly all addicts were in New York, some were in Los Angeles, the rest of the country heroin was hard to find or very unpopular.Even in New York the heroin was expensive and low-purity.Also the strongest pain pills were codeine or darvon, maybe percodan or demerol once in a while.Prescribing any pain pill was controversal because it was though to end life a few hours quicker in the terminally ill people who were the only one who got anything.

From what I've heard, pot/hash, amphetamines, ludes/barbs, PCP, and LSD were the most popular drugs back then. None did heroin except in a few large cities and coke was for the super rich. I could be wrong.
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im not sure where you guys get your info but im almost positive heroin has NEVER been entirely secluded to Los Angeles and New York. why would someone transport dope from wherever to LA and leave out all of the other major western cities (Las Vegas, Phoenix, San Francisco etc.) and why would a GREAT business minded man like Frank Lucas not want to transport his product into other cities for a wider market for his product? i wasnt alive so i cant speak from experience but i think it would be absolutely absurd to assume heroin was restricted to two major US cities. i have talked to numerous addicts who were actively using in the vietnam era and remained in memphis. thats not to say that it was as available as it is today throughout the US i just dont agree with the assumption that heroin was a very mysterious and rare drug. i think it was just as available then as it is now.


and as far as the purity argument goes...im not sure if you're a heroin addict or know one but this has nothing to do with anyone quitting...if you have a serious addiction you wont pick up 2-3 bags of 3% heroin and just say "you know what this dope is nowhere near as pure as it was in vietname I QUIT" no no no no no an addict with a serious problem would just cop 10 bags and do one shot...or however many it takes to satisfy him and getting 98% pure heroin would most certainly turn ANY man into one strung out and in need of any kind of fix junky.
 
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Those who were addicted were kept in Vietnam until they dried out. When these soldiers finally did return to their lives back in the U.S., Robins tracked them, collecting data at regular intervals. And this is where the story takes a curious turn: According to her research, the number of soldiers who continued their heroin addiction once they returned to the U.S. was shockingly low.

"I believe the number of people who actually relapsed to heroin use in the first year was about 5 percent," Jaffe said recently from his suburban Maryland home. In other words, 95 percent of the people who were addicted in Vietnam did not become re-addicted when they returned to the United States.

This flew in the face of everything everyone knew both about heroin and drug addiction generally. When addicts were treated in the U.S. and returned to their homes, relapse rates hovered around 90 percent. It didn't make sense.
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I must have misinterpreted that part about 90% addicts relapsed. I thought they compared typical addicts in the US to US military heroin users in Vietnam. Now that you mention it you're probably right. Do you know where I could view the full study for free?
MemphisX3 said:
im not sure where you guys get your info but im almost positive heroin has NEVER been entirely secluded to Los Angeles and New York. why would someone transport dope from wherever to LA and leave out all of the other major western cities (Las Vegas, Phoenix, San Francisco etc.) and why would a GREAT business minded man like Frank Lucas not want to transport his product into other cities for a wider market for his product? i wasnt alive so i cant speak from experience but i think it would be absolutely absurd to assume heroin was restricted to two major US cities. i have talked to numerous addicts who were actively using in the vietnam era and remained in memphis. thats not to say that it was as available as it is today throughout the US i just dont agree with the assumption that heroin was a very mysterious and rare drug. i think it was just as available then as it is now.
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I didn't mean that heroin was exclusively in LA or NY, just those were hot spots for heroin addiction, you could probably find it in a lot of major urban areas, but I think it was kind of like PCP is today, something you'd find in the inner city. I've asked people alive back then, some drug users but not opiates, and they didn't seem to think it was that common, though maybe it was only true for here in Arizona, I wouldn't be suprised if it was around in Memphis. Also Frank lucas is a snitch who probably can't be trusted.
and as far as the purity argument goes...im not sure if you're a heroin addict or know one but this has nothing to do with anyone quitting...if you have a serious addiction you wont pick up 2-3 bags of 3% heroin and just say "you know what this dope is nowhere near as pure as it was in vietname I QUIT" no no no no no an addict with a serious problem would just cop 10 bags and do one shot...or however many it takes to satisfy him and getting 98% pure heroin would most certainly turn ANY man into one strung out and in need of any kind of fix junky
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I know, an addict with 3% heroin will just do more of it. I am amazed at the garbage addicts will take just cause it does SOMETHING, coke so impure you get nothing back freebasing it, meth that's more MSM and pseudoephedrine than anything, tar thats mostly shoe polish, addicts will put up with this shit. The reason I brought up purity was on another forum someone said most smoked it in cigarettes in Vietnam, these weren't mainliners I don't think. If you smoked a half gram of #4 or #3 heroin in a cigarette it would still fuck you up even though most is burned up. If you smoked a half gram of 3% heroin you might get a little lightheaded but not much.
 
Frank Lucas was a joke compared to Nicky Barnes.

Either way; the study points to things we take for granted today. If you go into treatment, or rehab, and return to the same environment and same people you will likely continue to relapse and use all over again. The failure rates of inpatient rehabs for treating heroin addiction are notoriously terrible. The article seems to ignore the role of the infant Methadone program in the treatment of returning soldiers from Vietnam, which by the end of the war and its winding down phase (early to mid 1970's) estimates are that up to 30% of soldiers in Vietnam were actively using heroin with an even higher number having tried it or use it on an irregular basis. Methadone clinics to this day are often attached to VA hospitals in major cities. The heroin use of drafted soldiers in Vietnam is probably what saved American opioid replacement therapy and maintanence treatment from being eliminated like their earlier 1920's Morphine and Heroin maintanence clinics.
 
^I blame most of this on the WASPs and old school Catholics.
I'm not even going to acknowledge Muslims, because of their lack of influence (especially in the past) on the subject at hand, in US history.
 
THC2LSD said:
The reason I brought up purity was on another forum someone said most smoked it in cigarettes in Vietnam, these weren't mainliners I don't think. If you smoked a half gram of #4 or #3 heroin in a cigarette it would still fuck you up even though most is burned up. If you smoked a half gram of 3% heroin you might get a little lightheaded but not much.
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i dont know how puting tar in a cig would work but that brings up another thing. if they were smoking 98% pure in vietnam and didnt get treated odds are they came back to the US and began IVing the weak shit.
 
MemphisX3 said:
i think the article is saying vets PICKED UP the heroin habit in vietnam, not the US, so this is kinda void.
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Actually, that is what I was saying.
Those who picked up the habit in Vietnam and never bought in the US might not know any dealers in the US.
Those who still had the habit when the returned to the US were forced to/able to find dealers in the US, which made it harder to quit.
You seem to be disagreeing with me, but I had trouble figuring out what you were disagreeing with.
 
Tchort said:
Frank Lucas was a joke compared to Nicky Barnes.
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I think Nicky Barnes is a bigger bitch than Frank Lucas. Barnes ratted out his homies cause one of them was fucking his bitch. That was a straight bitch move, ratting out everyone over a bitch. He can't even show his face or be in public, cause he's a rat bastard.Plus he was basically the mafia's uncle tom, the Italians had the blacks sell dope for them because they were too pussy to run the corners themselves. Lucas at least claims he only snichted on pigs, though others claim he mostly snitch on other dealers. What hypocrites, they had people killed for snitching, yet when shit went down they started dropping dimes on everyone.
MemphisX3 said:
i dont know how puting tar in a cig would work but that brings up another thing. if they were smoking 98% pure in vietnam and didnt get treated odds are they came back to the US and began IVing the weak shit.
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It wasn't tar, it was pure heroin or #3 heroin with caffeine or barbital. What happen was the commanders started wising up to the smell of weed, so the troops started smoking heroin in cigarettes or tobacco pipes. It wastes 90% of the heroin, but 10% is still absorbed. Getting rigs or using foil was too high profile, but you could smoke "ack ack" right in front of an MP and they'd be none the wiser. It was called ack ack by Chinese addicts because the sizzling noise when they tried to smoke it as quick as possible reminded them of anti-aircraft gun, ack ack gun, it's an onomatopoeia.

Also I think most heroin addicts didn't IV back then, they skinpopped their shit with a rig made out of an eyedropper. IV was considered hardcore and dangerous. And I wasn't joking when I said the scene was mostly in New York, there was like 500,000 addicts and 200,000 of them were in New York!Though some at the time speculated that there may have been a much larger population of casual users.

I wonder how anyone got high off the shit back then? The average user today would need a fucking ladle and turkey baster rig to get anything resembling a high from 3% heroin. Maybe they got high off the cut, the heroin was just there to get and keep them hooked.
 
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I don't know man, it took me a lot of maneuvering, but near the end of my last run I mostly gave up shooting and was getting coma nods off less than 2 grams a day. Source obviously matters.

This is why I prefer tar actually. It's easy to tell from site alone when tar is "scramble".
 
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