If opiates were mass produced, cheap and readily available like alcohol and cigs then I'd probably take them daily to help with anxiety and depression. But I've never taken them daily for more than around 2 weeks and only first tried them around a year ago so I don't have much experience with them. The 'after a while you just use to feel normal', is this because you build a tolerance and the cost is too high to get enough to get high and feel great?
Are opiates like weed, even if you take it daily for years you can still get high but just have to keep taking more cause you're tolerance is increasing? Or are they like cigs, you get a buzz in the beginning but after a while you smoke a lot and barely feel anything? I've seen some episodes of intervention where people claim to have been using strong opiates for a long time and they still look really happy when they're on them.
In this documentary I saw from the history channel they talk about the period before ww1 when opiates were legal, and they said something like, "the scary part was you didn't know who was an addicted, it could be a respected lawyer, trusted teacher, doctor etc. Why is that thought so scary? maybe some of those people wouldn't have succesful careers and be well respected without the opiates. So I think it is possible to live a respectable life and have a good career and be using opiates daily. But if it is illegal and you have to deal with a black market where the cost is high I think it would be pretty much impossible unless you're rich.
They also talked about about young men who fought in the civil war who became addicted to morphine and stayed life long morphine addicts. I wonder how that affected their health and life expectancy compared to other people from that time who never used opiates. Not having to deal with black markets, and having it so easily available and cheap, did the addiction wear those people down and possibly ruin their life like it does to people now when it's illegal and has such a high cost?
If you started taking opiates at 18, and continued using until you die, let's say when you're 75, almost 6 decades, will they always work as long as you increase the amount you take to compensate for increased tolerance? How bad will the side effects be on your health over such a long amount of time?
I think about these things ever since i started taking oxycodone pretty frequently around 4 months ago. During the around 3 months before I stopped my parents were saying you're improving so much, keep it up, this is how you should be all the time. And I looked so much better, except when I got jaundice but can't really blame the opiates for that. They say opiates reduce your apetite, but I found the oxycodone made me slightly more hungry and eat healthier, tastier meals throughout the day. For some reason it made me appreciate my food and enjoy it more, Before I'd just be barely eating throughout the day, maybe something in the afternoon or evening but it wasn't that healthy.
I also have bad social anxiety, it's to the point where people think I'm crazy or up to no good or on drugs or basically something negative about me because of it. Sometimes people say stuff like, "drugs, yeah must be drugs, he's got drugs on him", and I'm totally sober. Opiates totally cover up that social anxiety and make me normal, well I'd say better than normal, feeling awesome! Yeah, it's funny how the only time people think I'm normal or not on drugs is when I'm on drugs. This is the main reason I keep thinking about if there'll ever be a period in my lifetime when opiates will be cheap and legal like before ww1.