Why Do We Treat Heroin Addicts Like They Deserve to Die?

yeah very good article basically sums up why some humans are such pieces of shit to others. What's there to do about this though when it is intentionally set up this way by others? The drug trade, Law enforcement, big pharma, prison industry, government all have a hand in the same setup (The drug war), along with greed and capitalism, these people have tremendous power, global influence and i imagine will not be easily swayed by appeals to humanity. I'm sure some people in earnest believe in the drug war but i bet the large majority know why we keep this charade up. If those people in power have to identify with heroin addicts as human beings equal to themselves then there's no way they could keep this drug war up, of course they don't give a fuck in the first place which is the real problem IMO.

it's not going to be like Germany's destruction, this drug war can play out forever unless enough actual people put a stop to it as in some sort of revolution.

 

because of fucking ignorance. the end.
i mean i knew people who just ever had only a bullshit desire to quit and were obvs not serious, but they don't deserve to die.
one of these guys is on my facebook and i just dread the fucking day it's all RIP on his timeline. he really had some great attributes but the lifestyle had prevailed, it was written in his actions and words.

 

because of fucking ignorance, bigotry, commercialism and white supremacism/racism. the end.
i mean i knew people who just ever had only a bullshit desire to quit and were obvs not serious, but they don't deserve to die.
one of these guys is on my facebook and i just dread the fucking day it's all RIP on his timeline. he really had some great attributes but the lifestyle had prevailed, it was written in his actions and words.

Fix I can't argue with you about ODs being a major risk when it comes to dope, however, again, the cost of ODing is related to our current drug policy, inalienability of needles, healthcare and opioid antagonists (e.g. naloxone) as well as IDUs being the most stigmatized and marginalized thanks to our drug policy and culture of any population in the US...

If IDU were not looked down on as scum of the earth, considered as good as dead or worth as much as a zombie, I can guarentee many an OD would be avoided (as well as issues related to IDU).

That all said, a lot if not most people who use dope are not IDUs - they sniff or smoke (or plug). These are much safer ROA and a lot less prone to leading to an OD. Anyways, I'm drifting off here...

 

If heroin were legal, cheap, pure, and given a fair try at social acceptability, would most people habituated to it continue to lead perfectly normal lives, fulfilling all their work, family, and social obligations, except having to duck into a private room a few times every day to give themselves a shot, just like Type I diabetics? No doubt some could. But is the nature of this drug and its long-term effects on human neuropsychology such that most regular users would blend seamlessly and cause non-users no affront or inconvenience directly attributable to the effect of the drug? My doubts on this stem from seeing people like Trey Anastasio.

I'll end this by saying that although I'm biased, I truly do want to be as informed as possible. As I hope to never try heroin, and haven't kept touch with most people I've known who have, my experience will necessarily be limited, and I'm willing to admit I might be entirely misguided. I'm willing to entertain the notion that the problems heroin causes people are entirely a result of, rather than a justification for, its demonization by society, as is the case for marijuana. But based on my limited experiences as I enumerated in another post, I suspect it's not quite that simple.

I am on maintenance Suboxone and have been for coming up on 6 years. I blend in with society fine and have a job that suits me great and I enjoy it (hourly rate, yes, not salaried, or even high-paying). For me, Suboxone is truly a miracle drug because it doesn't carry with it the strong desire to take more in order to be more euphoric. This would be a problem for work, because there'd always be those who are trying to catch a fix, and then some. Now, I must admit my personal experience and knowledge on this is quite limited because I was never truly addicted to Heroin or Oxycodone solely. I always (very soon after I started) had Suboxone on the streets to hold me as I dipped between uses of full-agonists. I became, thus, addicted to Suboxone instead. I never want to get off the stuff and just want to share that I am interacting and doing just fine - and am for the most part happy participating and working in society.

I will say I was experiencing social isolation, depression, apathy, and anxiety before I tried a full-agonist opiate and got into Oxycodone and Heroin. The mental illness came first. I would say right now I am still suffering from "dysthymia" - have been diagnosed as this in the past, right now in my Suboxone Maintanence Program I'm diagnosed as 'Depression, and anxiety'. Suboxone helps me out incredibly with my dysthymia too, so I feel like I'm made for the drug.

I don't get people who would risk everything and life to pursue heroin beyond an ample Suboxone maintanence program and plan, and that's why for me it's been a wonder drug. It holds me and buoys me and hoists me up. I often feel euphoric on it, even though I feel my low-level of depression almost constantly.

I think treating it as a health issue and not a public safety issue is paramount too. I am speaking of opiate-addiction in general though, not Heroin specifically.

My friend from a while back who I started using full-agonist opiates with is now on Methadone and I figure, what ever works for him. I know Suboxone rarely held him and I scratched my head because he'd always be out chasing the Heroin high much more frequently than me even though I was chipping. I am currently trying to stay off it altogether, and have stayed off all other drugs for 2 months now, I celebrate.

I believe in harm reduction tactics like wide availability of clean equipment for injection, education, etc.

Whether taking Heroin specifically causes the brain to desist taking any joy in other parts of life, and instead caring only for heroin is interesting. I still have ambitions in life, like to travel and finish my degree eventually, but I also recognize the fact that I think of Heroin as the best thing in the world too, and am a bit "jaded" because of it.

I think MyDoorsAreOpen needs to calm down a little though.

 

Thank you for your response Toothpastedog.
I too agree it doesn't entirely change the person, and from what I've experienced personally, it does have the ability to change one for the better and for the worse.
And though many of my friends do things I find overly dishonest, I've known plenty of people not addicted who do the same things. Rather I think it's a character trait already within the individual the drug simply makes more easy for one to utilize.
I've also noticed a sort of uniform characteristic amongst my friends, though we all have vastly different interests (aside from our drug of choice) it seems we constantly live on the fringe edge of society, rarely holding anything those typical to society uphold with any merit. Most of us have come from difficult pasts and have all uniformly seemed to have turned to the "fuck life" page during our usage.
It took a great deal of time, but eventually I switched to that page as well. It was as if all my best efforts contentiously got shot down, that coupled with around 5+ years prior psychosis, a large deal of self isolation due to said psychosis and paranoia, and I was apt to just give up, and hope the stuff would send me to a blissful early grave a few years down the line.

At this rate, though I again have hope for a future, and believe I now have a proper path to follow, Heroin really is always on my mind. Though I don't have the cravings due to the Methadone, there is nothing that even remotely seems to compare to my experience on Heroin. As I stated it's basically as if I fell from heaven to earth, or paradise to purgatory. Even that which would have given me tremendous joy slightly over a year ago brings me little if any satisfaction, and though I've only been clean a few days (which really has been the longest time off dope (aside from in rehab) in quite a great length of time) I do worry that what MyDoorsAreOpened mentioned about many Heroin addicts never finding anything enjoyable as they once did, and simply long for Heroin the rest of their lives as being what the future holds for me.
I am trying to look at it from different perspectives, and compare my desire for it to things similar in the past, and recall how I eventually managed to get past them. It's still obviously a worry.

Anyway, good talking with you folks.

 

so much of US policy is based on supposedly Christian ideals

yet they all seem to forget about Christ's big ideas -- love, acceptance, forgiveness... the guy hung out with prostitutes and thieves, he hugged lepers...

fucking sigh

 

In God We Trust my ass.

 

A few months ago, after leaving the office of one such quack, I was so enraged by the false allegations set against me by him (after asking why he didn't wanna prescribe me a certain medication) that I waited... and waited... until I saw him leave his office. I followed him home (luckily, he wasn't from out of town, as so many doctors tend to be), and waited for him to park and go inside. I shit you not - I witnessed the piece of shit smoking a bowl while watching CNN. I even snapped a photo. Anyways, the next appointment, I kept on asking why does the office smell like weed. The look on his face was priceless, and his body language changed dramatically. I'm pondering a subtle, but effective way of letting him know that I know he tokes, that I'm tired of putting up with his two-faced ego, and that if he doesn't stop treating me like a second rate citizen, one morning he will find his picture printed, framed and nailed to his office door.

I think showing him a picture taken at his home may have unintended consequences.

 

I am on maintenance Suboxone and have been for coming up on 6 years. I blend in with society fine and have a job that suits me great and I enjoy it (hourly rate, yes, not salaried, or even high-paying). For me, Suboxone is truly a miracle drug because it doesn't carry with it the strong desire to take more in order to be more euphoric. This would be a problem for work, because there'd always be those who are trying to catch a fix, and then some. Now, I must admit my personal experience and knowledge on this is quite limited because I was never truly addicted to Heroin or Oxycodone solely. I always (very soon after I started) had Suboxone on the streets to hold me as I dipped between uses of full-agonists. I became, thus, addicted to Suboxone instead. I never want to get off the stuff and just want to share that I am interacting and doing just fine - and am for the most part happy participating and working in society.

I will say I was experiencing social isolation, depression, apathy, and anxiety before I tried a full-agonist opiate and got into Oxycodone and Heroin. The mental illness came first. I would say right now I am still suffering from "dysthymia" - have been diagnosed as this in the past, right now in my Suboxone Maintanence Program I'm diagnosed as 'Depression, and anxiety'. Suboxone helps me out incredibly with my dysthymia too, so I feel like I'm made for the drug.

I don't get people who would risk everything and life to pursue heroin beyond an ample Suboxone maintanence program and plan, and that's why for me it's been a wonder drug. It holds me and buoys me and hoists me up. I often feel euphoric on it, even though I feel my low-level of depression almost constantly.

I think treating it as a health issue and not a public safety issue is paramount too. I am speaking of opiate-addiction in general though, not Heroin specifically.

My friend from a while back who I started using full-agonist opiates with is now on Methadone and I figure, what ever works for him. I know Suboxone rarely held him and I scratched my head because he'd always be out chasing the Heroin high much more frequently than me even though I was chipping. I am currently trying to stay off it altogether, and have stayed off all other drugs for 2 months now, I celebrate.

I believe in harm reduction tactics like wide availability of clean equipment for injection, education, etc.

Whether taking Heroin specifically causes the brain to desist taking any joy in other parts of life, and instead caring only for heroin is interesting. I still have ambitions in life, like to travel and finish my degree eventually, but I also recognize the fact that I think of Heroin as the best thing in the world too, and am a bit "jaded" because of it.

I think MyDoorsAreOpen needs to calm down a little though.

A quick question - How much bupe have you been on for all these years? If you're suffering from that dysphoria syndrome, I can attest that lower doses of bupe (1-2mg once or twice a day) provides much more of the agonist effect bupe can produce at low doses. Anyways I'd waaay prefer 1-2mg than anything more than that (especially insulfated, especially when in the form of a crushed up generic subutex pill ).

I agree with you about how bupe has increased our/my/your QOL, tremendously in my case and it sounds like your own too. I just want to mention that, in my case, I'm not too sure about staying on it my whole life, let alone more than a couple years. What if something happen or changes? Too many unknown possible future issues makes me want to taper to the point where I won't be taking it every day, eventually won't have to take it at all or risk going into bupe w/d. Granted this will take a while, but it's been happening since I began the treatment.

I'd be concerned that the longer I'm on bupe, not only the harder it will be to get off or experience other opioids, but the more I'm screwing with my opioid receptors. Then again, if one can't experience joy/pleasure like a "normal" person (and I absolutely relate to you here), it's kinda the lesser of the two evils deal... I'm not sure I totally buy into it, but there is something to be said for the argument that goes something like, those who are on potent opioids long term become less and less, if not outright incapable, of experiencing the joy/pleasure, even with their DOC, opioids (or whatever else) once brought them. Scary stuff...

Anyways, I liked your post! Absolutely 100% spot on right about the public health mention.

Thank you for your response Toothpastedog.
I too agree it doesn't entirely change the person, and from what I've experienced personally, it does have the ability to change one for the better and for the worse.
And though many of my friends do things I find overly dishonest, I've known plenty of people not addicted who do the same things. Rather I think it's a character trait already within the individual the drug simply makes more easy for one to utilize.
I've also noticed a sort of uniform characteristic amongst my friends, though we all have vastly different interests (aside from our drug of choice) it seems we constantly live on the fringe edge of society, rarely holding anything those typical to society uphold with any merit. Most of us have come from difficult pasts and have all uniformly seemed to have turned to the "fuck life" page during our usage.
It took a great deal of time, but eventually I switched to that page as well. It was as if all my best efforts contentiously got shot down, that coupled with around 5+ years prior psychosis, a large deal of self isolation due to said psychosis and paranoia, and I was apt to just give up, and hope the stuff would send me to a blissful early grave a few years down the line.

At this rate, though I again have hope for a future, and believe I now have a proper path to follow, Heroin really is always on my mind. Though I don't have the cravings due to the Methadone, there is nothing that even remotely seems to compare to my experience on Heroin. As I stated it's basically as if I fell from heaven to earth, or paradise to purgatory. Even that which would have given me tremendous joy slightly over a year ago brings me little if any satisfaction, and though I've only been clean a few days (which really has been the longest time off dope (aside from in rehab) in quite a great length of time) I do worry that what MyDoorsAreOpened mentioned about many Heroin addicts never finding anything enjoyable as they once did, and simply long for Heroin the rest of their lives as being what the future holds for me.
I am trying to look at it from different perspectives, and compare my desire for it to things similar in the past, and recall how I eventually managed to get past them. It's still obviously a worry.

Anyway, good talking with you folks.

VERY well said! Absolutely right, that you point out that A) a lot of people do junkie-esque things without or prior to using junk. Having worked with heroin/X-agonist opioid users/addicts from every walk of life, I can also verify that, more often than not, although there are always the exceptions, B) the rule certainly seems to be that an addiction will bring out issues already there (e.g. an individual predisposed towards stealing/etc will do it more so with heroin as a catalyst).


Anyways, at the end of the day, it's not just how people act who use the drugs, the damage they do to themselves and their communities. It's just as much, if not more important, how others in their communities act in response to them. Treat them like criminals will turn them into criminals all the more so than treating them like individuals who need help for whatever reason.

Heroin/X-Drug isn't the problem, the problem lies within the individual. That's actually the basis of the disease model of addiction not I think about it, even though I'm not the biggest fan of it...

 

Having come clean recently, I'd have to say that opiates are a bad idea. At least for me and my personality traits. I was already a recovering alcoholic before I got out. Hydro. Maybe there are people in the world that can self mediate without turning into hopeless cases.

I also wonder what the long term impact of heroin use is. I know for hydro it's gonna funk up the liver because of the Tylenol in it. And I can't see tearing a hole in my arm a few times a day as a healthy thing.

Aside from the addition aspects, what other long term medical risks outside of the mental risks are there? I know the mental is bad enough, but more information on the subject is always better than less.

 

Aside from the addition aspects, what other long term medical risks outside of the mental risks are there? I know the mental is bad enough, but more information on the subject is always better than less.

I'm not sure there are any. I also don't know that chronic Tylenol use is bad for the liver at reasonable doses. Tylenol is only toxic at very high doses.

 

Having come clean recently, I'd have to say that opiates are a bad idea. At least for me and my personality traits. I was already a recovering alcoholic before I got out. Hydro. Maybe there are people in the world that can self mediate without turning into hopeless cases.

I also wonder what the long term impact of heroin use is. I know for hydro it's gonna funk up the liver because of the Tylenol in it. And I can't see tearing a hole in my arm a few times a day as a healthy thing.

Aside from the addition aspects, what other long term medical risks outside of the mental risks are there? I know the mental is bad enough, but more information on the subject is always better than less.

Pardon my condescending frankness, but...

Right, people who have already had experience with dependency or addiction or whatever, opioids outside of a medical enviroment are obviously a bad idea...

Actually opioids generally speaking are some of the most forgiving drugs, in terms of what they do to your body. Heroin certainly is, as is codeine, morphine, etc. etc. It's not what they do to you pharmacologically speaking that's nasty, but the habit and addiction.

I would imagine that long term high dose daily use (decades) would create problems in terms of one's neuochemistry, but that's really the only danger outside of addiction. HIV, HepC, BBVs aren't due to someone using heroin or even needles - it's a result of needles not being available practically speaking as well as the wall of silence, that up until recently, has made learning about safe technique hard to come by, forcing users to act according to street legend. These diseases are more so thanks to the demonization of the dope fiend, not the dope or the needle or the fiend...

In terms of Hydrocodone, it doesn't damage the body (short of overdose I guess), just like other opioids. What you're saying is dangerous about it is thanks to the APAP, not the opioid.

Opioids do not cause liver damage. APAP/ethanol/etc can and do, but not so much opioids. They only fuck with your head

To reiterate, with the risks of addiction/mental issues aside, the vast majority of opioids are some of the safest drugs out there. Does that make them safe? No. Just because they don't do the damage ethanol or methamp can do in terms of neurotoxicity doesn't mean users are not playing with fire...

Much, much more forgiving than alcohol for instance (although thanks to prohibition non-pharm grade opioids are often cut with sometimes dangerous stuff, but again that has nothing to do with the opioid itself).

I think in sociological or philosophical terms or something, the health risks assosiated with heroin and other common opioids, with over dosing and allergic reactions aside, largely if not wholly environmental.

That's the point of the article in the opening post of this thread: Our enviroment wants us, whether it's intentional or not, dead.

 

I'm not sure there are any. I also don't know that chronic Tylenol use is bad for the liver at reasonable doses. Tylenol is only toxic at very high doses.

I disagree. I think that tylenol needs to be treated with the utmost caution. APAP is dangerous in overdose, but also through chronic usage. Speaking of 'very high' doses, toxic levels can be reached by taking 10 grams in one setting, or less but regularly. These kind of dosages aren't hard to achieve when there can be 500mg of APAP per pill.

According to the Medical Journal of Australia's 'Guidelines for the management of paracetamol poisoning in Australia and New Zealand', a dose of paracetamol that 'may be associated with hepatic injury' includes 200mg/kg or 10 grams (whichever is less) over a period of less then 8 hours, or if used chronically, as low as 100mg/kg or 4 grams a day (whichever is less) in patients with risk factors such as heavy alcohol use, dehydration, fasting or co-ingestion of enzyme inducing substances.

From our codeine extraction thread in AusDD, which also includes links to several journal articles concerning this.

 

I've taken large doses of APAP a couple times, between 1-4g, and once an acquaintance took 9.500g (19 5/500 vicodins over the course of a night without tolerance - and frankly I am pretty sure I've taken over 10g in a day, although again I was lucky to avoid any complications... extremely lucky) and we've both survived despite doing something incredibly stupid - incredibly stupid by which I mean risking our lives. Directly after our liver function was probably really high. I'm sure, we were both incredibly lucky. If either of us had been drinking heavily or had any early stage of liver problems I doubt either of us would have emerged unscathed. In either case, what we did was incredibly dangerous. I avoid APAP as much as I can these days (which is pretty much near totally).

I've seen a number of APAP OD cases where an individual consumed much less than 10g as well as, in chronic users, individuals taking less than the supposedly safe 4g/day max. It's a tricky substance and best avoided as much as possible. And in any case, I find 400-800mg of IBU or 220-440mg naproxen to work much better than APAP anyways...

Problems with APAP are magnified exponentially when the individual at hand has any kind of liver or other internal organ problems, a compromised immune system, hep c, etc. etc. If you can't avoid the APAP, try CWE. Short of that, as it's never worked well for me with anything but codeine, just make sure you know what the signs of an OD are and what to do in an emergency... Or better yet talk to your doctor and find an alternative! They do exist ya know (and 800mg IBU has been clinically proven to provide more analgesic relief than a 5/500 Vicodin).

What we need at this point in the thread is some references to stories, such as in the media, reporting APAP overdoses (they're hardly difficult to find...).

In a way, it's funny, Vicodin is more dangerous than smoking heroin, although of course the real culprit is the APAP - the only reason it's not more dangerous than IV heroin is the risk of OD of course, but smoking it taking Vicodin almost certainly is, from a pharmacological standpoint (not taking into account the addiction smoking heroin can create, although for a naive user it isn't all that much serve than that hydrocodone will create either - after all, I started with hydrocodone and I preferred that for a long time over heroin, until the dope became more attractive for other mostly financial reasons).

 

I've taken large doses of APAP a couple times, between 1-4g, and once an acquaintance took 9.500g (19 5/500 vicodins over the course of a night without tolerance - and frankly I am pretty sure I've taken over 10g in a day, although again I was lucky to avoid any complications... extremely lucky) and we've both survived despite doing something incredibly stupid - incredibly stupid by which I mean risking our lives. Directly after our liver function was probably really high. I'm sure, we were both incredibly lucky. If either of us had been drinking heavily or had any early stage of liver problems I doubt either of us would have emerged unscathed. In either case, what we did was incredibly dangerous. I avoid APAP as much as I can these days (which is pretty much near totally).

And condescending frankness is cool with me. As for the APAP, dropping 20 or so 5/500 in a day may not kill you or cause an OD. If you are a habitual user, your liver will tear down over time which was more to my point.

And I find it hard to believe that opiots have no physical downside. We know that it fucks up the pain/pleasure centers in the brain. Is that NOT a physical impact? And for IV users, how is tearing a hole in ones arm at the rates in which some users do a good thing?

I've seen arms that look like grated cheese. I've known people to try and hit veins in their feet to try and find a new 'path to pleassure'. Maybe these are symptomatic of the drug use, but still harmful to the body.

 

And condescending frankness is cool with me. As for the APAP, dropping 20 or so 5/500 in a day may not kill you or cause an OD. If you are a habitual user, your liver will tear down over time which was more to my point.

And I find it hard to believe that opiots have no physical downside. We know that it fucks up the pain/pleasure centers in the brain. Is that NOT a physical impact? And for IV users, how is tearing a hole in ones arm at the rates in which some users do a good thing?

I've seen arms that look like grated cheese. I've known people to try and hit veins in their feet to try and find a new 'path to pleassure'. Maybe these are symptomatic of the drug use, but still harmful to the body.

Your absolutely right, in that using opioids can have serious negative effects on one's physical health. But, as you referred to with your needle example, that's not so much the drug as the circumstances under which it's used.

When people talk about how benign opioids are, they're speaking towards a lack of relative neurotoxicity (whereas ethanol, amp, etc are neurotoxic). I agree with you that how habitual opioid use can alter brain chemistry, for lack of better words, is a physical side effect of chronic use, but in terms of the body's organs and whatnot opioids (common ones at least) do not damage them. I've heard that norbuprenorphine (a metabolite of buprenorphine) is neurotoxic, so like I said there probably are some more dangerous opioids out there, but they are rare to say the least.

Also, when it comes to IDUs, other than lack of access to proper (sterile) gear, poor technique (i.e. wanna lose a limb? inject into an artery... sadly not a whole lot of junkies on the street can distinguish veins from arteries) and safe environments to use in (i.e. not public toilet, although a public toilet is better than a dark all or inside a dumpster), the cutting agents dealers use can sometimes prove problematic.

But again, as fas as the actual drug itself, opioids are very, very easy on the body. It's the improper use, with improper gear, with a drug that has been contaminated in god only knows how many ways, that's what makes opioids dangerous. On their own, when dealing with legit compounds, even when it comes to chronic use, they do nowhere near as much damage as alcohol, nicotine or methamphetamine would under the same circumstances.

And as far as the APAP remarks I made go, I want to highlight something again. While my buddy might have been able to tolerate 10g of APAP in one dose just fine, that can not be said for everyone. I'd imagine most people would have a worse reaction than he did. But you're right to say that, generally speaking, a single high dose of APAP is probably not going to kill you. What is is using moderate-large doses over periods of time. That is, unless you the unlucky bastard who only take the daily limit of APAP 4g one single time and ends up dead for it, given a sensativity to it or something...

Point being, everyone's different, treat with caution, and work your way up cause you sure as hell don't want to have to be in the position where you need to work yourself down (cause it doesn't work like that..)/rant

Hopefully we can get some other folks more seasoned in the ways of ADD to join in here and clarify/explain

 

This is my first post on BL, how appropriate.

I, too, am a recovering H addict. With 4 years of OxyContin use (350mg daily, crushed), then 4 years of suboxone maintenance. I can attest that when I tried, unsuccessfully, to taper off of suboxone I had the feeling of a person who made a deal with the devil(Dr), who assured me Bupe was not addicting..

Throughout my opiate battle, which occurred from the ages of 17-27, I had 7 different rehab stints. I tried maintenance(subs), and I even tried meetings. Which BTW I'm not a fan of, something about glorifying drugs and the qualifications of being a drug addict rubbed me the wrong way. Nothing seemed to work..

Until..I was arrested for my second DUI. The judge ordered me 90 house arrest, which luckily or so I thought, was my first time loosing my freedom. (Even though I had the luxury of being at a siblings home). This is what changed my life and I attribute to my "rock bottom" moment of clarity. As it happened, I went cold turkey in my sister's basement. Those of use who have WD know this feeling all to well, hell on earth. But I survived, as will any opiate addict without a pre-existing condition. I never achieved more than 30 days clean in my 10 year binge, but now I managed 9 months. Magically.

One of my biggest fears when I quit was the damage I had done to my brains ability to make endogenous chemicals. I'm no expert on the brain, but I have read different opinions of the brains ability to recover from such damage. For personal reasons, I choose to believe that the brains "elasticity" allows for a rewiring of sorts. We do know the brain has a tremendous ability to heal, as has been scientifically confirmed with many brain damaged victims.

I went though a myriad of PAWS symptoms, some so debilitating that suicide crossed my mind. I felt a fog that I can only describe to those who never used as a "cloudy" feeling. My anxiety was on par with someone with generalized SAD, which was awkward being that I think of myself as a social butterfly. I felt removed from the world and isolated for periods of time. I had, and still have to some degree trouble plucking words from my vocabulary. My theory is that these opiod receptor site are dulled, but not destroyed ala methamphetamine use, and can eventually heal with proper nutrition and abstinence.

I'll also touch on the original article topic of the stereotyping that current and past heroin addicts have faced. I personally detoxed "harder", or generally felt worse from the WD of Oxycontin. I never would have landed in this opiate world if the original OC's were better regulated. They were so easily available here in Philadelphia that literally everyone from the ghetto of North Philly to the affluent of Bucks County were addicted. (This is an exaggeration, but it's an epidemic here) Even our millionaire head football coaches son, Garret Reid was touched by this long arm. He eventually moved to H, and died.

The manufacturers of OC, Purdue Pharm, were eventually brought to court and sued for an exorbitant amount of money for apparently underselling the pill as needed for slight to moderate pain.

Heroin has made a big comeback thanks to big pharm, and we need to look no further than the crooked doctors who take cash in hand in exchange for scripts. The scripts that flood our streets, lead our young to poach our elders medicine cabinets, and eventually lead to the hood for a bundle of dope. This is a viscous cycle that kids in my area, the suburbs of Philly, are all to familiar with.

So now we have essentially stereotyped these kids, from well to do families, in the category of "junkies" in the know. I can tell you first hand I had no clue that pain killers were made from the same plant that Diacetylmorphine is synthesized from.

Now, as a society, we have essentially traded the cypher that the OC 80's perpetuated, and inserted the 30mg pills. As long as big pharm is making billions on prescription opiates, including the maintenance approved substances, H use will continue to rise. Will the stigma attached to H cease or retract some?

Maybe.. Here in my county, officials are holding a town hall like meeting to discuss heroin. They have advertised the meeting through the "Bucks County Courier Times" and have received so many RSVP's that they needed to move it into a local school. Some addiction experts will be on hand, with doctors and recovering addicts to help "dispel" some of these stigmas. Hopefully meetings like this will reverberate around the country and similar meetings will pop up in similarly infected areas.

 

^ I'm sorry to hear about your struggles with opiate addiction. I too have had to kick the habit countless times because of legal and/or financial issues (among some other incidents). I've also done some research on the subject regarding the consequences of long term, drug induced, opiate receptor saturation.

Now, I've struggled with anxiety and depression (which I've been able to - I feel - successfully manage by way of medication, CBT, counselling, etc.) way before becoming addicted to opioids. As a result, my experiences probably differ from someone who doesn't have a history of such mental illnesses.

I've heard and read first hand accounts of other users who, after successfully being able to quit cold turkey and are past the acute phase, begin to feel moderately to extremely depressed in general. I've never felt this before. Everything else (post acute) such as the intense craving is there, but no depression whatsoever. Could this be because I'm on an antidepressant (Wellbutrin XL 300mg daily)? Perhaps.

I did feel quite anxious for awhile, plus, my pain tolerance went way down for a few weeks. In the end though (about 7 weeks later), I can honestly say that I felt exactly like I felt before using for the first time.

Therefore, personally I don't believe long term opioid use causes irreversible brain damage. I do think that constant receptor saturation causes our body to stop producing it's own natural opiate as a form of adaptation - which is eventually completely reversed.

-----------------------------

Also, off topic - Regardless of what the truth may be about whether any opioid causes any brain damage, you can be damn sure that if opium wasn't a controlled substance, I'd be smoking it every day, as a way to unwind and relax before/after work. Life is so fast paced where I live, my job is so fast paced, and I get extremely stressed out at times.

Many people I work with smoke/drink/toke as a coping mechanism. I quit smoking and don't intend to start again. I think booze is way too overrated (and let's be honest, no one is drinking the stuff solely because it tastes good). I can't tolerate weed anymore. I love (and can tolerate) narcotics. It sucks that the body forms a physical dependency to them, but if my supply would never run out, it would be a fair trade in my book.

Unfortunately, due to the law regarding narcotics in general, and - as a result - the ridiculously inflated street prices, I end up with an extremely expensive habit. I hope that things change sooner or later.

IMO, the biggest reason why methadone maintenance (which I'm currently on) allows people, allows me to get on with our lives is because it completely removes the need for me to spend most of my day looking for a way to pay for fixes so that I can feel normal, comfortable. As a result, I can focus on other things, such as my job, my debts, my family, my property, food, laxatives to not flood the toilet again, etc. And I truly believe that if it was the same situation, only swap the methadone with another opioid, things would be quite similar.

There was a period of about 3 months straight, where I had an endless (and cheap) supply of OxyContin. I worked my ass off during that time. I signed up for overtime whenever I could, and I enjoyed coming to work. During that period, I was named "employee of the month" twice. Surprisingly, the amount I was using didn't go up all that much either (I went from using 60mg daily, to 80).

It may be foolish of me to think that an endless supply of Oxy might better my life in the long run. Maybe 3 months is nothing. I'd still like to at least try. So again, I hope I get that chance, and I hope that this futile war on drugs ends.

 

Sorry it's been a while, guys. This is a really in-depth discussion, enjoying it immensely. It definitely gets down to the core of our mission here at BL.

As for my notion that heroin is peerless among opiates for reward pathway shortcircuitry, this study is what I'm talking about:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11448454
Essentially 6-monoacetylmorphine, the main active metabolite of heroin and only heroin, has a binding affinity for those mu receptors that can't be beat. So the brain grows more of them, in a compensatory effort to raise the threshold for having a certain critical fraction of them bound by a ligand, which is what triggers an action potential. So that when exogenous opioids are stopped, the brain won't possibly make enough of its own endorphins to bind the fraction needed for activation, at least for some time.

These animal studies go into the sorts of long-term changes in the brain after chronic heroin use that I was referring to:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22829433 -- increased mu receptor density
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23337531 -- decreased proopiomelanocortin levels
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18201731 -- apoptosis of neurons in certain brain areas

The good news is, none of these studies make good models of former human abusers after years of abstinence. And it seems that from my research, a lot of the disturbances in the brain do improve with time, to varying degrees. I think there's hope that some, if not most, of the damage done by chronic heroin abuse might be able to be repaired:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18201731 -- Adenosine receptor antagonists, anyone?

I will reply at length very soon to specific comments made to me, and try to clarify once again my position of why heroin is not, generally speaking, a boon to The Human Condition.

I stand corrected when I said that heroin users strain my ability to hate the game and not the player. With the help of other participants in this discussion, I have come to realize that it's largely heroin's illegality that makes decent folk turn grimy. And many users grew up under circumstances where being grimy was the only way to survive, and these were the same rough circumstances that drove them to consider heroin as an option. I agree wholeheartedly that heroin users, by and large, are complex and unique individuals that are far more than their addictions, and do not deserve to be treated badly just because of their habit. That said, I stand firm this: Efforts by the public to treat those afflicted by the disease of heroin addiction with compassion and dignity are commendable, so long as they never jeopardize the far higher goal of minimizing the number of people who even try heroin in the first place. Because I can't prove this, but I strongly believe that the vast majority of people who try it do not see a long term net improvement in their quality of life, even those who first tried it certain that their lives were so hard or bleak that they had nothing to lose. I could be wrong, but I bet most people who'd ever used heroin, if asked in their dying moments if their life was better having used it, would say no.

 

^ Thank you for the links.

To your last point, I think we can all agree that quality of life goes down after heroin. However, that is within our current real-world model, in which the law and the social demonization unquestionably account for a lot of the quality deflation. I think most of the addicts in this thread would argue that in a hypothetical society that treated heroin much like alcohol, this question would tend toward the response profile of "what has alcohol done to the quality of your life?" Some people would say that it was benefitial, others not so much. But it would not nearly be as lopsided. There is nothing inintrinsic to heroin that explains the lopsidedness.

 

I think we can all agree that quality of life goes down after heroin. However, that is within our current real-world model, in which the law and the social demonization unquestionably account for a lot of the quality deflation. I think most of the addicts in this thread would argue that in a hypothetical society that treated heroin much like alcohol, this question would tend toward the response profile of "what has alcohol done to the quality of your life?" Some people would say that it was benefitial, others not so much. But it would not nearly be as lopsided. There is nothing inintrinsic to heroin that explains the lopsidedness.

Well written - I share this sentiment.