Why do you think the heroin epidemic started?

[Felonious Monk]

Very similarly put as to how I described how this issue came to be. Surprised that more haven't explained it in this way.

Oh definitely .... I agree with everything you guys posted. When I commented on smokedup's comment I was only attempting to make further macro connections with concern to the broader issues driving drug consumption habits in America and the broader world.

Totally. It's basically the story I've read elsewhere in MSM (about changing pain guidelines), mixed with some of my own observations.

As a "milennial" and part of the younger opiate generation, I think there's also something else going on. It's existential dread at the state of the world and the growing belief that there is A) not a place for us B) the world is fucked bc of climate change, etc. Also the world (particularly the United States though), is finally at a place where my Life/Quality of Living will not be as good as my parents'--and it's their fault--and they won't admit it. So I hate them but I'm also reliant on them to a degree. And some of this is my own fault of course, but much of it was beyond my control.

I mean, that's why I do dope.

 

[somnilicious]

Totally. It's basically the story I've read elsewhere in MSM (about changing pain guidelines), mixed with some of my own observations.

As a "milennial" and part of the younger opiate generation, I think there's also something else going on. It's existential dread at the state of the world and the growing belief that there is A) not a place for us B) the world is fucked bc of climate change, etc. Also the world (particularly the United States though), is finally at a place where my Life/Quality of Living will not be as good as my parents'--and it's their fault--and they won't admit it. So I hate them but I'm also reliant on them to a degree. And some of this is my own fault of course, but much of it was beyond my control.

I mean, that's why I do dope.

Yes... "The existential dread" so eloquently stated.

 

[rujex]

I guess its more a matter of availability, quality and price.

In Europe the prescription practices was never like in the US, still there is kind of a ressuracation. Just because the afghan war meant that more cheap heroine hit the street. Prices felt a lot, while its lower quality. Nowadays its cheaper than ever and therefore more attractive: People just dont need to make as much money as before, to get a habit.

Maybe the Colombian and Mexican approach to find new markets just worked quiet well, too. Its only marketing. Introduce a product and the demand might eventually grow, as they started to produce heroine at a point way before there was a "crisis".

 

[thelung]

El Chapo and the Secret History of the Heroin Crisis good read

 

[TRASHCANJ4LIFE]

The heroin epidemic didn't start. It just lie dormant for a number of years. What sparked it was the pharmaceutical world. Heroin, as of 15 years ago, was not particularly easy to get at least where I was from. Painkillers and what nights were definitely easy to get and had way less regulations by the FDA. Kids started experimenting with those for a number of years and when people started understanding what they had they started jacking the prices way up while at the same time the FDA and DEA started cracking down because of all the idiots out there that don't know how to keep a low profile. I'm talking about the fucking idiots that figure out how to get into their local pain management doctor get a prescription and then go back a week later and say that they dropped them down the fucking drain. And that's just one example of the stupidity. So as the years go on OxyContin hits a staggering 70 or $80 for one pill and people are realizing that they can't afford that shit let alone get it as easy as they used to. And then a miracle happened. One day somebody introduced them to heroin and told him that it was just like pills but better and you get more for your buck. And let me tell you that couldn't be more true. These kids are going gosh I can pay $80 for one pill or spend $80 and get high for a week maybe less though depending on the quality. Now we have all these younger generation kids strung out on heroin not keeping a low profile and the DEA is making heroin users public enemy number one. However the consequences for getting caught with something like that on the user level are actually not that bad anymore. In California at least you get caught with a gram so it's a site and release. A pussy little slap on the wrist. I've got in more trouble for getting caught with a little pot before. But it is very easy to get these days.

 

[HeadphonesandLSD]

Everyone is saying generally the same thing but it was true for me as well. If not for the abundance of pills and the fact that there was little stigma attached to them I wouldn't have ever gotten on the opioid ride in the first place. Oxycodone was just seen as this harmless thing that made smoking weed more fun with the added benefit that it took away whatever type of pain you were dealing with. Pills were so cheap back then too...you could trade a joint of swag weed for handfuls of percocet in those days. Prices went up and up as the years rolled by but it wasn't a sudden spike like a lot of people were describing in the US southeast. I'd say it took a decade to go from $1 or so per pill up to $3 with the less strong stuff, the original formulation of OxyContin begin the sole exception because it was yanked from the market entirely. When it did get re-formulated and returned the price for them crashed because most people didn't want to deal with those pills. It took awhile before people figured out how to effectively snort/shoot them again and obtain an IR product.

It was only a few years ago that things started to become really bad. By 2012 there were constant droughts and the price started to climb up and up. For awhile price stabilized locally but the dry spells stretched longer and longer during the month. It went from going a week without to only have one "good week" every month with the other weeks spent paying a higher price for what little there was around if you were even lucky enough to find it. People started getting greedy with their sources and cutting each others throats. You'd show up to your usual dealer's house and they'd inform you that they were already out and someone was willing to buy the entire bottle at a couple dollars more per pill than you were willing to pay. In my area the usual set that deals in crack started selling pills at this point because they made more profit from it and since they were always flush with cash they could buy up the entire town's supply and re-sell it at a marked up price. If you did have your own trusted source (someone with a legit script) they started becoming very manipulative and untrusting of you. You were expected to be at their beck and call or you'd get cut off and they'd constantly remind you that they were the ones doing you a favor because without them you'd be sick or paying double for the same drug.

That's how oxycodone shot up to $1 a mg and beyond. (also sorry for pricing but I figure I'll get cut some slack because I'm describing how it all happened and the price plays a major factor in this).

Around this time heroin enters the fray locally. People started driving into the cities to score and bringing some back to sell at an inflated price. Groups of people started importing larger amounts to avoid taking so many 1 hour+ trips into the city and support their own habit. Even though they're selling it with tons of mark-up it's a lot cheaper than the pills and it's always around. People turn to it the first time to stave off w/d and figure out it's a better deal. That's why it's so prevalent now in rural areas. I'm guessing the same story played out everywhere in the southeast.

The epidemic is real, I've gone to enough wakes in the last decade to know that is true. The media over blows it like everything else but that doesn't mean it isn't a problem. My generation is full of opioid addicts actively using or trying to kick but older folks got sucked in too. The majority of people that buy pills now in my area are housewives that got hooked back when I did but can't deal with the stigma of making the jump. They have the cash to afford a large pill habit still so they're still able to maintain it. Most of the time their husband knows nothing about it.

 

[rujex]

The point, that its all about prescription practice in the past, is probably not "the" reason.
Let me give some examples:

- Quaalude was easily prescribed and available at a time. There was even an illegal production, when they weren't available anymore. But nowadays they arent available anymore in the USA.
- Benzos were at a point easily prescribed, too. Still there is non to very limited illegal production, while they are a drug of choice for a lot of people.
- Pharm opioioids were introduced more then 100 years ago and were abused a lot. But "pill mills" just happened to pop up in the 2000s. Still there were heroine epidemics in the 70s - 90s.
- Pharm stimulantes were big at a time, but i never read about any connection about harder prescription practices leading to an increase of "illegal" stimulant use.

I dint know the answer, but guess its not all about prescription practices. Sure pharms were the first step into the world of opioids for a lot of people. But wouldn't they have ever abused opioids otherwise? In my eyes, people that abuse pharms because they are clean and "safe" dont want to get into illegality. Or are there old ladies on the corner, asking for some valiums etc.?

Besides the Generation X and Y in the USA most junkies in the world started directly with heroine - there was no "graduation" from pharms. Also there were so much countries that had even easier prescription practices, that haven't seen a epidemic.

As mentioned above, social reasons are probably a bigger factor, then easy prescriptions. Because most people don't start to abuse scripts without a reason....

 

[falsifiedhypothesi]

Probably because heroin and other opiates feel really good

 

[treezy z]

Rujex, in response to one of your points:

You said you think people would still do opiates without pills.

Completely disagree. Pills and especially syrup are not particularly stigmatized among people who go beyond weed and liquor.

Once you get a taste and need 80mg oxycodone for a 4 hour high price becomes an issue.

You start hearing a little about dope.

Start thinking about how you can either drop a weeks salary or do some kick down door bout it bout it shit to get high for a couple days on pills or get a few pack of smokes worth of dope for the exact same high.

Once you get the cold sweats and shit liquid puke your guts up you lose the will and give into temptation.

Quite frankly I'm glad I used Kratom to get off subs before this ban because that's an easy kick. It's sub's or dope for me, pills are stupid expensive and no way in hell I'm hitting the clinic every morning.

 

[rujex]

Rujex, in response to one of your points:

You said you think people would still do opiates without pills.

Completely disagree. Pills and especially syrup are not particularly stigmatized among people who go beyond weed and liquor.

Once you get a taste and need 80mg oxycodone for a 4 hour high price becomes an issue.

You start hearing a little about dope.

Start thinking about how you can either drop a weeks salary or do some kick down door bout it bout it shit to get high for a couple days on pills or get a few pack of smokes worth of dope for the exact same high.

Once you get the cold sweats and shit liquid puke your guts up you lose the will and give into temptation.

Quite frankly I'm glad I used Kratom to get off subs before this ban because that's an easy kick. It's sub's or dope for me, pills are stupid expensive and no way in hell I'm hitting the clinic every morning.

I assume most people "graduating" bought their Rx Drugs illegal. Or how could otherwise become the pills stupid expensive? Official pharm prices didn't change that much over time.
That pharm opioids weren't stigmatized is a big point, but still people wouldn't jump straight on the heroine train eventually. If they weren't already involved in illegal drugs, they would never hear a little about dope.

People started heroine before pills and will do in the future. My point is just: South/middle American drug producers started to make heroine in the 90s, when pills weren't such an issue. Pill abuse may have promoted their sales a lot, but their start of production wasn't a response to it. An uncertain argument could be: Pills just saturated the market between the heroine "epidemics" in the 90s/earlys 2000s and nowadays.

I guess the drug market isn't just that consequent. The cartels were responding with their production to the heroine abuse in the 80s/90s. Heroine from south Asia wasn't that much available anymore (Afghan heroine only got big in Europe since 9/11) and a big chance raised. Colombia and Mexico couldn't probably not just arise as producers that fast, if they were only responding to "pill mills". It takes a lot of time to get big fields of poppy and the knowledge to make heroine in commercial quantities. Would they just have reacted, most users of pills would have just accepted their fate and/or find different solutions. As evil as it sounds: The cartels prepared the crises, before it had arisen.They are business man and know their market very good.

 

[cj]

I don't think you could narrow it down to one factor. Obviously the emergence of opiod based pain killers as treatments for all kinds of aches and pains played some role. In the early 90s the FDA did a study which found that pain was vastly undertreated in America, This is when pain was pushed as the fifth vital sign and that stupid 1-10 pain scale in use now was decided upon. Purdue Pharma saw an opening and aggressively marketed oxycontin as a safe opiod medicine every general practitioner could prescribe. That's when oxy 80s started to be found on the black market for .25 cents a milligram.

Then the economic downturn hit and half the youth in the country became unemployable overnight. There was a real sense of doom among me and my friends in this time period. We realized we where never going to do as well as our parents no matter how hard we worked. By 2010 the FDA was starting to sense trouble and oxy was reformulated in a desperate move to try and get control of the problem. Opiate pill prices skyrocketed.

In steps the cartels who needed a new drug to make up for lost profits that the local hydro marijuana market had cost them on shitty weed. Remember midgrade weed? Anyway the cartels worked there magic and heroin became cheap and available almost overnight it seemed. The people with a taste for opiates who could no longer afford them began making the switch to H. The rest as they say is history.

 

[Ne0]

What heroin epidemic? There is no such thing as drug epidemic, people continue using drugs like they always have done. In the other hand rise of drug use shows that there are problems in the society, mostly unemployment, economic problems, emotion problems all these can lead to frequent use of drugs. If people are unhappy they use more drugs.

 

[keeping]

it first really became a documented problem in polite, Western, occidental society in the late 19th century - it became known as 'the great binge'.

 

[Pill2Chill]

What heroin epidemic? There is no such thing as drug epidemic, people continue using drugs like they always have done. In the other hand rise of drug use shows that there are problems in the society, mostly unemployment, economic problems, emotion problems all these can lead to frequent use of drugs. If people are unhappy they use more drugs.

I'm pretty sure that prescription opiates being so abundantly available in the US for a time made a lot of people addicted to opiates. The very big drop in pain killers prescriptions must've 'forced' many people to go seek out and try heroin. I do think we can speak of an epidemic of sorts because of this.

 

[LucidSDreamr]

I'm pretty sure that prescription opiates being so abundantly available in the US for a time made a lot of people addicted to opiates. The very big drop in pain killers prescriptions must've 'forced' many people to go seek out and try heroin. I do think we can speak of an epidemic of sorts because of this.

i don't buy this. people doing oxys would have done heroin had it been available.....it just wanst because there were so many pills around.

why doesn't anyone ever blame adderall for the methamphetamine epidemic?

a BIG factor nobody is saying, I think it started because of the economic crash.....notice it got way worse after that. people have no hope for the future, no job to go to, how bout some heroin?

excess prescribing, fentanyl analogues....yes they play a factor.....but excess heroin and pills have always been around....the use and demand just blew up recentlhy when this generation realized that they have nothing to do, no future, no careers

 

[Felonious Monk]

but excess heroin and pills have always been around....

That's not actually true.

Heroin is cheaper and more potent than it was in the early 90s, and certainly the French Connection 70s. And good luck finding steady supplies of oxy 30s or 8mg Dilaudid before 1992--they were only going to terminal cancer patients (and of course 80mg OCs hadn't been invented yet, same with high mg ER hydromorphone or high dose oxymorphone).

While the economy is a factor, arguing that opioids aren't more readily available than they've ever been in the modern era is just arguing against the facts.

 

[poffinva]

My story is very common and now I am faced with the true nature of this problem. I have been seeing a pain management doc for 12 years now and the DEA is now shutting down the only dos in the state to help with these problems. I have now had 2 pain management docs closed down in Richmond and my primary care doc will not give me even half of the prescription I have had and can't find anywhere else to go and going to street drugs may be the only place for me to go. You want to know why we have a problem with overdoses and illegal drug use. There it is. I'm in extreme pain and scared I might make a mistake taking more than I should or getting something really bad. If anyone has suggestions I would like to hear it

 

[LucidSDreamr]

^ kratom (which won't be legal very long). Other than that heroin is your only option. I totally feel you on that one. suffered with horrible chronic pain for a decade until a surgery fixed it. What is happening to pain patients as a result of the illicit heroin/fentanyl epidemic is very disturbing and gets ZERO media attention. At a certain point you have to take your well being into your own hands and work outside of the law if you want dignity of life.

the interesting thing is once I had has back surgery, I had no problem getting strong opioids once I had that on my record. they take you more seriously. It took me a year to recover from the surgery so I still needed them for a while after.

which state is this if you don't mind me asking?


try multiple primary care docs you could get lucky and find a sympathetic one. I know a primary that used to give a friend 2 30s oxy per day, which is pretty good for a primary care doc.

 

[Erikmen]

it first really became a documented problem in polite, Western, occidental society in the late 19th century - it became known as 'the great binge'.

The original problem always the same IMO. First it was just not documented enough. Not too long ago doctors started to prescribed opiates freely and only after about 10/15 years later people started to look seriously into the problem and politicians made wrong decisions. If you couldn't afford meds H was right there super available in low cost. Dealers could always count with a guarantee profit (nobody wants to be sick after all) addiction is so easy, 'so handy'. Cocaine started to be a problem; people changed to what was more available, in most places. It makes you feel you can do it forever and when you can't you are on your own.

There are so many reasons, from economic issues to political decisions. Wars became part of our culture and routine. Priorities were aimed to capture dealers instead of dealing with the human source of the problems.

I believe it was a compilation of different issues that joined together in one issue only. The physical dependance that it creates along with the strong mental addiction makes it so difficult to treat. But even knowing that governments decided to target or choose the wrong wars. As if it was easy just to say no, like it was once suggested. Or by lacking of political actions to enable more of the population to get help.

 

[Z3 MOM]

Purdue Pharma introduced OxyContin (time release -80 mgs & later 160 mgs tabs) in the mid 90's Purdue LIED to doctors and the FDA, citing that because they were slowly released into the system, it made them less likely to be abused. Purdue Pharma held the patent until 2013. In the meantime the sales skyrocketed (thanks to aggressive advertising) they (Purdue Pharma) were responsible for something like 30% of pain medication in the US-OxyContin sales went from $45 million-10 years later profits rose to over $3 BILLION. Their sales department received huge bonuses, so they pushed harder and flooded the market, so much so that OxyContin trickled down into a street drug because of the heroin- like high. During the same time more OxyContin hit the market, deaths from overdoses on pain killers also rose, hence the crackdown. As fewer oxys were available -during this time the street price of OxyContin skyrocketed. People could no longer afford them and turned to herion. I experienced this first hand with my son, who was treated in ER for shoulder pain, but the idiot nurse gave him a shot directly into his sciatic nerve. The pressure put on doctors caused them to cut his dosage- now he has a MAJOR herion addiction-thanks in part to the nightmare caused by Purdue Phara IMO, Purdue Pharma should be held accountable. The state of Kentucky sued and WON.
I followed the news and read many articles, I apologize for not being able to remember of ALL my sources.
Anyway, Purdue Pharma's HQ is located in Stamford, CT (where we lived until 2010) then we moved to Ohio, which is one of the hardest states hit.
Now, several members of my family are unable to get meds for their chronic pain- big trouble coming down the pike.
Also, WHY is the CDC involved in this matter (another less than transparent methods going on with behind the scenes- they are setting up regulations with board members in conflict of interest).
Why don't they keep their nose out of this situation and deal with the ANTIBIOTICS debacle!- that's a nightmare which could very well create pandemic levels of disease since bacteria has become resistant thanks to the overuse of antimicrobial meds..even wrorst trouble (than with the pain meds issue) coming down the pike!