I think they are much more similar than a lot of yall are stating. Especially early on in addiction.
If you are anywhere near my age group, ( just starting to get into prescription “pharmies” in the late 90’s-early 2000’s) then chances are you didnt get addicted to heroin, you got addicted to oxycodone/hydrocodone, and once youre addicted to opiates - it kinda changes you right then and there... regardless of whether its bupe, poppy seed tea, oxy, or heroin.
I never even considered heroin growing up, even after i became fascinated with drugs and was trying to experience every substance under the sun- heroin was the one drug i knew i never wanted to try. It just had this stigma attached and everybody knew “ dont fuck w this one”.
But there was no stigma around benzos , adderall , percs , hyrocodone, ... and we did them all. I was mainly into mdma, lsd,(psychedelics in general)... weed, k , ghb.
I was a little out there, but functional. I was in college. Very into the jamband scene. Even if u were lucky enough to find a perc, it was 5-10$/each so u were doing maybe 5-10 mg oxy. It felt good i guess, but i never would have tried to take enough to nod .
But then oxycontin begin coming around. At first i didnt know much about opiates or oxycontin, and wasnt even that interested. I didnt know about the time release coating, and i think i even ate the first oc 80 i did WITHOUT removing the coating. Thank god, bc i def would have died.
I remember one night a yr later a bartender prepped an OC 20mg for me bc i didnt know how to , or to snort it. Once the coating was removed and it was crushed up into lines , I experienced the best high of my life. I was all about oxy from then on. Every weekend, id make sure to have a 20 or 40 lined up. Gradually tolerance went up, to the point of needing an 80 to last a full day. It was so expensive , it kept my habit small.... At this stage i still didnt fully realize how similar oxy and heroin were. I think millions of H users fell into this same trap.
I remember also having access to hydrocodone that id take tons of when i couldnt get my oxy, so i didnt experience WDs ... yet.
Oxy demands sores and prices skyrocket. Then u couldnt even get them.
Finally, one night as im desperate to find some oxy , my dealer stops by and says: “ive got something like oxy” and he hands me a stamp of H , totally rips me off charging 20$, yet it was still cheaper than oxy. It felt the same to me. So I continued w the H until i moved home.
I found myself craving it... any opioid. Oxy, H, percs. Didnt matter.
Then i was at a party and when i was leaving there was a crew slinging some fire dope around the corner. It was my first open air drug market experience in the hood like that, and i kinda expected to get ripped off, but they brought me back a bag after i paid them 10$.
I expected similar potentcy to what id done in past , and sniffed 1/4 bag. Holy fuck, it was so much stronger, i nodded so hard i was probably close to unconscious. Id never nodded so hard bc i didnt know it was possible. It was only bc of the unpredictability of the the potency of heroin that i instantly fell in love with the “nod”.
It was like the first time doing oxy, but better. And cheaper.
So now i was no longer looking to sniff a line and go socialize, i was looking to sniff a line and nod the fuck out for several hours. I didnt need the invincible feeling, the feeling of unlimited witty conversations or ability to work long hrs without pain. I just wanted to be sprawled out... floating on a cloud in lala land.
And from then on, no need looking for overpriced oxy, when H was so so much cheaper. Its hold on me tightened to the point i started IV use, and its been my best friend and worst enemy ever since.
Sorry for the novel, but my point is
(TL,DR ) : i was addicted to opiates via oxy, and had it not been for my oxy use- id never touched heroin in a million years.
Doctors and big pharma caused my addiction by pumping so much oxycontin into society, which is what started this opiate epidemic we are now in.
Oxycontin seemed like any other pharmy, no diff than adderall or valium( neither is harmless by any means, but its not like oxy )
Those oxycontin were almost talor-made to get young, white, wealthy suburban kids hooked on strong , high dose opiates.
When i first started looking for H on the streets, it was hard to find. Most dealers were workin coke and/or didnt trust a young white guy not to be a police or snitch. But within a couple yrs, heroin was everywhere... and everybody had switched to it bc oxy wasnt around, or they could no longer afford them. But everyone could afford H. But as stated, between vary potency and bag sizes, it becomes impossible to track your use and eventually your tolerance is higher than itd ever be from oxy alone. You are now an addict.
So i disagree that heroin is more addicting than H.
I think it just appears that way bc most ppls addiction doesnt really spiral out of control until youve ran the gamit of opiates, landing on the cheapest , strongest, and most available- heroin.
Personally- If i were offered an 0C 80 or an equil-potency bag of non-fent , good quality dope, ( i mean the quantity equals the Anesthesia/euphoria of the oxy ) i wouldnt really care which. I do believe i can feel just as good off oxy as heroin, and some ppl prefer oxy to heroin.ime.
Id probably choice the 80, bc it lasts longer if ate.
A lot of ppl rave about the rush, but it never did much for me. Im more interested in the several hrs of nodding.