Heroin Critical question

[thecookiemachine]

Hi guys,

I have been a long time reader of this forum but I don't usually post.

I have been thinking about something: isn't finding out the answer to the question "can heroin be done recreationally with minimal impact on one's life" hard to find over here because the replies are going to be inherently biased? By which I mean that the majority of the people here have come BECAUSE they are addicted or have problematic use and wanted to find people who are going through the same difficulties. Naturally, people who do manage to keep it recreational don't make heroin such a big deal in their life thus no need to spend hours debating the topic.

Now, I am not one of those countless curious Carls that come here trying to motivate the beginning of their habit or people who are in denial about their addiction. I do believe that after a period of successful chipping one does ultimately succumb to heroin's incredible prowess of changing the user's way of thinking and luring them into oblivion.

But, I am more interested in finding out if the percentage of successful recreational H users is 0.1%, 1% or 5%. There is only one study I have found (non peer reviewed but still, the methodology, structure and everything are well done) and it seems that there are exceptions to the rule, albeit a good portion of the people who participated in the study were past addicts who managed to cut back to a point where it didn't interfere with their lives.

I wish neither to send users on a guilt trip nor to promote the use of H, just want to see what you guys think.

 

[sekio]

I think it depends quite a lot on your sampling of the population and what the criterion of 'successful' is; understandably enough, most people will avoid self reporting that they are opioid users - or worse, addicts - due to the incredible social stigma it carries. And I suspect any population who will eagerly self report drug use probably is "Knee Deep In The Drugs" as it were...

Also, the duration of use plays a big role too; the average person prescribed strong opioids for surgery (& takes them as directed) will probably not immediately start buying diesel off the street as soon as they run out of Lortab, but for someone who makes a habit of regular recreational usage it is much easier to justify increasing dosage frequency & strength.

Certainly stuff like Rat Park and the like give good signs that the prevalence of addiction is much higher in any environment where people have to deal with problems that would predispose them to opioid use (homelessness, low income situations, stress, chronic pain etc).

There's also a little bit of a distinction between opioid dependency and opioid addiction... the two are similar but not always coincident.

 

[Johno88]

This would be very interesting to find out. You would have to define the categories of users better. Some are addicts, some dependent but don't get high and some use recreationaly. Then there are users who fit into those categories and feel their lives are effected and others whos don't feel their lives are effected no matter which category they fit in. This would be interesting but people would have to be very honest about their lives.

 

[oldfag420]

can you use recreationally and be fine? yes absolutely. you still have to deal with the realities of baseline tolerance and withdrawal though if you're doing it alot. and as johno88 said, some people are in it cuz they are dependant.

frequency of use and quantity of use play a huge role. if you're buying a tensack every two weeks, are you an addict if thats a consistent 2 weeks? what about if you're buying it once a week?

what if you buy a bills worth and then go crazy for two days. does that make you addicted?

i guess what im trying to say is define addiction for us, and we can give you an answer.

but yes, you can use recreationally and be fine, i know people of people that do it, but they're mostly folks who have been to opium hell and back.