I am a heroin user. I do not have a drug problem

Re:I am a heroin user. I do not have a drug problem by renewiltord on Thursday February 18, 2021 @01:41PM (#26183755)

A fair question. I haven't thought about it deeply. But smoking is a very social habit. No one hides the smoking. And it's really hard to hide because smokers have a sharp odour that's really hard to mask. So among the people I know, I know the smokers (or knew, since vaping wasn't common when I was young and had the habit).

So I guess I had a pretty good hold on what the population of smokers was, and so I know most struggled to quit.

As for the other drugs, yeah, I'm open to thinking otherwise. I have lots of friends who recreationally use cocaine, MDMA, LSD, mushrooms, and whatever else. Personally I've tried all of those and really just use shrooms now occasionally¹. No particular addictions there among my group of friends, so I'm open to your school of thought there.

¹ Cocaine is boring. MDMA is great. LSD is cool. Shrooms has massive therapeutic effects for me. I can skip my Adderall for two weeks after a trip. I feel so motivated to work and find it trivial to focus.

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Re:I am a heroin user. I do not have a drug problem by nostromo on Thursday February 18, 2021 @01:52PM (#26183919)

I think it's selection bias.

Lots and lots of living people have smoked at some point. However, many (most?) of those people quit smoking at some point.

So, the remaining people are the people that are most addicted, which gives us the impression that tobacco is highly addictive for everyone.

Edit: the CDC says that 62% of people who have ever smoked have quit.

https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/cess...

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Re:I am a heroin user. I do not have a drug problem by renewiltord on Thursday February 18, 2021 @01:57PM (#26183973)

The part that breaks that is that in the population I'm talking about, I have known the people continuously from age 15 to age 34. Twenty years continuously, over 20 people. No one ever tried to hide the habit (hiding your smoking is a thing no one did 20 years ago). So I can observe this population fixedly and not suffer from survival bias.

It could be selection bias. Maybe I hang out with other people with addiction potential because of who I am. But it's definitely not survival bias (which is sort of what the rest of your comment talks about). The thing that makes it unlikely and the article's premise unlikely is that the weight of evidence is on this stuff being addictive.

But, you know, I'm a huge fan of the therapeutic effects of many scheduled drugs, so I'm open to the idea that addiction works differently from currently understood.

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Re:I am a heroin user. I do not have a drug problem by pseudalopex on Thursday February 18, 2021 @03:07PM (#26184745)

That doesn't mean quitting was easy for them.

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