I'm just saying, would being an alcoholic of rock-bottom spirits be that much more expensive? I'd rather be a shaking alcoholic than have my arm fall off my body as I inject drugs into my festering stump. But that's just me.

You’re failing to appreciate the harshness of the addictive spell these users are under.

It’s not to say being an alcoholic is easier per se, but whatever specific substance a person is abusing is going to be what their body demands to feel relief. If you’re addicted to pain meds, alcohol intoxication isn’t going to be the sensation your body will fiendishly crave.

Without previous experience of what kind of high strong opioids (or other heavy drugs) gives you, it's hard to imagine people taking the risks of using them. But some of them really are that fucked up on your psyche, that you'll do anything to continue using them after you've used them for just a short while. It's really easy to get addicted and really hard to get out of there.

Nothing about addiction has anything to do with what the addict would _rather_ be addicted to. They'd mostly prefer to not have a problem at all.

Highs aren't fungible in the way you're describing. Don't mistake "I begrudgingly took a worse opiod because I couldn't get the one I want" for "I'm fine with anything"

> I'm just saying, would being an alcoholic of rock-bottom spirits be that much more expensive?

It doesn’t matter because you can’t just push-button swap chemical dependencies.

Try, and you’re likely to end up dead or addicted to both the one you tried to switch from and the one you tried to switch to.

I feel like if you’ve never used or been addicted to real drugs, your opinion is effectively useless here. It’s like listening to a non-programmer trying to help an engineer debug their code - “why don’t you just use a different variable?”

Stick to crypto Monero, I think your talents will be better suited there.

No opioid addict can beat opioid addiction using alcohol. Lots of addicts end up abusing alcohol on top anyway.

And by the way, the equivalent death of an alcoholic (happens to millions of people every day) would be an agonizing death with gastrointestinal bleeding, maybe cirrhosis, maybe a long period of disability before (which effectivel can mean death if you're homeless)...

As others have already said, you pretend to understand problems which you obviously have not experienced or witnessed at close yourself.

Your "I'd rather be" sounds like "They should rather eat pie" to any person with any kind of empathy or emotional connection to addicted humans.

That being said, yeah, I'll too rather not be addicted, as addiction to hard drugs (including alcohol) means pure agony. Why does anyone "choose" agony then?

Overcoming any serious addiction is a personal, social and medical problem requiring lots resources, luck and extreme willpower.

I'd say, a form of willpower that people comparing addiction to sheer indulgence cannot even grasp.

Beating addiction is not simply a decision, although an individual decision is of course required. Seeing that as the root of the problem is a flawed view from outside that contradicts everything we know about how human brains (and lifes) work.

> They just want to get high.

Or not even that, just to avoid withdrawal symptoms.

The most effective form of drug addiction treatment consists of using a long acting substitute and slowly tapering off.

The most common cause of overdose deaths is quitting cold turkey as people end up taking more of the drug to compensate the withdrawal.

I don't think you lose much tolerance within the week or so the acute withdrawal symptoms last.

I think the danger is from relapses long after withdrawal when both tolerance and knowledge of the supply has been lost. In some ways, withdrawal is the easy the bit - brutal but something to fight that gets easier as time passes. The nagging empty hole in your soul with sobriety is harder to fill and drags you back.