Most of heroin's issues arise because of its illegality, coupled with its price. I was spending $400 a day. It's nearly impossible to keep afloat with that sort of outgoing expense. Heroin also makes me grumpier than I typically am, and I wouldn't wish the withdrawals on my worst enemy.
But on the other hand, it has few negative physical effects in the long term, which I find amazingly curious. I've been clean for three years now, and if I didn't tell you you'd never know what I'd done. That's odd, in my opinion, considering its reputation. If I'd drunk the equivalent amount of alcohol every day for six years, I'd doubt that would be the case.
Like any drug, being illegal distorts the market and causes issues that wouldn't exist with it legal, however I would never want to see it legal the same way alcohol is. It's simply dangerous above and beyond things like weed. I'm truly not sure how i feel about it, to be honest. I just know that I would never use it again, regardless of its legal status.
But, the key reason? I didn't want to take it any more. A well known fact among addict circles, is that there will come a time when you're done taking it. The problem is, unless you were lucky to live in a country like mine, doing so without the support of society when it is so stigmatized is supremely difficult. It's an interesting problem.
It changes my view on whether it is useful to help somebody. Do you have any references for this?
Heres an interesting fact. About 23% of people who use heroin (not opiates in general, heroin specifically) become addicts[0]. I've always found that rather interesting, and matches up perfectly with my anecdotal experience. I'm one of the 23% unfortunately.
Edit: As I said in a comment above, no-one wants to remain on heroin forever. You truly will want to stop at some point, even if it causes no issues in your life (good luck with that!) -- every addict I've known has hit that point eventually. I did. I was just lucky my government and society supported me in getting clean. Others in other countries aren't so lucky, and I think that's a shame.
I find it very unfortunate that society hasn't caught up with this way of thinking and mostly still regards addiction as a moral vice, rather than a lifelong illness.
Very normal, in itself healthy social interaction could bring one to alcoholism for example, and nobody, including the addict, will be aware of the problem for a long time.
I believe a more interesting claim would be to say 'social issues involving a significant other'. It's easy to hide problems of various kinds from your friends; it's much harder to do so with a partner, especially living together.
I'm not saying having such a partner prevents addiction, but I do think that it makes it harder to maintain without ramifications. I suspect a significant part of addicts either lack in a significant other, or have one who suffers from 'compatible' issues.
Personally I've found that partners and flatmates (family or otherwise) are a primary reason for not spiraling into bad habits (or addictions). With friends it's too easy to 'manage' yourself.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park
If you prefer the graphic novel:
I don't feel great about posting non-throway, but hey.
My anecdata (10 > N < 20) are that most opiate users generally work out OK (<10% problem rate). Like most habits though, it's not a great thing to be stuck with. Worse than being a smoker although the smart ones will be quick to point out it's biologically better.
It's a thing you can actually grow out of, too. The people who don't usually have other problems.
I infer from this statement that you believe that, in the case of legalization, the price would still be high enough to require crime. Do you have any reason to believe that heroin is inherently more expensive to manufacture than, say, aspirin?
Also, unless heroin addiction skews towards the top five-percenters, $3500 per week is a distant outlier.
You're assuming that in the case of legalisation there wouldn't be sin taxes, which given alcohol and cigarettes (and indeed weed) would be incredibly unlikely.
The problem with heroin is that once you are abusing it you need more and more but it starts to destroy your ability to earn the funds to pay for it.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/financial-cost-of...
My experience is that "those" crimes are caused by trauma and mental illness, but I guess the drug use is the easy thing to blame. It correlates super high at that point.
My experience with most of this is second-hand.
Most of the time when people talk about drug legalization, they mean things like marijuana, LSD, or ecstasy.
The modern equivalent is spending hours watching reality TV and eating fast food.
Not trying to be snarky. I mean it.
Not knowing much about this, could I ask why?
Can you see Corona dealers fighting with Coors dealers for a territory to sell beer? Why not? This is the EXACT reality of 1920s in this country.
I don't care if some idiots are going to kill themselves. As if we didn't have enough economic issues and ways to spend money, to spend so much on prisons, police force and all this other BS to deal with somebody's addiction.
I will tell you what will happen. As 1929 crash forced us to legalize alcohol, the same way 2008 forced us to legalize weed. Hopefully next crash will force us to legalize rest of it and start making money on it to find education vs. taking money from education to keep juvenile institutions staffed with guards.
Being a heroin addict should be treated as a social/medical problem and people given all the help they can to get clean, but we absolutely shouldn't be encouraging people to take it up. Especially heroin which is responsible for a very high percentage of all drug related deaths.
That isn't a true statement even now, but it's the mindset people bring to discussions about decriminalization.
Legalization does not need to mean "encouraging people to take it up." If we want to end the war on drugs, we need to all accept responsibility for determining what is safe for ourselves. The government's role should be in providing information and support.
This either because they don't know the purity of the substance, or they have tried to get clean on their own and are relapsing.
The latter is particularly insidious, as the person will set up the dosage based on habit while their body has lost its resistance to the drug.
Beer, weed, ecstacy, etc don't have that same steep addictive power, so aren't dangerous in that way. So it can't be so easily compared to alcohol since alcohol has a much more gradual addiction curve whereas heroin is much much steeper.
In other words, thousands of people around the world received that 'one shot' today and if you didn't tell them, probably wouldn't even know they just had a hit of h (and none of them suddenly loses their ability for rational thought or their life's goals).
"One shot" is an exaggeration, apologies. My point was that heroin and it's analogues are highly addictive substances, in an aggressive way that beer weed and ecstacy aren't. You can't directly compare and equate beer with heroin for the sake of argument for legalization. Drugs aren't equal and the addictive properties of one are different from another. They have to be considered on a case by case basis.
You have kids in high school who are injured in sports, are prescribed painkillers by their doctors which eventually gets them on heroin. The addicts didn't wake up one day thinking, "You know what? I think I'm going to try heroin today." It was legal pharmaceuticals with falsely advertised addiction rates that got them onto it.
Entirely incorrect. You'll need to take it daily for at least a month or so for withdrawals to even begin to effect you.
There are good arguments against heroin. We don't need to use propaganda and falsehoods to do so, in my opinion.
The issue is probably mostly that many of the people at a point where the first dose seems like a good idea are going to also think the second dose is a good idea.
All bullshit. The vast majority of people who try heroin (even multiple times) do not get addicted.
I did find 1 interesting paper on occasional and controlled heroin use: http://www.jrf.org.uk/system/files/1859354254.pdf
every single addiction takes effort and time to develope, even heroin. anyway, google 'heroin + medical use' and be very suprised.
In terms of addictive potential for any given drug:
smoking > injecting > snorting > eating > topical
If you were to actually compare drinking crack with drinking coffee, the addictiveness of both would be identical.
Both in your nose and in your mouth the drug is absorbed into the bloodstream via a mucous membrane. The reason you don't see a lot of people putting large doses of cocaine on their gums is largely practical... same thing for mdma for example, just the other way around.
/edit The coke-numbs-your-gums part is supposed to be a test for the quality of the product, easily faked though.
>Both in your nose and in your mouth the drug is absorbed into the bloodstream via a mucous membrane. The reason you don't see a lot of people putting large doses of cocaine on their gums is largely practical... same thing for mdma for example, just the other way around.
It's more practical to put it in your gums though - you don't need to lay it out, crush it up, line it up into lines, find/roll a tube etc. You just stick your finger into the packet and rub it on your gums. Do a little research - snorting affects you in a more intense way.
> /edit The coke-numbs-your-gums part is supposed to be a test for the quality of the product, easily faked though.
Cocaine was used by dentists to numb gums. It acts as an anaesthetic. Drug dealers play on this and add numbing agents to other drugs and pass it off as coke.
I heard exactly the same form school teacher about marijuana. I heard the same about alcohol and native American Indians. This is all BS. Give me science, solid proofs, not scary stories for 6 year olds.
And then again. Even if it is true. How is that your business? Somebody hurting themselves and you decide it is illegal for them at the same time buying a gun that can hurt others and you. This all complete nonsense, not based on our freedoms , Constitution, tradition, but some middle ages hysteria witch a bunch of ladies screaming delegalize alcohol because it is destroying my family.
We had it, this is BS, this doesnt work and first of all is none of your business what chemicals other people take in their time using their money. Unless you have a vested interest in keeping it illegal, like you are in a gang, you are a dealer or law enforcement. There is no logical reason to support drugs delegalization except for these two: dealing it or catching dealers. Because dealing and catching would be extinct without proginition the same way you don't buy Corona on a corner of a street from armed gangster.
- Heroin addictions are incredibly expensive in monetary terms, at $3,500 a week the price reduction would have to be huge before any legal drug wouldn't continue to create acquisitive crime to fund it
- Heroin addictions are incredibly expensive in terms of destroyed careers and relationships. Sure some users function normally, but you cannot know whether you're going to succumb or not before embarking - and that is the problem.