I knew someone once who'd used heroin for a while and gave it up and he told a similar story. He said it "makes the pain go away," and I asked what he meant and he just said "all of it" and smiled. He said I'm in horrible, horrible pain and have no idea because I'd never tried heroin before. :O

Immediately made me think of this great old sci-fi story: http://bestsciencefictionstories.com/2009/05/17/desertion-by...

I remember talking to somebody in the medical industry once. I don't remember exactly what his job was, but he told me that he had done some work with opiate addicts. Supposedly, their brains themselves can get so powerfully addicted to the drugs that it actually generates phantom pain in order to force the user to get more opiates to make it go away. Every test they can run shows that the addict is actually feeling real pain, but there is absolutely nothing physically wrong to cause it. The idea that the brain can work on that level, actually causing artificial sensations to trick our conscious mind, is both amazing and scary.

The mental pain of existence, all existential issues, all of it fades away before you've even removed the needle from your vein. I always described heroin to those who ask about my experiences as "blissful apathy in a needle".

And yes, I've been clean for three years, but whenever I'd go through withdrawals every single nerve ending would be on fire and I'd be hypersensitive to pain. It's an interesting phenomenon. Part of that is caused by your brain downregulating it's own endorphin receptors, as you're providing it with something else that's much more powerful: you take away that stimulus and it takes your body and mind a while to adjust and upregulate those receptors again.

Forget physical pain. Opiates make the mental pain, the pain of existence go away. Stress, business problems, finances, it's all manageable with opiates. Most people don't know just how much better human existence can be with a bit of tweaking to our chemistry.

We accept we're no longer in our ancestral environment, why can't we accept that our default chemistry is suboptimal?

Suboptimal in what way? We create, develop, improve because we are unsatisfied, not because we are happy.

I don't think that's accurate. Certainly some people work jobs just to get cash to pay bills. But plenty of people create for the fun of it.

Our brains operate suboptimal because we can not control their state. We get worried when it provides no benefit. We get sad and troubled when we shouldn't. We experience intense pain with no way to shut it off. We lose focus, even when we really want to concentrate.

Everyone should have the capability and choice of modifying their brain chemistry on demand. Your premise that people should be forced to be unnecessarily unsatisfied because some of them might go on to do great things is cruel.

>>Our brains operate suboptimal because we can not control their state.

This is backwards, our brains are us.

>>We lose focus, even when we really want to concentrate.

This is a microcosm of the dangers involved, in modifying brain chemistry. Consider things like hyperfocus or working straight on amphetamine leading to shit code.

>>Our brains operate suboptimal because we can not control their state.

Many of the things you want can be achieved well by a machine or somebody without emotion? Do we want this?

>>Your premise that people should be forced to be unnecessarily unsatisfied because some of them might go on to do great things is cruel.

Its hard to decouple satisfaction from drive, and willpower - we have rather blunt instruments and current drugs build real dependency problems making it almost impossible to stop. Today's drugs don't do what you are talking about.

The pain of wanting is a very powerful pain. This is why the road to enlightenment requires you to give up your want.

My wife said something similar about morphine: "Did you know your hand hurts really bad while you are just standing there right now? You have no idea until you have morphine and it gets instantly better."

That's really interesting. I imagine nociceptors have a baseline firing rate but your brain tunes it out because it's just noise. If you switch that off, the current filter system would get whacked out of balance, you'd feel awesome, but when it switches on again, baseline firing would be a salient input for a bit and you might notice it? Of course, long term up/down regulation of various receptors occurs too, but I've never heard of this particular effect before though it sounds plausible to me.

I wondered a while back if (theoretically) taking some kind of non-harmful but pain stimulating compound might not make you feel awesome the rest of the time, and might even be good for you by recalibrating your inflammatory response and such.

BDSM has been shown to improve mental health in a number of ways. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jsm.12192/abstrac...

See: spicy food.

I was thinking of something more systemic, but that may be an example.

If you've ever wondered why people on hard drugs like to take off their clothes when they're coming down, this is it. You can't handle the sensory overload of your t-shirt against your skin.

Hard drugs isn't a category of drugs, but powerful opiates seem to be what's included anyways. I'm not aware of opiate users habitually taking off clothing. Other powerful drugs can make you feel cold, adding clothing. Some people really sweat on acid, which is probably a decent cause of taking off clothing.

Make sure to also read the same user's comment later on in the thread: http://www.reddit.com/r/Drugs/comments/1rhn38/heroin_users_o...

My favorite quote:

>I used to torture some of the people I sold drugs to by asking them if they knew why they got out of bed in the morning. "Why do you get out of bed every morning?" I would ask. Most didn't have any idea. When they realized this, I would pounce: "I know why I get out of bed," I'd say, almost imperially "it's because I'm sick as shit and need to do a shot." So there.

And from the first comment:

>In spite of my immediate delight with heroin and vow to use it as much as possible, it took over 6 months, and really closer to a year, of consistent use before the body became physiologically addicted. That said, addiction is rarely only physiological in nature. More often than not, it is caused by social factors.

The /r/opiates subreddit seems more accurate on opiate usage. Don't get things wrong, it can be terribly addicting. But for many users, that's not really a bad thing by using, any more than needing to pee more is considered by coffee fans.

Extended release opiates are a huge lifesaver though, allowing you to wake up without feeling like torture incarnate.

As a corollary, I remember trying opium whilst on a nice long career break overseas, and being frankly pretty underwhelmed.... and then considering whether I might have thought otherwise if I'd had any source of stress or dissatisfaction in my life whatsoever at the time.

[of course the alternate hypothesis is that what I was being supplied with wasn't opium, but I prefer the first one...]