Re:The Ketamine Connection
by ghshephard on Friday July 10, 2015 @05:47AM
(#9863045)
The thing is - I don't think "heroin is an extremely bad thing" - I know a bunch of ex-heroin users, and even a few current users. The current users I know basically just maintain, and are otherwise completely competent and normal people - You honestly would have zero clue that they were current users.
The problems with heroin are usually in conjunction with alcohol or other depressants, people using too much, throwing up, and then drowning on their own vomit, not having a clean rig, or, god forbid, sharing needles.. And, of course, using too much, and then dying from the toxicity.
The toxicity thing typically comes from the legal element - people don't know how pure a component they are using; also they do it alone with nobody around to help them when they get into trouble. If they did know the purity, and their tolerance, and shot up in a safe, clean and social manner - overdose deaths for existing users drop to zero if there is someone around to revive a person who is ODing. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health-and-fitness/vanco...
But coming back to my main point - we can't have reasonable conversations about this, because "oooh, Heroin, Crack, Cocaine - scary evil monsters" - and all rational discourse goes out the window. If you brought this into the public light, then when people meet heroin addicts, become familiar with their situation, and realized what a stupid and possibly expensive addiction it is - you treat it like a disease and have zero interest in touching the stuff.
I will note, that I know an ex-heroin user who also quit smoking, and he said kicking the smoking habit was 10x harder than heroin.
The problems with heroin are usually in conjunction with alcohol or other depressants, people using too much, throwing up, and then drowning on their own vomit, not having a clean rig, or, god forbid, sharing needles.. And, of course, using too much, and then dying from the toxicity.
The toxicity thing typically comes from the legal element - people don't know how pure a component they are using; also they do it alone with nobody around to help them when they get into trouble. If they did know the purity, and their tolerance, and shot up in a safe, clean and social manner - overdose deaths for existing users drop to zero if there is someone around to revive a person who is ODing. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health-and-fitness/vanco...
But coming back to my main point - we can't have reasonable conversations about this, because "oooh, Heroin, Crack, Cocaine - scary evil monsters" - and all rational discourse goes out the window. If you brought this into the public light, then when people meet heroin addicts, become familiar with their situation, and realized what a stupid and possibly expensive addiction it is - you treat it like a disease and have zero interest in touching the stuff.
I will note, that I know an ex-heroin user who also quit smoking, and he said kicking the smoking habit was 10x harder than heroin.