13 ms·

Fentanyl, a stealth killer

112 points by etendue 10y ago

bdavisx 10y ago
There would be far, far fewer deaths from overdose if all drugs were legal. There may be more addicts if they were legal, I don't know - but there would be a lot fewer deaths.
- ergothus 10y ago
  I'm not against legalization, but have you done the research to back this up? We have plenty of alcohol-related deaths (both indirect (traffic, etc), and direct (alcohol poisoning).
  - pizza 10y ago
    http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(10)61462-6/abstract http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-67... > Overall, alcohol was the most harmful drug (overall harm score 72), with heroin (55) and crack cocaine (54) in second and third places.
    - danbruc 10y ago
      This study comes up time and again but is really not founded very well. I couple of members of the Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs - whatever exactly that is - sat together and scored a selection of drugs on a selected set of criteria. That's it, there is really no data behind this study other than the opinions of those people. Those opinions might be correct but they may as well be biased or even totally wrong.
      - gozur88 10y ago
        Yes. From the abstract: >Members of the Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs, including two invited specialists, met in a 1-day interactive workshop to score 20 drugs on 16 criteria: nine related to the harms that a drug produces in the individual and seven to the harms to others. Drugs were scored out of 100 points, and the criteria were weighted to indicate their relative importance. You could make the scores come out however you wanted based on the people you chose for the "1-day interactive workshop" and the criteria you used as the basis for the analysis. This isn't something you'd ever want to use as a basis for policy.
  - celticninja 10y ago
    Have a look at the figures for Portugal pre and post 2001.the Cato Institute did a pretty good write up a few years ago.
  - Archio 10y ago
    We do have tons of alcohol deaths. But the idea here is that no one dies from alcohol today because their alcohol dealer slips in unknown amounts of toxic potentiators to cut costs (which is effectively what is happening with heroin et al. today).
    - FireBeyond 10y ago
      That's not "strictly" overdose, but contamination. The original point still stands, re alcohol overdose.
    - anotheryou 10y ago
      There was a nice article about how you survive addiction by growing it out. Addiction has also to do with the circumstance and the personality, not just with the drug itself. If alcohol was illegal the death toll might be even higher. People might shift to something with more bang for the buck and have an even shittier and shorter life than dying with 64 from liver failure.
    - MichaelGG 10y ago
      Yeah the increase from heroin to fent would be like drinking a wine cooler (2%) that's actually everclear (95%). I don't know any user of any substance that would say "well 1 unit is likely to get me off a bit, so I think I'll take 20 just to be sure".
  - loverofcode 10y ago
    It is hard to get true data, when the only supposedly creditable source (CDC), mixes its data to include all prescription drugs including SSRI's and illicit fentanyl from china. Opioids can be used in VERY high doses as a person becomes more dependent. What is clear is that people are use to heroin and then take the higher dose without knowing and OD. This is the current trend. It is cheaper to get the Fent from Ch than the H from Afgan.
    - shams93 10y ago
      You could take a look at the results in Portugal: https://mic.com/articles/110344/14-years-after-portugal-decriminalized-all-drugs-here-s-what-s-happening#.MNdTXLhE0 https://mic.com/articles/110344/14-years-after-portugal-decr...
      - d0mine 10y ago
        The "Drug-induced deaths" plot from the link is very telling.
        loverofcode 10y ago
        it is.
      - loverofcode 10y ago
        wow. very good info. saved link.
      - slavik81 10y ago
        The statistics are interesting, but they kind of miss the GGP's point. Decriminalization is not legalization. If you just decriminalize, drug users still have to buy their drugs from sketchy black-market suppliers. That's very dangerous compared to buying from a legal, regulated industry. For example, alcohol is predictable and pure today but in the prohibition era, when all suppliers were criminals, it wasn't [1][2]. [1] http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1864521_1864524_1864626,00.html http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,288... [2] http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2010/02/the_chemists_war.html http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_exa...
  - loverofcode 10y ago
    i mean look at this statement "A study showed patients prescribed high dosages of opioids long-term (>90 days) had 122 times the risk of opioid use disorder compared to patients not prescribed opioids" from the cdc to drs here http://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/pdf/guideline_infographic-a.pdf http://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/pdf/guideline_infographic-a.... So people taking opioids have are at more risk of opioid use disorder than people who dont take them. -YA THINK. And finally look at how they garble the data here http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6450a3.htm http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6450a3.htm they are finally getting to where they can see the drugs are from illegal sources and not dr regulated rxs.
  - duaneb 10y ago
    The Swiss have had a program legalizing medical heroin, I believe. That's a starting point.
    - MichaelGG 10y ago
      Already legal in NL and UK.
  - exDM69 10y ago
    In the case of alcohol, there was a period of prohibition that did not decrease the death count nor reduce harm to individuals or the society. Granted it was a long time ago. Better data about drug policy and harm reduction can be found by looking at results from Portugal or other countries with permissive policies. None of them supports the claim that prohibition reduces use or harm caused.
- searine 10y ago
  >There would be far, far fewer deaths from overdose if all drugs were legal. 2/3rds of all overdoses are opiate related. The biggest impactor to preventing overdose death is the drug Naloxone which is an opioid blocker. Putting naloxone in the hands of at risk drug users, and as standard kit for police officers/EMTS, is the most effective way to save lives.
  - pizza 10y ago
    Many (if not like more than half, I forget the statistic..) of those overdose deaths result from combining a GABAergic like alcohol or especially benzodiazepines with an opioid.
    - rmac 10y ago
      I wonder why mixing cns depressants is so common? Is it because opioids are so expensive / hard to get, and benzos/alcohol easier to get and cheaper? Or is it simply a better feeling mixing them...
      - pizza 10y ago
        Both, and 3. throwing caution/life to the wind.. oh, and 4. combining a stimulant with a larger/more euphoric dose of the CNS depressants so if the respiratory stimulating effects of the stimulant run out first, respiratory depression ensues
        rmac 10y ago
        In my experience doing a heroic amount of opioids was enough to not care, uppers mixed in as anti-nod. I didn't understand why people mixed in benzos, unless to curb withdrawals.
      - MichaelGG 10y ago
        There's also no literature on the subject. So if you need benzos and opiates, there's zero guidance on what's safe. Just "we don't know, we don't measure, don't do it". In other words, abstinence. Some people take them to increase the nod. Others might have insomnia and don't want to take so much opiates to really sleep. Edit: And there's obviously some information on this, somewhere because e.g. IV opiate+midazolam is quite a common thing. [In a 3rd world pharmacy, I was actually offered liquid midazolam as a sleep aid when I complained long-lasting benzos were too long-lasting and asked for a medium-duration sleep aid.]
pizza 10y ago
Just because fentanyl has a shit therapeutic index doesn't mean it has a high body count (it gets used just fine even in tandem with other depressants in clinical circumstances...) - I would say the problem is more in the hands of the tough-on-crime lawmakers who seem to lack, at least in my neck of the woods, remorse. Also, look up sufentanil, and once you feel you're ready, carfentanil.. Also, yes, yes, fentanyl is made because of its potency and therefore cheapness, but a napkin-back calculation shows: 17 $ / g codeine * 100 g codeine / 70 g morphine in a conversion tek * 3 g morphine / 2 g heroin = ~$37 g/heroin, if you were a pretty good chemist, and could legally source precursors (pyridine HCL, acetic anhydride..), which is probably a lot better than the stepped on shit you would get for even 60 bucks a gram (although you can get 60 dollar grams on AlphaBay iirc). That's near a dollar a dose for an opiate-naive user and a day's worth for the 60-year old junkie down the street. Also, the high/euphoria from fentanyl is much shorter lasting (hence its appropriate use in surgery) - I could see this encouraging heroin users to use more under the idea that they've simply increased their tolerance.. Also, Prince died with traces of U-47700 in his system.
- jshelly 10y ago
  I love this website
- oxide 10y ago
  Also, consider the tried and true method of overdosing: taking your usual dose after a break in use. someone addicted to a certain amount of heroin per day who stops using (money, access, etc) will come back to heroin with a much lower tolerance than before. if they are sold fentanyl unknowingly, using a familiar amount can be a death sentence. if they are sold heroin cut with fentanyl, it could result in death as well. these aren't entirely new concepts, nor are they explicitly attributable to fentanyl. addicts across the country are keeling over every day from traditional overdoses, fentanyl's presence means everyone using heroin intravenously, even the 60 year old junkie, needs to have a test shot first. in my experience, fentanyl is good for withdrawal only. it is a cold, unfriendly high that leaves the user irritable. it's nothing like the warm embrace of morphine.
  - 10y ago
civilian 10y ago
Chapter 2 is titled ‘Kissed by Jesus’, if that helps anyone avoid the longread. // edit whoops yeah I'm wrong, my replier is correct. Nevertheless... Chapter 1 was stumbling into a long resume of the boy's high school experiences and I was getting bored, so when the title of chapter 2 was "Kissed by Jesus" I ended early. The first portion of the article is really good, but the long backstory and gateway-drug-ism in the article got old.
- tensor 10y ago
  There is nothing religious in this. The quote was describing the feelings when they were on the drug.
onetwotree 10y ago
The mention of Fentanyl here is pure clickbait. Fentanyl is pretty well known amongst opiate addicts (and has been for a while). Everyone knows it's dangerous, including dealers, who like to avoid killing their customers and catching murder charges, believe it or not. Aside from that and a bit of gateway drug BS towards the beginning, this is a solid and somewhat moving, if long, account of the standard Heroin story, and is more or less the same as the ones I hear from fellow recovering addicts all the time. Key features, so you can avoid the longread: * Insurance refusing to pay for treatment * Parents being forced to get their kids arrested to protect them (and the plan failing) * Relapse, relapse, and more relapse despite full knowledge of the consequences and a strong desire not to relapse. * Terror of being dope sick * Doing stuff you don't want to do to avoid being dope sick * Death
- hristov 10y ago
  Hate to break it to you but your dealer does not give a fuck about your health. It is extremely difficult for the police to find the dealer of a dead person, and then very difficult to prove the elements needed for a murder charge. The police do not even try to find dealers of drug deaths, unless the victim is a celebrity. Furthermore, every heroin dealer knows that each of their clients is likely to go into a downward spiral and become a liability. Thus, they treat their clients as expendable.
  - rhizome 10y ago
    While it isn't yet the law everywhere in the US, it's not just celebrities whose dealers get charged with murder for supplying drugs that kill via overdose.[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/her-fiance-gave-her-heroin-she-overdosed-does-that-make-him-a-murderer/2016/05/08/f9a9e79a-f29b-11e5-a2a3-d4e9697917d1_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/her-fiance-gave-her-...
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loverofcode 10y ago
Fentanyl is coming from China and other places. The main problem is the users not knowing what they are getting and dose exchanges, not the opioid itself. The DEA and people using addicts to make money instead of treating as a healthcare problem is what is causing this.
milesf 10y ago
Sad that the message of this piece will likely be discounted and discredited. It amazes me the blasé attitudes towards drugs in the tech world. Hearing even high-profile tech leaders extoll the 'virtues' of getting high while ignoring the huge toll it takes on individuals and their families seems selfish to me.
- pierrec 10y ago
  I have never heard of any high-profile tech leaders defending the recreational use of opioids, nor is it a popular position on HN. What's often praised, however, is education (eg. not throwing all drugs into the same bag).
  - notyourloops 10y ago
    One of the top posts in here is describing how to start your own opioid business. I'd consider that praise on some level, unfortunately.
    - openasocket 10y ago
      Are you referring to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12212241 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12212241 ? (if not, disregard this) It read to me like the user just said that fentanyl isn't that much cheaper than making heroin, and showed his work. They aren't actually advocating or advising for anything.
      - notyourloops 10y ago
        Starting material, precursors, cost analysis, and a darknet market for sales. You can say they're not advocating or advising for anything, but they just did to anyone who could be interested, from start to completed product to where to sell it.
        soundwave106 10y ago
        That really isn't a worry in my opinion. Generally speaking, when a drug exists in prescription form, you don't see too many people rushing out to make it. (Methamphetamine's probably one of the few exceptions because it can relatively easily be (badly) made by "home chemists".) Instead, the focus becomes more on obtaining diverted prescription drugs via illicit channels ("doctor shopping", shady pharmacies, pharmacy theft, etc.). See: oxycodone, vicodin, etc. Beyond that, most of these compounds are patented or have been at one point, and there's certainly plenty of patents on fentanyl. Patents pretty much contain much of the information you need to make the compound, easy enough to look this information up. This is not very "top secret" information. Actually the poster provided hardly the information needed to actually make the compound in comparison to what you can Google. Finally, for those wishing to pursue this for some reason, said poster did not describe what to do when "the law" shows up at your door to inquire just what in the heck you are doing ordering acetic anhydride (it is, er, a U.S. DEA List II compound after all) or other watched chemicals. :) If someone's going to get into the illicit drug manufacturing business, they're going to need far more than a Hacker News post to do such.
gallonofmilk 10y ago
I just want to say that that I lost one of my close friends Thom Simmons last April due to Fentanyl overdose. He was a young, voracious autodidact prodigy that was always way ahead of the curve especially with technology. I met him through the #django irc channel about 7 or 8 years ago when I was starting out with python and django and we developed a friendship that lasted until he overdosed on fentanyl and died in a motel room alone last year. I had reconnected with him in his final weeks as he struggled to get clean and desperately wanted out of his situation but he felt trapped, afraid, alone, and hopeless. He broke down crying to me over the phone a few days before he died, after I helped pay for a night in his motel room because he had run out of money. I didn't realize the full gravity of the situation or know that he had already relapsed at that point and he was dangerously close to the end. I believe that Thom knew it was his last week on Earth and he was saying goodbye to me. He told me what a special friendship we had and how much that meant to him, how he hadn't met many people in his life that he could trust. We laughed a lot about the many memories of late nights programming, scheming on grand ideas for the next major social platform we wanted to build. He showed me Reddit when no one knew what it was, he showed me hackerne.ws before it was known, he helped me set up a trixbox server and program asterisk with voip connections, we built a custom PLC software for a startup and worked on other various projects. We also shared the disease of addiction and unfortunately he couldn't get the help he needed to stay clean and sober. Upon his death all he got was a short blurb in a rural Texas local newspaper, not a word about the amazing person, friend, genius he was. I later found out that 15+ people died of fentanyl overdose in his town that weekend, all of them addicts that lost the battle. I had to get that out because every time I hear about fentanyl it reminds me of Thom and I hope that our society finds solutions to help addicts overcome the extremely dark and twisted pull of drugs and addiction so that other amazing people like Thom don't meet the same fate. I'll never forget his memory and the amazing person he was, and that the very fact that I met him and we became friends was because of the same technology he was so fond of. (http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/pearland/obituary.aspx?pid=174779466 http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/pearland/obituary.aspx?pid=...)
- frandroid 10y ago
  Your friend and the others who died that weekend didn't "lose the battle". They were poisoned, murdered by an unscrupulous and/or clueless dealer.
trhway 10y ago
people who get addicted should be treated similarly to the mentally impaired/disabled persons. Once addicted, a range of specific brain functions are impaired, and thus it is a medical issue. A lot of other medical issues are result of personal irresponsibility too. That doesn't stop us from treating those issues medically (though it seems it took some time, even as recently as the end of the 20th century, to accept HIV as a medical disease to be treated instead of a "God's punishment for perversion"). Yet when it comes to addiction, the patients are treated as criminals instead.
RankingMember 10y ago
This was a well-written story but I could've done without: A. The "MARIJUANA, THAT DEVIL WEED, STARTED HIS DESCENT INTO HELL" routine. and B. The "truth" anti-drug ad campaign-style video overlays
- DanBC 10y ago
  A ridiculous over-reaction to a bit of biographical detail.
  - gravypod 10y ago
    I'd not call this an over reaction. This part of the story, no matter how true, will be used to smear pot users in the future. People will look at the original drug as the cause when in reality there are probably many more possible things that could be associated with the cause. This sort of thing becomes played out after time. "It's not the person's fault! It's that they used this devil plant"
- gedy 10y ago
  Frankly, virtually everyone I've known who ended up in drug 'hell' did start with pot; so while correlation does not equal causation, the belief or concern it's a gateway drug really should not be mocked. Questioning, debating, fine - but mocking people's concern, is frequently about friends and family who are in trouble.
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    > Frankly, virtually everyone I've known who ended up in drug 'hell' did start with pot Funny, everyone I've known who ended up in drug "hell" started with either tobacco or alcohol. Which means just as much nothing as yours... > so while correlation does not equal causation, the belief or concern it's a gateway drug really should not be mocked. Anecdote ("virtually everyone I've known...") doesn't equal meaningful correlation in the general population, much less causation. And "people who end up in drug hell are likely to have used X drug in the past" is the wrong correlation, anyway, to support "dangerous gateway drug" claims (even leaving aside the need to move from correlation to causation.) You really want "people who use X drug are likely to go on to end up in drug hell".
imaginenore 10y ago
It probably will sound cruel, but this is natural selection at work. We can't babysit adults. If someone wants to smoke or drink alcohol, we accept it, but when someone takes drugs, people start losing their minds, even though alcohol/cigarettes are worse than many recreational drugs. If someone wants to ruin their health, but experience something unusual, let them. The dangers are generally known.
- bbctol 10y ago
  You're right, that does sound cruel. Moreover, the effects of addiction, the way choices made in childhood or under duress can affect the brain well into adulthood, and the fact that unregulated drugs sold can be far more dangerous than believed (you know, what the article was about) make this a hardly tenable position. "The dangers are generally known" is only said about opiate addiction by someone who doesn't know much.
  - imaginenore 10y ago
    Are you saying opiate addiction dangers are not known? Sounds like you're the one who doesn't know much. Even kids know drugs are bad for you. And the article is about the adults.
    - MichaelGG 10y ago
      This is not a danger of opiate addiction. It is a danger of an unregulated black market selling improperly marked medicine. Hint: If you accidentally take 50x the amount of Tylenol you intended to take, you're probably going to die.
- frandroid 10y ago
  Drug addiction is a mental health disease. We don't tell depressed people that this is just natural selection at work, "just shake it out". We get people treated with the right medication. A huge amount of drug addicts suffer from untreated psychological trauma, particularly childhood trauma. http://drgabormate.com/book/in-the-realm-of-hungry-ghosts/ http://drgabormate.com/book/in-the-realm-of-hungry-ghosts/
jessaustin 10y ago
Found by a coworker within two minutes of passing out, but no one called an ambulance for thirty minutes. We ought to care more about the people around us.
- MichaelGG 10y ago
  Having been in non-drug, legal, harm situations, there's a huge pressure not to involve authorities. Embarrassment and hassle, costs (perhaps not in Canada) are bad enough. Legal and social repercussions due to officially having a problem on your record can really damage. (Applies to people seeking mental health help, too!) Add in potential to be arrested and it's not hard to see why someone might delay or even let someone die. It's easy to visualize the damage of being wrong - you just "ruined" someone's life just because they might be in mortal danger. If there was a guarantee of no investigation, no publicity, no named record, this might not happen as much. Also, making easy, cheap access to naloxone might mean more users would carry around antidote.
  - jessaustin 10y ago
    You're right, of course. The coworker was probably quite young, and the outcomes you describe loomed larger for her than the actual outcome. This sort of thing really ought to be addressed in high school, but unfortunately all we get is, "drugs're bad, mmm-kay?"
    - MichaelGG 10y ago
      If the coworker had drugs on them, the potential outcomes might actually _be_ far worse than the actual outcome here. They'll feel like shit. But you know, in a few years, the emotional pain will have subsided quite a bit. And it wasn't really their fault, directly, totally - it'll get rationalized. Whereas a drug arrest, a criminal history, that could take much more work and time to get over.
      - jessaustin 10y ago
        Well sure one definitely doesn't call 911 while possessing illegal substances, but it just takes a minute to walk out to one's car/the dumpster/some other place the cops ain't going to search because one called an ambulance for an unconscious coworker. Who would complain, the manager who wasn't present? Actually this train of thought would be pretty ethically indefensible.
downandout 10y ago
Opiate addiction is a serious problem that affects people from all walks of life. My mother has had rheumatoid arthritis for decades. She was prescribed Fentanyl patches for the pain at one point, but the strength was too high. One day she wound up passing out in her kitchen after applying a patch. After that she stuck the patches in a drawer, intending for them to never to be used again. She was fine after this incident, but my sister happened to mention the story to an acquaintance of my mother's from church. Upon learning that there was a box of unused Fentanyl patches in my mother's house, she suddenly became her best friend and volunteered to begin taking her to doctor's appointments. She would take her to doctor's appointments, then while my mother was there, would go back to my mother's house to "clean up" - do dishes, vacuum etc. This wasn't a mere act of charity; she also "cleaned up" not only the patches, but a significant percentage of my mom's other opioid pain medications. At first my mother thought she was going crazy when pills began going missing. She finally told me about it, and while I was inclined to believe that she was simply starting to lose her mental acuity, I bought her a lockbox for her pills. It was only after this woman (an upper middle class mother of three young children) brought tools with her during a visit and actually destroyed the electronic lock on the box that I realized that her trusted "friend" from church was stealing her pain medications. When my mother told one of the leaders of her church what happened, the woman denied it, and three weeks later moved her entire family several states away. You really can't make this stuff up. Addicts come in all shapes and sizes and will do anything to quench their addiction.
- MichaelGG 10y ago
  If someone was suffering from pain and couldn't even buy Ibuprofen due to an oppressive government and shitty societal view, one might not be surprised if they steal to get life-changing medicine. The fact a "normal" person would rob an older woman for an essential medicine should reflect more on the society than the patient.
  - downandout 10y ago
    I'm pretty sure the only pain she was suffering from was that of not having enough drugs in her system at any given time.
filoeleven 10y ago
I've read a fair amount online about ibogaine, derived from iboga root, as a treatment for addiction, and opiate addiction in particular. It doesn't seem to be very well-known, but everything I've read makes it seem like a miracle cure. It is a schedule 1 psychedelic in the US, but there are apparently clinics/retreats in Mexico and Canada where it is used to treat addiction. Reportedly, withdrawal symptoms immediately begin to subside when the trip hits and then disappear completely, never to return. Cravings don't return either. The success rate is incredible--one study I read about from ~2011 followed up with its participants, and 30/30 were still not using, and they and their partners reported a much higher quality of life. All from a single six-hour trip (though it seems like these places want people to hang out for a week or so afterward, too). When I say "miracle cure" and "incredible" I mean them in the superlative sense, but these kinds of claims also make me suspicious because I'd expect to hear more noise about them if they worked as well as advertised. So consider this post both a plea to share more info if anyone has it, either for or against, as well as a jumping-off point for further research for anyone who is personally or knows someone who is suffering from an addiction. On the one hand, it sounds too good to be true, but on the other hand, psychedelics are so demonized that I could believe the word just hasn't gotten out yet. (After all, clinical LSD treatment showed a lot of promise in curing/greatly reducing alcohol addiction 50 years ago, among a host of other things, but you wouldn't know it unless you go looking yourself.)
Floegipoky 10y ago
It's 2016, and the media is still pushing the same classic tropes, marijuana as a gateway drug, etc. Yet other than a quick characterization of DJ being a risk-taker, this article fails to even consider the most important question- why did he start using? What was the cause of his addiction? Nobody wants to consider the consequences of a society that confines adolescent male hominids in a classroom during the height of puberty, then locks them in cages to keep them from bothering others when they become too much of a bother, or a family that attempts to account for every minute of their adult offspring's life. I can't speak to the female experience, but I still remember the existential ache of a teenaged male trying to make his place in the world. But there's a pill for that, right? Nobody wants to admit that fighting a War On Drugs without fundamentally reforming our toxic society is the same as fighting a War On Climate Change while still burning fossil fuels.
jalami 10y ago
In the US you can't do research about a product then go out and buy quality product from a quality provider. That's really where I see a lot of the problems with all of this. Yes there's a failure of information somewhere and people that fall through the cracks should be able to find their way out again, but the root of the problem stems from publicly vilifying people and actions that should be legal. Regulating all drugs like cigarettes, for example, would make it so they wouldn't have to get grade E stuff from some alley, we'd stop imprisoning people that may just need help and we could have discussions in the open about abuse. Privately vilify all you want, but the government should be mute on people's preferences as long as they are capable of making decisions, there's mandatory information disclosure surrounding dangerous drugs and companies can't lie about what they're selling. Heroine for better or worse is a product that people are willing to go far out of their way to purchase and that goes for nearly all drugs. I would never do it and I believe if you made it legal, most people not doing it today wouldn't pick it up. We really need to get the idea that legal === government endorsement out of our heads. We do things because the pros of doing them outweigh the cons of not doing them. Information around drugs, proper, honest and often, deters dangerous adoption.
baus 10y ago
I talked to a friend of mine today who has a serious opiate addiction. It is heartbreaking. He is on the verge of losing what he has left to lose, but I don't know if there is anything to do. He refuses to seek treatment. I think his options are running out. I've had my problems in life, specifically with mental illness and benzo addiction, but I'm thankful that I never went the opiate route.
- tigershark 10y ago
  Why is he so unhappy? Reading this thread it would seem that opiates are innocuous, a glass of wine is more dangerous apparently. Seriously, I can't understand how people can say such things actively encouraging people to take opioids because they have "less side effects than alcohol".
  - aianus 10y ago
    Nobody is telling people to go out and try opiates. We'd just rather people who are already addicted be able to get a cheap, safe fix than /go broke/go to jail/OD on sketchy drugs.
    - tigershark 10y ago
      There are people in this thread explicitly saying that getting high with heroine once a day is not different than drinking a glass of wine a day. If this is not an opiates eulogy then I don't know what is it. For me should be even illegal to incentivise opiates usage so irresponsibly.
alasdair_ 10y ago
My daughter died of a fentanyl overdose one month ago. She was 21. It was her first time taking it. I assume she thought it was cocaine or something similar and simply took far too much. If you have children, please teach them about drugs. That means more than "just say no" it means being really, really clear with them that a huge danger is that they get given something that isn't what it is claimed. Sadly, this is especially true if they are young and female and perhaps a little naive. I expect that my younger children will experiment with drugs even knowing what happened to their sister. I expect their friends will as well. All I can do now is teach them how quickly their life can end and, perhaps, give them ready access to test kits in the same way that they will have ready access to condoms and std education when the time comes. Please, if you have a child, talk to them today about fentanyl in particular - most of her friends has never heard of it before she died and had no idea how strong or cheap it was.
- davidhariri 10y ago
  That's tragic. I'm so sorry for your loss.
anonbanker 10y ago
was recently given fentanyl when I had to have a dislocated arm re-located. I passed out within 4 minutes, and woke up without a dislocation. I don't understand why you'd want to take it recreationally (how much does your life suck that you want to sleep constantly?), but I'm glad it exists to ease suffering. Maybe some of these scare articles should look at the "Rat Park" study, and figure out why people are doing the drug in the first place?

112 points by etendue 10y ago

There would be far, far fewer deaths from overdose if all drugs were legal. There may be more addicts if they were legal, I don't know - but there would be a lot fewer deaths.

ergothus 10y ago
I'm not against legalization, but have you done the research to back this up? We have plenty of alcohol-related deaths (both indirect (traffic, etc), and direct (alcohol poisoning).
- pizza 10y ago
  http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(10)61462-6/abstract http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-67... > Overall, alcohol was the most harmful drug (overall harm score 72), with heroin (55) and crack cocaine (54) in second and third places.
  - danbruc 10y ago
    This study comes up time and again but is really not founded very well. I couple of members of the Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs - whatever exactly that is - sat together and scored a selection of drugs on a selected set of criteria. That's it, there is really no data behind this study other than the opinions of those people. Those opinions might be correct but they may as well be biased or even totally wrong.
    - gozur88 10y ago
      Yes. From the abstract: >Members of the Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs, including two invited specialists, met in a 1-day interactive workshop to score 20 drugs on 16 criteria: nine related to the harms that a drug produces in the individual and seven to the harms to others. Drugs were scored out of 100 points, and the criteria were weighted to indicate their relative importance. You could make the scores come out however you wanted based on the people you chose for the "1-day interactive workshop" and the criteria you used as the basis for the analysis. This isn't something you'd ever want to use as a basis for policy.
- celticninja 10y ago
  Have a look at the figures for Portugal pre and post 2001.the Cato Institute did a pretty good write up a few years ago.
- Archio 10y ago
  We do have tons of alcohol deaths. But the idea here is that no one dies from alcohol today because their alcohol dealer slips in unknown amounts of toxic potentiators to cut costs (which is effectively what is happening with heroin et al. today).
  - FireBeyond 10y ago
    That's not "strictly" overdose, but contamination. The original point still stands, re alcohol overdose.
  - anotheryou 10y ago
    There was a nice article about how you survive addiction by growing it out. Addiction has also to do with the circumstance and the personality, not just with the drug itself. If alcohol was illegal the death toll might be even higher. People might shift to something with more bang for the buck and have an even shittier and shorter life than dying with 64 from liver failure.
  - MichaelGG 10y ago
    Yeah the increase from heroin to fent would be like drinking a wine cooler (2%) that's actually everclear (95%). I don't know any user of any substance that would say "well 1 unit is likely to get me off a bit, so I think I'll take 20 just to be sure".
- loverofcode 10y ago
  It is hard to get true data, when the only supposedly creditable source (CDC), mixes its data to include all prescription drugs including SSRI's and illicit fentanyl from china. Opioids can be used in VERY high doses as a person becomes more dependent. What is clear is that people are use to heroin and then take the higher dose without knowing and OD. This is the current trend. It is cheaper to get the Fent from Ch than the H from Afgan.
  - shams93 10y ago
    You could take a look at the results in Portugal: https://mic.com/articles/110344/14-years-after-portugal-decriminalized-all-drugs-here-s-what-s-happening#.MNdTXLhE0 https://mic.com/articles/110344/14-years-after-portugal-decr...
    - d0mine 10y ago
      The "Drug-induced deaths" plot from the link is very telling.
      - loverofcode 10y ago
        it is.
    - loverofcode 10y ago
      wow. very good info. saved link.
    - slavik81 10y ago
      The statistics are interesting, but they kind of miss the GGP's point. Decriminalization is not legalization. If you just decriminalize, drug users still have to buy their drugs from sketchy black-market suppliers. That's very dangerous compared to buying from a legal, regulated industry. For example, alcohol is predictable and pure today but in the prohibition era, when all suppliers were criminals, it wasn't [1][2]. [1] http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1864521_1864524_1864626,00.html http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,288... [2] http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2010/02/the_chemists_war.html http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_exa...
- loverofcode 10y ago
  i mean look at this statement "A study showed patients prescribed high dosages of opioids long-term (>90 days) had 122 times the risk of opioid use disorder compared to patients not prescribed opioids" from the cdc to drs here http://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/pdf/guideline_infographic-a.pdf http://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/pdf/guideline_infographic-a.... So people taking opioids have are at more risk of opioid use disorder than people who dont take them. -YA THINK. And finally look at how they garble the data here http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6450a3.htm http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6450a3.htm they are finally getting to where they can see the drugs are from illegal sources and not dr regulated rxs.
- duaneb 10y ago
  The Swiss have had a program legalizing medical heroin, I believe. That's a starting point.
  - MichaelGG 10y ago
    Already legal in NL and UK.
- exDM69 10y ago
  In the case of alcohol, there was a period of prohibition that did not decrease the death count nor reduce harm to individuals or the society. Granted it was a long time ago. Better data about drug policy and harm reduction can be found by looking at results from Portugal or other countries with permissive policies. None of them supports the claim that prohibition reduces use or harm caused.
searine 10y ago
>There would be far, far fewer deaths from overdose if all drugs were legal. 2/3rds of all overdoses are opiate related. The biggest impactor to preventing overdose death is the drug Naloxone which is an opioid blocker. Putting naloxone in the hands of at risk drug users, and as standard kit for police officers/EMTS, is the most effective way to save lives.
- pizza 10y ago
  Many (if not like more than half, I forget the statistic..) of those overdose deaths result from combining a GABAergic like alcohol or especially benzodiazepines with an opioid.
  - rmac 10y ago
    I wonder why mixing cns depressants is so common? Is it because opioids are so expensive / hard to get, and benzos/alcohol easier to get and cheaper? Or is it simply a better feeling mixing them...
    - pizza 10y ago
      Both, and 3. throwing caution/life to the wind.. oh, and 4. combining a stimulant with a larger/more euphoric dose of the CNS depressants so if the respiratory stimulating effects of the stimulant run out first, respiratory depression ensues
      - rmac 10y ago
        In my experience doing a heroic amount of opioids was enough to not care, uppers mixed in as anti-nod. I didn't understand why people mixed in benzos, unless to curb withdrawals.
    - MichaelGG 10y ago
      There's also no literature on the subject. So if you need benzos and opiates, there's zero guidance on what's safe. Just "we don't know, we don't measure, don't do it". In other words, abstinence. Some people take them to increase the nod. Others might have insomnia and don't want to take so much opiates to really sleep. Edit: And there's obviously some information on this, somewhere because e.g. IV opiate+midazolam is quite a common thing. [In a 3rd world pharmacy, I was actually offered liquid midazolam as a sleep aid when I complained long-lasting benzos were too long-lasting and asked for a medium-duration sleep aid.]

pizza 10y ago

Just because fentanyl has a shit therapeutic index doesn't mean it has a high body count (it gets used just fine even in tandem with other depressants in clinical circumstances...) - I would say the problem is more in the hands of the tough-on-crime lawmakers who seem to lack, at least in my neck of the woods, remorse. Also, look up sufentanil, and once you feel you're ready, carfentanil.. Also, yes, yes, fentanyl is made because of its potency and therefore cheapness, but a napkin-back calculation shows: 17 $ / g codeine * 100 g codeine / 70 g morphine in a conversion tek * 3 g morphine / 2 g heroin = ~$37 g/heroin, if you were a pretty good chemist, and could legally source precursors (pyridine HCL, acetic anhydride..), which is probably a lot better than the stepped on shit you would get for even 60 bucks a gram (although you can get 60 dollar grams on AlphaBay iirc). That's near a dollar a dose for an opiate-naive user and a day's worth for the 60-year old junkie down the street. Also, the high/euphoria from fentanyl is much shorter lasting (hence its appropriate use in surgery) - I could see this encouraging heroin users to use more under the idea that they've simply increased their tolerance.. Also, Prince died with traces of U-47700 in his system.

jshelly 10y ago
I love this website
oxide 10y ago
Also, consider the tried and true method of overdosing: taking your usual dose after a break in use. someone addicted to a certain amount of heroin per day who stops using (money, access, etc) will come back to heroin with a much lower tolerance than before. if they are sold fentanyl unknowingly, using a familiar amount can be a death sentence. if they are sold heroin cut with fentanyl, it could result in death as well. these aren't entirely new concepts, nor are they explicitly attributable to fentanyl. addicts across the country are keeling over every day from traditional overdoses, fentanyl's presence means everyone using heroin intravenously, even the 60 year old junkie, needs to have a test shot first. in my experience, fentanyl is good for withdrawal only. it is a cold, unfriendly high that leaves the user irritable. it's nothing like the warm embrace of morphine.
- 10y ago

civilian 10y ago

Chapter 2 is titled ‘Kissed by Jesus’, if that helps anyone avoid the longread. // edit whoops yeah I'm wrong, my replier is correct. Nevertheless... Chapter 1 was stumbling into a long resume of the boy's high school experiences and I was getting bored, so when the title of chapter 2 was "Kissed by Jesus" I ended early. The first portion of the article is really good, but the long backstory and gateway-drug-ism in the article got old.

tensor 10y ago
There is nothing religious in this. The quote was describing the feelings when they were on the drug.

onetwotree 10y ago

The mention of Fentanyl here is pure clickbait. Fentanyl is pretty well known amongst opiate addicts (and has been for a while). Everyone knows it's dangerous, including dealers, who like to avoid killing their customers and catching murder charges, believe it or not. Aside from that and a bit of gateway drug BS towards the beginning, this is a solid and somewhat moving, if long, account of the standard Heroin story, and is more or less the same as the ones I hear from fellow recovering addicts all the time. Key features, so you can avoid the longread: * Insurance refusing to pay for treatment * Parents being forced to get their kids arrested to protect them (and the plan failing) * Relapse, relapse, and more relapse despite full knowledge of the consequences and a strong desire not to relapse. * Terror of being dope sick * Doing stuff you don't want to do to avoid being dope sick * Death

hristov 10y ago
Hate to break it to you but your dealer does not give a fuck about your health. It is extremely difficult for the police to find the dealer of a dead person, and then very difficult to prove the elements needed for a murder charge. The police do not even try to find dealers of drug deaths, unless the victim is a celebrity. Furthermore, every heroin dealer knows that each of their clients is likely to go into a downward spiral and become a liability. Thus, they treat their clients as expendable.
- rhizome 10y ago
  While it isn't yet the law everywhere in the US, it's not just celebrities whose dealers get charged with murder for supplying drugs that kill via overdose.[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/her-fiance-gave-her-heroin-she-overdosed-does-that-make-him-a-murderer/2016/05/08/f9a9e79a-f29b-11e5-a2a3-d4e9697917d1_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/her-fiance-gave-her-...
  - deleted 10y ago
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- deleted 10y ago
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loverofcode 10y ago

Fentanyl is coming from China and other places. The main problem is the users not knowing what they are getting and dose exchanges, not the opioid itself. The DEA and people using addicts to make money instead of treating as a healthcare problem is what is causing this.

milesf 10y ago

Sad that the message of this piece will likely be discounted and discredited. It amazes me the blasé attitudes towards drugs in the tech world. Hearing even high-profile tech leaders extoll the 'virtues' of getting high while ignoring the huge toll it takes on individuals and their families seems selfish to me.

pierrec 10y ago
I have never heard of any high-profile tech leaders defending the recreational use of opioids, nor is it a popular position on HN. What's often praised, however, is education (eg. not throwing all drugs into the same bag).
- notyourloops 10y ago
  One of the top posts in here is describing how to start your own opioid business. I'd consider that praise on some level, unfortunately.
  - openasocket 10y ago
    Are you referring to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12212241 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12212241 ? (if not, disregard this) It read to me like the user just said that fentanyl isn't that much cheaper than making heroin, and showed his work. They aren't actually advocating or advising for anything.
    - notyourloops 10y ago
      Starting material, precursors, cost analysis, and a darknet market for sales. You can say they're not advocating or advising for anything, but they just did to anyone who could be interested, from start to completed product to where to sell it.
      - soundwave106 10y ago
        That really isn't a worry in my opinion. Generally speaking, when a drug exists in prescription form, you don't see too many people rushing out to make it. (Methamphetamine's probably one of the few exceptions because it can relatively easily be (badly) made by "home chemists".) Instead, the focus becomes more on obtaining diverted prescription drugs via illicit channels ("doctor shopping", shady pharmacies, pharmacy theft, etc.). See: oxycodone, vicodin, etc. Beyond that, most of these compounds are patented or have been at one point, and there's certainly plenty of patents on fentanyl. Patents pretty much contain much of the information you need to make the compound, easy enough to look this information up. This is not very "top secret" information. Actually the poster provided hardly the information needed to actually make the compound in comparison to what you can Google. Finally, for those wishing to pursue this for some reason, said poster did not describe what to do when "the law" shows up at your door to inquire just what in the heck you are doing ordering acetic anhydride (it is, er, a U.S. DEA List II compound after all) or other watched chemicals. :) If someone's going to get into the illicit drug manufacturing business, they're going to need far more than a Hacker News post to do such.

gallonofmilk 10y ago

I just want to say that that I lost one of my close friends Thom Simmons last April due to Fentanyl overdose. He was a young, voracious autodidact prodigy that was always way ahead of the curve especially with technology. I met him through the #django irc channel about 7 or 8 years ago when I was starting out with python and django and we developed a friendship that lasted until he overdosed on fentanyl and died in a motel room alone last year. I had reconnected with him in his final weeks as he struggled to get clean and desperately wanted out of his situation but he felt trapped, afraid, alone, and hopeless. He broke down crying to me over the phone a few days before he died, after I helped pay for a night in his motel room because he had run out of money. I didn't realize the full gravity of the situation or know that he had already relapsed at that point and he was dangerously close to the end. I believe that Thom knew it was his last week on Earth and he was saying goodbye to me. He told me what a special friendship we had and how much that meant to him, how he hadn't met many people in his life that he could trust. We laughed a lot about the many memories of late nights programming, scheming on grand ideas for the next major social platform we wanted to build. He showed me Reddit when no one knew what it was, he showed me hackerne.ws before it was known, he helped me set up a trixbox server and program asterisk with voip connections, we built a custom PLC software for a startup and worked on other various projects. We also shared the disease of addiction and unfortunately he couldn't get the help he needed to stay clean and sober. Upon his death all he got was a short blurb in a rural Texas local newspaper, not a word about the amazing person, friend, genius he was. I later found out that 15+ people died of fentanyl overdose in his town that weekend, all of them addicts that lost the battle. I had to get that out because every time I hear about fentanyl it reminds me of Thom and I hope that our society finds solutions to help addicts overcome the extremely dark and twisted pull of drugs and addiction so that other amazing people like Thom don't meet the same fate. I'll never forget his memory and the amazing person he was, and that the very fact that I met him and we became friends was because of the same technology he was so fond of. (http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/pearland/obituary.aspx?pid=174779466 http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/pearland/obituary.aspx?pid=...)

frandroid 10y ago
Your friend and the others who died that weekend didn't "lose the battle". They were poisoned, murdered by an unscrupulous and/or clueless dealer.

trhway 10y ago

people who get addicted should be treated similarly to the mentally impaired/disabled persons. Once addicted, a range of specific brain functions are impaired, and thus it is a medical issue. A lot of other medical issues are result of personal irresponsibility too. That doesn't stop us from treating those issues medically (though it seems it took some time, even as recently as the end of the 20th century, to accept HIV as a medical disease to be treated instead of a "God's punishment for perversion"). Yet when it comes to addiction, the patients are treated as criminals instead.

RankingMember 10y ago

This was a well-written story but I could've done without: A. The "MARIJUANA, THAT DEVIL WEED, STARTED HIS DESCENT INTO HELL" routine. and B. The "truth" anti-drug ad campaign-style video overlays

DanBC 10y ago
A ridiculous over-reaction to a bit of biographical detail.
- gravypod 10y ago
  I'd not call this an over reaction. This part of the story, no matter how true, will be used to smear pot users in the future. People will look at the original drug as the cause when in reality there are probably many more possible things that could be associated with the cause. This sort of thing becomes played out after time. "It's not the person's fault! It's that they used this devil plant"
gedy 10y ago
Frankly, virtually everyone I've known who ended up in drug 'hell' did start with pot; so while correlation does not equal causation, the belief or concern it's a gateway drug really should not be mocked. Questioning, debating, fine - but mocking people's concern, is frequently about friends and family who are in trouble.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  > Frankly, virtually everyone I've known who ended up in drug 'hell' did start with pot Funny, everyone I've known who ended up in drug "hell" started with either tobacco or alcohol. Which means just as much nothing as yours... > so while correlation does not equal causation, the belief or concern it's a gateway drug really should not be mocked. Anecdote ("virtually everyone I've known...") doesn't equal meaningful correlation in the general population, much less causation. And "people who end up in drug hell are likely to have used X drug in the past" is the wrong correlation, anyway, to support "dangerous gateway drug" claims (even leaving aside the need to move from correlation to causation.) You really want "people who use X drug are likely to go on to end up in drug hell".

imaginenore 10y ago

It probably will sound cruel, but this is natural selection at work. We can't babysit adults. If someone wants to smoke or drink alcohol, we accept it, but when someone takes drugs, people start losing their minds, even though alcohol/cigarettes are worse than many recreational drugs. If someone wants to ruin their health, but experience something unusual, let them. The dangers are generally known.

bbctol 10y ago
You're right, that does sound cruel. Moreover, the effects of addiction, the way choices made in childhood or under duress can affect the brain well into adulthood, and the fact that unregulated drugs sold can be far more dangerous than believed (you know, what the article was about) make this a hardly tenable position. "The dangers are generally known" is only said about opiate addiction by someone who doesn't know much.
- imaginenore 10y ago
  Are you saying opiate addiction dangers are not known? Sounds like you're the one who doesn't know much. Even kids know drugs are bad for you. And the article is about the adults.
  - MichaelGG 10y ago
    This is not a danger of opiate addiction. It is a danger of an unregulated black market selling improperly marked medicine. Hint: If you accidentally take 50x the amount of Tylenol you intended to take, you're probably going to die.
frandroid 10y ago
Drug addiction is a mental health disease. We don't tell depressed people that this is just natural selection at work, "just shake it out". We get people treated with the right medication. A huge amount of drug addicts suffer from untreated psychological trauma, particularly childhood trauma. http://drgabormate.com/book/in-the-realm-of-hungry-ghosts/ http://drgabormate.com/book/in-the-realm-of-hungry-ghosts/

jessaustin 10y ago

Found by a coworker within two minutes of passing out, but no one called an ambulance for thirty minutes. We ought to care more about the people around us.

MichaelGG 10y ago
Having been in non-drug, legal, harm situations, there's a huge pressure not to involve authorities. Embarrassment and hassle, costs (perhaps not in Canada) are bad enough. Legal and social repercussions due to officially having a problem on your record can really damage. (Applies to people seeking mental health help, too!) Add in potential to be arrested and it's not hard to see why someone might delay or even let someone die. It's easy to visualize the damage of being wrong - you just "ruined" someone's life just because they might be in mortal danger. If there was a guarantee of no investigation, no publicity, no named record, this might not happen as much. Also, making easy, cheap access to naloxone might mean more users would carry around antidote.
- jessaustin 10y ago
  You're right, of course. The coworker was probably quite young, and the outcomes you describe loomed larger for her than the actual outcome. This sort of thing really ought to be addressed in high school, but unfortunately all we get is, "drugs're bad, mmm-kay?"
  - MichaelGG 10y ago
    If the coworker had drugs on them, the potential outcomes might actually _be_ far worse than the actual outcome here. They'll feel like shit. But you know, in a few years, the emotional pain will have subsided quite a bit. And it wasn't really their fault, directly, totally - it'll get rationalized. Whereas a drug arrest, a criminal history, that could take much more work and time to get over.
    - jessaustin 10y ago
      Well sure one definitely doesn't call 911 while possessing illegal substances, but it just takes a minute to walk out to one's car/the dumpster/some other place the cops ain't going to search because one called an ambulance for an unconscious coworker. Who would complain, the manager who wasn't present? Actually this train of thought would be pretty ethically indefensible.

downandout 10y ago

Opiate addiction is a serious problem that affects people from all walks of life. My mother has had rheumatoid arthritis for decades. She was prescribed Fentanyl patches for the pain at one point, but the strength was too high. One day she wound up passing out in her kitchen after applying a patch. After that she stuck the patches in a drawer, intending for them to never to be used again. She was fine after this incident, but my sister happened to mention the story to an acquaintance of my mother's from church. Upon learning that there was a box of unused Fentanyl patches in my mother's house, she suddenly became her best friend and volunteered to begin taking her to doctor's appointments. She would take her to doctor's appointments, then while my mother was there, would go back to my mother's house to "clean up" - do dishes, vacuum etc. This wasn't a mere act of charity; she also "cleaned up" not only the patches, but a significant percentage of my mom's other opioid pain medications. At first my mother thought she was going crazy when pills began going missing. She finally told me about it, and while I was inclined to believe that she was simply starting to lose her mental acuity, I bought her a lockbox for her pills. It was only after this woman (an upper middle class mother of three young children) brought tools with her during a visit and actually destroyed the electronic lock on the box that I realized that her trusted "friend" from church was stealing her pain medications. When my mother told one of the leaders of her church what happened, the woman denied it, and three weeks later moved her entire family several states away. You really can't make this stuff up. Addicts come in all shapes and sizes and will do anything to quench their addiction.

MichaelGG 10y ago
If someone was suffering from pain and couldn't even buy Ibuprofen due to an oppressive government and shitty societal view, one might not be surprised if they steal to get life-changing medicine. The fact a "normal" person would rob an older woman for an essential medicine should reflect more on the society than the patient.
- downandout 10y ago
  I'm pretty sure the only pain she was suffering from was that of not having enough drugs in her system at any given time.

filoeleven 10y ago

I've read a fair amount online about ibogaine, derived from iboga root, as a treatment for addiction, and opiate addiction in particular. It doesn't seem to be very well-known, but everything I've read makes it seem like a miracle cure. It is a schedule 1 psychedelic in the US, but there are apparently clinics/retreats in Mexico and Canada where it is used to treat addiction. Reportedly, withdrawal symptoms immediately begin to subside when the trip hits and then disappear completely, never to return. Cravings don't return either. The success rate is incredible--one study I read about from ~2011 followed up with its participants, and 30/30 were still not using, and they and their partners reported a much higher quality of life. All from a single six-hour trip (though it seems like these places want people to hang out for a week or so afterward, too). When I say "miracle cure" and "incredible" I mean them in the superlative sense, but these kinds of claims also make me suspicious because I'd expect to hear more noise about them if they worked as well as advertised. So consider this post both a plea to share more info if anyone has it, either for or against, as well as a jumping-off point for further research for anyone who is personally or knows someone who is suffering from an addiction. On the one hand, it sounds too good to be true, but on the other hand, psychedelics are so demonized that I could believe the word just hasn't gotten out yet. (After all, clinical LSD treatment showed a lot of promise in curing/greatly reducing alcohol addiction 50 years ago, among a host of other things, but you wouldn't know it unless you go looking yourself.)

Floegipoky 10y ago

It's 2016, and the media is still pushing the same classic tropes, marijuana as a gateway drug, etc. Yet other than a quick characterization of DJ being a risk-taker, this article fails to even consider the most important question- why did he start using? What was the cause of his addiction? Nobody wants to consider the consequences of a society that confines adolescent male hominids in a classroom during the height of puberty, then locks them in cages to keep them from bothering others when they become too much of a bother, or a family that attempts to account for every minute of their adult offspring's life. I can't speak to the female experience, but I still remember the existential ache of a teenaged male trying to make his place in the world. But there's a pill for that, right? Nobody wants to admit that fighting a War On Drugs without fundamentally reforming our toxic society is the same as fighting a War On Climate Change while still burning fossil fuels.

jalami 10y ago

In the US you can't do research about a product then go out and buy quality product from a quality provider. That's really where I see a lot of the problems with all of this. Yes there's a failure of information somewhere and people that fall through the cracks should be able to find their way out again, but the root of the problem stems from publicly vilifying people and actions that should be legal. Regulating all drugs like cigarettes, for example, would make it so they wouldn't have to get grade E stuff from some alley, we'd stop imprisoning people that may just need help and we could have discussions in the open about abuse. Privately vilify all you want, but the government should be mute on people's preferences as long as they are capable of making decisions, there's mandatory information disclosure surrounding dangerous drugs and companies can't lie about what they're selling. Heroine for better or worse is a product that people are willing to go far out of their way to purchase and that goes for nearly all drugs. I would never do it and I believe if you made it legal, most people not doing it today wouldn't pick it up. We really need to get the idea that legal === government endorsement out of our heads. We do things because the pros of doing them outweigh the cons of not doing them. Information around drugs, proper, honest and often, deters dangerous adoption.

baus 10y ago

I talked to a friend of mine today who has a serious opiate addiction. It is heartbreaking. He is on the verge of losing what he has left to lose, but I don't know if there is anything to do. He refuses to seek treatment. I think his options are running out. I've had my problems in life, specifically with mental illness and benzo addiction, but I'm thankful that I never went the opiate route.

tigershark 10y ago
Why is he so unhappy? Reading this thread it would seem that opiates are innocuous, a glass of wine is more dangerous apparently. Seriously, I can't understand how people can say such things actively encouraging people to take opioids because they have "less side effects than alcohol".
- aianus 10y ago
  Nobody is telling people to go out and try opiates. We'd just rather people who are already addicted be able to get a cheap, safe fix than /go broke/go to jail/OD on sketchy drugs.
  - tigershark 10y ago
    There are people in this thread explicitly saying that getting high with heroine once a day is not different than drinking a glass of wine a day. If this is not an opiates eulogy then I don't know what is it. For me should be even illegal to incentivise opiates usage so irresponsibly.

alasdair_ 10y ago

My daughter died of a fentanyl overdose one month ago. She was 21. It was her first time taking it. I assume she thought it was cocaine or something similar and simply took far too much. If you have children, please teach them about drugs. That means more than "just say no" it means being really, really clear with them that a huge danger is that they get given something that isn't what it is claimed. Sadly, this is especially true if they are young and female and perhaps a little naive. I expect that my younger children will experiment with drugs even knowing what happened to their sister. I expect their friends will as well. All I can do now is teach them how quickly their life can end and, perhaps, give them ready access to test kits in the same way that they will have ready access to condoms and std education when the time comes. Please, if you have a child, talk to them today about fentanyl in particular - most of her friends has never heard of it before she died and had no idea how strong or cheap it was.

davidhariri 10y ago
That's tragic. I'm so sorry for your loss.

anonbanker 10y ago

was recently given fentanyl when I had to have a dislocated arm re-located. I passed out within 4 minutes, and woke up without a dislocation. I don't understand why you'd want to take it recreationally (how much does your life suck that you want to sleep constantly?), but I'm glad it exists to ease suffering. Maybe some of these scare articles should look at the "Rat Park" study, and figure out why people are doing the drug in the first place?