4 ms·

> I'm assuming we are in agreement that the pharmaceutical opiates are way more addictive than their illegal analogs. Actually, that's... a complicated questio

> I'm assuming we are in agreement that the pharmaceutical opiates are way more addictive than their illegal analogs. Actually, that's... a complicated question. Pharmaceutical opiates are definitely more addictive than raw opium (that's like asking if eating white sugar is sweeter than cane sugar). But once you're comparing heroin available on the street to prescribed opiates, there are enough variables (variable quality of product, means of ingestion, the different situations under which a person chooses one over the other, etc.) that there isn't a straightforward answer.

thrownblown 10y ago
>there isn't a straightforward answer. We have to acknowledge the biological component of addiction, that some people are predisposed to certain addictions. There is a physical, chemical component that comes into play. I, for example, smoked my first cigarette at 12 y/o. I continued to smoke cigarettes socially for the better part of the next decade, often buying my own packs of smokes. I never understood the "need" to smoke that many of my fellows expressed. I enjoyed the nicotine high, but never once felt it necessary to smoke tobacco to live a "normal" life. I stopped smoking one day after college and never felt the urge to smoke again. Even after long-term repeated exposure to nicotine I never developed a physical dependancy. The "William Shatner seat" article posted yesterday sent me down a rabbit hole of Shatner talk shows (in "Aftermath" he interviews Bernie Goetz and it is amazing) ending on his "Raw Nerve" interview with Rush Limbaugh where Rush goes into great detail regarding his own painkiller habit. Contrasting how he speaks about opiates about how his body told him he needed pills like he needs food or water to my own personal experiences with opiates and nicotine only reinforces this belief that some people just have the right brain chemistry to get addicted. My next thought is that the chemistry of the brain changes over time, under stress or when exposed to other chemicals. Ergo, at some point, people may be more prone to particular addictions than at other times.

thrownblown 10y ago

>there isn't a straightforward answer. We have to acknowledge the biological component of addiction, that some people are predisposed to certain addictions. There is a physical, chemical component that comes into play. I, for example, smoked my first cigarette at 12 y/o. I continued to smoke cigarettes socially for the better part of the next decade, often buying my own packs of smokes. I never understood the "need" to smoke that many of my fellows expressed. I enjoyed the nicotine high, but never once felt it necessary to smoke tobacco to live a "normal" life. I stopped smoking one day after college and never felt the urge to smoke again. Even after long-term repeated exposure to nicotine I never developed a physical dependancy. The "William Shatner seat" article posted yesterday sent me down a rabbit hole of Shatner talk shows (in "Aftermath" he interviews Bernie Goetz and it is amazing) ending on his "Raw Nerve" interview with Rush Limbaugh where Rush goes into great detail regarding his own painkiller habit. Contrasting how he speaks about opiates about how his body told him he needed pills like he needs food or water to my own personal experiences with opiates and nicotine only reinforces this belief that some people just have the right brain chemistry to get addicted. My next thought is that the chemistry of the brain changes over time, under stress or when exposed to other chemicals. Ergo, at some point, people may be more prone to particular addictions than at other times.