15 ms·

I bought my daughter heroin

152 points by happy-go-lucky 10y ago

M_Grey 10y ago
I read this yesterday on the BBC, and was struck by, among many other things, the fact that this woman was put into this position in the first place. Most of all, that she was essentially turned into a criminal through the failure of the state. I also hope that people can read that, and understand the trap that so many addicts find themselves in. Instead of medical treatment they're referred to 12 step programs or told to "kick it", unless of course you can pay, of you're lucky. The system is set up to create failure and re-offense, although I'm not arguing that it was designed that way, the result is the same. All of this comes down to a single root cause which can be addressed: the "war on drugs". It's insane, it's wasteful, it's already going to have generations of negative impacts around the world. The sooner we stop it, the sooner we can start to heal the damage.
- striking 10y ago
  Yeah, but don't methadone maintenance programs work? If the requirements here were lessened, and the woman was prescribed methadone more quickly, wouldn't this article not have to exist? I feel the problem is less about the "war on drugs" and more about the UK's failure to help her recover from her addiction.
  - beaconstudios 10y ago
    the NHS has a lot of problems dealing with health issues that aren't A&E-worthy. It's understaffed, the staff they do hire are overworked, and the whole organisation is simultaneously under-budgeted and over-stuffed with bureaucracy.
    - skylan_q 10y ago
      people don't realize that free means no charge, but not unlimited.
    - digi_owl 10y ago
      I can't help but think that since the 80s these systems have been deliberately rigged to fail, to give an excuse to privatize or introduce parallel for-profit options.
      - beaconstudios 10y ago
        Both Labour and the Tories have gutted the NHS at various times. Bureaucracy comes from both sides too.
        digi_owl 10y ago
        Yeah, Blair "Labour". The french term "champagne left" is very apt in that regard.
        beaconstudios 10y ago
        You can't say someone isn't Labour just because you personally disagree with their work. New Labour was still left-of-centre, even if it was closer than previous Labour institutions. Left and right transcend economic class. The idea that the left is rooted in the working class is a complete fabrication. Gordon Brown also harmed the NHS by the way. Considerably.
        emodendroket 10y ago
        The whole thing of the "new" Democrats and "new" Labour is making a show of staking positions that are essentially a middle finger to their core constituencies.
        laurencerowe 10y ago
        Labour did not gut the NHS. Their policy on bringing the private sector into the NHS was probably a bad one - PPI was more expensive than direct public investment for hospital rebuilding but kept the costs off the national balance sheet, maintaining a helpful fiction. But Labour significantly increased spending on the NHS, from 5% to 7% of GDP before the banking crisis (which with GDP falling saw spending rise in GDP terms by about another 1%.) Since the Tories regained power they've been cutting back on NHS spending (and more dramatically on social care, which increases the demands on the NHS.) That's why we're seeing the horror stories once again of waiting lists and winter crises, which had last been common under the previous Tory administration in the early 1990's. http://www.publicfinance.co.uk/opinion/2015/10/nhs-spending-squeezed-never http://www.publicfinance.co.uk/opinion/2015/10/nhs-spending-...
  - Symbiote 10y ago
    The immediate cause, of not being able to get methadone after the court had ordered it, seems straightforward to fix. Whatever rule prevented the GP from prescribing it can be changed. Changing the maintenance programme itself might take more effort, and according to this article, more research is needed: http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-31943109 http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-31943109
  - girvo 10y ago
    I had to wait 7 days to get on my Suboxone treatment. My parents got me codeine and valium from our GP to help me until that point, which amazed me at the time. 7 days is pretty short at least, and it saved my life. Other countries have months long waiting lists.
- RobertoG 10y ago
  Apart from the terrible human suffering that drugs (and their criminalization create), there is another factor that is not, in my opinion, discussed enough. Drugs are and amazing business and making them illegal, make rich to the worst kind of people. It's giving power to the last people you would want in power. So, in the consumer countries you have addicts suffering. In the producers countries you have wars and societies totally corrupted, and the worst of the worst get rich. Amazing strategy. It looks more like a war on humanity that a war on drugs.
  - digi_owl 10y ago
    Frankly reading up on The Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs is disheartening. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Convention_on_Narcotic_Drugs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Convention_on_Narcotic_... Keep in mind that it came into being right as the Nixon years used anti-drug legislation to effectively take down blacks and hippies. On top of that you have nations that wanted to hedge around their big and growing pharma industries, and others that was negative to all drugs (except their local cultural ones) for religious and cultural reasons. In effect religion and economics trumped medical science, and the world has been dealing with the blowback ever since.
  - acchow 10y ago
    Aren't drugs made illegal as a matter of national security? See also: the opium wars.
    - emodendroket 10y ago
      That's not really what's happening in this case.
    - laughinghan 10y ago
      Huh? Are you talking about the opium wars where China was invaded by the British and forced to stop trying to combat their opium epidemic? I've never heard of an interpretation of events where China made opium illegal in an attempt to forestall invasion by Western powers.
- YSFEJ4SWJUVU6 10y ago
  >Most of all, that she was essentially turned into a criminal through the failure of the state. Yes, and that failure is the arbitrary criminalisation of certain narcotics.
  - adammck 10y ago
    I've always been intrigued by this stance. Do you believe that heroin should be available for purchase, like e.g. cigarettes? Is this a matter of individual liberty, or some other reason?
    - echlebek 10y ago
      Not the parent to your comment but I'll chime in here. Heroin is more dangerous than cigarettes, since the threshold for overdose is so low. So, probably not a great thing to be able to buy at a gas station. Personally, I think heroin should be available at pharmacies by prescription, cheaply purchasable in small quantities. Addicts should have to visit daily for their doses, and should get some support from doctors and pharmacists if they want to withdraw. Doctors should make it easy for addicts to get prescriptions for heroin, and clean, safe drug delivery options. It's a matter of harm reduction. It would help reduce overdoses because dosages would be exact. It would help reduce organized crime, because the money would be diverted to legitimate channels and taxed. These kinds of ideas are already being discussed in Vancouver, where black market fentanyl and carfentanil is causing a rash of fatal overdoses. While we have safe injection sites, addicts are still using black market drugs which are wildly unpredictable.
      - Xylakant 10y ago
        The threshold for overdoses is fairly high in all opioids though lower for heroin than for morphine. The reason people regularly overdose on heroin is that heroin from the illegal market is often of wildly changing purity and sometimes mixed with substances that increase the risk of OD. Handing out known quality heroin eliminates that risk.
        10y ago
- tn13 10y ago
  The miserable war on drugs is the failure of the society to acknowledge that people have right to their own life and even thought we may not agree with their choices we must nevertheless support them to exercise their right. Drugs destroy life ? They dont destroy it as much as spending 10 years in jail for having few gms of heroine. The overall theme of politics these days is to create an "other" group and blame everything on that group. Demonise that group and take more power in hand to then hurt them to cover up the failures of the government doing basic things. Muslims, illegal immigrants, Asians, China, Blacks, stoners, hippies, Rock musicians, top 1% etc. Thus government gets to pretend that they are doing something for "us".
- mason240 10y ago
  I totally agree that the best way to fight drug addictions is to make them completely legal and increase their availability. The sooner we end war on drugs, the sooner the supply will go down, and that will mean less addicts.
- noonespecial 10y ago
  >The system is set up to create failure and re-offense, although I'm not arguing that it was designed that way... It doesn't have to be. The system random walks through all sorts of configurations. All we need to end up like this is no incentive to fix these problems when they occur. In fact, we find a mild incentive to not fix it. In time, all of the poisonous sludge the system produces runs down and collects in these crevices. What's most odious to us casual onlookers is that there are so many in the system that simply shrug at the human pain as they collect the spoils. "I'm just doing my job" is really no different than "I just did it for the money."
coleifer 10y ago
GPs should know about clonodine. It's a blood pressure medicine that counteracts the massive norepinephrine dump you experience when you kick (and which is the number one thing that makes it so unbearable). It helps a lot. Besides methadone there's also buprenorphine and Suboxone, which are opiate replacements. Not the kind of thing you take to get high, something to use to taper off so the withdrawals aren't so intense. Heroin abuse is a big problem that's only going to get bigger in the US. A lot of folks got addicted back when Purdue was pushing Oxycontin, and now that it's harder for them to obtain they've switched to the cheaper and more potent stuff. Doctors need to know how to treat withdrawal, period. There are lots of options besides methadone (which has it's own nightmare withdrawal if stopped abruptly, and which lasts three times longer than heroin withdrawal).
- pmoriarty 10y ago
  "Heroin abuse is a big problem that's only going to get bigger in the US. With legal weed, a lot of former marijuana producers are getting wise and starting to farm the opium poppy. Plus a lot of folks got addicted back when Purdue was pushing Oxycontin, and now that it's harder for them to obtain they've switched to the cheaper and more potent stuff." I'd really like to see some numbers on this. From what I understand, there are far, far more marijuana users than there are heroin users -- like many orders of magnitude more. So, yeah, illegal marijuana growers could certainly switch to growing opium, but they're not going to magically get anywhere near the number of customers.
  - coleifer 10y ago
    I did a quick google search: * https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/data/heroin.html https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/data/heroin.html * http://www.cbsnews.com/news/heroin-use-in-u-s-reaches-alarming-20-year-high/ http://www.cbsnews.com/news/heroin-use-in-u-s-reaches-alarmi... * http://time.com/3946904/heroin-epidemic/ http://time.com/3946904/heroin-epidemic/ * http://www.cnn.com/2016/09/16/health/huntington-heroin/ http://www.cnn.com/2016/09/16/health/huntington-heroin/
    - pmoriarty 10y ago
RazzyPI 10y ago
> Heroin abuse is a big problem that's only going to get bigger in the US. With legal weed, a lot of former marijuana producers are getting wise and starting to farm the opium poppy. This might be the dumbest thing I've read in a while. I was with you until this line, and now I realize you're just puking out headlines you've read elsewhere on the internet.
- coleifer 10y ago
  I'm speaking from experience. Mexico's become a huge producer of tar. It also matters where you live - if you're on the east coast the H is completely different from what you see in the midwest or southwest. https://news.vice.com/video/the-rise-of-mexican-black-tar https://news.vice.com/video/the-rise-of-mexican-black-tar PS - Why the downvotes?
  - Retric 10y ago
    Opioid abuse is not supply side limited.
    - dragonwriter 10y ago
      Even so, aggressive marketing by cartels trying to reduce lost MJ revenues could magnify it. The scenario presented is not implausible.
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
  - Zigurd 10y ago
    Regarding the downvotes, I had to read your top level post three times to understand what you are getting at: a) Mexican pot growers need a new line of business, now that it's legal to produce for the medical and recreational markets in many places in the US. b) Therefore they are supplying heroin addicts in the US. The first time I read what you wrote I got the impression you were saying cannabis is a gateway drug. I didn't understand you were talking about the effects of legalization on Mexican traffickers.
deleted 10y ago
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brohoolio 10y ago
And here in the United States we are talking about removing drug treatment options from our health care. Over a million people.
coding123 10y ago
Economics-wise, drug manufacturing can be the next-big-thing for the US economy. Sprinkle in some regulation and oversight for quality, and BAM we're good to go.
ybrah 10y ago
clickbait cancer
- sctb 10y ago
  Please stop posting unsubstantively like this here.
ThrustVectoring 10y ago
Holy shit that's some hilariously bad double-think justifying some really horrific parenting. Some choice examples: >We talked about how to stop it there and then - how to bring it to a stop as soon as possible. We talked about it as a family, and there was a bit of shouting. Go on, completely gloss over how you were treating your daughter in this interaction and use language that drops all responsibility for it. Oh no, "there was a bit of shouting", nothing can be done about that sort of thing, it just happens you know? More accurate picture of what happened: the mother recruited the rest of her family to gang up on and emotionally abuse her daughter until she stops embarrassing her by doing things she doesn't want. And of course getting the behavior that you want is the only thing worth talking about. Because that's always the important thing for you. >I had always been a very controlling mum when they were younger. They had set bedtimes and they ate their vegetables and all that. And I felt very out of control. I couldn't say, "No you're not going out. You need to come home and stay home and sort yourself out." Because she would say, "I'm an adult, I can do what I like." Micromanage everything yourself and then act all surprised when your grown children aren't capable of it and resent you for trying to take control back again. Like seriously, your feelings of "being in control" aren't more important than your daughter. >I was disappointed. Very disappointed, because I had great expectations of what she could achieve. Translation: she could've made me look really good, and instead she didn't, and this is a gigantic problem to me personally. >She was earning good money but after about a year, at the end of every month, we started getting phone calls. She kept saying, "I don't know where I spend all my money mum, it just goes. At the end of every month I'm left with nothing and I've got no money for food and stuff." Okay, so she's never learned how to manage her finances, so we're going to get a heartwarming story of how you realized that you failed in teaching your daughter independence skills and made up for it with responsible parenting with the goal of creating a thriving adult, right? >So we would forward her a sub for the next month. We weren't actually giving her money, we were subbing her until her next pay packet. No wait, I forgot who was writing this piece for a moment, my bad. We're just going to see you do the easiest thing that makes the shame over your lack of parenting skills go away. >Each time we saw her, a lot would depend on her state of mind, and on where we were in terms of our ability to accept her for what she was and what she was doing, and love her regardless. But at a certain point we argued, and she said she didn't want contact any more. So we didn't speak for three months. This is the kind of self-centered story people end up telling when they're doing straight-up emotional abuse and still want to get positive attention. "But at a certain point we argued" is straight up double-think gold. Spend seven words and use language that takes zero responsibility for an event that convinced your own daughter that couch surfing in drug dens was a better fucking choice than speaking with you. >Nobody can help. Nobody knows what to say. Everyone's desperate for it to be good news. They say, "How are things getting on?" And if it's good news, they're like, "Oh brilliant, brilliant!" But nobody really wants to hear that it's still the same, or worse. And there is very little professional support unless you're prepared to pay for it. This is her real problem in her mind - she's having trouble talking about herself like they're she's a good mother when her daughter is out doing heroin addict things. >And I was shocked at how nobody was taking responsibility and the whole burden was placed on us, as the parents. NO FUCKING SHIT. This feels like she's consistently trying to do whatever she thinks is the easiest way to fix the broken human-shaped prop in her life. >I didn't personally buy the heroin. I just drove my car to the area and she went off, injected herself, and came back Lol. Just lol. And her husband is so distraught, and she has to deal with her distraught husband, and oh no, it's so terrible, woe is me, look at what I have to deal with. Grow the fuck up. >I know it's boastful, but she's absolutely beautiful looking and very intelligent. I think she could have been anything. She is so massively into animals that she used to talk about being a vet, so years ago I guess we used to dream about that. You would dream about being able to brag about your beautiful, intelligent, veterinarian of a daughter, wouldn't you? And you'd have looked like such a good mother, and your sycophantic "friends" would tell you where she got her looks from, and oh my god stop me now I'm going to barf. >I feel 50% responsible because I think all mothers do. You're 100% responsible, and the fucked up thing is that you've got no clue why your daughter's making these choices. You either didn't listen when she tried to tell you (all your can remember is "It's just fun"), or you convinced her that it's pointless to try to talk to you. >Initially, in the first days she was back, I'm sure she didn't trust me. She probably hasn't trusted you since she was 13. What you're missing is conditioned obedience. There's a difference. You wouldn't know.
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agjacobson 10y ago
I want to use this message thread to tell a story and make a point. If it is off-point, delete it, give it negative votes, whatever. I had abdominal surgery. They had to remove 14cm of my colon which was badly inflamed due to diverticulitis. When I woke up, I was so doped up that I felt no pain. I even danced a jig in my room. That evening they hooked me up to a hydromorphone injector for the inevitable pain. Every 12 minutes or so, I could give myself a shot into my IV. Hydromorphone is about 100 times stronger than morphine, so the doses were in micrograms. I was allowed, like, 5 shots per hour, and the machine could get loaded with about 50 shots. I kept a record of the shots in my Iphone Notes. I tried to space them further than 12 minutes, but I only decreased the frequency by a few minutes. I liked those shots. They worked. The nursing staff encouraged me to use this. They could reload the machine, no trouble. Now the thing about colon surgery is, your colon has to get working. Those opiate shots very effectively prevent this. I wanted to get out of that place. So the next night, I quit cold turkey. I was freezing cold, and the pain I felt was not just from the after effects of the surgery, I am pretty sure. It was fucking horrible. Now the things is, I was addicted. I did succeed in quitting cold turkey. My colon still didn't work for a day, so I vomited almost a gallon of green bile over the edge of my gurney. It was so much, it lapped up against the walls. Then my colon worked, and I got to go home. But I was addicted, and I am a recovering addict, from that one time. And every nurse I mention this to says, "Oh no, you weren't an addict." They even quote some bullshit criterion for addiction, which I've forgotten. I haven't had any problems since, and if I have to take oral oxycodone, or hydrocodone, there have been no problems or instance of abuse. But I was an addict.
- rodionos 10y ago
  Thank you for sharing this.
- coleifer 10y ago
  I don't think you know what you're talking about. For how many weeks were you on the medication? For how long were you in withdrawal? Heroin, hydromorphone, oxycodone, etc the withdrawal lasts 5-7 days. Were you in withdrawal for that long? I guess the point I'm trying to make is that most addicts are on much higher doses for much longer periods of time -- and the withdrawal is insane. Furthermore, there's a big difference between physical and psychological addiction. If there weren't, then everyone who takes prescribed pain meds for any length of time would be "an addict" because they'll experience a degree of withdrawal. If you identify as a drug addict, that's fine (though I certainly hope you aren't one!). IV Hydromorphone is also, by the way, 5x stronger than IV morphine. Granted, that's a lot, but nowhere near 100x!
everyone 10y ago
This is a good book on drugs and the history of prohibition. https://www.amazon.com/Pursuit-Oblivion-Global-History-Narcotics/dp/0393325458 https://www.amazon.com/Pursuit-Oblivion-Global-History-Narco...
jokr004 10y ago
Opiate addiction is hell. Just pure unadulterated hell. I've been through a lot of hardships in life but I honestly can't begin to explain to you the amount of pain this has caused me. I'm currently in a methadone program after relapsing for the first time since I got clean five years ago. Just.. stay as far away from this stuff as you possibly can. It has the potential to swallow you whole.
- oxryly1 10y ago
  Not to pry, but did it start with a doctor's prescription for you?
  - jokr004 10y ago
    It actually didn't start with a prescription.. For me it started as casual use here and there and very quickly turned into self-medication. I've had issues with depression and anxiety for a long time and opiates were a really easy way of dealing with those problems. However I can't tell you how many people I knew who started using after being prescribed opioid painkillers.
    - gefh 10y ago
      I've only ever had opioid painkillers after dental work, and it's enough to convince me that I must _never_ try heroin. You have my kind thoughts and best wishes.
      - jokr004 10y ago
        Thanks, I really appreciate it! All things considered things are actually going really well. My relationship with my SO is better than ever, my career is going well, I'm actually starting a new job next week. I managed to keep my life together through all of this, and I know I'm very lucky for that.
      - pgrote 10y ago
        I never understood how people could be addicted to drugs until the middle of the night screaming in an emergency room bed. A kidney stone was causing so much pain morphine wouldn't touch it. Unbearable. The nurse came in and put something in my IV and I just stopped. The pain stopped. I stopped talking to my wife in mid-sentence. Everything was fine. My world just stopped and I liked it. As the nurse left my wife asked what I was given and it was dilaudid, which is equal to heroin on the equianalgesic scale. It was right then I understood how people become addicted to drugs. Like you, it convinced me to never try heroin or any other opiates outside of emergency medical care.
mnm1 10y ago
This reads like a laundry list of exactly what not to do when you find out your child is addicted to opiates. Everything they do, from being overly controlling to kicking her out and pressing charges against her, is a self-righteous act and harms her greatly. At one point, I thought I was reading a scene cut from Trainspotting for being too mundane. The naivety about the legal and health systems is also appalling. These are people who claim the ability to function in the world, yet they don't know the most basic things about the world they claim the ability to function in. I think towards the end, the mother actually starts to get a glimpse of the reality of what is going on with her daughter and is more compassionate by letting her live in their house again. I hope their daughter recovers and other parents heed this story as to what not to do to their sick children.
- tjohns 10y ago
  Out of curiosity, what would you do instead? From person experience with a family member who had a severe case of alcoholism (and eventually died from it)... there's very little you can do to help somebody if they don't want to quit. After a while these behaviors start to negatively affect everyone else in the household, too. (Also, keep in mind we're actually talking about an adult here... since they're old enough to join the military.)
  - billjings 10y ago
    The cardinal error in "helping" addicts is to try and fix the addict's problems for them. As you said, that's impossible. Even being available to provide support rarely makes any sense, because addicts try to divest themselves of their problems instead of solving them — so they might ask you for help on something they could do themselves, or on something they think you could fix but actually can't (e.g. "Can you keep an eye on how much I drink tonight?" This just pits my will against yours.) Detoxing, preventing withdrawal symptoms, transportation — addicts often can't provide these things for themselves, so if asked, they're good ways to help out. But addicts have to choose themselves to stay on a path that leads away from that addiction. That will be the case even if that path ends up being as simple as a pill you can take.
  - 10y ago
metaphorm 10y ago
This is really sad. I got the impression while reading through that whole sorry story that the poor girl's parents really just don't see how they are a huge source of negativity and pain in their daughter's life. They kick her out of the house, sabotage her job, put conditions on their provision of love and support. These are terrible parents. I feel awful just reading about that whole situation.
- tjohns 10y ago
  Not to sound harsh, but have you dealt with someone who has a serious drug problem before? When things get very bad, you try anything in the hope it gets though to them. (It often doesn't, but you try anyway.) Keep in mind that major drug addictions cause problems for everyone involved. Nobody resorts to these things as their first option. (And frankly, if one's job involves driving, and they're doing it while under the influence... they really should lose their job/license. That's how innocent people get killed on the road.)
  - metaphorm 10y ago
    I'm going to quote the author here > Our daughter at that point didn't feel it was a problem. She kept saying, "It's just fun, OK? It's just fun." And that would be interspersed with periods of depression and it not being fun, but her not being prepared to admit that. And as time went on we gave her an ultimatum. Looking back I don't know whether it was the right decision or not, but we said, "If you continue to use drugs, you can no longer live at home." And we kicked her out, because she continued. Then her drug use got worse, and her friendship groups deteriorated more and more. > I hated her. I hated her so much. Am I really being harsh? This is a mother writing about how she felt hatred towards her daughter. She hated her daughter for doing drugs and for socializing with the wrong people. As a result of her hatred she kicked her own daughter out of the home, which instigated a downward spiral that made things far worse than they might have been otherwise.
    - hndruguser 10y ago
      Not harsh, I completely agree with you. Everything the mother did would have just made her daughter's life harder.
csense 10y ago
They teach you in school, drugs are bad. Don't do drugs. Just say no. At least where and when I went to school, they went out of their way, above and beyond to ensure this simple message was hammered into every single child. The image of a drug addict in pop culture -- it's never a pleasant one. They lie, cheat, steal. They're a burden and a trial to their families. People are warned about what happens when you get addicted to drugs. I simply fail to understand why so many people do drugs in the first place, and I have little sympathy for addicts. The world is a dangerous place. If you drive your car off the side of a bridge, or you mix the wrong household chemicals, or you stay in a running vehicle in an enclosed garage, or you grab on to a downed powerline, you'll probably die. It's simple cause and effect, and for the most part people understand it and aren't stupid enough to do these things unless they're suicidal. If you do drugs, you'll probably ruin your life. It's simple cause and effect. For the most part people understand it, but it seems that enormous hordes of people do them anyway. I don't get it, what's the difference?
- kolinko 10y ago
  Enormous hordes of people do them and don't get addicted. The addicts are just a tiny fraction of people who do drugs.
- frozenport 10y ago
  We have an epidemic because people were told by pharmaceuticals and doctors that they were taking medicine, and that it was safe and unlikely to be habit forming. This wasn't true. As to recreational drug use, I'll leave it to others to comment.
- hchasestevens 10y ago
  Do consider that, in many places in the U.S., anti-drug programs deliver the same ruinous message about all drugs, regardless of their actual dangerousness or potential to harm. When the children exposed to this rhetoric discover that drugs are not uniformly lethal - oftentimes through experimentation - this has the effect of undermining fundamentally the messaging they've heard (while also serving to discredit the person who warned them in the first place - often a police officer or other authority figure).
xkcd-sucks 10y ago
It seems a little bit dramatic-- Heroin withdrawal symptoms are pretty much the same as those of influenza, except the flu can actually kill you.
- wintermute42 10y ago
  Have you had severe withdrawals? I've withdrawn cold turkey off of a $500/day heroin habit. It is the worst pain I have ever experienced. If I had a gun on me at the time, I am 100% sure that I would have killed my self. You have no idea what you're talking about
- krylon 10y ago
  Except that there is a psychological component involved. The craving for another fix, I am told, can be incredibly intense, and the harshness of a reality you tried to escape from in the first place, does not really help. From what I have read (all this is strictly second- to fourth-hand knowledge!), it is very hard to watch somebody you love (or just care about) go through this.

152 points by happy-go-lucky 10y ago

I read this yesterday on the BBC, and was struck by, among many other things, the fact that this woman was put into this position in the first place. Most of all, that she was essentially turned into a criminal through the failure of the state. I also hope that people can read that, and understand the trap that so many addicts find themselves in. Instead of medical treatment they're referred to 12 step programs or told to "kick it", unless of course you can pay, of you're lucky. The system is set up to create failure and re-offense, although I'm not arguing that it was designed that way, the result is the same. All of this comes down to a single root cause which can be addressed: the "war on drugs". It's insane, it's wasteful, it's already going to have generations of negative impacts around the world. The sooner we stop it, the sooner we can start to heal the damage.

striking 10y ago
Yeah, but don't methadone maintenance programs work? If the requirements here were lessened, and the woman was prescribed methadone more quickly, wouldn't this article not have to exist? I feel the problem is less about the "war on drugs" and more about the UK's failure to help her recover from her addiction.
- beaconstudios 10y ago
  the NHS has a lot of problems dealing with health issues that aren't A&E-worthy. It's understaffed, the staff they do hire are overworked, and the whole organisation is simultaneously under-budgeted and over-stuffed with bureaucracy.
  - skylan_q 10y ago
    people don't realize that free means no charge, but not unlimited.
  - digi_owl 10y ago
    I can't help but think that since the 80s these systems have been deliberately rigged to fail, to give an excuse to privatize or introduce parallel for-profit options.
    - beaconstudios 10y ago
      Both Labour and the Tories have gutted the NHS at various times. Bureaucracy comes from both sides too.
      - digi_owl 10y ago
        Yeah, Blair "Labour". The french term "champagne left" is very apt in that regard.
        beaconstudios 10y ago
        You can't say someone isn't Labour just because you personally disagree with their work. New Labour was still left-of-centre, even if it was closer than previous Labour institutions. Left and right transcend economic class. The idea that the left is rooted in the working class is a complete fabrication. Gordon Brown also harmed the NHS by the way. Considerably.
        emodendroket 10y ago
        The whole thing of the "new" Democrats and "new" Labour is making a show of staking positions that are essentially a middle finger to their core constituencies.
      - laurencerowe 10y ago
        Labour did not gut the NHS. Their policy on bringing the private sector into the NHS was probably a bad one - PPI was more expensive than direct public investment for hospital rebuilding but kept the costs off the national balance sheet, maintaining a helpful fiction. But Labour significantly increased spending on the NHS, from 5% to 7% of GDP before the banking crisis (which with GDP falling saw spending rise in GDP terms by about another 1%.) Since the Tories regained power they've been cutting back on NHS spending (and more dramatically on social care, which increases the demands on the NHS.) That's why we're seeing the horror stories once again of waiting lists and winter crises, which had last been common under the previous Tory administration in the early 1990's. http://www.publicfinance.co.uk/opinion/2015/10/nhs-spending-squeezed-never http://www.publicfinance.co.uk/opinion/2015/10/nhs-spending-...
- Symbiote 10y ago
  The immediate cause, of not being able to get methadone after the court had ordered it, seems straightforward to fix. Whatever rule prevented the GP from prescribing it can be changed. Changing the maintenance programme itself might take more effort, and according to this article, more research is needed: http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-31943109 http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-31943109
- girvo 10y ago
  I had to wait 7 days to get on my Suboxone treatment. My parents got me codeine and valium from our GP to help me until that point, which amazed me at the time. 7 days is pretty short at least, and it saved my life. Other countries have months long waiting lists.
RobertoG 10y ago
Apart from the terrible human suffering that drugs (and their criminalization create), there is another factor that is not, in my opinion, discussed enough. Drugs are and amazing business and making them illegal, make rich to the worst kind of people. It's giving power to the last people you would want in power. So, in the consumer countries you have addicts suffering. In the producers countries you have wars and societies totally corrupted, and the worst of the worst get rich. Amazing strategy. It looks more like a war on humanity that a war on drugs.
- digi_owl 10y ago
  Frankly reading up on The Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs is disheartening. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Convention_on_Narcotic_Drugs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Convention_on_Narcotic_... Keep in mind that it came into being right as the Nixon years used anti-drug legislation to effectively take down blacks and hippies. On top of that you have nations that wanted to hedge around their big and growing pharma industries, and others that was negative to all drugs (except their local cultural ones) for religious and cultural reasons. In effect religion and economics trumped medical science, and the world has been dealing with the blowback ever since.
- acchow 10y ago
  Aren't drugs made illegal as a matter of national security? See also: the opium wars.
  - emodendroket 10y ago
    That's not really what's happening in this case.
  - laughinghan 10y ago
    Huh? Are you talking about the opium wars where China was invaded by the British and forced to stop trying to combat their opium epidemic? I've never heard of an interpretation of events where China made opium illegal in an attempt to forestall invasion by Western powers.
YSFEJ4SWJUVU6 10y ago
>Most of all, that she was essentially turned into a criminal through the failure of the state. Yes, and that failure is the arbitrary criminalisation of certain narcotics.
- adammck 10y ago
  I've always been intrigued by this stance. Do you believe that heroin should be available for purchase, like e.g. cigarettes? Is this a matter of individual liberty, or some other reason?
  - echlebek 10y ago
    Not the parent to your comment but I'll chime in here. Heroin is more dangerous than cigarettes, since the threshold for overdose is so low. So, probably not a great thing to be able to buy at a gas station. Personally, I think heroin should be available at pharmacies by prescription, cheaply purchasable in small quantities. Addicts should have to visit daily for their doses, and should get some support from doctors and pharmacists if they want to withdraw. Doctors should make it easy for addicts to get prescriptions for heroin, and clean, safe drug delivery options. It's a matter of harm reduction. It would help reduce overdoses because dosages would be exact. It would help reduce organized crime, because the money would be diverted to legitimate channels and taxed. These kinds of ideas are already being discussed in Vancouver, where black market fentanyl and carfentanil is causing a rash of fatal overdoses. While we have safe injection sites, addicts are still using black market drugs which are wildly unpredictable.
    - Xylakant 10y ago
      The threshold for overdoses is fairly high in all opioids though lower for heroin than for morphine. The reason people regularly overdose on heroin is that heroin from the illegal market is often of wildly changing purity and sometimes mixed with substances that increase the risk of OD. Handing out known quality heroin eliminates that risk.
      - 10y ago
tn13 10y ago
The miserable war on drugs is the failure of the society to acknowledge that people have right to their own life and even thought we may not agree with their choices we must nevertheless support them to exercise their right. Drugs destroy life ? They dont destroy it as much as spending 10 years in jail for having few gms of heroine. The overall theme of politics these days is to create an "other" group and blame everything on that group. Demonise that group and take more power in hand to then hurt them to cover up the failures of the government doing basic things. Muslims, illegal immigrants, Asians, China, Blacks, stoners, hippies, Rock musicians, top 1% etc. Thus government gets to pretend that they are doing something for "us".
mason240 10y ago
I totally agree that the best way to fight drug addictions is to make them completely legal and increase their availability. The sooner we end war on drugs, the sooner the supply will go down, and that will mean less addicts.
noonespecial 10y ago
>The system is set up to create failure and re-offense, although I'm not arguing that it was designed that way... It doesn't have to be. The system random walks through all sorts of configurations. All we need to end up like this is no incentive to fix these problems when they occur. In fact, we find a mild incentive to not fix it. In time, all of the poisonous sludge the system produces runs down and collects in these crevices. What's most odious to us casual onlookers is that there are so many in the system that simply shrug at the human pain as they collect the spoils. "I'm just doing my job" is really no different than "I just did it for the money."

coleifer 10y ago

GPs should know about clonodine. It's a blood pressure medicine that counteracts the massive norepinephrine dump you experience when you kick (and which is the number one thing that makes it so unbearable). It helps a lot. Besides methadone there's also buprenorphine and Suboxone, which are opiate replacements. Not the kind of thing you take to get high, something to use to taper off so the withdrawals aren't so intense. Heroin abuse is a big problem that's only going to get bigger in the US. A lot of folks got addicted back when Purdue was pushing Oxycontin, and now that it's harder for them to obtain they've switched to the cheaper and more potent stuff. Doctors need to know how to treat withdrawal, period. There are lots of options besides methadone (which has it's own nightmare withdrawal if stopped abruptly, and which lasts three times longer than heroin withdrawal).

pmoriarty 10y ago
"Heroin abuse is a big problem that's only going to get bigger in the US. With legal weed, a lot of former marijuana producers are getting wise and starting to farm the opium poppy. Plus a lot of folks got addicted back when Purdue was pushing Oxycontin, and now that it's harder for them to obtain they've switched to the cheaper and more potent stuff." I'd really like to see some numbers on this. From what I understand, there are far, far more marijuana users than there are heroin users -- like many orders of magnitude more. So, yeah, illegal marijuana growers could certainly switch to growing opium, but they're not going to magically get anywhere near the number of customers.
- coleifer 10y ago
  I did a quick google search: * https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/data/heroin.html https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/data/heroin.html * http://www.cbsnews.com/news/heroin-use-in-u-s-reaches-alarming-20-year-high/ http://www.cbsnews.com/news/heroin-use-in-u-s-reaches-alarmi... * http://time.com/3946904/heroin-epidemic/ http://time.com/3946904/heroin-epidemic/ * http://www.cnn.com/2016/09/16/health/huntington-heroin/ http://www.cnn.com/2016/09/16/health/huntington-heroin/
  - pmoriarty 10y ago

RazzyPI 10y ago

> Heroin abuse is a big problem that's only going to get bigger in the US. With legal weed, a lot of former marijuana producers are getting wise and starting to farm the opium poppy. This might be the dumbest thing I've read in a while. I was with you until this line, and now I realize you're just puking out headlines you've read elsewhere on the internet.

coleifer 10y ago
I'm speaking from experience. Mexico's become a huge producer of tar. It also matters where you live - if you're on the east coast the H is completely different from what you see in the midwest or southwest. https://news.vice.com/video/the-rise-of-mexican-black-tar https://news.vice.com/video/the-rise-of-mexican-black-tar PS - Why the downvotes?
- Retric 10y ago
  Opioid abuse is not supply side limited.
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    Even so, aggressive marketing by cartels trying to reduce lost MJ revenues could magnify it. The scenario presented is not implausible.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
- Zigurd 10y ago
  Regarding the downvotes, I had to read your top level post three times to understand what you are getting at: a) Mexican pot growers need a new line of business, now that it's legal to produce for the medical and recreational markets in many places in the US. b) Therefore they are supplying heroin addicts in the US. The first time I read what you wrote I got the impression you were saying cannabis is a gateway drug. I didn't understand you were talking about the effects of legalization on Mexican traffickers.

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brohoolio 10y ago

And here in the United States we are talking about removing drug treatment options from our health care. Over a million people.

coding123 10y ago

Economics-wise, drug manufacturing can be the next-big-thing for the US economy. Sprinkle in some regulation and oversight for quality, and BAM we're good to go.

ybrah 10y ago

clickbait cancer

sctb 10y ago
Please stop posting unsubstantively like this here.

ThrustVectoring 10y ago

Holy shit that's some hilariously bad double-think justifying some really horrific parenting. Some choice examples: >We talked about how to stop it there and then - how to bring it to a stop as soon as possible. We talked about it as a family, and there was a bit of shouting. Go on, completely gloss over how you were treating your daughter in this interaction and use language that drops all responsibility for it. Oh no, "there was a bit of shouting", nothing can be done about that sort of thing, it just happens you know? More accurate picture of what happened: the mother recruited the rest of her family to gang up on and emotionally abuse her daughter until she stops embarrassing her by doing things she doesn't want. And of course getting the behavior that you want is the only thing worth talking about. Because that's always the important thing for you. >I had always been a very controlling mum when they were younger. They had set bedtimes and they ate their vegetables and all that. And I felt very out of control. I couldn't say, "No you're not going out. You need to come home and stay home and sort yourself out." Because she would say, "I'm an adult, I can do what I like." Micromanage everything yourself and then act all surprised when your grown children aren't capable of it and resent you for trying to take control back again. Like seriously, your feelings of "being in control" aren't more important than your daughter. >I was disappointed. Very disappointed, because I had great expectations of what she could achieve. Translation: she could've made me look really good, and instead she didn't, and this is a gigantic problem to me personally. >She was earning good money but after about a year, at the end of every month, we started getting phone calls. She kept saying, "I don't know where I spend all my money mum, it just goes. At the end of every month I'm left with nothing and I've got no money for food and stuff." Okay, so she's never learned how to manage her finances, so we're going to get a heartwarming story of how you realized that you failed in teaching your daughter independence skills and made up for it with responsible parenting with the goal of creating a thriving adult, right? >So we would forward her a sub for the next month. We weren't actually giving her money, we were subbing her until her next pay packet. No wait, I forgot who was writing this piece for a moment, my bad. We're just going to see you do the easiest thing that makes the shame over your lack of parenting skills go away. >Each time we saw her, a lot would depend on her state of mind, and on where we were in terms of our ability to accept her for what she was and what she was doing, and love her regardless. But at a certain point we argued, and she said she didn't want contact any more. So we didn't speak for three months. This is the kind of self-centered story people end up telling when they're doing straight-up emotional abuse and still want to get positive attention. "But at a certain point we argued" is straight up double-think gold. Spend seven words and use language that takes zero responsibility for an event that convinced your own daughter that couch surfing in drug dens was a better fucking choice than speaking with you. >Nobody can help. Nobody knows what to say. Everyone's desperate for it to be good news. They say, "How are things getting on?" And if it's good news, they're like, "Oh brilliant, brilliant!" But nobody really wants to hear that it's still the same, or worse. And there is very little professional support unless you're prepared to pay for it. This is her real problem in her mind - she's having trouble talking about herself like they're she's a good mother when her daughter is out doing heroin addict things. >And I was shocked at how nobody was taking responsibility and the whole burden was placed on us, as the parents. NO FUCKING SHIT. This feels like she's consistently trying to do whatever she thinks is the easiest way to fix the broken human-shaped prop in her life. >I didn't personally buy the heroin. I just drove my car to the area and she went off, injected herself, and came back Lol. Just lol. And her husband is so distraught, and she has to deal with her distraught husband, and oh no, it's so terrible, woe is me, look at what I have to deal with. Grow the fuck up. >I know it's boastful, but she's absolutely beautiful looking and very intelligent. I think she could have been anything. She is so massively into animals that she used to talk about being a vet, so years ago I guess we used to dream about that. You would dream about being able to brag about your beautiful, intelligent, veterinarian of a daughter, wouldn't you? And you'd have looked like such a good mother, and your sycophantic "friends" would tell you where she got her looks from, and oh my god stop me now I'm going to barf. >I feel 50% responsible because I think all mothers do. You're 100% responsible, and the fucked up thing is that you've got no clue why your daughter's making these choices. You either didn't listen when she tried to tell you (all your can remember is "It's just fun"), or you convinced her that it's pointless to try to talk to you. >Initially, in the first days she was back, I'm sure she didn't trust me. She probably hasn't trusted you since she was 13. What you're missing is conditioned obedience. There's a difference. You wouldn't know.

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agjacobson 10y ago

I want to use this message thread to tell a story and make a point. If it is off-point, delete it, give it negative votes, whatever. I had abdominal surgery. They had to remove 14cm of my colon which was badly inflamed due to diverticulitis. When I woke up, I was so doped up that I felt no pain. I even danced a jig in my room. That evening they hooked me up to a hydromorphone injector for the inevitable pain. Every 12 minutes or so, I could give myself a shot into my IV. Hydromorphone is about 100 times stronger than morphine, so the doses were in micrograms. I was allowed, like, 5 shots per hour, and the machine could get loaded with about 50 shots. I kept a record of the shots in my Iphone Notes. I tried to space them further than 12 minutes, but I only decreased the frequency by a few minutes. I liked those shots. They worked. The nursing staff encouraged me to use this. They could reload the machine, no trouble. Now the thing about colon surgery is, your colon has to get working. Those opiate shots very effectively prevent this. I wanted to get out of that place. So the next night, I quit cold turkey. I was freezing cold, and the pain I felt was not just from the after effects of the surgery, I am pretty sure. It was fucking horrible. Now the things is, I was addicted. I did succeed in quitting cold turkey. My colon still didn't work for a day, so I vomited almost a gallon of green bile over the edge of my gurney. It was so much, it lapped up against the walls. Then my colon worked, and I got to go home. But I was addicted, and I am a recovering addict, from that one time. And every nurse I mention this to says, "Oh no, you weren't an addict." They even quote some bullshit criterion for addiction, which I've forgotten. I haven't had any problems since, and if I have to take oral oxycodone, or hydrocodone, there have been no problems or instance of abuse. But I was an addict.

rodionos 10y ago
Thank you for sharing this.
coleifer 10y ago
I don't think you know what you're talking about. For how many weeks were you on the medication? For how long were you in withdrawal? Heroin, hydromorphone, oxycodone, etc the withdrawal lasts 5-7 days. Were you in withdrawal for that long? I guess the point I'm trying to make is that most addicts are on much higher doses for much longer periods of time -- and the withdrawal is insane. Furthermore, there's a big difference between physical and psychological addiction. If there weren't, then everyone who takes prescribed pain meds for any length of time would be "an addict" because they'll experience a degree of withdrawal. If you identify as a drug addict, that's fine (though I certainly hope you aren't one!). IV Hydromorphone is also, by the way, 5x stronger than IV morphine. Granted, that's a lot, but nowhere near 100x!

everyone 10y ago

This is a good book on drugs and the history of prohibition. https://www.amazon.com/Pursuit-Oblivion-Global-History-Narcotics/dp/0393325458 https://www.amazon.com/Pursuit-Oblivion-Global-History-Narco...

jokr004 10y ago

Opiate addiction is hell. Just pure unadulterated hell. I've been through a lot of hardships in life but I honestly can't begin to explain to you the amount of pain this has caused me. I'm currently in a methadone program after relapsing for the first time since I got clean five years ago. Just.. stay as far away from this stuff as you possibly can. It has the potential to swallow you whole.

oxryly1 10y ago
Not to pry, but did it start with a doctor's prescription for you?
- jokr004 10y ago
  It actually didn't start with a prescription.. For me it started as casual use here and there and very quickly turned into self-medication. I've had issues with depression and anxiety for a long time and opiates were a really easy way of dealing with those problems. However I can't tell you how many people I knew who started using after being prescribed opioid painkillers.
  - gefh 10y ago
    I've only ever had opioid painkillers after dental work, and it's enough to convince me that I must _never_ try heroin. You have my kind thoughts and best wishes.
    - jokr004 10y ago
      Thanks, I really appreciate it! All things considered things are actually going really well. My relationship with my SO is better than ever, my career is going well, I'm actually starting a new job next week. I managed to keep my life together through all of this, and I know I'm very lucky for that.
    - pgrote 10y ago
      I never understood how people could be addicted to drugs until the middle of the night screaming in an emergency room bed. A kidney stone was causing so much pain morphine wouldn't touch it. Unbearable. The nurse came in and put something in my IV and I just stopped. The pain stopped. I stopped talking to my wife in mid-sentence. Everything was fine. My world just stopped and I liked it. As the nurse left my wife asked what I was given and it was dilaudid, which is equal to heroin on the equianalgesic scale. It was right then I understood how people become addicted to drugs. Like you, it convinced me to never try heroin or any other opiates outside of emergency medical care.

mnm1 10y ago

This reads like a laundry list of exactly what not to do when you find out your child is addicted to opiates. Everything they do, from being overly controlling to kicking her out and pressing charges against her, is a self-righteous act and harms her greatly. At one point, I thought I was reading a scene cut from Trainspotting for being too mundane. The naivety about the legal and health systems is also appalling. These are people who claim the ability to function in the world, yet they don't know the most basic things about the world they claim the ability to function in. I think towards the end, the mother actually starts to get a glimpse of the reality of what is going on with her daughter and is more compassionate by letting her live in their house again. I hope their daughter recovers and other parents heed this story as to what not to do to their sick children.

tjohns 10y ago
Out of curiosity, what would you do instead? From person experience with a family member who had a severe case of alcoholism (and eventually died from it)... there's very little you can do to help somebody if they don't want to quit. After a while these behaviors start to negatively affect everyone else in the household, too. (Also, keep in mind we're actually talking about an adult here... since they're old enough to join the military.)
- billjings 10y ago
  The cardinal error in "helping" addicts is to try and fix the addict's problems for them. As you said, that's impossible. Even being available to provide support rarely makes any sense, because addicts try to divest themselves of their problems instead of solving them — so they might ask you for help on something they could do themselves, or on something they think you could fix but actually can't (e.g. "Can you keep an eye on how much I drink tonight?" This just pits my will against yours.) Detoxing, preventing withdrawal symptoms, transportation — addicts often can't provide these things for themselves, so if asked, they're good ways to help out. But addicts have to choose themselves to stay on a path that leads away from that addiction. That will be the case even if that path ends up being as simple as a pill you can take.
- 10y ago

metaphorm 10y ago

This is really sad. I got the impression while reading through that whole sorry story that the poor girl's parents really just don't see how they are a huge source of negativity and pain in their daughter's life. They kick her out of the house, sabotage her job, put conditions on their provision of love and support. These are terrible parents. I feel awful just reading about that whole situation.

tjohns 10y ago
Not to sound harsh, but have you dealt with someone who has a serious drug problem before? When things get very bad, you try anything in the hope it gets though to them. (It often doesn't, but you try anyway.) Keep in mind that major drug addictions cause problems for everyone involved. Nobody resorts to these things as their first option. (And frankly, if one's job involves driving, and they're doing it while under the influence... they really should lose their job/license. That's how innocent people get killed on the road.)
- metaphorm 10y ago
  I'm going to quote the author here > Our daughter at that point didn't feel it was a problem. She kept saying, "It's just fun, OK? It's just fun." And that would be interspersed with periods of depression and it not being fun, but her not being prepared to admit that. And as time went on we gave her an ultimatum. Looking back I don't know whether it was the right decision or not, but we said, "If you continue to use drugs, you can no longer live at home." And we kicked her out, because she continued. Then her drug use got worse, and her friendship groups deteriorated more and more. > I hated her. I hated her so much. Am I really being harsh? This is a mother writing about how she felt hatred towards her daughter. She hated her daughter for doing drugs and for socializing with the wrong people. As a result of her hatred she kicked her own daughter out of the home, which instigated a downward spiral that made things far worse than they might have been otherwise.
  - hndruguser 10y ago
    Not harsh, I completely agree with you. Everything the mother did would have just made her daughter's life harder.

csense 10y ago

They teach you in school, drugs are bad. Don't do drugs. Just say no. At least where and when I went to school, they went out of their way, above and beyond to ensure this simple message was hammered into every single child. The image of a drug addict in pop culture -- it's never a pleasant one. They lie, cheat, steal. They're a burden and a trial to their families. People are warned about what happens when you get addicted to drugs. I simply fail to understand why so many people do drugs in the first place, and I have little sympathy for addicts. The world is a dangerous place. If you drive your car off the side of a bridge, or you mix the wrong household chemicals, or you stay in a running vehicle in an enclosed garage, or you grab on to a downed powerline, you'll probably die. It's simple cause and effect, and for the most part people understand it and aren't stupid enough to do these things unless they're suicidal. If you do drugs, you'll probably ruin your life. It's simple cause and effect. For the most part people understand it, but it seems that enormous hordes of people do them anyway. I don't get it, what's the difference?

kolinko 10y ago
Enormous hordes of people do them and don't get addicted. The addicts are just a tiny fraction of people who do drugs.
frozenport 10y ago
We have an epidemic because people were told by pharmaceuticals and doctors that they were taking medicine, and that it was safe and unlikely to be habit forming. This wasn't true. As to recreational drug use, I'll leave it to others to comment.
hchasestevens 10y ago
Do consider that, in many places in the U.S., anti-drug programs deliver the same ruinous message about all drugs, regardless of their actual dangerousness or potential to harm. When the children exposed to this rhetoric discover that drugs are not uniformly lethal - oftentimes through experimentation - this has the effect of undermining fundamentally the messaging they've heard (while also serving to discredit the person who warned them in the first place - often a police officer or other authority figure).

xkcd-sucks 10y ago

It seems a little bit dramatic-- Heroin withdrawal symptoms are pretty much the same as those of influenza, except the flu can actually kill you.

wintermute42 10y ago
Have you had severe withdrawals? I've withdrawn cold turkey off of a $500/day heroin habit. It is the worst pain I have ever experienced. If I had a gun on me at the time, I am 100% sure that I would have killed my self. You have no idea what you're talking about
krylon 10y ago
Except that there is a psychological component involved. The craving for another fix, I am told, can be incredibly intense, and the harshness of a reality you tried to escape from in the first place, does not really help. From what I have read (all this is strictly second- to fourth-hand knowledge!), it is very hard to watch somebody you love (or just care about) go through this.