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Heroin wasn't historically a problem because the users died. Heroin's been a problem because of just how far people will go to get it, and how a massive amount

by fiblye 9y ago

Heroin wasn't historically a problem because the users died. Heroin's been a problem because of just how far people will go to get it, and how a massive amount of people will drop everything else in life just to get a steady supply of it. Opiates are the most addictive substances in the world. Once someone gets a taste of it, their life is forever changed. People can smoke a cigarette a couple times and decide it's not for them. People can have beers once in a while and move on. There aren't many people who try heroin a couple times then realize they're busy and drop it forever.

Retric 9y ago
I knows several people that tried Heroin a few times and gave it up, but where addicted to cigarettes. Different people have different drug preferences ans I doubt we have good statistics on this stuff. I like many people where given opioids post surgery and ended up tossing the pills vs finishing the prescription, yet people get really addicted to the same medication.
- tmp-20150107 9y ago
  Indeed, it's entirely possible for people to take heroin at the weekends or similar, and put it down without problems, and I know several friends who do it irregularly without getting addicted - although only smoking, I've never heard of anyone injecting IV heroin who wasn't an addict...
  - Xylakant 9y ago
    Injections are apparently much more potent than smoking, so it makes sense that people already addicted prefer that to keep the required amount lower. For recreational uses, smoking would just be much more practical.
    - tmp-20150107 9y ago
      Indeed. The bio-availability from 'chasing the dragon' on tin-foil is something like 50% or even less, although in the UK at least powdered heroin is adulterated with things like caffeine (which causes heroin to vaporize at a lower temperature) to make smoking more effective. Obviously IV injecting gives 100% bio-availability, though.
      - Xylakant 9y ago
        I’d like to take the opportunity and thank you for posting here. It’s hard enough to find reports of people that are going through a withdrawal, so being able to engage in a discussion is a rare opportunity. I wish you all the best in that process.
leereeves 9y ago
> There aren't many people who try heroin a couple times then realize they're busy and drop it forever. Millions of people have used legal opioid painkillers and moved on with their lives. Some people get addicted but for the legal opioids it's far from true that "once someone gets a taste of it, their life is forever changed." Is heroin that much more addictive than the legal variants?
- senorjazz 9y ago
  No it isn't. You don't get addicted straight away, you have to work at it. Just like cigarettes, you have one and don't like. Tastes foul, gives you a headache. But if you persevere, smoke 1, then more then more. Then after 10 days / 2 weeks of daily smoking you are starting to get addicted, same for heroin. You use it once, and if is any good, you are sick, violently so (vomiting, not dope sick), but persevere for 1-2 weeks the addiction will take hold. Addiction tends to happen more with heroin, because people who would tend to trying it have other issues on in their life to give them the impetus to keep on trying it.
crankylinuxuser 9y ago
Oh please. Enough of your DARE rhetoric. I've been on hydromorphone. It's 8x more potent than morphine on a gram basis. Heroin is only 3x more powerful than morphine. I was on hydromorphone for 4 months, and then went DOWN to oxycodone for another 6 months. After 6 months, went on hydrocodone. By all measurements of addition, I was 100% addicted. Yeah, it felt good having the drugs. But I also quit taking them sooner because I felt my mind fogging up. I didn't like that, and took more pain to be able to think clearly. But no, your assertions that people will just drop everything to get it is blatantly false. Homeless people will go after heroin, if they can afford it. But those that choose this route are trying to numb the fact that people don't care about their condition, and that they have very little chance to raise themselves up. It's a social reason - if I cant have a better life, I can check out with drugs.
- fiblye 9y ago
  And the problem is the people that are dying of heroin aren't the Silicon Valley tech workers with good jobs and homes that make up the majority of hacker news. They're people living in shithole towns like my hometown. The jobs left decades ago and people are just scraping by. They don't have enough savings to pack up and leave. I've got friends and family dying because it's way too accessible, and the idea of making it legal and even more accessible doesn't appeal to me or my common sense. I trust the average person to use heroin as responsibly as they'd use a military helicopter if they could afford one from a day's work--and that's not at all. So congrats on being able to take opiates and not have a problem. If you have stable employment, your situation is in no way relevant to the people this problem is afflicting. We already know that soldiers who abused drugs during the Vietnam war were able to quit them easily upon returning because their lifestyle improved. Addicts don't have a chance to just up and get a happier life.
  - tcj_phx 9y ago
    > And the problem is the people that are dying of heroin aren't the Silicon Valley tech workers with good jobs and homes that make up the majority of hacker news. My girlfriend grew up in a "1%" household. She developed substance abuse problems because she was born premature, because she was adopted, because of some "adverse childhood experience", and because her doctors thought she was a candidate for chemical castration with Provera (which makes some women suicidal). "Stress" is the main factor in addiction. For some people stress is emotional, for others it's economic, and for others it's biological... > I trust the average person to use heroin as responsibly as they'd use a military helicopter if they could afford one from a day's work--and that's not at all. Do you trust organized crime to provide heroin to people who are going to use it anyways?
DanBC 9y ago
Only about 10% of people who try heroin go on to become addicted. The first few tries just aren't pleasant. Cocaine or methamphetamine are probably more psychologically addictive, although not as physically addictive. And, for addicts, coming off heroin is unlikely to kill you. Coming off alcohol might.
- fiblye 9y ago
  10% is not a number to trivialize. I've noticed a lot of people on HN are for all drugs being legalized, but they look at it from the perspective of fairly wealthy and highly educated tech workers with stable lifestyles. Coming from a small town in the rust belt where people struggle to even imagine a future, heroin is way too easy of an escape. I think helping people who've become addicted is good, but these aren't things that should be legal and accessible for people to start using.
  - tcj_phx 9y ago
    > I think helping people who've become addicted is good, but these aren't things that should be legal and accessible for people to start using. When addictive substances are illegal they're more accessible than when they're managed appropriately. Johann Hari tells in Chasing the Scream about a city in the UK that used to have a legal heroin program. Addiction rates were a fraction of the rate of a nearby city with similar economic prospects. The difference was that the addicts who lived under prohibition had to advertise to their friends to support their habit. Patients who could get what they needed from the NHS had no need to promote heroin/cocaine/etc to their friends.
  - Xylakant 9y ago
    10% is the rate of the people that ever try, and those are currently likely to be the people that are predisposed to develop an addiction. I don't think this can be generalized to the whole population. > but these aren't things that should be legal and accessible for people to start using. Then impose a full ban on alcohol as well? It's about as addictive and ranks higher in danger to health than heroin. And it's pretty much freely available to any adult. Well, the US tried, it didn't work out all too well.

by fiblye 9y ago

Retric 9y ago

I knows several people that tried Heroin a few times and gave it up, but where addicted to cigarettes. Different people have different drug preferences ans I doubt we have good statistics on this stuff. I like many people where given opioids post surgery and ended up tossing the pills vs finishing the prescription, yet people get really addicted to the same medication.

tmp-20150107 9y ago
Indeed, it's entirely possible for people to take heroin at the weekends or similar, and put it down without problems, and I know several friends who do it irregularly without getting addicted - although only smoking, I've never heard of anyone injecting IV heroin who wasn't an addict...
- Xylakant 9y ago
  Injections are apparently much more potent than smoking, so it makes sense that people already addicted prefer that to keep the required amount lower. For recreational uses, smoking would just be much more practical.
  - tmp-20150107 9y ago
    Indeed. The bio-availability from 'chasing the dragon' on tin-foil is something like 50% or even less, although in the UK at least powdered heroin is adulterated with things like caffeine (which causes heroin to vaporize at a lower temperature) to make smoking more effective. Obviously IV injecting gives 100% bio-availability, though.
    - Xylakant 9y ago
      I’d like to take the opportunity and thank you for posting here. It’s hard enough to find reports of people that are going through a withdrawal, so being able to engage in a discussion is a rare opportunity. I wish you all the best in that process.

leereeves 9y ago

> There aren't many people who try heroin a couple times then realize they're busy and drop it forever. Millions of people have used legal opioid painkillers and moved on with their lives. Some people get addicted but for the legal opioids it's far from true that "once someone gets a taste of it, their life is forever changed." Is heroin that much more addictive than the legal variants?

senorjazz 9y ago
No it isn't. You don't get addicted straight away, you have to work at it. Just like cigarettes, you have one and don't like. Tastes foul, gives you a headache. But if you persevere, smoke 1, then more then more. Then after 10 days / 2 weeks of daily smoking you are starting to get addicted, same for heroin. You use it once, and if is any good, you are sick, violently so (vomiting, not dope sick), but persevere for 1-2 weeks the addiction will take hold. Addiction tends to happen more with heroin, because people who would tend to trying it have other issues on in their life to give them the impetus to keep on trying it.

crankylinuxuser 9y ago

Oh please. Enough of your DARE rhetoric. I've been on hydromorphone. It's 8x more potent than morphine on a gram basis. Heroin is only 3x more powerful than morphine. I was on hydromorphone for 4 months, and then went DOWN to oxycodone for another 6 months. After 6 months, went on hydrocodone. By all measurements of addition, I was 100% addicted. Yeah, it felt good having the drugs. But I also quit taking them sooner because I felt my mind fogging up. I didn't like that, and took more pain to be able to think clearly. But no, your assertions that people will just drop everything to get it is blatantly false. Homeless people will go after heroin, if they can afford it. But those that choose this route are trying to numb the fact that people don't care about their condition, and that they have very little chance to raise themselves up. It's a social reason - if I cant have a better life, I can check out with drugs.

fiblye 9y ago
And the problem is the people that are dying of heroin aren't the Silicon Valley tech workers with good jobs and homes that make up the majority of hacker news. They're people living in shithole towns like my hometown. The jobs left decades ago and people are just scraping by. They don't have enough savings to pack up and leave. I've got friends and family dying because it's way too accessible, and the idea of making it legal and even more accessible doesn't appeal to me or my common sense. I trust the average person to use heroin as responsibly as they'd use a military helicopter if they could afford one from a day's work--and that's not at all. So congrats on being able to take opiates and not have a problem. If you have stable employment, your situation is in no way relevant to the people this problem is afflicting. We already know that soldiers who abused drugs during the Vietnam war were able to quit them easily upon returning because their lifestyle improved. Addicts don't have a chance to just up and get a happier life.
- tcj_phx 9y ago
  > And the problem is the people that are dying of heroin aren't the Silicon Valley tech workers with good jobs and homes that make up the majority of hacker news. My girlfriend grew up in a "1%" household. She developed substance abuse problems because she was born premature, because she was adopted, because of some "adverse childhood experience", and because her doctors thought she was a candidate for chemical castration with Provera (which makes some women suicidal). "Stress" is the main factor in addiction. For some people stress is emotional, for others it's economic, and for others it's biological... > I trust the average person to use heroin as responsibly as they'd use a military helicopter if they could afford one from a day's work--and that's not at all. Do you trust organized crime to provide heroin to people who are going to use it anyways?

DanBC 9y ago

Only about 10% of people who try heroin go on to become addicted. The first few tries just aren't pleasant. Cocaine or methamphetamine are probably more psychologically addictive, although not as physically addictive. And, for addicts, coming off heroin is unlikely to kill you. Coming off alcohol might.

fiblye 9y ago
10% is not a number to trivialize. I've noticed a lot of people on HN are for all drugs being legalized, but they look at it from the perspective of fairly wealthy and highly educated tech workers with stable lifestyles. Coming from a small town in the rust belt where people struggle to even imagine a future, heroin is way too easy of an escape. I think helping people who've become addicted is good, but these aren't things that should be legal and accessible for people to start using.
- tcj_phx 9y ago
  > I think helping people who've become addicted is good, but these aren't things that should be legal and accessible for people to start using. When addictive substances are illegal they're more accessible than when they're managed appropriately. Johann Hari tells in Chasing the Scream about a city in the UK that used to have a legal heroin program. Addiction rates were a fraction of the rate of a nearby city with similar economic prospects. The difference was that the addicts who lived under prohibition had to advertise to their friends to support their habit. Patients who could get what they needed from the NHS had no need to promote heroin/cocaine/etc to their friends.
- Xylakant 9y ago
  10% is the rate of the people that ever try, and those are currently likely to be the people that are predisposed to develop an addiction. I don't think this can be generalized to the whole population. > but these aren't things that should be legal and accessible for people to start using. Then impose a full ban on alcohol as well? It's about as addictive and ranks higher in danger to health than heroin. And it's pretty much freely available to any adult. Well, the US tried, it didn't work out all too well.