9 ms·

I don't know why you'd assume you're the outlier. Never mind the differences between physical and psychological dependence and problem use (which can happen wit

by jimz 6y ago

I don't know why you'd assume you're the outlier. Never mind the differences between physical and psychological dependence and problem use (which can happen without dependence, and one can be dependent but not using problematically), you personally experienced underwhelming withdrawal effects on multiple drugs that don't all affect the same parts of your brain, and some more physically addictive than others (benzos on top of that list). As for your friends, you know about their struggles because they had struggles in the first place. Just as the news doesn't report things when nothing bad happens, it's unlikely that, with the potential of stigmatization and jailtime, most people would volunteer something that caused them no issues but can only cause issues if they let it be known. If I were in your shoes I'd not assume that you and this guy happens to be the outliers, but rather, selection bias, the well-documented history of our drug laws being based on racial panics (Chinese for opiates, cocaine for African-Americans, marijuana for Mexicans, the crack sentencing disparity, et cetera) that happens to fund a lot of the economy via the prison-industrial complex, it's not much of a leap to think that a great deal of the harm linked to drug use is linked really to the various behavior undertaken to hide from detection and not necessarily from the drugs themselves, most of which - diamorphine included - are classified as having some medical use somewhere, although for whatever reason MDMA and marijuana are classified as having none. I think it's not hard to buy into the idea that problematic use is not the outlier because that's been taught to us for decades. But if your personal experience doesn't indicate that, why jump directly to thinking that you're the odd man out?

renewiltord 6y ago
A fair question. I haven't thought about it deeply. But smoking is a very social habit. No one hides the smoking. And it's really hard to hide because smokers have a sharp odour that's really hard to mask. So among the people I know, I know the smokers (or knew, since vaping wasn't common when I was young and had the habit). So I guess I had a pretty good hold on what the population of smokers was, and so I know most struggled to quit. As for the other drugs, yeah, I'm open to thinking otherwise. I have lots of friends who recreationally use cocaine, MDMA, LSD, mushrooms, and whatever else. Personally I've tried all of those and really just use shrooms now occasionally¹. No particular addictions there among my group of friends, so I'm open to your school of thought there. ¹ Cocaine is boring. MDMA is great. LSD is cool. Shrooms has massive therapeutic effects for me. I can skip my Adderall for two weeks after a trip. I feel so motivated to work and find it trivial to focus.
- nostromo 6y ago
  I think it's selection bias. Lots and lots of living people have smoked at some point. However, many (most?) of those people quit smoking at some point. So, the remaining people are the people that are most addicted, which gives us the impression that tobacco is highly addictive for everyone. Edit: the CDC says that 62% of people who have ever smoked have quit. https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/cessation/smoking-cessation-fast-facts/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/cess...
  - pseudalopex 6y ago
    That doesn't mean quitting was easy for them.
  - renewiltord 6y ago
    The part that breaks that is that in the population I'm talking about, I have known the people continuously from age 15 to age 34. Twenty years continuously, over 20 people. No one ever tried to hide the habit (hiding your smoking is a thing no one did 20 years ago). So I can observe this population fixedly and not suffer from survival bias. It could be selection bias. Maybe I hang out with other people with addiction potential because of who I am. But it's definitely not survival bias (which is sort of what the rest of your comment talks about). The thing that makes it unlikely and the article's premise unlikely is that the weight of evidence is on this stuff being addictive. But, you know, I'm a huge fan of the therapeutic effects of many scheduled drugs, so I'm open to the idea that addiction works differently from currently understood.
cafard 6y ago
Considering only tobacco, I'd assume he is an outlier. I'd assume so because of the many quite intelligent people who started smoking before the Surgeon General's warning, tried to quit after it, maybe eventually quit after a dozen years of work, maybe never did. Back during one of the big buyouts of ca. 1980, an executive of KKR explained why it was buying some cigarette company: You make it for a dime, you sell it for a dollar, and people are addicted to it.

by jimz 6y ago

renewiltord 6y ago

A fair question. I haven't thought about it deeply. But smoking is a very social habit. No one hides the smoking. And it's really hard to hide because smokers have a sharp odour that's really hard to mask. So among the people I know, I know the smokers (or knew, since vaping wasn't common when I was young and had the habit). So I guess I had a pretty good hold on what the population of smokers was, and so I know most struggled to quit. As for the other drugs, yeah, I'm open to thinking otherwise. I have lots of friends who recreationally use cocaine, MDMA, LSD, mushrooms, and whatever else. Personally I've tried all of those and really just use shrooms now occasionally¹. No particular addictions there among my group of friends, so I'm open to your school of thought there. ¹ Cocaine is boring. MDMA is great. LSD is cool. Shrooms has massive therapeutic effects for me. I can skip my Adderall for two weeks after a trip. I feel so motivated to work and find it trivial to focus.

nostromo 6y ago
I think it's selection bias. Lots and lots of living people have smoked at some point. However, many (most?) of those people quit smoking at some point. So, the remaining people are the people that are most addicted, which gives us the impression that tobacco is highly addictive for everyone. Edit: the CDC says that 62% of people who have ever smoked have quit. https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/cessation/smoking-cessation-fast-facts/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/cess...
- pseudalopex 6y ago
  That doesn't mean quitting was easy for them.
- renewiltord 6y ago
  The part that breaks that is that in the population I'm talking about, I have known the people continuously from age 15 to age 34. Twenty years continuously, over 20 people. No one ever tried to hide the habit (hiding your smoking is a thing no one did 20 years ago). So I can observe this population fixedly and not suffer from survival bias. It could be selection bias. Maybe I hang out with other people with addiction potential because of who I am. But it's definitely not survival bias (which is sort of what the rest of your comment talks about). The thing that makes it unlikely and the article's premise unlikely is that the weight of evidence is on this stuff being addictive. But, you know, I'm a huge fan of the therapeutic effects of many scheduled drugs, so I'm open to the idea that addiction works differently from currently understood.

cafard 6y ago

Considering only tobacco, I'd assume he is an outlier. I'd assume so because of the many quite intelligent people who started smoking before the Surgeon General's warning, tried to quit after it, maybe eventually quit after a dozen years of work, maybe never did. Back during one of the big buyouts of ca. 1980, an executive of KKR explained why it was buying some cigarette company: You make it for a dime, you sell it for a dollar, and people are addicted to it.