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Having grown up in suburbia with a number of friends who have gone the heroin route, from my experience the biggest issue is young kids don't associate their Mo

Having grown up in suburbia with a number of friends who have gone the heroin route, from my experience the biggest issue is young kids don't associate their Mom's painkillers in the medicine cabinet with heroin. Oxycontin is viewed like a fun drug. It's legal, so it must be okay... Once they're addicted and out of money they eventually turn to heroin(something they would have never touched prior).

nickysielicki 12y ago
My biggest problem with the war on drugs is not the frivolous spending and disgusting financial cost to the taxpayer, or the ruined lives of people in jail for nonviolent crimes. My biggest problem with the war on drugs is that it has created drug education that is propagandized, but even worse, even the nonpartisan content is still severely inadequate and abstinence focused. It really sucks to hear of my friends from highschool are doing 'MDMA' without waiting long enough to not do brain damage to themselves. Not to mention, they're sourcing these drugs at festivals and are probably instead taking synthetic cathinones. It pains me to think that most of my friends don't reagent test their blotter, and will take 4 tabs of 'acid' without thinking that it actually is probably 2C-E and they could die from it. It bothers me that people have parents that will drug test them, so they're smoking JWH-017 and irreversibly fucking their brains up because they don't know any better. Those in the know rely on sites like wikipedia, reddit, and erowid to get our drug information. Those that are not in the know rely on their 5th grade DARE education which they've entirely rejected after realizing weed isn't deadly, and word of mouth from other not in the know drug users that are obviously biased towards drugs not being harmful. So in summary, yes, I 100% agree with you. I've many friends that are on heroin, a few that have escaped it, and a few that I know won't. I have nothing to say besides that it's super fucked up and I'm glad I learned about erowid before I had the opportunity to do any drugs.
- morgante 12y ago
  > abstinence focused. Why shouldn't the focus be on abstinence?
  - simplexion 12y ago
    Have you seen the rate of teen pregnancy in the Bible Belt?
  - GeneralMayhem 12y ago
    "Abstinence-focused," in drug and sex education, tends to mean "abstinence only." If all the kids are getting is "drugs will all cause you to get addicted and die a horrible death," then once they learn that's not true, they don't have any other knowledge to go on. I agree that the focus should still be on abstinence in most cases - many drugs can in fact cause you to get addicted and/or die a horrible death in very short order - but "teaching abstinence" is shorthand for not really teaching at all.
    - morgante 12y ago
      I agree that abstinence-only sex education is harmful, but I'm not sure the same could be said of drug usage. There's no reason that the majority of people would need or want drugs, and many go without, so it's a perfectly reasonable assumption that most will not partake. That being said, any education should still be honest—including explaining the exact harms of different drugs and, hopefully, in the process guiding future users towards safer choices. However, I don't think that should be extended to include the corollary of condom usage—there's no reason to educate people on how to use needles, for example.
      - danenania 12y ago
        A big part of the problem is lumping all drugs together in the first place and painting them with the same broad brush. While it may be true there's no non-self-destructive reason to use some drugs (meth and heroin come to mind), there are plenty of others that many people are able to use responsibly and gain enjoyment, insight, or other benefits from. MDMA, for example, while widely abused, has shown great promise as a therapeutic tool for treatment of PTSD and can have powerful strengthening effects on relationships. Is it your place to tell someone who stands to benefit greatly and plans to use this drug responsibly that there's no good reason for them to do it? Shouldn't that be up to them?
Zigurd 12y ago
Trip route should have been from Oxycontin addiction to treatment, not with a detour into illegally obtained needle drugs. The Drug War makes the path to treatment much much more difficult.
- pedrosorio 12y ago
  Still relevant: http://mic.com/articles/110344/14-years-after-portugal-decriminalized-all-drugs-here-s-what-s-happening http://mic.com/articles/110344/14-years-after-portugal-decri...
soberhacker 12y ago
Opioid addiction is an insidious series of compromises. At 16 years old, I would have laughed off any notion of trying heroin as absurd. "No, I would never do that!" But having recently tried marijuana, and open to exploring drugs I thought of as "safe," the 5mg Vicodin I found in the medicine cabinet didn't seem like such a big deal. Well I tried it, and boy did I like it. Slowly, over time, I ran the gamut of different strength pharmaceuticals, administered orally, intranasally, and even rectally. Eventually, you develop a physical addiction. One day, you can't afford the $40 for an 80mg oxycontin that you need to get well, and you're staring down the barrel of a long night of withdrawals. But a small bag of heroin might cost $10 and last you a couple of days. And so it goes.
- rcarrigan87 12y ago
  This is so true. My hometown wasn't far from Camden, NJ, the perfect place to go score heroin once you were out of money and could no longer afford prescription pills. I had a friend even trick me once into driving into Camden for what I eventually realized was so he could buy heroin. Meanwhile, Camden continues to be a place riddled with crime fueled by the money coming in from all the rich white surrounding towns buying Camden's drugs. It's a sad state of affairs.
- hn_ 12y ago
  Thanks for sharing your story. A while back I saw something about heroin addition on the TV. There was an interview with a doctor. She basically said the same thing as you - none of her patients just decide to start heroin one day, they start on prescription opioids. Then their supply runs out... Then they show videos from pharmaceutical companies from the 90s directed at doctors telling doctors to prescribe their opioids to all their patients (basically). It was basically like "30 million Americans have chronic pain... give them Oxycontin. It's totally safe."
  - ddmf 12y ago
    I remember reading something similar about the pharmacy companies telling their doctors that oxycontin didn't cause addiction and therefore it was safer to prescribe than codeine etc: http://motherboard.vice.com/read/how-big-pharma-hooked-america-on-legal-heroin http://motherboard.vice.com/read/how-big-pharma-hooked-ameri...
growupkids 12y ago
As Elvis Presely used to day: these aren't drugs, these are pills see I've got a 'script from my doctor. Psychology is everything, prescriptions aren't drugs, pills are safe, needles are scary.

nickysielicki 12y ago

My biggest problem with the war on drugs is not the frivolous spending and disgusting financial cost to the taxpayer, or the ruined lives of people in jail for nonviolent crimes. My biggest problem with the war on drugs is that it has created drug education that is propagandized, but even worse, even the nonpartisan content is still severely inadequate and abstinence focused. It really sucks to hear of my friends from highschool are doing 'MDMA' without waiting long enough to not do brain damage to themselves. Not to mention, they're sourcing these drugs at festivals and are probably instead taking synthetic cathinones. It pains me to think that most of my friends don't reagent test their blotter, and will take 4 tabs of 'acid' without thinking that it actually is probably 2C-E and they could die from it. It bothers me that people have parents that will drug test them, so they're smoking JWH-017 and irreversibly fucking their brains up because they don't know any better. Those in the know rely on sites like wikipedia, reddit, and erowid to get our drug information. Those that are not in the know rely on their 5th grade DARE education which they've entirely rejected after realizing weed isn't deadly, and word of mouth from other not in the know drug users that are obviously biased towards drugs not being harmful. So in summary, yes, I 100% agree with you. I've many friends that are on heroin, a few that have escaped it, and a few that I know won't. I have nothing to say besides that it's super fucked up and I'm glad I learned about erowid before I had the opportunity to do any drugs.

morgante 12y ago
> abstinence focused. Why shouldn't the focus be on abstinence?
- simplexion 12y ago
  Have you seen the rate of teen pregnancy in the Bible Belt?
- GeneralMayhem 12y ago
  "Abstinence-focused," in drug and sex education, tends to mean "abstinence only." If all the kids are getting is "drugs will all cause you to get addicted and die a horrible death," then once they learn that's not true, they don't have any other knowledge to go on. I agree that the focus should still be on abstinence in most cases - many drugs can in fact cause you to get addicted and/or die a horrible death in very short order - but "teaching abstinence" is shorthand for not really teaching at all.
  - morgante 12y ago
    I agree that abstinence-only sex education is harmful, but I'm not sure the same could be said of drug usage. There's no reason that the majority of people would need or want drugs, and many go without, so it's a perfectly reasonable assumption that most will not partake. That being said, any education should still be honest—including explaining the exact harms of different drugs and, hopefully, in the process guiding future users towards safer choices. However, I don't think that should be extended to include the corollary of condom usage—there's no reason to educate people on how to use needles, for example.
    - danenania 12y ago
      A big part of the problem is lumping all drugs together in the first place and painting them with the same broad brush. While it may be true there's no non-self-destructive reason to use some drugs (meth and heroin come to mind), there are plenty of others that many people are able to use responsibly and gain enjoyment, insight, or other benefits from. MDMA, for example, while widely abused, has shown great promise as a therapeutic tool for treatment of PTSD and can have powerful strengthening effects on relationships. Is it your place to tell someone who stands to benefit greatly and plans to use this drug responsibly that there's no good reason for them to do it? Shouldn't that be up to them?

Zigurd 12y ago

Trip route should have been from Oxycontin addiction to treatment, not with a detour into illegally obtained needle drugs. The Drug War makes the path to treatment much much more difficult.

pedrosorio 12y ago
Still relevant: http://mic.com/articles/110344/14-years-after-portugal-decriminalized-all-drugs-here-s-what-s-happening http://mic.com/articles/110344/14-years-after-portugal-decri...

soberhacker 12y ago

Opioid addiction is an insidious series of compromises. At 16 years old, I would have laughed off any notion of trying heroin as absurd. "No, I would never do that!" But having recently tried marijuana, and open to exploring drugs I thought of as "safe," the 5mg Vicodin I found in the medicine cabinet didn't seem like such a big deal. Well I tried it, and boy did I like it. Slowly, over time, I ran the gamut of different strength pharmaceuticals, administered orally, intranasally, and even rectally. Eventually, you develop a physical addiction. One day, you can't afford the $40 for an 80mg oxycontin that you need to get well, and you're staring down the barrel of a long night of withdrawals. But a small bag of heroin might cost $10 and last you a couple of days. And so it goes.

rcarrigan87 12y ago
This is so true. My hometown wasn't far from Camden, NJ, the perfect place to go score heroin once you were out of money and could no longer afford prescription pills. I had a friend even trick me once into driving into Camden for what I eventually realized was so he could buy heroin. Meanwhile, Camden continues to be a place riddled with crime fueled by the money coming in from all the rich white surrounding towns buying Camden's drugs. It's a sad state of affairs.
hn_ 12y ago
Thanks for sharing your story. A while back I saw something about heroin addition on the TV. There was an interview with a doctor. She basically said the same thing as you - none of her patients just decide to start heroin one day, they start on prescription opioids. Then their supply runs out... Then they show videos from pharmaceutical companies from the 90s directed at doctors telling doctors to prescribe their opioids to all their patients (basically). It was basically like "30 million Americans have chronic pain... give them Oxycontin. It's totally safe."
- ddmf 12y ago
  I remember reading something similar about the pharmacy companies telling their doctors that oxycontin didn't cause addiction and therefore it was safer to prescribe than codeine etc: http://motherboard.vice.com/read/how-big-pharma-hooked-america-on-legal-heroin http://motherboard.vice.com/read/how-big-pharma-hooked-ameri...

growupkids 12y ago

As Elvis Presely used to day: these aren't drugs, these are pills see I've got a 'script from my doctor. Psychology is everything, prescriptions aren't drugs, pills are safe, needles are scary.