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I hate when heroin is described as some terrible extremely dangerous drug, when in fact it is quite the opposite - it is very gentle and relatively harmless dru

by stplsd 11y ago

I hate when heroin is described as some terrible extremely dangerous drug, when in fact it is quite the opposite - it is very gentle and relatively harmless drug. Of course I am talking about medical grade pure heroin, not that Mexican black tar shit or white heroin mixed with god knows what. Even with street shitty heroin, 90% overdoses can be so easy avoidable: just don't mix with it alcohol or benzos, and have someone in your shooting gallery with shot of Naloxone. I am not even talking about medical grade morphine/heroine, which is gentle and safe as milk (I mean constipation and some temporary hormone imbalance is the worst you can get, compare it with side affects of otc NSAID, which includes renal failure, myocardial infarction, Gastrointestinal bleeding). And the solution is so simple - just provide addicts with pure heroin, other countries, like Switzerland do this with great success.

acjohnson55 11y ago
That sounds like a much more humane way to manage addiction, but I'm interested in knowing what more effective ideas are out there for stopping the on-ramp into addiction, and what the off-ramp is. Even with better management, it seems to me like addiction still will have great social cost.
- chimeracoder 11y ago
  > Even with better management, it seems to me like addiction still will have great social cost. This is a common assumption. But empirically, it turns out that the inherent social cost of heroin use (or even heroin dependence) is relatively low, no greater than the social cost of alcohol use/dependence, and arguably a lot less. The only condition is that heroin has to be easily accessible for an affordable price and with a known potency. Diacetylmorphine maintenance programs do exactly this, and have had great success in Switzerland and the UK[0]. People on diacetylmorphine maintenance are able to hold steady jobs and lead otherwise "normal" lives, save for a daily trip to their local clinic. Substitute "bar" or "coffeeshop" for "clinic", and suddenly we're talking about a large chunk of the upper-class workforce, including the tech industry. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heroin-assisted_treatment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heroin-assisted_treatment
  - facetube 11y ago
    It's also almost certainly cheaper than imprisoning someone, even if the full cost of the program is borne by society at large.
  - tmp-20150107 11y ago
    As long as you have the funds, say from a well-paying technology job, you should be able to manage your habit. I discussed this in another thread previously (see the comment history for this throwaway account) and pointed out that I have had both a reasonable career and an unreasonable addiction for twenty years. Of course, the career trajectory probably suffered due to my habit, although that could be laid at the feet of a badly judged brief interlude with crack cocaine rather than heroin ;)
soberhacker 11y ago
While I agree that the dangers of heroin are severely compounded by its illegality, it is intellectually dishonest to describe it as "gentle and relatively harmless." Speaking as an ex-user, opioids are a horrendous class of drug. They steal your motivations, your desires, your dreams—your very soul. They turn you into a shell of your former self. Do not fool yourself into thinking that opioids are gentle and harmless just because they are technically non-toxic.
- tmp-20150107 11y ago
  I don't know. For me, the harmful part is not the heroin per-se, it is the addiction itself. The mentality created by such a powerful addiction is what is most damaging, the heroin itself less so. Although I have ended up in hospital due to poor needle hygiene, causing an infection and abscess that required multiple surgeries to fix.
- stplsd 11y ago
  I don't know, while I never used opiates or any other "hard" drugs (except nicotine and alcohol), I had/have gambling addiction, lost a fortune of money (myself and parents), now have huge debts, caused a huge emotional pain to my parents, now have to live very frugal, because have to cover my debts, etc, etc. So I think I imagine that full blown heroin addiction does to you, but the way you describe it sound like some virus, which affects your brain and make your a zombie (like some wasps do this to cockroaches). But in reality in just simple chemical with well understood action mechanism. Of course if you high all day, there is no motivation to do anything, but I think, we as humans beings, have to take responsibility for this and not blame some chemical. When I said "gentle" and "harmless" I meant their psychical properties to human body. A roulette or deck of cards is also harmless to body, but they can ruin lives too. But the main tragedy is when people lose health, money, commit crimes, prostitute themselves, etc. An as heroin is relative safe and harmless to body, legal heroin supplies to addicts would solve so much problems.
  - amagumori 11y ago
    you still aren't getting it though. drugs that cause huge dopamine release like opiates or meth are literally tampering with your motivational/reward system directly, in a way that's much more harmful than other addictions. you can't will yourself out of a fundamental change to your intrinsic will system. you can't say that people have to "take responsibility" and "not blame some chemical". the chemical is literally altering the motivational behavior of the person. this is not something the person can solve themselves. they should not be expected to be able to. let's say you can place everything you've felt in life on a scale of good to bad feelings from -10 to 10. shooting heroin is like suddenly having an experience rated at 100 on that same scale. the entire scale has permanently shifted. everything else in your life has completely paled in comparison to that experience whether you like it or not. you will have to deal with that changed perspective for the rest of your life.
xaa 11y ago
Nope. I've tried my fair share of different drugs but wouldn't dare touch opioids: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Drug_danger_and_dependence.png http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Drug_danger_and_depen...
tmp-20150107 11y ago
+1 on the Naloxone. Here in the UK the NHS harm reduction policy is to provide free Naloxone injection pens after some short training; this is advertised in all needle exchange locations. I think this is an excellent idea, and would hope that it will help reduce the number of overdose-related deaths.
king_magic 11y ago
You're kidding yourself if that is what you believe. Even pure heroin is still extremely dangerous. Your solution isn't so simple when you provide pure heroin to an addict who gets behind the wheel and kills a family coming home from dinner. The devil, as always, is in the details - maybe some aspects of that sort of plan will work in a small country like Switzerlend, but in somewhere like the US, there are just too many practical barriers to a plan like that working. Hell, we can't control our drunk driving problem - there is just no way free heroin for addicts is going to work at scale.
- logic404 11y ago
  You're kidding yourself if that is what you believe. I think OP is speaking from a medical perspective, and from that perspective I believe OP is correct. You could live a long time without complications taking a medicinal dose of heroin. To be clear, if you abuse alcohol you get cirrhosis of the liver, if you smoke your more likely to get cancer, emphysema, etc. You don't have those types of complications just from abusing heroin. So instead of arguing against a straw man, lets try to understand each other. Is it your belief that heroin use causes medical problems or do you agree with the claim that heroin is relatively benign from a medical perspective. If you disagree, maybe elaborate on the what you believe are the health consequences. (Note: I'm talking about medical heroin, as was the OP. Injecting contaminated substances and sharing needles causes all sorts of health problems. I stipulate that the behavior that typically goes along with heroin abuse is unhealthy).
  - sukilot 11y ago
    When one of the side effects of the drug is dependency, abuse should be considered part of the drug effect.
sukilot 11y ago
Heroin is fine for your body, but it severely messes with your brain.

by stplsd 11y ago

acjohnson55 11y ago

That sounds like a much more humane way to manage addiction, but I'm interested in knowing what more effective ideas are out there for stopping the on-ramp into addiction, and what the off-ramp is. Even with better management, it seems to me like addiction still will have great social cost.

chimeracoder 11y ago
> Even with better management, it seems to me like addiction still will have great social cost. This is a common assumption. But empirically, it turns out that the inherent social cost of heroin use (or even heroin dependence) is relatively low, no greater than the social cost of alcohol use/dependence, and arguably a lot less. The only condition is that heroin has to be easily accessible for an affordable price and with a known potency. Diacetylmorphine maintenance programs do exactly this, and have had great success in Switzerland and the UK[0]. People on diacetylmorphine maintenance are able to hold steady jobs and lead otherwise "normal" lives, save for a daily trip to their local clinic. Substitute "bar" or "coffeeshop" for "clinic", and suddenly we're talking about a large chunk of the upper-class workforce, including the tech industry. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heroin-assisted_treatment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heroin-assisted_treatment
- facetube 11y ago
  It's also almost certainly cheaper than imprisoning someone, even if the full cost of the program is borne by society at large.
- tmp-20150107 11y ago
  As long as you have the funds, say from a well-paying technology job, you should be able to manage your habit. I discussed this in another thread previously (see the comment history for this throwaway account) and pointed out that I have had both a reasonable career and an unreasonable addiction for twenty years. Of course, the career trajectory probably suffered due to my habit, although that could be laid at the feet of a badly judged brief interlude with crack cocaine rather than heroin ;)

soberhacker 11y ago

While I agree that the dangers of heroin are severely compounded by its illegality, it is intellectually dishonest to describe it as "gentle and relatively harmless." Speaking as an ex-user, opioids are a horrendous class of drug. They steal your motivations, your desires, your dreams—your very soul. They turn you into a shell of your former self. Do not fool yourself into thinking that opioids are gentle and harmless just because they are technically non-toxic.

tmp-20150107 11y ago
I don't know. For me, the harmful part is not the heroin per-se, it is the addiction itself. The mentality created by such a powerful addiction is what is most damaging, the heroin itself less so. Although I have ended up in hospital due to poor needle hygiene, causing an infection and abscess that required multiple surgeries to fix.
stplsd 11y ago
I don't know, while I never used opiates or any other "hard" drugs (except nicotine and alcohol), I had/have gambling addiction, lost a fortune of money (myself and parents), now have huge debts, caused a huge emotional pain to my parents, now have to live very frugal, because have to cover my debts, etc, etc. So I think I imagine that full blown heroin addiction does to you, but the way you describe it sound like some virus, which affects your brain and make your a zombie (like some wasps do this to cockroaches). But in reality in just simple chemical with well understood action mechanism. Of course if you high all day, there is no motivation to do anything, but I think, we as humans beings, have to take responsibility for this and not blame some chemical. When I said "gentle" and "harmless" I meant their psychical properties to human body. A roulette or deck of cards is also harmless to body, but they can ruin lives too. But the main tragedy is when people lose health, money, commit crimes, prostitute themselves, etc. An as heroin is relative safe and harmless to body, legal heroin supplies to addicts would solve so much problems.
- amagumori 11y ago
  you still aren't getting it though. drugs that cause huge dopamine release like opiates or meth are literally tampering with your motivational/reward system directly, in a way that's much more harmful than other addictions. you can't will yourself out of a fundamental change to your intrinsic will system. you can't say that people have to "take responsibility" and "not blame some chemical". the chemical is literally altering the motivational behavior of the person. this is not something the person can solve themselves. they should not be expected to be able to. let's say you can place everything you've felt in life on a scale of good to bad feelings from -10 to 10. shooting heroin is like suddenly having an experience rated at 100 on that same scale. the entire scale has permanently shifted. everything else in your life has completely paled in comparison to that experience whether you like it or not. you will have to deal with that changed perspective for the rest of your life.

xaa 11y ago

Nope. I've tried my fair share of different drugs but wouldn't dare touch opioids: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Drug_danger_and_dependence.png http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Drug_danger_and_depen...

tmp-20150107 11y ago

+1 on the Naloxone. Here in the UK the NHS harm reduction policy is to provide free Naloxone injection pens after some short training; this is advertised in all needle exchange locations. I think this is an excellent idea, and would hope that it will help reduce the number of overdose-related deaths.

king_magic 11y ago

You're kidding yourself if that is what you believe. Even pure heroin is still extremely dangerous. Your solution isn't so simple when you provide pure heroin to an addict who gets behind the wheel and kills a family coming home from dinner. The devil, as always, is in the details - maybe some aspects of that sort of plan will work in a small country like Switzerlend, but in somewhere like the US, there are just too many practical barriers to a plan like that working. Hell, we can't control our drunk driving problem - there is just no way free heroin for addicts is going to work at scale.

logic404 11y ago
You're kidding yourself if that is what you believe. I think OP is speaking from a medical perspective, and from that perspective I believe OP is correct. You could live a long time without complications taking a medicinal dose of heroin. To be clear, if you abuse alcohol you get cirrhosis of the liver, if you smoke your more likely to get cancer, emphysema, etc. You don't have those types of complications just from abusing heroin. So instead of arguing against a straw man, lets try to understand each other. Is it your belief that heroin use causes medical problems or do you agree with the claim that heroin is relatively benign from a medical perspective. If you disagree, maybe elaborate on the what you believe are the health consequences. (Note: I'm talking about medical heroin, as was the OP. Injecting contaminated substances and sharing needles causes all sorts of health problems. I stipulate that the behavior that typically goes along with heroin abuse is unhealthy).
- sukilot 11y ago
  When one of the side effects of the drug is dependency, abuse should be considered part of the drug effect.

sukilot 11y ago

Heroin is fine for your body, but it severely messes with your brain.