I've at this point had (at least) eight friends die from opioid overdoses in the past ~10 years. I myself was nearly one of them a long time ago.
It's really disappointing to see this bullshit.
It's really disappointing to see this bullshit.
I keep hearing about the opioid deaths and the crisis but what exactly happens that these people overdose on it?
Then, realize, some people come from absolutely fucked and broken lives. Being beaten and raped by their own family members they have to live with (sometimes for years) - if you're not aware that things like this go on - I'm mostly happy for you. But yeah, this is very much a thing.
Then put together what it has to be like being a person coming from an absolutely broken place and having never had the slightest emotional warmth and happiness in your entire life, and finding something relatively cheap and easily sourced that takes away all of that pain for some amount of time.
Then, realize, that tolerance to this euphoria inducing drug grows rather quickly, what you find on the street gets laced with shit like fentanyl, etc - and it's not hard to see why countless deaths occur.
Also, somewhat unrelated, but you sound like you've never had much of a bout with extreme lasting physical pain. Shit can get unfathomably intense.
For better answers perhaps, look to the bluelight forums.
I have had a very close friend die from a heroin/fentanyl overdose, getting a PhD at the time. I say this to emphasize that even very smart, careful, and reasonable people can overdose and die. I've come close myself a couple times.
I would imagine accidental death from pharmaceuticals is much rarer, as the potency is consistent.
I'm convinced if we just completely legalized all of this stuff a better outcome would ensue. After all, there are two primary negative effects of illicit opiates in our current system: high stdev of potency, and high cost. Under legalization, the stdev could be reduced to 0 and the cost could be brought down 10 or 100 fold.
The vast majority of them (if not all) also took oxy before/during their stints with IV heroin. This is obviously anecdotal but that's what I've seen!
Edit to clarify: Generally it's been accidental as far as I can tell, there have been two instances where it might've been suicide. Generally one way to think about the heroin problem would be: Imagine wine (which is normally 14% abv and costs let's say, $20) but sometimes it's 100% abv and costs $20, or 5% abv and costs $30, or 7% abv and $100, or 75% abv and $0.99 and you can't tell until you buy it and try it.