I am a heroin user. I do not have a drug problem

I just lost my brother-in-law to heroin overdose. He overdosed because he went into rehab, came out, and then used far more than his body could tolerate. This is unfortunately common. Not because he mixed it with alcohol or antihistamines or whatever.

Overall, his entire life has been extremely tragic. He was a good guy at heart. He was a hard worker and did good work in general.

However, he did did A LOT of crazy things. He was the poster child for "your emotional development stops at the point you got addicted to heroin". He basically acted like a troubled 13 yr old in a 40 yr old's body. This craziness has caused a LOT of problems over the years, especially for his daughters.

I get that the popular notions of drug use are wrong, but when is that not true of anything? Drug use does itself cause a lot of problems. While some people may be able to use them without any issues, many cannot.

The way a lot of this is phrased, it makes it sound like drugs are fine and there is a conspiracy to demonize them. While the popular notion of them isn't perfectly balanced, it is not the case that they are just fine for people to use.

Well, I picked up smoking from a girlfriend in college and we used to smoke all the time. Like ten cigs a day for a year and a half. Real bad, right?

Well, one day, I decided "Meh. I'll just stop" and I did. Not because of any reason. I just chose not to.

Now cigarettes are way addictive but I just chose to stop. More addictive than Benzos and shit and I just stopped cold turkey without any other reason.

Many of my friends struggled with quitting but eventually did. But I did it way easy. It's unlikely that I'm some super outlier, but clearly I'm some near the right edge of the bell curve in ease of exiting cigarette dependence.

That makes me think there are other outliers. This guy must be a heroin outlier. And considering the dependence inducing strength of that drug, he must be a far outlier.

That there exists people like this person who can chip (controlled use of opiates) always intrigues me -- as this drug was the ultimate pathway to euphoria and thus I became the mouse hitting the button for more more more. If you're on the chipping path I hope you can find peace just for today.

I am pro-legalization of all drugs with some FDA oversight on quality.

The only bit I will agree with is that addiction is not caused by the drug itself, and is typically the result of childhood trauma. With that drug use is not a solution for dealing with that trauma, dealing with that trauma directly through therapy and mediation is a much better solution.

His assertion the 70% of all drug users including alcohol and prescription users aren't addicted if anything seems extremely low to me. I'd say the vast majority of my friends drink alcohol and are more than likely on prescription drugs but I don't think any of them are addicts

Which means that the other less common drugs must be a lot more addictive to bring the number down to 70%

I get the point the article is trying to make, but its headline and opening paragraphs frame it more as a "decriminalise all drugs" article

Just like everyone may need a bank loan (which is totally socially acceptable), sometime you may need a happiness/energy/relief/whatever loan.

The thing is, just like a money loan, you should be ready to pay your debt after. The day you think you can run away without paying, it's where the trouble begin.

This is true even with alcohol: Go to a party, drink a few glasses. One or two more. Have fun. The day after you pay it with a little (or even big) hangover. Just drink a lot of water and you will be ok.

Obviously this is more difficult with some drugs. They are dangerous because they are more subtle, somehow you think you're still in charge, until it's too late and your debt is out of control.

Now, I'm aware that this is quite complex, but still I wonder how many people there are out there who can self-control themself and diligently keep their debt in order.

I guess, compared to "meth-heads" and other rock bottom abusers, they just don't make the news. Plus they may want to avoid a lot of social rejection.

I think this is likely wrong. I guess it partly depends on the definition of a "drug user" (like, does it include alcohol drinkers) but I would be very surprised if most heroin users are responsible professionals - how can you do anything when you're high on heroin? I'd go so far as to say that saying people that are addicted are "typically responsible professionals" is a little disrespectful and downplays the reality of those that are actually afflicted with addiction, as it feels like it's just pushing the "burden" onto the drug user, which reinforces negative stereotypes and makes it harder to get people on the side of treating addiction as a health issue and not a moral failing.

As for knowing any functional, well I've seen many have functional phases would be the best I could attest to that from experience and out of about 30 heroin addicts I've endured in the past 2 decades, I'd say only 2 would be close to being classed as functional.

Really gets down to if somebody who is using drugs can just stop and take a break every now and then, then in that clean period - still hold the same mentalities towards their usage and if they can come to the same conclusion - bravo as that is what I would call somebody with their head working well for them.

What really is the issue for many drug users is the point in which the drugs use them - that's the turning point of addiction I'd say.

Yet all that said, you can't help but accept that the brain is driven by chemical stimulus and there lays the hard barrier of having the will power to quite.

I've personally never done heroin, no desire too as like a fine wine, I might like it and it is easier to miss what you never had and one step I've become very mindful never to take having learned from others, many who's lifestyle choices I had thrust upon me and I will say, not best neibours to have from my numerous experiences.

One of the more chilling posts on there[1] is the account of a user who randomly tried Heroin one day, got addicted within 2 weeks, overdosed and was clinically dead within a month, got revived and admitted, came clean, then posted an update to his story 7 years later.

I would personally suggest trying meditation first before trying opioids to alter consciousness and feel euphoric.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/MuseumOfReddit/comments/68srty/spon...

The problem is that what it takes "negatively affect the rest of your life" depends a lot on what role you have in society.

Short of pornography producer, fantasy fiction author, songwriter and other professions where copious drug use fit one's "brand image" or potentially enhance one's work, a tenured college professor gets about about as much leeway from the rest of society as a white collar professional can get. He can be "eccentric" and nobody blinks twice. But for other professions the standards of behavior are different (and generally get more permissive as you go down the economic ladder).

Defining the difference between acceptable use and addiction, and by proxy who's problems are bad enough to be considered problems and therefore in need of solving in a way that is relative to one's place in society is very dangerous. If you're blind in one eye you're still blind in one eye even if it doesn't negatively affect you. Addiction (and a multitude of other conditions) are the same.

What an incredibly dangerous idea to promote. Do not mess with opioids. You think you are in control, until you are not.

I am often wondering about how addiction "feels". I don't consider myself being addicted to anything, and always wonder how an addiction actually manifests itself. Is it a pain? Is it comparable to being extremely hungry or thirsty?

Slightly related: a few years ago, I overheard a conversation between a fairly large woman and a child. The child said that it was hungry. The woman said: "Oh yes, that hurts". That struck me as odd, because even after eating nothing for 1-2 days, I never actually felt pain when I was hungry. It was surprising to me that some people seem to do, and it would have certainly explained why the woman was so heavy: I, too, would of course eat much more if being hungry was painful.

It was a small community whose members looked more like the Hacker News crowds than the meth heads you'd see in the news.

> Despite the current false narrative, the addiction rate among people prescribed opioids for pain in the United States, for example, ranges from less than 1 percent to 8 percent.

What's the threshold where it's a problem? 1% of prescription drug users getting addicted sounds like a terrible situation to me. Let alone 8%. Especially if they're already in a situation where finding a way to escape is tempting.

> Hiya kids. Here is an important message from your Uncle Bill. Don't buy drugs. Become a pop star, and they give you them for free.

... except in this case the message is don't do drugs kids, but "grown ups" should (as defined as a state of maturity where you know how the drugs behave, know your limits and can balance your experimentation with fulfilling your societal obligations)

I see this as a bit like speeding. The government sets fairly arbitrary speed limits for different types of road. They do it based on what they think the majority of people can cope with, versus the likelihood of risks, vs the need to get from A to B in a reasonable amount of time. The government hasn't been amazingly scientific about the speed limits, and don't take into account time of day, traffic, weather conditions etc. A healthy, fully-alert person can probably go at 150% of the speed limit on an ambient clear day on an empty road - and do so perfectly safely. But that isn't the message they give people, because it would be impossible to assess person-by-person, minute-by-minute.

And yet, some would consider the above information to be recklessly given, because some people will on read "go at 150% of the speed limit... perfectly safely" and take that as my advice.

So the question is, should it be legal to travel at any speed, provided you feel like you're doing a good job of it? In both cases, misjudgement can be disastrous for yourself and the people around you (and innocent bystanders too)

And when you are talking about something that can alter your perceptions, you would surely need a non-drug-taking associate with you at all times who could give you an honest blow-by-blow assessment of where you are dropping the ball as a "normal" human being, and where your drug-fuelled failings are happening?

When the potential downsides so vastly outweigh the benefits, I can understand why laws take the side they do. That said, I absolutely do think that there are massive downsides to making drugs illegal when taken responsibly. Countries should be realistic about what they can and can't do. If they can't eradicate drug use - and most countries can't - they need to put effort into safeguarding above incarceration.

But I think that's the consensus anyway on most social issues. And it seems to be a lesson that governments globally are very slow to learn.

People are never going to stop using these drugs, so we should take steps to make their use safer. Thanks to widespread education, most people know the basics about how to drink safely (e.g. don't drink and then take NSAIDs). Because alcohol is sold legally, nobody has to worry about going blind or dying from moonshine. We should be applying the same principles to drugs like opioids. You should be able to buy them in precise dosages and know that they're not contaminated with something way too strong like fentanyl. People should be educated about unsafe drug combinations, which is the other major cause of overdoses.

The one drug that has interestingly been demonized is meth. It’s used as a prescription drug and was commonly used recreationally in the 70’s. Now it’s viewed as a one way road to destitution and death.

Drugs are illegal so the media covers the train wrecks. The users who aren’t train wrecks don’t make the news.

Can you imagine if alcohol was illegal and the only stories you heard about users were the people who drank themselves to death? You’d assume nobody could use alcohol in moderation, which isn’t true.

He's basically for personal freedom and responsibility, drugs included.

His position is really hard to argue with, given the disaster that alcohol prohibition and this 'war on drugs' has been.

The word heroin has triggered a lot of comments here - just because you've known someone who has ruined their life and feel strongly about it, does not make you qualified to draw conclusions on the effects of drug use at large.

- Yes it would be nice if drugs were decriminalized ... but they aren't ... and the supply chain for heroin causes a lot of suffering in the world.

- Shrugging and leading with "only 30% of people have addictions" is astoundingly innumerate. If there were a 30% chance of a potentially fatal outcome in almost any other context it would be a big deal.

There are plenty of comparisons that might be made, but driving seems an apt comparison. Driving is extremely dangerous, magnifies even small mistakes, and kills or maims very large numbers of people on a regular basis. And yet even with similar evidence of harm and habit formation people do not treat driving with the same fear but instead face driving with irrational positivity and optimism.

Scientists using rigorous observations and mathematical analysis do not see drug use and driving as having risk profiles that are completely different.

Please, don't take this horrible advice. Drugs are harmful and can do fatal damage to you and those around you. I mean, is this guy advocating drug use? It sounds like he wants to justify his dependency.

I would expect one of the first things to come up in a the conversation would be something along the lines of "yeah, I took a break for a month last year. It was easy, I had no cravings or other problems."

Drugs have had a profound effect on my life. Like many, I started with alcohol - the most boring and most dangerous drug there is. I later used cannabis, which I decided had an overall negative effect on my life, and MDMA. The latter I only used a few times but it changed me. I don't need to take it any more but it has improved my life no end. Now I only use caffeine (in tea and coffee). I haven't used other drugs for almost two years at this point (my last drink was around May 2019 and it ruined my sleep, as it always does, for the last time).

There are people immune to some poison, people that don't feel pain at all, a woman which has two vaginas, there were people that never stopped growing, people that don't sleep, etc.

Thats before we get into psycology and personal experiences that shaped them.

I willing to believe that ther are some people who can abuse drugs, and not become adicts. However odds are I am not one of them, and its not worth finding out by experiment.

I think drug use also encourages people to seek out more thrills in their personal lives. It takes away their ability to enjoy a simple life and makes them greedier for endorphins. I wouldn't be surprised if the current narcissistic, monopolistic corporate economic environment is a result of heavy drug use among executives. They can never get enough money or power because they can never get the life satisfaction that their brains need to match the highs provided by drugs; even given the fact that their regular life experiences are far better than the average person; it still doesn't compare to the drugs. The best possible life experiences they can get don't meet their new baseline for happiness. Drug use also seems to encourage cheating and other unethical behaviours since these behaviours deliver a natural high (alas, it still falls short of their drug baseline).

I know if I had a ready supply of clean heroin I would probably not just take it once in a while. Ive never done heroin, and that is because I know how much I like hydrocodone and its much weaker chemical cousins. I also know 2 people severely harmed by heroin use.(Brothers in fact) Maybe if they had a regimented way of copping it and safe supply of needles one of them wouldnt have Hep C now.

The real problem with treating opiates or other drugs as a public health problem is that the US does not have that sort of infrastructure set up to deal with the problem. Why do you think the police are called in now for drug problems(non criminal)? There is literally nobody else to deal with it. I dont agree with locking up addicts, but is checking them into a hospital with no insurance a viable option?

Now, how do you square that with almost everyone here universally claiming that these words are dangerous?

> The statements that make people mad are the ones they worry might be believed. I suspect the statements that make people maddest are those they worry might be true.

If one (adult) can’t handle drugs then help should be readily available as is for alcoholics.

No need to get political and emotional about it, there’s a pragmatic way.

Unfortunately though these kind of positio are made possible by our stand against drugs. Currently nearly all western countries are simply banning all drugs. This war on drugs, however has proven to be ineffective at best. The truth is that the more we fight drugs the more problems we cause.

We should aknowledge that drug use is not the problem, it's a symptom. So instead of prohibiting the drugs, we should be helping those that seek drugs, to cure the underlying problem. If we did that, we could even sell drugs in pharmacies. The point is curing and helping out people, not putting them in jail.

Switzerland has done this for nearly 30 years with great results, we should learn from them.

This starts off reading like one of those spam emails of the past where some claim was made backed up by 'and my brother/sister/father/friend' 'is a professor at Harvard' (or similar) to get you to take it as authoritative and serious. [1]

The issue with drug use is the outliers. Just like the issue with driving fast is the driver who is not you it's not about what you or most capable drivers can do under the best circumstances and driving a well equipped and responsive modern car it's about 'the other guy/gal'.

[1] What is the name for the logical fallacy here?

I feel like he just wrote off 450000 deaths from 1990-2019 with people don't know how to mix alcohol and opioids correctly.

https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/data/analysis.html

Most of them started out with prescription pills, often legally prescribed, and switched to H when the pills ran out and the source ran dry.

If they started shooting up, it was to use it more efficiently.

The biggest danger with heroin is unpredictable dosage and lacing with fent.

I would never advise anyone to use heroin, it's a terribly dangerous pursuit, and the payoff is burning out your pleasure receptors.

I think it would save countless lives to somehow legalize it to the point of an addict being able to get predictable dosage and not off the street.

This definitely convinced me that it doesn’t make sense to pull drug users out of productive society and either fire them or put them to jail. It’s just very unproductive that makes things only worse.

It would be much cheaper to treat their addiction while they are working.

That's how crazy ecstasy was for me. I am 100% sure if I would try heroine once I would fall for it, especially because as a tech guy I have the means to sustain it to a deadly degree.

I don't think it's about health criteria. It's about whether you want to add yet another item to things you depend on just to feel normal.

Also, the need is a symptom of a real issue that needs to be addressed instead of just numbed and berried i.e., unhappy at a job or a situation etc that needs to be addressed.

Changing your environment is also a good idea - if nothing else move change room to sleep in and move furniture to new places, and you’ve got a new “place”.

I use it to quit my daily beer habit. Kindest regards to you internet friend who struggles with addiction.

Short version - your body longs to be at equilibrium/homeostasis and drugs (alcohol, stimulants, opiates, etc) upset that equilibrium, so your body attempts to return you to your previous state.

There is no free lunch, and a high will be accompanied by a low. The lows come in numerous and surprising forms.

The book is significantly better than my description.

I was struck by the point where he talked about how heroin had made him a better person. The description he gives sounds like meditation and mindfulness would be a better prescription/solution than heroin.

One would hope that would be well over 99%, given how many use asperin/acetaminophen/etc, caffeine, alcohol, nicotine, and so forth.

Check out the work of Gabor Mate. It's silly how simple it is. It's silly how misunderstood it is.

Partly because I may have a weird pleasure in feeling like crap the day after and likely because I view life as contempt for misery. No matter how terrible I feel - I'll crank out the work.

A lot of these questions are real softballs.

The same argument could be made for heroin. The point is that 'not wearing a mask' does not endanger someone's life in any way unless someone is infected with covid. yet the author suggests that not wearing a mask is "potentially impacting the rights of other people" Then surely the same argument could be made for people using heroin, you're not endangering anyones life by using heroin unless you're causing drug-related crimes. Which is the exact argument the government used to declare war on drugs. This is quite a contradiction by equavalency.

The rest of the article is reasonable. I dont think he has said anything that fell outside the mainstream medical and psychological view.

> Hart presents himself as a model drug user. “I am now entering my fifth year as a regular heroin user,” he writes. “I do not have a drug-use problem. Never have. Each day, I meet my parental, personal, and professional responsibilities. I pay my taxes, serve as a volunteer in my community on a regular basis, and contribute to the global community as an informed and engaged citizen. I am better for my drug use.”

Anyone who has plumbed the depths of addiction either with a family member or personally has spoken this exact paragraph, potentially word for word. It's a rationalization for addiction, and honestly the most common and basic one.

Good luck to him as he descends through addiction. He's extremely educated and very assured of his self-perception so for him to hit Step 1: Realize you have a Problem, is going to be a lot harder than the average person.

Maybe he is the one out of 100k who can manage a Heroin habit. Well good for him, he can keep it to himself.

Addiction is a force that counteracts your will power. You may not have drug problem but you are an addict if you feel compulsion to use the drug.

Today you may have enough willpower to counteract that force to consume more alcohol or drugs. But the next day may be worse, you may find some family or work problem and your will power may decrease enough that you will run into drug problem and have really hard time getting rid of it if at all.

It is called slippery slope for a reason.

But what if it's actually the heroin speaking?

You want to talk about some shit that gets demonized for no reason? Testosterone replacement therapy is legal, but if you decide that you want to use an extra 100mg, suddenly it’s a criminal offense and you are a bad person. For what? Wanting to have bigger biceps or train harder in the gym? What is the alternative? Drink alcohol which has a measurable death rate per year, or smoke some legal cigarettes and second hand smoke poison countless people?

This is dangerous!

1. Some people do not seem have an addictive response to opioids. It's roughly in the same safety category as alcohol and weed.

2. Some people become nearly-instantly profoundly physically addicted to the point that it will inexorably destroy their lives.

The only way to figure which category you're in is to try it and find out. There's a personal liberty principle argument that if you are in the first category, you should have access to opioids just like you have access to other pursuits of happiness. But the inability to determine whether you're that category induces a significant risk at the aggregate level. People die and everyone, even those who can take opioids safely end up indirectly dealing with the negative consequences in terms of rising healthcare costs, dealing with homeless drug users on the street, etc.

I can think of three philosophical approaches to this:

* Communal: Say that since some fraction of people will be grievously harmed by opioids, the greatest good for all is to prohibit them universally. We ask the safe users to sacrifice the harmless positive experience to protect the unsafe users from harm. This is nominally what we do now by outlawing them.

* Libertarian: Acknowledge that even trying is a roll of the dice and that if you choose to roll them, you have to take the consequences. This is effectively what we do now since the law enforcement is so ineffective.

* Technological: Research a way to determine whether you can take opioids safely without having to try them. Imagine a test your doctor could give you that says "Yes, you'll be physically addicted." That increased certainty would remove much of the stigma of use, and make it easier for those that are at risk to stay away because they know they really are likely to get addicted.

I don't usually lean towards tech solutions to societal problems, but this seems like a case where having more insight into an individual's physiology would help everyone make better choices.

(Personally, after receiving fentanyl during a medical procedure, I am absolutely certain I should never be given easy access to opioids.)

[1] https://www.uit.co.uk/drugs-without-the-hot-air

https://www.amazon.com/Drugs-without-hot-air-illegal/dp/0857...

God this is so stupid. Please, stop amplifying this nonsense.

I have never been addicted to heroine, so I cannot speak from personal experience. But I have seen its impact first-hand, thankfully, a number of times I can only count with one of my hands.

The way I explain addiction to my kids is the way it was explained to me by an addict (alcohol, Vicodin and others):

(1) There's no difference between "Psychologically Addictive" and "Physically Addictive" -- he said this in the context that he was an abuser of alcohol, every day, but was not chemically addicted to it and required no medicine to quit, but it was easily as difficult as quitting Vicodin.

(2) Addicts don't love their drugs more than their family/kids/morals -- your body uses addiction to make you eat, drink, etc -- go without those things for long enough and you will start to sacrifice things that are otherwise more important. Imagine your desire to do this particular drug is substantially stronger than your desire to eat or drink.

Having the benefit of a few decades away from childhood and been witness to some really incredible individuals' lives being flushed down the toilet, I don't believe either of those two statements to be sensationalized in any way. It's internalizing these things and understanding that the people I know who became addicts were very strong people. One was a person I counted among the "Great Men"[0] in my life (and still do).

Politically speaking, I tend to fall pretty narrowly on the whole "victimless crime shouldn't be criminal[1]", so my puritanical beliefs that you should "just stay as far away from that stuff as you possibly can" doesn't translate into support for the War on Drugs(tm). Personally speaking, I've watched people maintain a heroine addiction for years, Vicodin for decades. In the early days, they managed OK. They all quit because the drug became it--the single need that remained. That's what it does. People nearing this stage delude themselves into thinking it's not affecting their lives/loved ones, but I'd be curious -- with the benefit of hindsight bias -- at what point a former addict[2] would admit their drug problem was out of control.

[0] My measure is not just a man who can be counted on to do the right thing when nobody is looking, but who will do the right thing when the outcome will/might serve him poorly.

[1] A person should not be able to be convicted of a crime if the criminal and the only victim are the same person.

[2] Recovering addict is the phrase most frequently used. One acquaintance of mine (who didn't do 12-steps/rehab) corrected me and said he's "not an alcoholic anymore" or a "former alcoholic" because he quit a decade ago and has no desire/temptation to drink (whole household is extremely anti-alcohol; he couldn't hide it if he tried) and feels that claiming to have a problem he doesn't have feels too much like being a "pity whore". He wasn't chemically addicted, either. Can't please everyone, I guess.

Our blind catering to individual freedoms is really unbecoming and I question why this author wanted to bring attention to himself and his own private struggles.

I thought the UBC professor who faked being indigenous and doxxed Asian Canadian students for being white supremacist and threatened another professor topped it.

Just what in the hell is going on with North American academia and educators? How did it fall from grace like this?

This was a good story to flag.

Like in Russian group Splin lyrics: "Я наяву вижу то, что многим даже не снилось, Hе являлось под кайфом".

Rough translation: "I see the things in reality, others don't even when dreaming, when getting high"