Hacker News Reader

Comment by chasd00 | Hacker News Reader

If an addict test their drugs and the results come back fail are they going to shrug and throw them away? I don't see an addict throwing away any drug they have in hand no matter what the test says.

View on HN

Frequently yes, because the people consuming illegal drugs are actual human beings rather than stereotyped zombies, and in many cases aren't even addicts.

Firstly, no “addict” wants to die from their addiction. Second, “addicts” is a tiny subset of “drug users”.

“Drug users” would benefit from poison and allergen warnings, just like “food users”.

> Second, “addicts” is a tiny subset of “drug users”

Tiny? Does not sound believable, especially since they are explicitly excluding marijuana. If I was to give my totally uneducated guess I would give something like 40-50%

I'm not an expert by any stretch, but it probably varies greatly by drug. I know a lot of people who have done LSD, shrooms or MDMA. Those aren't even all physically addictive and are more like experience drugs. Probably totally different for heroin or meth.

In the Hacker News bubble, it might be natural to think LSD, shrooms, MDMA, ketamine, etc. are very common drugs, but they have nothing on cocaine, opioids, methamphetamine, etc. - especially in North America, but also globally.

The vast majority of people who use drugs use the latter ones and a large amount of that use is by addicts.

> Second, “addicts” is a tiny subset of “drug users”.

I think you are absolutely wrong.

e: Okay, now some are disagreeing about whether 30-40% of users in the last year is a 'tiny subset' or not, but I think my point has been made.

Why? What's your experience with dealing with populations of habitual drug users? Do you go to clubs? Parties? Raves? Backs of offices? etc?

Just looking at the stats for the US, significantly more people have opioid use disorder than have ever reported using MDMA in their entire lives and using MDMA once in your entire life is a pretty generous definition of a drug 'user'.

> Do you go to clubs? Parties? Raves? Backs of offices? etc?

Do you live in Europe? Your description of drug use seems decidedly European to me.. America doesn't have the same MDMA use culture as in Western Europe outside of some raves, more of an opioid & amphetamine use.

But I live in San Francisco so I have plenty of experience dealing with populations of habitual drug users. There are millions of Americans that are addicted to opioids and even more addicted to stimulants (illegal & legal, if you have withdrawal it is a dependence).

I'm from the west coast and have lived in SF and Seattle, and now live in Germany. I still disagree with your assessment having worked in a lot of night clubs, bars, etc.

Living in Belltown (neighborhood of Seattle), we have a TON of addicts. Mostly alcohol. Most of the residents are great at functioning.

We also have the /other/ "addicts" - crackheads (et al, sic) who show up here (Belltown) and are not part of the contributing society.

The ones going to clubs/parties/raves when represented in a Venn diagram describing

addicts/over-use and those not going to clubs/parties/raves and societal contributions

is pretty dramatic.

Well, I mean, I think you are absolutely wrong. So... Who's right?

(Hint: not you)

The vast majority of drug users out there are non addicted recreational users.

I guess it also depends on how you classify “drug user” or “addict”.

What drugs are we talking about? I would say someone who has used a drug in the past year is a user, someone who compulsively uses or would experience withdrawal if they stopped using is an addict.

I am not sure where you are getting these 'vast majority' numbers from - if you look at publicly available stats it is evidence that there is a significant proportion of people who are addicted. Look at cocaine - 4.8 million American users in last year, 1.4 million addicts - ~30% [0]. For opioids, the proportion who is addicts is even higher. We explicitly are not discussing tobacco/weed/alcohol, which have much higher non-addict uses.

I guess I didn't count anabolic steroids, I am not sure what 'addiction' really means in that context.

[0]: https://nida.nih.gov/publications/research-reports/cocaine/w...

>Look at cocaine - 4.8 million American users in last year, 1.4 million addicts - ~30%

Is 70% not addicted not a "vast majority?" 50.1% would be a majority, 70% seems high enough for "vast."

Most drug use in America is opioids and meth both of which have higher rates of addiction.

Colloquially I don't think most people would refer to 70% as a 'vast majority' or 30% as a 'tiny subset.' But if the GP meant 30-50% (when factoring in other drugs) as a 'tiny subset', then I guess we don't disagree :)

See usage notes [0]

[0]: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/vast_majority

A quick search shows my personal definition of "vast majority" and "overwhelming majority" may be reversed. I would consider overwhelming>vast, so 70% is fine for vast but apparently I'm wrong.

I mean, I’d consider 70% to be the vast majority, and I also suspect there’s more than 4.8 million cocaine users in the US in the last year.

Excluding commonly used drugs like alcohol, weed or tobacco doesn’t seem very useful, but I can see why. Tobacco being included would massively spike the addict numbers, alcohol and weed would drop them.

to me "addict" is someone who is prioritizing getting high over every other aspect of their life. Addicts eventually lose jobs, families, stability in order to get high. When getting high is the highest (no pun intended) priority in your life and remains without external intervention then you're an addict.

> Firstly, no “addict” wants to die from their addiction

addicts destroy their own lives and the lives of people around them and even anonymous members of the community because of their addiction. No test is going to overcome an addiction.

As for recreational users, I went to plenty of raves in the 90s and if a test result said I should not take the hit of X or acid i'd been looking forward to all week i'm not sure what i'd do.

It’s probably more useful for raves and parties where people can see if they are getting ripped off or ingesting something nasty

Huh? Why else would they do the test in the first place?

it's one thing to be willing to test it's quite another to watch a hit go down the toilet while you're sober and don't know how long until you can get another hit.

Is this from experience or conjecture?

I haven't been in this situation myself, but I imagine that people organized enough to do tests are organized enough to keep a stash.

Even if they don't throw the drug away, learning what the drug is can allow addicts to adjust their dose preventing overdoses.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com