It is impossible to discount a personal experience of yours as false, it is your personal experience. However, is it possible that many who get into H are dramatic and overly sensitive by nature, and the drama queens make it seem as if everything they experience is to an extreme? There are people who when they get the flu complain as if they are dying, and say they want to die just to get over the pain, and others who handle it differently. The bottom line is withdrawal is not pleasant for most, just as the flu is not pleasant for most.
Rearden, this is one of the most interesting threads I have read on ET in a long time. Thank you so much for starting it. There has been wonderfully thoughtful contributions. To Vhehn whose post is below, I would only comment that while we might all agree that driving stones or drunk can pose a hazard to others, perhaps, in an attempt to see where the greater danger lies, we should weigh the consequences of a few tragic and preventable injuries and deaths against the tragic and preventable consequences of US drug policy .. Thank you all for a very enlightening discussion.
to those of you that claim drug abuse is just a harmless pastime. how harmless does this sound to you? "A semi close friend of mine (21 years old) overdosed and died two nights ago," really. how stupid do you have to be to inject yourself with that crap knowing what it can do to your body?
You helped kill him. Do you even realize how? You'll never get it, but society & government will... eventually.
you helped kill him. it is your demand for these drugs that make them so profitable for pushers and so easily obtainable. i watched a show on msnbc called lockup last weekend. it was about life inside prisons today. how stupid does one have to be to use hard drugs when you have already been caught once and you have to know next time they catch you that you are going to end up in that place? the upside is it sounds like drugs are still available in prison if you dont mind being a butt buddy.
i have some sympathy for the addict that would come here asking for help to get over the addiction. i would even support paying for that help through taxes. that person is not rm or you either. you are both still defiantly trying to delude others into thinking its just a harmless practice. its obvious you have not hit your ultimate bottom yet. we all know you will get there though.
Here is what is going to happen to heroin use in the states. The feds are going to make it increasingly harder to get Oxycontin and other pain meds. IT's already happening now, what happens next is predictable and you have to look no further than meth to see the similarities. The users that were doing oxy, will find it too expensive and hard to get. They will start using powdered heroin, because the stigma with snorting is not the same as with needles. That usually is the typical path with heroin use in my anecdotal experience. Kids are simply going to skip the oxycontin route and go straight to heroin, because it will be far cheaper and more pure. This is all of course caused by prohibition. When meth use was exploding, the government made it very hard for the guys cooking it in their shop to get the materials. Mexican DTO's gladly picked up the slack, and what you had was meth that was probably 70-80% pure compared to the old biker dope which was pretty awful. Drugs are here, they have always been here, and they are never going anywhere. Watch the heroin epidemic in this country, it's sad but unfortunately a perfect storm is brewing.
You do make a good point in everything being relative and personal. I know that when I came off opiates (it's been more than once) I have been a huge drama queen. Every person that I have ever known that has came off opiates has had a pretty bad withdrawl experience. These are all different personality types, one of my friends went to college on a football scholarship and withdrew during two a day practices in the August heat! For some it's probably easier than others, I can tell you that for me Oxycontin wd was much easier than heroin. That's been the general consensus of anybody I have spoken with. Every day gets easier than the last during the process, but the temptation to go do more when you are sick can be pretty strong. Vhehn whatever happened to personal responsibility? Why does there always have to be blame when something happens? People make their own choices and although the outcome can be tragic, that is the choice that person made nonetheless. I have a feeling you might be happier if you quit worrying about others and judging them so much. Enjoy life buddy, it's all we have.
i dont see any of you druggies showing any personal responsibility. all i see is "i want the right to use any drug i crave and dont care what happens." your rights to freedom of choice end when they effect me and others like me. if have to pick up the pieces of the destroyed families and communities you have demonstrated that you will leave behind people like me will decide that you are better off locked up where you can do no harm.
Vhehn, I don't use illegal drugs so my perspective is perhaps different from that of a user. It seems to me though that we have good examples of what happens in societies where drug use is tolerated and treated more as a medical problem than as a crime. Why don't we just look carefully at those examples and decide whether there is a better outcome available if we were to alter our drug policies in the US? It seems we are not behaving rationally.