Rearden, you have 15 months with no drugs. All the (physical) withdrawel is gone away now. But in your mind you crave that drug still. Why? Because you say you (think) you are better with the drug. You FORGET the bad part, and crave the good part.
Reasonable people should take note that the article was written by Lee Harris, not Dalrymple. Lee Harris is the author of The Suicide of Reason: Radical Islamâs Threat to the West (Basic Books, 2007). Product Description From a "startlingly original and visionary"* writer, a disturbing and far-ranging look at the West's vulnerability to fanaticism. Whether by choice or not, the West finds itself in a low-grade yet bitter war with Islamic fanaticism. It is a war the West is singularly ill equipped to fight. The foe is resistant to any of the normal methods of conflict resolution such as negotiation, economic sanctions, or conventional armed confrontation. The Suicide of Reason shows how modern liberal societies, whose political theories are born of the Enlightenment, are unfamiliar with the nature of mass fanaticism. The West can only think of fanaticism as a social pathology, a failure to modernize, rather than as what it is: a variety of social order that is not only fully viable in the modern world but also willing to use weapons to which the West is uniquely vulnerable. A governing philosophy based on reason, tolerance, and consensus cannot defend itself against a strategy of ruthless violence without being radically transformed--or destroyed. Extraordinarily original and thought-provoking, The Suicide of Reason explains the logic of fanatical movements from the Crusades through Nazism to radical Islam; describes how the Enlightenment overcame fanatical thinking in the West; shows why most Western attempts to address the problem are doomed to fail; and offers strategies by which liberal internationalism can defend itself without becoming a mirror of the tribal forces it is trying to defeat. *Salon About the Author Lee Harris is the author of Civilization and Its Enemies: The Next Stage of History and a frequent contributor to Policy Review, the Wall Street Journal's "Opinion Journal," and other publications, both print and online. He lives in Stone Mountain, Georgia. Those who want to address the parts of the Lee Harris article I quoted, could do so... The knee jerk attack of Dalrymple clearly illustrates that someone was not paying attention to the salient points made by Lee Harris...and attacked Dalrymple...not even having the intelligence sufficient to attack the real messenger...in this case, Lee Harris.
He is only repeating what has been said before in scientific literature. The whole subject of drug addiction â particularly to opiates such as heroin â is steeped in mythology. Among the strongest and most persistent myths is that of the terrors of withdrawal, known as cold turkey. It has long been established in scientific literature that withdrawal from opiates is medically trivial, and that the symptoms are much less unpleasant than flu, and easily alleviated. This is in marked contrast to, say, withdrawal from alcohol among those who drink greatly to excess. Withdrawing alcoholics may suddenly collapse and die; they may have epileptic fits; and their terrifying hallucinations may prompt them to behave in bizarre and dangerous ways, for example by throwing themselves from high windows to escape the pursuing monsters. Even withdrawal from long-term use of diazepam (Valium) may sometimes produce this picture: but withdrawal from heroin never. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article867789.ece
On opiate withdrawal: One who is otherwise healthy or whose ability to cope with stress is not in some manner limited can probably, on the basis of this evidence, withstand the stress of opiate withdrawal without difficulty. But, for the impaired individual, whether by age or preexisting or intercurrent disease, the stress of withdrawal may combine wide other conditions to produce a fatal outcome. Still, the salient point is that these cases fail to furnish a single instance in which withdrawal alone is a sufficient cause of death. http://www.drugtext.org/library/books/epidemiology/chapter16.htm It stands to reason that those who are in poor health or otherwise infirm condition are at a greater risk of pain and death from influenza than a healthy adult. So too it stands to reason that a typical junkie going through withdrawals would suffer to a greater degree than an adult who had taken care of their body, eaten properly, slept properly, etc. Perhaps some of the suffering of withdrawal has to do with the psychological condition and dramatic need of the junkie for sympathy for their "victimization" by the world that intensifies their detoxification process.
Are you seriously listening to this crap? Really? Is your bullshit-filter on thanksgiving vacation today, or what? I mean, even though I've never personally given birth or suffered a kidney stone attack... but if some douchebag were to come along and say that those things are no worse than the common flu... I mean, seriously! I've said a lot of things in this thread that go against the mainstream consensus. However, you should know that ANYONE who knows ANYTHING at all about addiction knows that: Deadliest withdrawal = Alcohol. Most painful withdrawal= Opiates. Even the most die-hard prohibitionists admit that much. Bringing up the fact that opiate withdrawal is rarely fatal in order to 'prove' that it's not so painful after all...Well, you could say the exact same thing about kidney stones. If you can't see through such an obvious straw-man argument, then I have some magic beans to sell you.