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desert father said:
if you stop shooting up, you'll stop getting sick, that's it.

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OrgoneConclusion said:

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It's not nearly so simple as an easy choice to not shoot up over shooting up.  Try being in agonizing pain while puking and shitting uncontrollably for 5-7 days (oh, and don't forget the insomnia!) and all the while you know that if you just do a little bit of heroin all your suffering will melt away and you'll feel normal again.  Even after the physical withdrawals are gone the addict is faced with an almost constant barrage of cravings, which are powerful, gut-level emotional urges to go out and consume more of the drug.  You're correct in that no person is putting a gun to your head, but it's basically equivalent once you're physically and/or psychologically addicted.

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You make it sound sexy and alluring. Ever thought of writing marketing copy?

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It's too easy (and morally questionable) to romanticize heroin, but I wrote this a while back in my journal:

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The ecstatic abyss of the needle: Black Tar Heroin

150 milligrams of bitter black and sticky tar heroin.  Gingerly unwrapped from its confining plastic; vinegary residue caking to my fingernails: damning marks proving my guilt for the crime of stealing paradise.  I reverently lower the dark blob into the gleaming altar of my spoon: a solitary worshipper pledging his allegiance to divine Bliss just as a masochist yearningly kneels before his fur-laden Mistress.  The power to capture a man's heart, the seduction to make him bend before her will, and the beauty necessary to convince him that it was worth it... all these I distill in my miniature cauldron of Desire.  Thirty, forty, sixty milliliters of dissolving water; heated pools giving off that Oriental aroma as my lighter converts solid into solute.  Brownish solution swirls invitingly: as thick and as muddy as good earth on a river bed, coursing streams anticipate their surging and gushing into the flow of my circulatory system.  The addition of a catalyst: fibrous cotton stained with the life blood of the Poppy.  My needle tip probes hesitantly into the inviting softness of the filter, and the plunger pulls back to reveal the purified solution: the eye of the hurricane designed to bypass the natural filtration systems of the body.  I groan.  Release from these interminable minutes of dedicated preparation is nigh, but so sweet it is to teasingly delay its nihilistic onset as I feel the cool wind against alcohol-swabbed skin.  My red tie gleams like the lurid light of an underworld district wrapped about my arm; a tourniquet of sin inviting the snake bite of narcotic pleasure.  Teeth clamped tight, pulling taut... tap one-two-three against plastic to liberate the last scraggling bubble of air and then the sharp pin prick of intoxicating sting followed by penetrating slide of long metal into my vein.  Body keened, senses wrapped up in exhilaration for the next moment, concentration focused: and I press the plunger down all the way.

...

Unnoticed is the smooth pull out of the syringe, forgotten is the loose, languid drop of that scarlet armband falling from my hand, irrelevant is the external world.  Here, smoothly floating in the antechamber to space, I am in perfect harmony with everything.  Ever slowly, yet creeping faster and faster, rushing on, here, HERE it is, that freight-train to Heaven or Hell or wherever the destination is it doesn't matter because fuck it, we don't care anyway, and my neurons are lighting up like a Christmas tree by a warm fireplace and I feel like all the stresses and worries and insignificant, mundane-fucking trivialities of the external world have just been replaced by a fuzzy blanket straight from the dryer; a mother's womb wrapping around me, swallowing me whole in perfect blissful apathy.  Waves of nodding drowsiness softly lap around my closing eyelids as hypnagogic reveries project their euphoric fantasies behind them.  Melting into the couch feels like the gentle breath of a slow orgasm; soothing itchiness spreading across the canvas of my body like a painter sketching his ultimate masterpiece.  This is beauty, this is love, this is utter hedonism taken to its mathematical limit.  I have gazed in the Abyss, and the Abyss has gazed back into me: sheer nothingness has enveloped my soul and I love every bit of it.

I would not recommend trying the fruits of temptation if you aren't willing to pay the possible price of slavery for your mind, body and soul.  Tasting the celestially infernal diacetylmorphine will unveil the exquisite pleasures of a pharmacological feedback loop rivaled by none, but once having tasted heaven being without it will seem like hell.  It's a two-edged sword alright, and I stand balanced between the twin peaks of agony and ecstasy just as my veins of life-giving blood stand infinitesimally close to the ever waiting stab of the needle.  I have been enthralled by Morpheus, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Perhaps you think, as I once did, that you can take it with impunity.  However, I tell you this; take it just once and it will change you.  It is a devil that is older than man and is more evil than any man can comprehend.  Yes, it is only a chemical... as are we all.

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link to journal

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which is depression that can last from months to years after the addict stops shooting up

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bigmike7104 said:

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which is depression that can last from months to years after the addict stops shooting up

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how do you know this isn't just the same depression that the addict had while using, and now there not using it's just more apparent.

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It's when they run out that things go south.

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Diploid said:
I've never met an addict who was depressed while using. They're happy as a clam as long as they have more chilli to shoot up. It's when they run out that things go south.

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Diploid said:
You are regurgitating DARE propaganda and misinformation.

People use drugs because drugs are fun, not because they're depressed. They smoke and drink because it's what people do in bars and other social situations. They get stoned because they want to relax. They do meth because it gives them energy and puts them on top of the world. They shoot heroin because it wraps them in a warm euphoric glow.

I don't doubt that some depressed people seek out drugs, but by and large, depression isn't why people use drugs.

Eventually they can get addicted if they have your naive and cavalier attitude toward addiction, namely, that all you have to do to get out of addiction is man up and stop using. It's perfectly clear to me you've never been there, and I have a feeling you're in for a big surprise soon.

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bigmike7104 said:
yes addiction effects the brain (as does everything else including your own thoughts) and stopping using produces withdrawals. but that doesn't mean a person becomes addictive because the drug is so great they can't stop using. unfortunately this addiction is a disease thing keeps being spread around and only tells the addict that they can't stop on their own. this is bullshit though, and it's known that most addicts stop on their own when they want to enough, but you only hear of the ones that can't so you get a biased view.

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Try being in agonizing pain while puking and shitting uncontrollably for 5-7 days (oh, and don't forget the insomnia!) and all the while you know that if you just do a little bit of heroin all your suffering will melt away and you'll feel normal again.

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but what about the millions of hospital dependent on morphine and drugs like oxy. only a very small percentage of them go on with addictions while the majority deal with the withdrawals.

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dkmonk said:
I don't speak to my mother anymore, but still love her and forgive her. I just don't like to deal with unstable people, and she may cause drama in my life like she has every time I rekindle my relationship with her. She purposely humiliates me, and it wouldn't be a big deal if it was a stranger, but it hurts a lot when it is your Mom especially when you see normal families, and wonder why yours is so strange.

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isn't it our cultural deficiency to deal with trauma appropriately that causes such problems as they had?

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That is why alcoholics are said to never drink alcohol again or they will fall prone to their destructive drinking pattern. Well, if that is the case, the addiction was never cured.

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Most experts regard drug addiction as a brain disease. Do you agree?
I'm critical of the standard view promoted by the National Institute on Drug Abuse that addiction is a brain disease. Naturally, every behavior is mediated by the brain, but the language "brain disease" carries the connotation that the afflicted person is helpless before his own brain chemistry. That is too fatalistic.

It also overlooks the enormously important truth that addicts use drugs to help them cope in some manner. That, as destructive as they are, drugs also serve a purpose. This recognition is very important for designing personalized therapies.

Don't most studies show that addicts do better with professional help?
People who come to treatment tend to have concurrent psychiatric illness, and they also tend to be less responsive to treatment. Most research is done on people in a treatment program, so by definition you've already got a skewed population. This is called the "clinical illusion," and it applies to all medical conditions. It refers to a tendency to think that the patients you see in a clinical setting fully represent all people with that condition. It's not true. You're not seeing the full universe of people.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=can-you-cure-yourself-of-addiction

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Diploid said:
You are regurgitating DARE propaganda and misinformation.

People use drugs because drugs are fun, not because they're depressed. They smoke and drink because it's what people do in bars and other social situations. They get stoned because they want to relax. They do meth because it gives them energy and puts them on top of the world. They shoot heroin because it wraps them in a warm euphoric glow.

I don't doubt that some depressed people seek out drugs, but by and large, depression isn't why people use drugs.

Eventually they can get addicted if they have your naive and cavalier attitude toward addiction, namely, that all you have to do to get out of addiction is man up and stop using. It's perfectly clear to me you've never been there, and I have a feeling you're in for a big surprise soon.

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Diploid said:
I've never met an addict who was depressed while using. They're happy as a clam as long as they have more chilli to shoot up. It's when they run out that things go south.

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