onepocketchump said:
I was responding to comments about who is a loser and who is not. "Speed" is frequently prescribed for ADD, narcolepsy and other issues. I don't know enough about heroin, cocain, or pcp to comment on whether there are illnesses that would require their use. I can say with some degree of confidence that there are certainly drugs regularly used in the medical profession that are hallucenigens, narcotics and stimulants. So it is a bit of a fallacy to claim that there are no equivalent drugs that are in use and abuse through the established medical community.
I find it truly weird that what is illegal today was not years ago and may not be in the future. As society changes so does it's views, tolerances, fears, and prohibitions.
The only thing "wrong" with using drugs is when the use affects other people negatively. When excess of any kind disrupts lives then it is not acceptable. If purchasing street drugs fuels violence then it's wrong. Perhaps making it forbidden fruit by making access hard is the real culprit.
I predict that if drugs were available for anyone to try for free that most people would try them, keep what is needed and discard the use of the rest. If people had a chance to get credible medical care without the pressure of the HMO's and the Pharmaceutical industry then they could and would be able to experiment and tweak their needs accordingly.
I see NO difference in the recreational use of cocain and getting drunk. Both are done to get high. One is "legal" while the other is not. Alcoholism probably destroys more people's lives than all the so-called hard drugs combined.
John
Sorry John I thought you were about to go off on a tangent like Superstar. I would be inclined to agree with you on the statistics of alcoholism, since alcohol is legal and everywhere you go. Two semesters ago in one of my addiction studies courses I had the opportunity to interview a former meth/coke addict, a former heroin addict, and a former alcoholic. It's really amazing how differently each drug affects the user's mind. With alcoholics violence is common, inhibitions are non-existent, and usually depression is involved. The meth addicts turn into paranoid individuals who begin to not even trust their family members and often they resort to criminal behavior like robbery and GTA to support their habit. Withdrawal from meth is more psychological than physical, although when burning out from meth the user becomes really tired and can sleep for two days straight, usually because they stayed up for two or three days straight on the drug. The meth high gives them energy and confidence, even a feeling of sexiness, and often for the meth user this later backfires as their appearance becomes distorted from lack of nutrition since meth strongly decreases your appetite. Teeth begin to rott, skin begins to wrinkle, and they become wiry and bony and look extremely unhealthy. Once the user has reached this stage they are so fargone into their addiction and need the high so much, they really don't care about their appearance anymore and "live" for the drug. Heroin addiction is similar in a way, because the heroin addicts likewise "live" for the high and would spent every last penny on heroin if that was required. For the heroin junkies, shooting up is more like an escape. An effect of the opiates, all problems seem easy to deal with and the world is a happy place when the high is at it's peak. As their bodies grow more tolerant to heroin after the initial peak, they have energy and can function normally but only for short periods, as withdrawal can set in only after a few hours and they get physically AND mentally sick. As the high wears off reality starts to set in, their bodies begin to ache, and if they go without heroin for too long, they get extreme aches and pains, fever, anxiety attacks, deep deep depression, it's absoloute misery, so they shoot up again. For both alcohol and heroin addiction, they use the drugs to push away all their problems temporarily, kind of like storing them in the attic. When the drug wears off, stuff starts to tumble out of the attic on top of them. As time goes by the attic gets overloaded and they go on a binge for days and usually this is when overdose occurs.
The difference between alcohol and heroin, is that alcohol kind of numbs your problems, while heroin basically puts you in another world. People can use alcohol occasionally and never become alcoholics, but with heroin they say the second or third time you use it, you are an addict and you won't be able to stop.
Moth addiction specialists set meth apart from most other drugs because meth is believed the hardest to overcome. Harder than cigarettes, alcoholism, even heroin. For regular users, the meth high becomes a norm. Imagine a scale numbered 1-10. Lets say that their normal feeling while high on meth is an 8. When they start to come down from the drug, they drop to a 2. They have been on number 8 for so long that 2 (which is sobriety) seems unbearable. If they manage to stay off the drug, as time goes by the norm of 2 gradually increases to 3, 4, 5, 6, then 7, but sobriety never reaches 8. They never forget how good being an 8 felt, and the thought of the drug is almost always in the back of their minds. This is what really sets meth addiction apart from most other drugs. Heroin is similar in this sense, but the only difference is that there are medications that can alleviate heroin withdrawal symptoms to an extent to make it maneagable (no, I'm not talking about methadone, which IS a narcotic).
The problem with occasional use of methamphetamine is that it produces such a good feeling, that if you use it once you are most likely going to use it twice. Use it twice and you will use it three times. Slowly the occasional user becomes a regular user, and eventually a regular user becomes an addict.
My argument here on this board, PLAIN AND SIMPLE, is that occasional use for MOST people later can and will turn into full blown addiction. CJ and Superstar don't see that, but I do and so do many other people who have posted in this thread, along with the rest of the world.
