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Habitually USE pharmaceutical quality heroin at maintenance levels and what do you get? A normally functioning person who works and pays his taxes.
You offer no definition Vance. What do you mean by "perfect"? It's difficult to carry on a rational discussion with no definitions of terms. I'm talking about use, you're talking about abuse, and never define the term. Give me something to work with here.
Its like you have this vision that addicts are all emotionally healthy reasonably well maintained individuals that except for the grade and quality of product may become addicted but would be fully functioning participating members of society...Habitually USE pharmaceutical quality heroin at maintenance levels and what do you get? A normally functioning person who works and pays his taxes.
You offer no definition Vance. What do you mean by "perfect"? It's difficult to carry on a rational discussion with no definitions of terms. I'm talking about use, you're talking about abuse, and never define the term. Give me something to work with here.
https://arstechnica.com/science/201...ply-of-opioids-1-in-5-become-long-term-users/
This is why we have such an opioid addiction epidemic in this country. They are dangerous, its much better to man up and deal with the pain than it is to risk getting hooked.
Last year in Vancouver 904 people died of fentanyl overdose. Three times as many as the year before. So far this year the rate is down, but not by much.
They may be "just addicts" but they had people who cared for them and loved them. But the real hit is what's happening to our first responders. They are the worst hit with PTSD and other issues.
We are responding by throwing money at it and asking "what else? Any suggestions?" And while we struggle to find answers - better control of the materials needed to make it, more focused policing, hard time for real dealers, and more assisted user sights which have proven to be the best means of reducing ODs.
But even I am frightened. I've spent 27 years volunteer in the addictions area and never have I seen anything like this.
To comment directly on your post many of us have seen addiction happen with ONE use.
And I will go on record agreeing with you that facing the pain is a lot easier, and you heal faster. These days I deal with migraines 24/7, and while we got on top of most of it, when they hit there is nothing I can take safely, especially now I am on blood thinners for Afib. What I do know is when a migraine hits and I take the meds I used to be able to take the situation would last an hour, maybe two.
Now, I take nothing and find that the headache lasts about an hour, maybe two.
When I broke a bunch of ribs mountain falling years ago, because I am a recovered addict pain killers were not available to me. When I went to see the specialist a few days later he was amazed at how much I had mended. You heal faster when you don't use painkillers
Inadequately managed pain can lead to adverse physical and psychological patient outcomes for individual patients and their families. Continuous, unrelieved pain activates the pituitary-adrenal axis, which can suppress the immune system and result in postsurgical infection and poor wound healing. Sympathetic activation can have negative effects on the cardiovascular, gastrointestinal, and renal systems, predisposing patients to adverse events such as cardiac ischemia and ileus. Of particular importance to nursing care, unrelieved pain reduces patient mobility, resulting in complications such as deep vein thrombosis, pulmonary embolus, and pneumonia. Postsurgical complications related to inadequate pain management negatively affect the patient’s welfare and the hospital performance because of extended lengths of stay and readmissions, both of which increase the cost of care.
What a load crap.
First.. dependence IS NOT addiction.
A person that needs pain control for chronic pain.. such as a person with a amputation... does not mean they are an addict because they have a physical dependence.
Anymore than a person who has a dependence on heart medication is an addict because they need to take heart medication.
In regards to the science behind pain control and healing:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK2658/
http://www.woundsaustralia.com.au/journal/1803_02.pdf
I would strongly dissuade anyone telling people that they will heal better if they are in pain. The research does not support that. In fact.. most research shows that inadequate pain relief has deleterious effects on healing rates.
Last year in Vancouver 904 people died of fentanyl overdose. Three times as many as the year before. So far this year the rate is down, but not by much.
They may be "just addicts" but they had people who cared for them and loved them. But the real hit is what's happening to our first responders. They are the worst hit with PTSD and other issues.
We are responding by throwing money at it and asking "what else? Any suggestions?" And while we struggle to find answers - better control of the materials needed to make it, more focused policing, hard time for real dealers, and more assisted user sights which have proven to be the best means of reducing ODs.
But even I am frightened. I've spent 27 years volunteer in the addictions area and never have I seen anything like this.
To comment directly on your post many of us have seen addiction happen with ONE use.
And I will go on record agreeing with you that facing the pain is a lot easier, and you heal faster. These days I deal with migraines 24/7, and while we got on top of most of it, when they hit there is nothing I can take safely, especially now I am on blood thinners for Afib. What I do know is when a migraine hits and I take the meds I used to be able to take the situation would last an hour, maybe two.
Now, I take nothing and find that the headache lasts about an hour, maybe two.
When I broke a bunch of ribs mountain falling years ago, because I am a recovered addict pain killers were not available to me. When I went to see the specialist a few days later he was amazed at how much I had mended. You heal faster when you don't use painkillers
I have lived through a family member addicted to opioids. It is an ugly ugly situation for the entire family. Mine was my youngest brother who started dabbling in drugs in early years. It was his drug addiction to opioids that caused his liver to fail at the age of 55. But not until he absolutely created a living Hell for the entire family.
Unless you have a condition with chronic pain that just does not heal.
I think I'm addicted to anything that makes me feel good, but at my age I'm not experimenting with much of anything more addictive than a Baskins and Robbins, "World Class Chocolate Malt or Milkshake".
Habitually USE pharmaceutical quality heroin at maintenance levels and what do you get? A normally functioning person who works and pays his taxes.
You offer no definition Vance. What do you mean by "perfect"? It's difficult to carry on a rational discussion with no definitions of terms. I'm talking about use, you're talking about abuse, and never define the term. Give me something to work with here.
In regards to the science behind pain control and healing:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK2658/
http://www.woundsaustralia.com.au/journal/1803_02.pdf
I would strongly dissuade anyone telling people that they will heal better if they are in pain. The research does not support that. In fact.. most research shows that inadequate pain relief has deleterious effects on healing rates.
I never said it was a blanket and even then there are alternatives to opiates
What if that person ever gets pneumonia and thus must stop using that drug while he recovers due depressed lung function?
Heroin is easier to kick than methadone. More than one of the men I have walked with had to go back on heroin and then quit.
Its like you have this vision that addicts are all emotionally healthy reasonably well maintained individuals that except for the grade and quality of product may become addicted but would be fully functioning participating members of society...
Have you ever WORKED with addicts?
What if that person gets killed in a motorcycle accident before he gets pneumonia?
I'm not trying to be flippant, but I don't see the relevance of your hypothetical.
I agree. When it comes to injuries or painful conditions that will heal, you are absolutely not better off just dealing with the pain, at least initially. I had a chest trauma injury that led to a fractured sternum and a bruised heart. Complete healing takes a minimum of 12 weeks. I absolutely had to do something about the pain on that first day as the pain was equal to a heart attack. Morphine got me over the hump and then after going home, I threw out most of the pain medication as was well taken care of the first day.
The point is that even if you assume that someone can be maintained on opiates their entire life, any kind of severe respiratory infection or issue will most likely require them to stop taking them until the issue is resolved, which will bring on narcotic withdrawal symptoms.
On top of that, long term opiate use is hell on your endocrine system.
There are dictionary definitions of addicts, and there are clinical definitions of addicts and then there are people that will inject **** into their system that will cause this...I have lived with addicts too. Coffee addicts, alcohol addicts, suboxone addicts, tobacco addicts.
Chronic use of various drugs is part of the human condition. How do you define addiction?
Yes, there is no question that opiates in large dose can and will suppress breathing. As to whether any given maintenance dose will be sufficient to suppress breathing, maybe so, maybe not. As you say "most likely".
And for the sake of argument I will agree that long term opiate use is hell on the endocrine system. Chronic use of many drugs can cause problems.
My only point is that our policy of prohibition causes far more harm to all of society, users and non-users alike, than any individual harm that might be caused by poor lifestyle choices. Government laws cannot make people exercise good judgment, but they can and do have often enormous unintended consequences.
There are dictionary definitions of addicts, and there are clinical definitions of addicts and then there are people that will inject **** into their system that will cause this...
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Because they are desperate for the 'effect'. They arent healthy physically or emotionally. We put people through detox programs where they come out clean and within weeks they are back at it and it doesnt matter if we are talking alcoholics or heroin users or synthetic opioid users. Hell...Russian soldiers used to put shoe polish on bread,put it in a toaster and inhale it. Oh...did we talk about huffers? Glue sniffers? The world is not full of emotionally healthy productive individuals that if simply allowed a healthy clinical medical dose of heroin would serve wonderful full and complete lives.
You remind of the college professors of the 70s and 80s that used to promote drug legalization because they themselves were casual users and felt that if it were all legal people would be able to make responsible choices and our drug problem would go away. And they may have been right...for the casual user.
I agree with you about the drug war and so on. However, the problem with the opiate epidemic is that we have doctors prescribing them for weeks, months or years. Thus they are creating addicts out of people that would not normally be a drug addict and there are huge societal costs to that.
Im simply stating truth and the real world. You are trying to turn the drug addiction epidemic into a crusade for legalized drugs.You remind me of politicians who like to scare people by posting ugly pictures of depraved and pitiful humans, and pretend it's education. It's not education, it is just fear-mongering, and I'm fairly immune to fear-mongering based upon ignorance.
The simple, unvarnished and unpleasant truth is that our current drug policy has not stopped addiction, but it has allowed the CIA to be in the dope business since its inception, and it has led to the highest per capita rate of imprisonment in the entire world for more than 30 years.
Fear-mongering is not debate or rational dialogue, it is an appeal to emotion, nothing more. Keep those eyes wide shut Vance, and be afraid, very afraid.eace
Hell...Russian soldiers used to put shoe polish on bread,put it in a toaster and inhale it. Oh...did we talk about huffers? Glue sniffers? The world is not full of emotionally healthy productive individuals that if simply allowed a healthy clinical medical dose of heroin would serve wonderful full and complete lives.
You remind of the college professors of the 70s and 80s that used to promote drug legalization because they themselves were casual users and felt that if it were all legal people would be able to make responsible choices and our drug problem would go away. And they may have been right...for the casual user.
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