and other drugs, such as oxycontin, will kill you.

said it was the alcohol rather than the heroin that killed her and that's been the case in most of the ODs I've seen. Mixing two central nervous system depressants is not smart but it's common among junkies with a high tolerance to the drug.

That doesn't mean an addict can't get a hot shot, but with dealers looking to maximize profits by weakening the drug as much as possible, it's unlikely.

My friend fell to her death while ripped on Oxycontin that her husband stole from his medical practice.

Yes, he is still a doctor.

and is still licensed 20 years later.

A friend of mine's brother OD'd on heroin in summer 2011. I can only imagine the devastation to their family.

Fentanyl - look out.

People get fentanyl patches, cut them open and inject the contents, not realizing how much more powerful fentanyl is than heroin.

He was lighting the patches on fire, then huffing the smoke.

Sad. He was a fun guy. He was a magician with computers and he had a cool obsession with all things Tiki.

"Furthermore, the dead addicts were experienced rather than novice users and therefore should have built up tolerance to large doses of heroin."

A common path to death is:

1. Addiction
2. Rehab
3. Relapse - and OD because body cannot take the same doses that it did pre-rehab.

Cory Monteith: Finished rehab in April...dead in July
Phillip Seymour Hofman: Rehab last May, dead this February

My point is that a person's experience level with heroin means very little...every time they rehab and start up again, they are essentially rookies.

and I was surprised to learn that in many cases - at least in addicts who od'd but survived - common in teenagers, not sure about adults - when they relapse, they intentionally "go hard". Like if you're going to do it, DO IT. Including doing the drugs you haven't tried already (a bucket list, if you will).

Others are so ashamed that they lose all hope...



Someone I know on Fbook posted that Hoffman was an irresponsible parent. I think he was a very sick, sick man and probably a heroin addict before he was a parent.

I have never thought about the 'go hard' or 'bucket list' mentality, but it makes sense.

As far as Hoffman goes, it is absolutely terrible that he left young children behind. I know a few addicts, and my emotions run from being furious at them to being very concerned about them, and an acknowledgement that they are 'in the grip' of the drug, and not in complete control of themselves. Like many, Hoffman had gone to rehab...and relapsed...in other words, he was human.

One more thing on rehab, which I'm sure you already know, but can't be stressed enough - keep your kid away from his user friends....no contact, no phone calls, no texts, no facebooking together. They are kryptonite to recovery.

I never saw old junkies on the street. I had one guy in full cardiac arrest and we kept him going until we shot him full of narcon. He came around and was pissed becasue we ruined his high.

That's what killed him.

are the fast track to the crazy train. I know. I was prescribed some and they made me nuttier than a pecan pie in fruit cake factory.

My doctor said I was non compliant with my meds and refused to see me again. Like I was coming back or something.

and get prescribed some more "medicine" that reduces me to a lunatic. LOL

I wouldn't have gone back, either!

I felt high as a kite all day. If I wanted to be high I'd find a drug dealer.
He was on Xanax and swore by them. Poor guy, crazier than I was.

Temazepam is a sleep aid and won't make you stoned. Xanax is another story.

screwed up.

Oops. I was thinking of Ambien. Ativan didn't affect me so strongly, but it is addictive and I'm glad to not be on it. I took it for a while about 17 yrs ago.

give me Ativan while I was trying to get off anti-depressants and it was triggering panic attacks. She didn't want to give it to me and kept warning me about the signs that I was addicted, etc.
I tried it once and it did nothing to me. At all. Like I couldn't tell I took it. So I took a second one. Nothing. So I just didn't take it again after that (did some cognitive behavioral therapy instead). I wasn't going to risk addiction to a drug that didn't help me or do anything to me.

I have some kind of immunity to a lot of drugs. Narcotics did nothing for me in labor and my doctor said he had never seen a woman have so many narcotics and not be completely passed out (long story, no epidural, 30 hours of labor, Dr wanted to give me 'a break'). Then they did nothing for me post op after my 3 C-sections and gallbladder surgery. With all my surgeries I usually went straight to Tylenol or advil which worked better. Then I had a stomach scope where I was awake for the entire thing because their drugs that were supposed to make me pass out (narcotic) and not remember (amnesia drug) had zero effect on me. They said 5% of the population doesn't respond to those meds. Lucky me.

Anyway, I read that people who have a tolerance for these kinds of drugs are the same people who actually have a gene linked with addiction. Again, lucky me. I don't know how true that is but I'm not about to test it out.

I have really bad allergies too. If I take a Percocet I breakout in a rash. If I take a Xanax the world spins.
They're popping xany bars around here like skittles. I think they're stronger than regular pills.
Hope I never need to take anything because I probably just won't bother.

I'm the opposite. So yeah, I shouldn't make generalizations like that based on my experience because brain chemistry differs dramatically.

Sleepy? Not so much. Just agitated LOL.

I lost so damn much weight when I was taking them, they threatened to put me in the hospital. The second I got off of Ativan, I gained the weight back. I hit 79 lbs., and I'm a 5'3" woman. I was skeletal from that crap.

Never again!

Opiates do that to me. I never stop puking on opiates.

I see why you hate them, that stuff coulda killed you! I'm glad you got treated and gained some weight. I'm your height and I hover around 140. If I go lower than 110, I look like a meth junkie. 79 pounds would have scared me.

so 110 is normal for me. When I started dropping weight like that, though, it scared me.

It's weird. It made me looney on top of it all. I would sooner drink cyanide than take another benzo. Crazy train.

I was diagnosed back in 2010 with panic/anxiety disorder after suffering from it for over 40 years, and I finally reached the point where I could no longer function since I was in a constant state escalating fear.

I have been on a low dose since and it is the only thing that ever worked.

They can cause disinhibition, agitation, aggression ... Very extreme in some cases.

One dose can be much stronger than the previous.

They also say people who used a lot then quit, overdose when they start using again cause they take a shot like they used to even tho their tolerance is lower. A person could be largely functional on heroin for a lifetime given an unlimited supply and high quality.

Heroin its for kids...

I've never done cocaine, either, and I didn't feel the need to experiment with it once I got to know some people that had their lives destroyed due to drug addiction. I made a promise a long time ago to a friend of mine that I would never take cocaine, and I have stood by it. They told me don't even start going down that hill, and I didn't go.

the latter in my case being very rare.

I've never knowingly taken anything other than odd prescription or over the counter drugs like ibuprofen. Not a matter of disapproval of those who do otherwise : I just don't understand it.

Some start with Oxycontin -- prescribed or taken from their parents' medicine cabinets -- and find out heroin is cheaper and easier to get. Then they tell themselves they'll only smoke it, not shoot it.

And it's an age-old feature of adolescence that teenagers imagine they're indestructible and take risks. If it's pot or alcohol or other drugs, they can put it down. Meth and heroin, not so much.

and morphine was used in the 19th century to wean people off alcohol. Drunkards were likely to spend all their pay at the saloon, then come home and beat their wife and children. If they were turned into morphine addicts, they quietly went to work and supported their families.

Too many jokes have been made about Carrie Nation for most of us to understand what a scourge alcohol was back then. As it happens, social pressure and the anti-DWI campaigns have been much more effective than Prohibition ever was.

Lots of food for thought!

Due to either using other opiates (ie prescription drugs) or trying to quit altogether. In any case, you're going to have problems if you try to restart at your old dose. The tolerance isn't there anymore. But I also agree about the cutting with other opiates. We recently had a string of deaths here due to cutting with fentanyl.

there is no telling the purity so it would be easy to get used to a weaker batch then when you get some more pure and try to use the same amount as you're used to using you wind up with an overdose.

Heroin is not to be played around with that's for sure.

the medical examiner said his heart gave out. His arteries were 94 to 96% blocked to blood flow.

Traces were found in his bloodstream,that revealed he most likely had had heroin in his system some time before death. And news reports focused on that heroin abuse as a factor. It's a much sexier headline than "Blocked arteries."

But the real cause of his death was that he had lived on hot dogs and Cokes for so many decades. One band mate after another talked abut how little truly nutritional food that Jerry had consumed.

A healthy heart and he probably could have gone on using drugs for another decade at least.

Probably the stress of trying to quit (again) cold turkey, as opposed to being chemically eased through the process as he had been at Betty Ford, put him over the edge. But certainly it could be argued that the 7-11 burritos were as much of a culprit as the drugs.

.... was also diabetic for many years before his death. Diabetes is hell on the heart and circulatory system.

He was a very heavy user. He OD'd early in the morning, was rushed to the hospital and the ER saved him and let him go. Later that day, he shot up more and died. The problem with heroin is what other's have mentioned... an addict never truly knows what dose they're going to get, they don't know what it's cut with and most heavy users also mix in other drugs. Sometimes they'll mix in speed so they don't nod, sometimes they'll mix in valium, which escapes me why they would.

My sister died two years ago (a week after her 50th birthday) and though her official COD was heart failure, years and years of heroin abuse is what killed her.

is something normal, average people do. And it's not that I would ever equate opiate use and marijuana use - that would be idiotic - but what I'm saying is we'll probably eventually come to the same realization, as a society, about other drugs. And if so, our drug policy will hopefully come to reflect that.

If heroin were available in known purity, there wouldn't be so man OD's from an unexpected supply of higher purity.

in medically supervised settings, IIRC.

I wonder if that sort of situation eliminates or drastically reduces the risk. I suspect it does.

Other than methadone, heroin maintenance works pretty well, and there are no problems getting them to come back and keep in regular contact.

before drug prohibition began to be federalized. These were what today would be called faith-based programs, and were designed to keep doses clean & manageable so addicts could carry on with productive lives. Lost to history....

If they go back to immediately using at the level they were when they stopped after being clean for a period of time, not having the systemic tolerance.

This seems to be what happened with Cory Monteith as well as PSH. It's a serious subject, obviously, but like I said to my wife yesterday "shit, OTOH look at Keith Richards. That guy's indestructible"

that I do not see mentioned on this thread -- which is a very good thread, by the way, and sorry if I missed someone else saying this -- is that people who abuse heroin over a long period do not tend to be in good health. This is not to suggest that everyone using heroin fits snuggly into one little group; surely, they do not. But there do tend to be some common features among those who are prone to the use and abuse of heroin (and related substances). Paying attention to their health is not one of them.

A person who has health issues, including chronic ones that may be as simple as a poor diet and/or lack of exercise, can be contributing factors in many of those deaths that are attributed to ODing on heroin.

Thanks for a good OP/thread.

Even long term opiate use in controlled doses does no physical harm. Constipation maybe but that's easily solved.

All the diseases, OD's, heartbreaking family stories mentioned in the above tales are a direct result of it's being illegal.

Period.

The current state is an artifact of a misdirected social experiment that developed it's own life and financial interests and it has tries to law enforcement big pharma , the prison system and of course, the rehab industry. In fact, a large part of these deaths seem to be be associated with going to rehab in the first place as much as anything else. Using loaded terms such as "clean" and sober, "dirty" urine, "fix" etc. they tend to create a self-loathing that persists life long in their customers.

Some people are better off on drugs and some drugs are worse than others. Is this not suppose to be a "Free Country"?

How exactly was my response/post "clueless"?

I took small doses of codeine (sold over the counter there) to manage my chronic headaches and depression. I did this for 10 years. I wouldn't say I did it every day, but most days. Prior to this, I was found to have an endorphin deficiency. I just didn't produce enough to keep me stable and it caused chronic headaches, major sleeping problems and depression. I had tried Prozac, Effexor, citalopram and amitriptyline. None of them worked because it didn't treat the right deficiency. Then I found the codeine quite by accident, I had no idea it was sold over the counter with drugs like Tylenol and ibuprofen. I cannot tell you how much better I felt after that. It got rid of my headaches every time (unlike other painkillers where it was really hit and miss), I felt happy and contented for the first time since puberty, and I slept like a baby. I wasn't high, it actually made me feel motivated. After a while I started getting it from my GP, just the opiate, without Tylenol or ibuprofen, which worked great on it's own. I didn't want to take the other meds if I didn't need it. My GP over there understood why I felt compelled to take it.

After I moved back home to the US, I could not get anything. I was judged very harshly about this issue and nobody wanted to have anything to do with me, even though I didn't ask for the drug, just said it helped me tremendously. So now I'm back to having the same issues I had before, except this time, it's worse. I managed just fine under my doctor on safe doses. I found out eventually that endorphins and opiates are almost identical chemically, so it all made sense as to why I reacted so well with it. I would not go to the black market, so I gave them up. It's been almost 6 years and my quality of life is terrible now.

Just because some abuse opiates doesn't mean everyone will. Some people legitimately need it. Just like marijuana helps some people. It doesn't do anything special for me, but I won't judge those who do find it helpful. I just wish I was given the same consideration.

beginning around the turn of the century I was prescribed Vicodin for sinus headaches. My experience with hydrocodone was pretty much identical to yours with codeine. Those were some of the most productive years of my life. Something that positively transformative, and in 20 minutes rather than waiting weeks for some vague, super subtle sense of improvement that might just be a placebo effect, is almost certainly going to be abused and that leads right into tolerance and addiction. That's what happened to me. If I'd had the good sense and self-discipline to stay on a strict schedule I probably could have kept that prescription for the rest of my life.

I'm guessing you'd agree that it would be a worthwhile endeavor to develop an opiate, or opiate-like, drug that didn't have the tolerance and addiction issues. I think it would be beneficial and sometimes life saving for millions. I don't doubt that sometime in the future this will happen and the sooner we rid ourselves of this puritanical and superstitious attitude concerning drugs and behavior the better.

that would be less of an addictive property, somehow. What makes opiates so addictive is when you take them for months or years regularly, every day, your pituitary gland thinks it doesn't need to produce endorphins because you're topping your receptors up chemically. Especially if you keep increasing your doses as you become tolerant. As stupid as this sounds, your pituitary "forgets" how to make these endorphins and these chemicals are important to our wellbeing. When you stop taking opiates, your body can't take up the slack over night. I went through a tough time stopping, but when that was over I just went back to my usual headachey, sleep deprived, miserable self. Right now in order to feel "ok", I have to take spoonfuls of very hot sauce made with hot peppers as this makes your body produce endorphins. The capsaicin in peppers causes this reaction pretty quickly.

I think some people can benefit and if something could be made that wouldn't cause the tolerance so people could stay on one low effective dose, however there is something interesting I would like to try - low dose naltrexone, it makes your body produce more endorphins by blocking receptors only for a short while. This was developed for addicts at higher doses, but at low doses it has helped for all kinds of conditions, auto immune disorders and things like MS. Getting it prescribed can be problematic. You'd have to find a doctor willing, then you have to find a special pharmacy that will break down the higher dose pills into lower dose pills. Something about the drug being so cheap that it's not in big pharma's interest to make low dose applications of this medication. But the plus is it's not a narcotic. Some doctors know of it's benefits, others do not. I haven't even tried to get it for fear of being rejected.

I think it should be decriminalized, but as you know, controlled doses are not going to happen. The deaths are because the drug, and its use, are Russian roulette.

The "rehab industry" is overrun with need -- too few beds. The idea that rehab causes OD is ridiculous.

Nobody is "better off" addicted to heroin. Nobody.

Because if you're used to getting smack that's 10% pure and you suddenly get some that's 25% pure, you don't titrate the dose and it ends up causing respiratory paralysis.

It was the third time he had overdosed that I know of.. one time before that he was in a coma for weeks. He was 27.