Is there an opiate *epidemic*? Is illicit opiate use harming the legitimate patients, who now have to jump through hoops for the medication? Is pill porn a bad thing? A pain patient enters /r/opiates to assert these things, to poor end.

39  2017-11-21 by snallygaster

90 comments

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I'm always amazed by people who use opiates on a daily basis who believe they aren't addicts or they are somehow morally superior to others because of a specific medication.

You're still an addict.

No worse than potheads

Potheads are not dying in droves from their devils lettuce intake though.

In the Philippines they are!

!redditsilver

Or stealing from their parents/significant other to get their fix.

One wishes annoying potheads or 90% of r/trees would tho

You definitely have not been around either a pothead or junky. They are so very, very different.

No not really atleast in my experiences

Yeah, you DEFINITELY have not been around them kid.

Oh shit you called me a kid. I have been thoroughly routed in verbal debate!

Hippies and stoners piss me off. They ruin a fun thing like pot with their shitty weed culture.

Who gives a shit what the emotional response you have towards someone? Your dislike does not make your claim that a pot user and heroine user are the same.

Yes it does. Your both addicts

You are a special kind of stupid.

Don't be a degenerate

k

Just because you found a loophole to enjoy drug doesn't make you suddenly better then the rest of the degenerates addicts you deal with.

Yep you are just a troll

Classic response when proven right. By calling me a troll you can instantly discredit me without having to prove your not some degenerate junkie.

How many times have you been revived with narcan this year alone?

K

junkie logic is truly something incredible to behold.

It really is man. If someone offers to help them out, the person offering to help is the one in the wrong because they just don't want to understand. I had a friend that started heroin. Motherfucker wouldn't even take a decent payout to get clean. He didn't even need to pay for all of rehab process because I was offering to pay that as well. There was literally no excuse why he couldn't get help other than him prioritizing his addiction over everything else.

What ended up happening to him?

He died of an overdose a few months after getting out of jail. His mother called me right after she found out. She blamed herself for everything that happened with him. They were a close family and it really tore them apart. His father became withdrawn and his mother stopped taking care of herself.

Well shit. :( At least you tried to help him, but even then, people can't overcome addiction unless they truly want to.

Well when you consider rehabs are a fucking joke, and 95% of the time a cash grab, where those running it ENCOURAGE relapses, so they can screw the addict's insurance company and/or parents/family for more money. It's deplorable how bad it is, and their success rates of around 5ish% make sense.

The gold standard for not just getting clean (easy to do), but actually staying clean (way harder), is MAT... medication assisted treatment... typically suboxone or methadone, along with other psych meds the person needs to help treat the underlying causes as to why they started using/kept relapsing before. I got on methadone and I've been clean going on 3 years, and nothing else worked. Methadone's success rate is around 55%ish, with suboxone following pretty close behind. There's even MORE helpful treatments, but god forbid we allow them in 'murica -___-

Fuck that, aa all the way.

It does at least have a higher success rate for alcoholics, so at least it seems that for that it works better. The reason I even mentioned AA and not just NA is because a lot (in my areas at least) of opiate only addicts go to AA instead of NA, and my ex-rehab/sober home only followed AA, not NA at all, even tho legit all of the 30ish of us were opiate only addicts. In that case, it fails around 90ish% percent of the time. I don't have any stats for how well it works with alcoholics but IIRC it's def a lot better than how it is for opiate addicts... which makes sense, since they're way different drugs, that work on different receptors on the brain, so the treatments that work the best would more than likely require something other than what AA/NA/12 steps can offer, since it's such an advanced addiction. To those who it worked for... that's amazing, I really commend you since the deck is stacked against you. However I hate those who end up acting like 'oh it worked for me luckily, so im gonna spread misinformation about the gold standard treatments that work the best for the MAJORITY of people, even tho they're in the minority of people that it worked for (if they're an opiate or other drug addict., not alcoholic).

Anyway just wondering, were you an alcoholic who sought treatment via AA and/or 12 steps? If so did it work? How long have you been sober? If you're an opiate addict that got clean thru AA, how long have you been clean jw?

You realize that AA has about the same success rate that you were hating on rehab clinics for, right?

Yeah but AA is as far as I know and meetings work into your schedule better than being locked in a compound.

Obv. That's what I was saying. Which makes sense since the majority of these rehabs charge desperate families out the ass for a free program that has a shit success rate. That's why I get so worked up over rehabs, and how they're usually revolving door industries that love making it so people never heal so they can profit off their every relapse until they get truly clean via MAT or die. It's like how the US prison system doesn't want to actually rehabilitate the inmates... since then recidivism might go down!

And with a lot of the prisons privatized, they make tons of money for each prisoner, and letting them out hoping they don't return means they'll make less than if they release the prisoners with the deck stacked against them, and are given no skills or training often to actually move on with your life, and inevitably get sent back, and then they can re-profit off of you/the same people multiple times... the parallels between the privatized prison industry and the typical rehabs are uncanny... it's fucking sickening >:(

Yeah I know. Typically those rehabs, even the most expensive and luxurious, base their entire recovery aspect on either AA/NA/or CA's 12 steps. So it's no wonder why they don't work. At least if you do some meetings for free and they don't work out, you're not out a few grand+. These revolving door rehabs are run by some of the scummiest, greediest assholes the world has seen, where it's not uncommon for the house managers to bring drugs in so people relapse, which means they can bill the patient's insurance and/or their families yet again.

And when they leave, even with great aftercare plans set up, and almost inevitability of lapsing/relapsing at least once, usually months down the line, when PAWS (post acute withdrawal symptoms, which are 'skipped' while on subs or 'done, and if you never get off the maintenance meds, you never got to suffer thru PAWS) has been eating away at the patient for months upon months now (can last up to a year or more after the worst 'acute' withdrawals are over, usually like 4-7 days depending on the opiate used... and detoxing can be very easy/pain free... so getting clean is easy enough, but staying clean, without MAT? The statistics don't look good), combined with the person's opiate tolerance being practically 0, like before they used at all, AND with all the fent around out there, AAAAND the fact that in scenarios like this, the shame and other variables often cause them to have to use alone, and since the US has no supervised injection centers with nurses to give narcan in case of emergency, the person typically uses alone, ODs, and is found already long dead unfortunately.

People on suboxone or methadone not only have those drugs 'block' other opiates, but they make the cravings way lower, so people are less likely to even wanna use, AND often even if they use, the high tolerance that subs or 'done gives them will make them more likely to survive a potential OD situation (e.g. if they had no or a lower tolerance, than it could've been a fatal OD, but since their tolerance is high af, the person often can't even feel any high, let alone OD). Although keep in mind that's not always how it works, and it can have a paradoxical effect where the OD happens due to the user trying to override their maintenance med's block by trying to take huge doses of their opiate drug of choice, and THAT'S when an OD is likely in that scenario.

Def a lot less likely, esp for it to be fatal, for those on MAT than the 'abstinence only' BS like rehabs/12stepAA/NA/CA shit where they act like if you're on subs or 'done you're a 2nd class citizen, and they don't let you share, and they're all 'when you gonna get clean!?' ...and yeah ik all meetings are different, but ugh the tons i went to around me were filled with some pretty awful human beings, but thankfully the good ones were good enough to make up for a lot of the bad ones lol.

I don't knock it if it works for someone, as long as they don't become closed minded towards all the other treatments, esp ones that are more likely to work better for others... and they don't spread the type of disinformation that can legit be deadly esp. to the younger, more impressionable people trying out recovery, esp on their first try.

Often they seem to want to listen to the older ones with a lot of experience, but IME, those types are often the worst since they ONLY talk down to you, even if you're older than them lol, and they give deadly 'advice' often, and are just shit people... the 'old timers' and other just as insufferable types of people you find at xA meetings are often the main reason why people like me hate them, and hate how little is being done to make sure their influence is next to none.

Anyway, I hope my rambling habit is getting a little better, as I'm trying to remain more conscious of the fact that I tend to ramble on, go on rants, tangents, off-topic randomness, brackets within parentheses clusterfucks, more than likely misused (and overused) ellipses all over the place... ugh what a mess... but it's a good indicator of the racing anxious thoughts that use my mind as a racetrack, and... fuck, here I go again >:(

Fin.

Im into meth and dissociatives and do aa, all my friends in recovery prefer aa to na, ca can be pretty good as well. My sponsors have all been meth, heroin, or cocaine addicts.

I agree with you. Nobody will get clean unless they really want to. I was looking to get him into MAT program and not ones that would not try to replace one addiction with another like NA/AA. NA/AA works for some people and I'm glad it did for them. I wanted him to get off of it for good. We were friends from elementary school so I knew him and his family well. I made it abundantly clear that anything he needed to get clean was on the table. I even offered to move him in where I was living at the time. He took everything I said as an insult. We were friends for over 20 years at that point. I told him that any time he was ready, let me know. I knew his brain wasn't right at that time and all the shit he was saying wasn't really him. It was his addiction. He could of had depression but he wasn't willing to get it checked out because he didn't want to be labeled crazy if he was diagnosed. It wasn't like we were trying to get him off of anything else, just opiates. He overdosed a few months after getting out of jail. There was rumors that it might have been intentional, but we will never know for sure.

If it was between having money or my friend, I would rather have my friend around. I'm glad your off that shit man. People don't really know how destructive it really is, especially when they're using it. It's destructive to friends and family as well. You see someone becoming just a husk of their former self and it weighs on you.

could of

Did you mean could've?


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No, I like going in raw.

You cannot validate nor enable an addict, that only makes things worse. Fuck people who do that, its only harming the junky.

Damn man, I'm really sorry to hear that. It seems like you at least tried a great deal to get him some good help, so that's always great to see from others. However it's like that expression "you can lead a horse to water but can't make him drink it"... that applies a lot to treatment for addictions, or any other problems/character flaws/physical illnesses, etc. So many are too unwilling, for tons of different reasons, to actually go through with certain treatments, and unfortunately end up dying at worst, or at best, with a heavily reduced quality of life. And thanks man, I appreciate that. I'm glad I'm nearing 3 months, and I really like to try to help out others online since people online helped me when I needed it while getting clean.

Who knew being an addict was high horse material. 😂😂

Well they spend a lot of time on the toilet trying to get that turd out, gotta do something while they're there.

Junkiecide now

Is pill porn a bad thing? Not according to this hilariously misplaced modifier:

Not a single one of them were able to improve how I felt about my life besides fucking my Anti-Anxiety pills.

You got yourself a new flair.

Every time I buy ephedrine, I thank a Junkie for making it put me on a list...

No don't blame big government over-regulation, blame those who wish to alter their own consciousness... TOTALLY a terrible thing they're doing... <obvious /s>

When you OD get back to me.

How, I'm nearly 3 years clean and lost all desire to use (oh and if I used it'd be blocked by my meds anyway lol).

Are those people different from the ones who keep breaking into cars in our neighborhood? Or the ones living under a tarp in the woods down the street surrounded by used needles?

Is your entire worldview only constructed by the various extremes/stereotypes you see from everyone who isn't in your 'in-group'?

In 2004, 17% of state prisoners and 18% of federal inmates said they committed their current offense to obtain money for drugs.

That's my outgroup, fam

how many addicts need to commit crimes to get alcohol or tobacco? very little. why? they're legal, and therefore at least loosely based on how much the product itself is actually worth, plus taxes... aka a reasonable price (somewhat). But thanks to the bullshit drug war, a bag of drugs normally worth a dollar is now worth hundreds thanks to the risk that everyone in the drug ring/chain takes smuggling/selling it. If drugs were legal a ton of the issues with addiction could be avoided and easily treated. Literally the majority of problems are the direct or indirect result of the drug war. But too many are too stupid to realize that and some are dumb enough to WANT to continue the billion dollar war which literally has accomplished nothing in 100 years. You can't win a fight against an idea lol

alcohol, caffeine, or tobacco?

A perfectly germane comparison to opiates and meth...

Keep in mind also that this has worked in other countries

I'm very interested in countries that have legalized hard drugs. Please name them.

Nothing got worse than it was drug wise

While I'd love to see Portugal's drug policy here, this is simplistic. From 2001 to 2007, use of illicit drugs increased in prevalence in Portugal when it decreased in the European Union. (source: https://web.archive.org/web/20140821135419/http://www.beckleyfoundation.org/bib/doc/bf/2010_Caitlin_211621_1.pdf page 1008)

Is it your contention that opiate and meth use and overdoses would decrease if you could buy pills/heroin/meth legally and cheaply at Wal-Mart?

No I have friends and family whose lives have been ruined by opioids as well.

I never got into opiates. The lifestyle is something that you hear about and think is bullshit until you know an addict. What's pathetic is the people who offer to help them out are somehow the bad ones that hate them.

Nobody ever just tries heroin, they simply start using heroin.

I remember when I almost tried heroin.

I was drunk at a massive house party and wandered into some back room where a couple guys were getting ready to shoot to. One guy was like "hey, you wanna try heroin?" And stupid me says "sure, why not?"

Guy two gets pissy and says he doesn't want to wait for me, he's first. I wasn't gonna argue with a guy giving me free drugs, so whatever.

Almost as soon as the guy shoots up, he's gone. Leans back with a big smile on his face, goes for the nod, and pisses himself, and from the smell, probably shit himself too.

I just kinda watch this happen, look at guy one, and walk out of the room.

You just wrote an anti-drug commercial. That is solid gold!

Right? Sometimes I stop and think how fucked up my life might have gone, if that junky hadn't been so impatient.

I have a good friend who always said he'd never search out drugs, but he'd try anything once. About 5 years ago he was offered some heroin kinda like you were. He's lost his job, wife, family and is going to trial in the next few weeks for killing another junky over something like $20 worth of heroin. I always thought it was funny when he said he'd try anything once, I don't think it's funny anymore.

Well, I can honestly say, my life is going better than that.

I'm glad to hear it! I can honestly say that he has probably done more to keep my kids from experimenting with drugs than anything else. They grew up with his kids and watched their world crumble around them.

You probably would have died that night. Too bad.

Jk

Could've. Probably would've. But I'm still here to tell you how much better I am than you. Life is weird like that.

Nawh I'm pretty great.

I have been offered it before, weed is my only thing. I really never liked taking pills because I would get sick after taking them for any extended period of time. I figured it was likely a physical addiction. I flat out refuse to take any pain pills and just stick with weed. I have a high pain tolerance so weed would take the edge off of any pain I might be feeling.

Pisses himself after shooting a drug infamously known for it's side effect of urinary retention? Not saying I don't believe you but he must have been on alcohol and/or other drugs for that to happen (or perhaps also just have issues with bladder control lol) IMO

Probably. Who the fuck knows what else they were doing?

oh good snally is back

My reaction when Snally returns after being absent too long.

I like how /u/n0dsquad equates being a worthless junkie who gave up on life to a person with a debilitating chronic pain. Totally the man's fault he's a bum

What the fuck are you talking about? And who the fuck are you? Why are you bringing me into literal drama?

And way to misinterpret my comment. To come to the conclusion you did requires ignorant black and white thinking. You're not a computer, there's more to life than 0's and 1's. Things aren't just all good or all bad. There's tons of grey areas in life, just keep that in mind.

did you get your start with pills or right to the plunge?

Technically started with pills, but only because ik they would feel sorta like heroin, and I couldn't find a heroin connect. And every time I had a chance to buy pills, I either had a tiny bit of money or none at all, and/or the person had only a few to sell anyway, usually at a ripoff of a price (although all pills are ripoff priced nowadays, that's why heroin/fent is such an epidemic due to the doctor's and DEA's bullshit kneejerk reaction to cut off pain patients needlessly, which will only more than likely make them resort to black market pills or dope... fucking dumbass govt. lol) anyway... so I never got any real opiate effects/high, until I got to try heroin for the first time.

Sniffed a tiny line, and 10 mins later I was in absolute bliss. And that was without even having to shoot it and getting that rush, which I did the 2nd time I used, and it was like a few simultaneous orgasms worth of pleasure being felt all at once, which drifts off into a dreamy, relaxing high. But obv. the honeymoon phase of the drug use came and went, and after about 6 months to a year of occasional usage, I started noticing more cons than pros to it's use, but realized I was now addicted. But that was years ago. I'm going on 3 years clean now, which is about how many years I used for, somewhat off and on.

well no joke grats on being clean that long

Thank you for that backhanded compliment after you essentially implied that I should die from a fentanyl OD...

...AND you completely misinterpreted what I said so that you could karma whore from a bunch of sheltered 'le redditor' fucktards who love to be edgy behind a screen, yet would fucking run away scared shitless if an actual addict got anywhere near them in 'meatspace' (i love that term lmfao... and btw I also assume that the senseless downvotes I've gotten are from those types, and no matter the post nor sub, it usually is... at least IME).

But in case I jumped the gun and made an ass out of you and me (by assuming... get it, lol), and that odd comment you made about "...careful of all that fentanyl that's out there! It's waiting for you!" somehow wasn't insinuating that I should just keep using and die, then my response would be "Thanks, much appreciated!"

We tell the retards in here to not downvote visitors but they very rarely listen *sigh* Meatspace is a hilarious term thanks for that

lol no problem

You are trying to validate and enable people who need serious help for an illness that will destroy their loves, their loved ones, and ultimately kill them. Fuck you, seriously, fuck you.

How in the fuck am I even remotely 'enabling' or 'validating' people who need serious help for an illness? Explain exactly what you mean other than hurling insults at people since you're too stupid to attack my argument, so you attack my character.

The media isn't supposed to solve anyone's problems. Specially not dumbass junkies.

Those dopeheads needto come to the Philippines, my boy Roddy Duterte got something for them.

no need, the chinese are doing their part with all the synthetic opiates they are exporting to us

Opium Wars 2: The Think Revengeance

FREE 👏 CARFENTANYL 👏 FOR 👏 JUNKIES👏

💊💉😵

I’ve lost two people I know to the epidemic and these fuckers act like it’s some sort of rebellious counter culture thing to do. Fuck them all to hell.

these fuckers act like it’s some sort of rebellious counter culture thing to do.

Yeah, a lot of the younger junkies who haven't lost everything yet glorify it hardcore. It's apparently a big problem on tumblr. Wouldn't be surprised if the way junkies treat addiction online has lead to a good deal of young people getting hooked and dying themselves.

Give them 5 years, they will either be dead or look 15 years older than they are.

we have otc codeine here for basically the same price as plain ibuprofen but theyre changing it next year because stupid people eat handfuls of them

No offense but try stopping taking your opiate medicine and then come back and tell us you aren’t an addict. If you can honestly say that you experienced no withdrawal-like symptoms or had any desire to take anymore, than kudos. >You’re a unicorn. Just because your doctor says it’s okay for you to take this or that addictive narcotic every day doesn’t mean you aren’t an addict.

Cause a huge ass spinal tumor == literal pleasure junkie