Lethal Opiates Delivered by Mail from China, Killing Addicts in the U.S

I think that even users of a drug have beliefs about the drug and its effects that are myths promoted by the anti-drug side. Drugs are supposed to feel like more pleasure than 100 orgasms, right? I actually think that no drug directly causes pleasure. It's like alcohol. Alcohol by itself does not plaster a smile on your face. The enjoyment of drinking comes from combining it with an enjoyable activity. Likewise for drugs. Their effect on mood is neutral and the enjoyment comes from combining it with an enjoyable activity.

I think one of the practical effects of it is that serves to teach drug users about the "addiction disease" and how to act their part in the drama. I suspect that it helps bring about the symptoms of the "disease", because without being educated about the symptoms, how would you know what you're supposed to do?

She's wasting her life away, but also endangering others' (as well as her dog's). Her dog was taken away most recently because she was out on a weeklong bender and left the dog locked inside the house. After a few days of wailing and notices, animal control finally went in and rescued the dog. This being San Francisco, of course she got the dog back after claiming she went on vacation and just forgot about the dog.

That said, there was feces and urine piled up in the apartment for that week, and a few weeks after. She also had a stopped up toilet that backed up raw sewage into her apartment for "several weeks" according to the health dept. She was literally walking around on waste soaked carpets for weeks...and didn't care. Because heroin don't care.

She would also freak out and randomly dial 911 while high and insist that there were people in her apartment that were trying to kill her.

I, mean, I could go on for days writing up the crazy stuff she does while high. Her family wants nothing to do with her. She owns her place, has a pile of money, doesn't pay any real estate taxes, is a "frequent flier" for the police and fire department, but all of this is just A-OK, right San Francisco?

Honestly, I could care less about her life at this point. I'm just worried about the dog. It never gets walked and lives in literal squalor.

Local councils also have some other powers for their Community Protection Officers.

Until people realise that this is a rational and sensical decision there won't be any solutions for these problems and these cases.

The US drug "treatment" / "rehab" industry is notoriously awful and is dominated by pseudo-religious ideologues obsessed with abstinence (to the point that "cult" is often an accurate, non-hyperbolic term) and whose practices are not based on any medical evidence of what reduces deaths. It's a fucked up industry that loves to use degradation, isolation, and humiliation on its "patients", loves to make people withdraw suddenly from their drug use and force them to endure the withdrawal symptoms, and isn't even particularly good at helping people not die from heroin/opioid use.

Given the current state of the rehab industry, and given how ineffective the "treatments" it offers are, it can alas be a rational decision to avoid it.

here's some reading that is relevant: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/04/the-irr... http://theinfluence.org/the-rehab-industry-badly-needs-to-cl... http://www.salon.com/2012/08/28/do_12_step_programs_lead_to_... http://projects.huffingtonpost.com/dying-to-be-free-heroin-t...

Unless the US adopts some sort of ASBO laws, there's not much you can do about forced treatment for someone who doesn't choose treatment.

Also, you could substitute heroin here with any other equally damaging substance like alcohol and the situation wouldn't change.

Then just systematically lock all addicts up and ship them off to freshly constructed prisons in Alaska.

It's good you have immediate treatment they still can't figure that out here, the "Rapid Access Addiction Clinic" in that story is unfortunately not accessible to all addicts and has temporary funding.

That is far less dangerous than opiates; I don't think it's comparable.

I agree that the current approach works very poorly; that doesn't mean any other approach is better. Sometimes what works poorly is still the best we can do, such as our approach to pancreatic cancer (though I don't think that's the case here).

Government restricts access to many things for safety reasons, from unsafe cars to prescription drugs to dodgy financial deals to highly enriched uranium. It's a simple formula, almost a slogan, to say 'legalize it and consumers will decide for themselves' (and in fairness maybe the parent isn't being formulaic in this case). In some cases that's true; in some cases consumers simply don't have that capability. In our business, IT security is a good example; consumers have no way to make a judgment or even know that it's working. It's the same for prescription drugs: Am I better? Is that due to the drug? The placebo effect? Natural progress? Maybe I'd be even better without the drug.

But that's all theory; before we mess with people's lives, we need evidence.

The problem with fentanyl is the dosage is in the micro-gram range which is why so many opiate addicts die from it. You simply can't gauge the dosage with such a powerful compound with any sort of accuracy.

I suspect that many psychiatric illnesses are indicative of metabolic disorders, and/or malnourishment. An effort to apply the findings of physiology to psychiatric practice would certainly lead to an Understanding that would allow effective treatments to become mainstream.

> Branding these people as criminals and throwing them in prison is outright cruel.

In the future the 'war on plants' will certainly be recognized as a crime against humanity, or at least as society's autoimmune disease.

A girl I work with moved house a couple of years ago, to move in with some cool people who invited her out to cool parties. To fit in she tried the cocaine, then moved on to buying her own to share with her best friend. Roll on two years and her life is as good as over. Bearing in mind that she is just a workmate, not the love of my life or a relation, however, finding out that she has moved on from cocaine to crack has been the most shocking thing that has happened to my life. Today she has conjunctivitis which is a progression of what kept her off work last week - some grizzly puss filled sores in her throat and ears. Obviously it is just a flu and not because she has wiped out her sinuses by smoking/snorting cocaine.

As mentioned I have seen these white powders around all my life, if I think now how lucky I was to be naive enough to not take the path of my workmate, otherwise I would be done over a dozen times by now!!! Only now in seeing the descent of my workmate have I learned what these things do. I am now wondering how the marriages and jobs worked out with those people I saw along the way with the white powders at parties, maybe I saw them at the stage my workmate was at a couple of years ago, seemingly in control.

I have had to read 'Beyond Addiction' to personally cope with the one-person humanitarian crisis that I only learned of three months ago. I can already see how the next stage gets progressed to, my workmate has nightmares and awful sleep, I believe that 'benzos' help with that or there is also the heroin mix. So then there is the descent into homelessness and prostitution, then the legendary rock bottom where a methodone script can be my workmate's existence for the rest of her days.

I would do anything to save my workmate but it is already too late. If she lasts three months in work then that will be a miracle. With a 'payday loans' existence as it is the fall is going to be out of control crazy stuff.

Essentially her problem is a triple onion of the childhood hurt, the drug itself and the scene of 'happy party people' that she 'has a good time with'. She thinks that if she can solve the childhood hurt then everything will be great but she ignores the elephant in the room.

The disease she has is 'addiction' and there is no cure. It makes no difference whether she is on cocaine or opiates because the journey is the same. It is a horror movie and it really does affect more than just the addict.

How much safer would 'recreational users' be if they had a legal, clean (pure), supply and a place to use it where they are monitored?

As the parent posts have said, the above combined with help for getting out of the hole in the same place would probably be more effective. It would /ALSO/ be the most effective way of defeating the criminals that make money off of the drugs; by depriving them of sales.

It depends. Someone looked at PDE5 inhibitors (i.e. Viagra) purchased from online pharmacies and found that their products were accurately labeled. They were "own-brand" and from a clandestine lab, however the product was what is claimed to be. But these pharmacies rely on repeat customers and word-of-mouth, that encourages them to be responsible.

Dunno about opiates. If the customers seek consistent quality and use a "research chemical" website instead of a guy on a street corner this may actually be a step in the right direction, you get consistent quality, and opiate addicts with a regular supply of drug are surprisingly functional.

The patent literature is vast and the pharmacology established. You don't have to resort to the kind of experimentation that Shulgin did when he worked on phenethylamines (i.e. amphetamines).

Anecdotally the issue of potentially fatal heroin doses from fentanyl adulteration came up in a citizen's police class I took in Houston. One of the officers there claimed drug dealers don't mind accidentally killing the occasional customer because it puts word on the street that the dealer has really potent product. Who knows if that's really true but it's an interesting theory, anyway.

I can almost guarantee, if you get a drug in the mail chances are its a research chemical that will probably get you high, but NOBODY knows what the long term effects are.