"Addiction is a hideous condition, but it’s rare."
Is this a true statement for harder drugs?
Is this a true statement for harder drugs?
> Proportion of users that become dependent:
> Tobacco: 32-68%
> Alcohol: 15-23%
> Cannabis: 9% (30% of users with abuse or dependence)
> Cocaine: 17-21%
> Stimulants: 11%
> Anxiolytics (includes benzodiazepines): 9%
> Analgesics i.e. pain relievers: 8%
> Psychedelics: 5%
> Heroin: 23%
> Anthony, Warner, Kessler, 1994; Lopez-Quintero, Pérez de los Cobos, Hasin, et al., 2011
From what I understand, the addiction mechanism for heroin is more subtle then non users think. Its easy to try once, enjoy it, and then not be compelled to do it again. The problem is many users see the lack of negative experiences on their first use as sign that the drug is "safe", so they use a month later, and it still ok, so they quickly start to use most weekends, ramping up until they use every day.
Similar to you, an old boss of mine well experienced with drugs told me the only two drugs he would advise people against are heroin and crack. Heroin because you're always going to remember your first time and its amazing, and crack because you will be amazingly high for 10 minutes, crash, and really feel the insanely strong need to take another hit.
so you can trust me when i say there is no such thing as a "if you do it once youre hooked forever" chemical or certainly not in the 100+ unique psychoactive chemicals i have tried.
feel free to ask any questions you may have
That's not what dependence means. That could be an outcome. And each of those drugs has a different potential outcome from long term use.
Take for example the difference between marijuana and cigarettes. Cigarettes are much more addictive, and have clear evidence of causing lung cancer. It would seem logical that marijuana would also cause lung cancer, but there is not enough evidence to say for certain that it does.
So dependence on cigarettes can definitively kill you. Dependence on marijuana might make you less employable, but it's not certain that it might kill you.
Anyway, there is no data showing smoking marijuana causes lung cancer (rather, there is no high quality data. I'm sure some NIDA-funding scientists have found otherwise, but it's not considered correct).
The NSF review concluded that, at most, smoking marijuana causes respiratory problems, but not lung cancer. The only type of cancer positively associated with marijuana smoking was a form of prostate cancer, which happens to be easily treated.
1. What is the harm for different drugs once addicted? (health, possibility to lead normal life)
2. What percentage of people addicted can successfully quit?
I personally think what we are doing today is far worse than had we never done anything about drugs in the first place.
If it meant that, all drug users would become addicted every 10 days.
It actually means 1 in 10 drivers would total their car, over a lifetime.
https://erowid.org/chemicals/cocaine/images/archive/cocaine_...
Smoking crack feels essentially the same as cocaine, only the level of stigma is different.