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As a (former? never say never) injecting drug user of Heroin, methamphetamine, and quite a few other water soluble substances, I fully agree with the parent comment.

I never bothered getting addicted to Heroin. You have to stick to the rules: never use more than two days in a row and don’t use it consistently, if in doubt half your dose, and never use alone but always with at least one other who knows how to administer breathing assistance until paramedics arrive. Don’t take your dose at the same time as your buddy, wait to see if the first user has trouble staying conscious, 15 to 20 minutes should do it.

Edit: fixed a word

Sensible and honest advice like this saves lives

Yes! And it works in practice:

A friend overdose in my loungeroom one evening. He’d taken a lot of Valium, a little bit of a alcohol, and then half the heroin I sold him. After a 15 minute argument he took the rest of the Heroin. I tried to tell him he’d already taken some but couldn’t remember.

Anyway, he started going a bit blue: Cyanosis. Became progressively and rapidly more difficult for him to speak and stay alert.

Called the ambulance, put him in the stable side position, watched his breathing, he was ok. Ambulance arrived, started administering breathing assistance and naltrexone. They commented he required a lot of naltrexone. He came to, they took him to hospital for observation over night. I rode with him in the ambulance and sat with him in hospital for a few hours.

No long term harm. Still friends, and I like to joke he owes me his life.

Friends don’t let friends die from overdosing on opiates.

Doesn’t that show how much easier it is to overdose on heroin than alcohol?

>Somehow the vast majority of people who take legal hard drugs such as vicodin or dilaudid, don't overdose on them. There's a culture built around taking these drugs responsibly according to their directions.

And yet there are tons of addicts on those:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opioid_epidemic

My understanding of the opioid crisis differs from what you've implied.

Typically, it starts with someone being prescribed opiates. Maybe they use them as prescribed, maybe they don't. If they don't, or they have the kind of genes or psychological issues that make it more likely for them to get hooked, they get hooked. Once they're addicted to the opiate, and discover how much cheaper heroin or fentanyl is on the street, compared to their oxy prescription, they start using them instead, upping their risk a ton.

From there it's all downhill unless the right kind of intervention happens, and the psychological issues underlying that addiction are resolved.

Because I can't edit my comment using this app:

A big contributing factor, I think, is the overprescription of opiates to treat pain when it isn't 100% necessary

I wonder how many overdoses were just suicides

My childhood best friend has been a heroin addict for perhaps a decade.

I’ve tried to help her over the years.

She tried going to an Ibogain clinic in Mexico and was sexually assaulted by a nurse while there. I paid for her to give it a second try for her and her boyfriend (also an addict) but after a few days clean they went back to their old life and relationships and couldn’t stay clean.

Her underlying trauma was sexual abuse as a teenager.

She’s spent most of her adult life living with her parents, using heroin, and committing petty crimes or doing sex work to stay high.

She told me that every time she’s OD’d, she knew she was going to and a part of her kind of took over and did more heroin than she knew she should but she just didn’t care.

She’s been brought back to life several times.

She’s still alive, so that gives me hope she might have some insight or be able to try Iboga again with a better supportive context for integration.

Her 10 year old son is going to have a lot of work to do as an adult to heal from this.

EDIT: as stated above, I belive in drug legalization with tax revenue going to Support free access to trauma healing centers for everyone along with an educational program that helps people understand the link between trauma and addiction.

> legal hard drugs such as vicodin

Isn't vicodin designed in such a way that the secondary ingredient would kill you before you'd get high on the primary one?

It does work that way but I don't know if it was intentional, acetaminophen is a very valid anti-inflammatory and (non-opiod based) painkiller.

I have no idea how Vicodin was designed; however, paracetamol (acetaminophen) wouldn't do that. It is liver toxic in higher doses, and can certainly kill your liver and you eventually, but that takes weeks.