Comment by mruts | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mruts | Hacker News Reader

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Heroin doesn't have any neurotoxicity profile to speak of. It's safer than almost another other drug for your brain (assuming you don't overdose and have oxygen-deprivation, of course)

Moreover, it only harms your veins if you shoot it.

It is addictive and tolerance forming, but that's about the only downside.

Let's take myself for example. I have a good salary and used to spend maybe 40k/year on heroin. That's a big cost for sure, that's why I quit. But because I could afford to do it, there weren't any other downsides. In fact, there were a lot of upsides.

I worked harder and longer than any of my coworkers could even dream of. I could pump out high quality code for 20 hours straight. No one knew I was addicted to anything. In fact, over the 2 years I was addicted I got promoted and got huge bonuses every year for being a quote "killer".

People think the common social effects of heroin (stealing, homelessness, etc) are inherent to the drug itself, but that simply isn't true. These negative effects have more to do with the laws and culture we have built up around the drug, not the drug itself.

Nitpick, but, heroin hasn't been ruining lives for "centuries." It wasn't even invented a hundred years ago.

I'm happy that you kicked the addiction and I think your arguments around the mischaracterization around the behaviour commonly associated with Heroin are spot on (and probably apply to many other drugs as well).

What I'm in disagreement with, is the stance that "as long as one is self-sustainable and does a good job", there's no real problem to it". Now that might not be what you wanted to say, but I think it's a reasonable enough reading of the text.

I have many friends who are addicted to Cannabis, who all have good jobs and do good work. But compared to other friends I feel I can see a certain lack of grander, more personal ambitions. Now I might just be confusing the direction of the correlation here, and Heroin is probably a whole different beast. I guess, I just want to say there's more to life. And some drugs might open certain doors in your mind to deeper meaning, but my (limited) observations lead me to the conclusion that addiction to drugs tends to be more of a door-closer.

"Let's take myself for example. I have a good salary and used to spend maybe 40k/year on heroin. That's a big cost for sure, that's why I quit. But because I could afford to do it, there weren't any other downsides. In fact, there were a lot of upsides."

I knew a guy like that. He took heroin and cocaine and was highly functioning in his professional life. His private life was a mess though. From time to time he disappeared for a week or two but professionally he did ok. But over a few years he got more erratic and things started to fall apart.

Based on that experience I think there are a lot of drug addicts around but nobody notices. Especially in upper management I suspect a lot of people are on something to keep up with pace.

"lot of drug addicts around but nobody notices"

Everybody notices. Nobody talks about it. I hope you understand you are one of the lucky ones, and that it eats people and family alive. Social programs and mental health programs ... social workers involved in that area could probably write books. It's a horrible, horrible drug. I never said it was neurotoxic. It just is just a big old dopamine button and it's incredibly difficult for many people to not let it consume them (to the point of stealing and lying from whomever is necessary). The tolerance that builds up and the pain of withdrawal make people do things they would never do otherwise. A really substantial number of people can't self regulate opiates (Prince, Tom Petty, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and 70,000 other people per year) and dealers can and will trap regular people in addiction to the maximal extent they can. If it's legal, it will only get worse.

"If it's legal, it will only get worse. "

All the stuff you wrote also applies to alcohol and there we decided a long time that prohibition doesn't work.

I think that ignores how much worse heroin is than alcohol on every metric under typical usage and in the aggregate. We have prohibition all over the place. We prohit murder. We prohibit drunk driving even though we allow drinking. There is no obvious dividing line between what drugs should be illegal, regulated, or how much regulation (of which prohibition the maximal subset). Unless you don't think it should be illegal to give heroin to a baby, for example, then we are already talking about degrees of regulation. Talk of prohibition is useless. Do you want a Nordic model of highly regulated, decriminalized? Because that is a whole different ballgame.

I really don't care about the policy that much, either, I just wanted to strongly push back on people minimizing the dangers of heroin. It is a lethal, life destroying drug and it's one of only a few I would strongly advice people to never even try once, regardless of legality. If I can convince a single HN commenter to avoid it, then I'm happy.

" Do you want a Nordic model of highly regulated, decriminalized? "

Yes this would allow addicted people to participate in normal life openly and allow for therapy options. Prison is very expensive so that money could be shifted to treatment.

BTW, don't minimize the dangers of alcohol. Alcohol is often involved in traffic accidents, domestic violence, and gun deaths. It also has a lot of negative health effects. A huge number of people die from alcohol every year.

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