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Comment by collyw | Hacker News Reader

Anecdotally a friend who travelled a lot in India told me that most Rickshaw drivers are take heroin.

It wouldn't really surprise me as it looks like a damn tough life that they have.

I used to be addicted to heroin and honestly, the drug is amazing. The mental and physical clarity it gives you is downright unbelievable. For me the problem was never heroin itself (I worked harder on it, I was less anxious and happier) but the cost and the risk of it’s illegality. If heroin was the same price per pound as other agricultural products like beans or flour, I don’t think I would ever quit. For me the problem lay entirely in the cost and the difficulty of procurement if I traveled or something. I think people would be surprised by the positive effects of heroin legalization on lifestyles and outcomes of addicted people.

I’m not saying addiction is good or whatever, but opiates taken properly are safer than Tylenol and without money being an issue I think would help a lot of people. People on heroin look kind of shitty not because the drug is hurting them, but because the cost is hurting them.

Seems like you are still addicted to heroin and just trying to rationalise things. Lets play devils advocate, lets say the problem really was cost and difficulty of procurement. Then rich people should have no issue with it, no? They have enough money and they usually have a trustworthy dealer around. In fact one can practically say that rich people live in world very similar to a world where drugs are legal, because (a) they can afford them and (b) the police do not bother rich people with drug searches nowadays. Should be great.

Of course what really happens is that a rich person takes more and more, gets more and more addicted and thus must take more for the same effect, until they take enough heroin to literally turn off their heart and they die, usually in their bathtub. How many people die from a tylenol overdose.

If you make heroin legal you just ensure the same fate reaches many more people. Perhaps we can make heroin legal for people already addicted but lets not kid ourselves that is just kind of a prolonged assisted suicide.

I have no doubt that you feel miserable and you felt much better on heroin, but that is a product of your addiction rather than anything else. Healthy people can feel mental and physical clarity without drugs.

> people would be surprised by the positive effects of heroin legalization on lifestyles and outcomes of addicted people.

This is true.

> opiates taken properly are safer than Tylenol

This is ridiculous.

>This is ridiculous

It's somewhat true. The amount of paracetamol needed to reduce severe pain can cause many health problems, while a low dose of opiates would manage the pain. With opiates, prolonged use is more of an issue.

So an opiate would be the safer option while getting a tooth pulled, but Tylenol would be safer for the recovery period.

Is it? I have seen Youtube videos mentioning large numbers of soldiers in Vietnam being addicted and being able to come off relatively easily when they got their normal life back.

(Saying that one of them might be one of the two Kurtzgesagt videos that they decided to remove afterwards).

Youtube videos aren't a source of truth or science.

YouTube videos might or might not be a source of truth and science

The same applies to comments on HN.

This sounds awful but i would say somewhat believable because many middle class people do coke regularly and apart from usually, picking a few kilos, they still look OK and keep their careers, families and the stuff. For sure it's not nearly as bad as if they were drinking. My ex is a writer and she was mostly writing on coke, she's as far from being a lost in life drug-addicted person as it gets, honestly i'm a lot closer to there with my alcohol abuse.

From my personal observations, I don't think coke is quite comparable to heroin. Heroin takes over a person's life in a much more scary way than coke. Heroin becomes the number one thing every day, before food, family, or any other concern. Granted, you can easily be a high functioning heroin addict, if the expense and acquisition are not concerns, but at a point, heroin merely makes you 'normal', and even slightly outside that window is a steep descent into withdrawal hell.

Coke is both better and worse. Not quite as addictive, but it seems to damage people more than heroin does (particularly mentally).

Isn't it only 10% of heroin users that become addicts?

Source? I know a few people who tried but did not become addicted, but i thought of them as more of an exception.

They definitely wouldn't if they were taking coke with the regularity and frequency an alcoholic drinks though.

The thing is, coke is slightly more dangerous, but quite a lot more physically addictive. It's hard to quit once that holds, though it's relatively easy to keep steady dosage as the euphoric effect is short lived.

Unlike cocaine, opiates would hurt productivity in general. There was a time when many people were addicted in China to opium...

Wars were and are fought over best growing grounds of many drugs.

The addictive and tolerance building effects of opiates are pretty bad. Heroin may make you feel better, but the withdrawal effects are horrific. Heroin legalization would help people get off the addiction. But it should not be done to encourage people take more opiates.

I remember some addiction treatment centers in certain countries (was it UK?) were allowed to prescribe opiates including heroin as part of program to wean people off it.

Is that gone as part of some stupid war on drugs or other?

Still true-ish - it's methadone rather than heroin.

From https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/healthy-body/drug-addiction-get...:

> If you're dependent on heroin or another opioid drug, you may be offered a substitute drug, such as methadone.

No, actual, real heroin is prescribed legally to some people:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/heroin-addic...

It's also used legally in the UK in paliative care for cases where it's easier to administer than morphine.

Medical opiates are legal and taken on doctor's orders, so typically 'properly'.

Somehow it didn't turn out so well. (Google 'opiate epidemic'.)

How hard was it for you to quit? Did you go to rehab?

I quit my job as a developer (because I knew I would get fired if I kept my lifestyle the same), broke the lease on my apartment and moved to my parents house for a month and got a doctor to give me suboxone. Am I a lot happier person now? For sure l. But I’m still addicted to opiates. Really the only difference is that now my opiates cost $100/month instead of $6000/month. If I could have gotten heroin for the same price I would never have quit, and honestly, probably feel better.

You say you are happier now, so why do you think you would feel better on heroin?

Because not being able to sleep at night because you don’t know whether to pay your rent or get enough heroin for two weeks is stressful. It’s not about the drug, it’s about the cost.

I did Cocaine with my girlfriend to give her company, a few months maybe.

Then I convinced her to give it up after I did so myself. Now it's long time, and we are clean.

Why did we stop? I always knew drugs are bad for us, they promote neurotoxicity and damage brain. I tried to make her understand this many times but one time she nearly died with drug overdose after that she changed and we quit.

Few changes I noticed is that I became lot less combative in my arguments, became less concerned about my political and religious beliefs.

And more or less, I lost the anexity issue I used to have.

Bad see effects? I do not know of any, I've good long term memory and I do not notice any change in that either.

I understand drugs are mind altering substance and possibly neurotoxic which could be fatal for our brain.

Worst thing is that, many people get addicted to these and are never able to walk out of addiction. Luckily, that was not our fate.

So I think not all people are addicted to drugs and many can quit it at will whenever they want.

Legalisation would be better, although you can buy any drug in Europe but problem is that if you are caught with it or you overdose then how do you call ambulance? Many would be terrified if they overdosed and will die.

Talking with my doctor friend in EU, he says you can deny that you took drugs and claim that someone else put that in your drink or something and the case ends there but how many know it?

Just as in interesting sidenote - heroine(diamorphine) is actually used legally as pain relief in some countries, even UK uses it for palliative care.

I am aware of that. Apparently most of the damaging effects come from the crap it is cut with when buying street heroin. (Again just stuff I have read, no first hand experience).

Do you mean auto rickshaw, bicycle rickshaw, or hand rickshaw?

I assume he meant hand or bicycle rickshaws, but he didn't specify.

This is changing tho, now there is Electric Rikshaw, so you don't need stimulants.

Heroin is not a stimulant.

I thought that opiates were stimulant at lower doses. Sedative at higher doses.

Yes, you are right but the point stays. Now they'll not have aching body from hardwork.

Rickshaw also means motorcycle (usually cng) with a cabin, not just pedal powered.

I would have called that a tuk-tuk.

The place where I am in North India.

Those motor ones are called Vikram or Auto, and only manual one is called Riskshaw but now electric one is also called Rickshaw.

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