Comment by consonants | Hacker News Reader

Comment by consonants | Hacker News Reader

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Recovering opiate addict here, I guess I'd fit your definition of having a "real addiction[sic]". I just want to chime in and say the defining attribute of addiction isn't whether or not something is physically addictive, but whether or not the behavior is negatively impacting your life and you can't stop on your own aka psychological addiction. I've been through opiate withdrawals dozens of times, while I had the urge to use my WANT to be clean was enough to bare the brunt of the pain. Physical withdrawals weren't the reason I relapsed after kicking (as I had obviously returned to a endogenous opioid (receptor) balance), it was the psychological dependence that crept back into my life when I was stressed. It's that pattern of addictive behavior in response to emotions that is the problem, not receptor downregulation and cessation of production endogenous neurotransmitters or what have you.

Remember your criteria for addiction doesn't match that of the medical community's, and for good reason.

>it was the psychological dependence that crept back into my life when I was stressed. It's that pattern of addictive behavior in response to emotions that is the problem

Very well put. I am no expert in this subject, but it feels to me that the web is taking advantage of this pattern a little too much.

I am not just talking about porn, its social networks, video sites, gaming sites, aggregators all of which are being engineered to optimize for engagement.

Definitely, if you want to see an extreme example of it take a look at Tumblr. The echo-chamber nature of the site leads to a positive feedback loop of certain illnesses. In this case I'm thinking of pro-anorexia content of that site being reblogged compulsively and the new content that spawns from such influence is ghastly and viral.

Ask any serious WoW player how the game has impacted their life. From what people have told me, the social relations in-game are such that one becomes reliant on a group and vice-versa to advance in the game. Soon those reliances become responsibilities that start to overshadow real life.

Some anime is specifically drawn and written to take advantage of the type of person that would obsessively envelope themselves into their favorite anime's branding. Do a google image search for otaku, and you will immediately see the kind of profits people peddling 50 different editions of the same figurine must be raking in.

Take a look a bluelight.ru and erowid. The former is a forum for discussion of psychoactives the latter a index of chemicals and experience reports submitted by users. Instead of the harm reduction espoused, it encourages dangerous behavior in the name of 'sharing research'; which is just ingesting what could be a chemical without much human research and just writing about it. One wouldn't be compelled to put themselves in such a position if it wasn't normalized and encouraged by a community that was warped by a pattern of addictive behavior.

Grouphug.us is another example. Reddit certainly is as well. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc all provide that supplemental 'reward' of positive human interaction without the human component. Your brain isn't stupid, when actual human interaction doesn't provide the reward you WANT, it will learn where it can get it. Psychological addiction is quite the beast.

So before people were writing about it on the internet no one was doing drugs in a stupid way? As anecdotal evidence, I know a variety of people using cold water extraction of APAP on tehir opiates that would never have done so without reading about it online, perhaps saving their livers. I think communities like bluelight and erowid are indispensible resources for people to educate themselves about the positives and negatives of various substances, especially so given that the abstinence-only campaigns around substances in many countries (think DARE in the US) are full of so much misinformation and encourage the irresponsible use of drugs by basically declaring them all the same, as "bad".

No, but before the internet the realm of completely untested novel psychoactive chemicals was confined to certain circles of chemists, academics, psychiatrists, and social commentators/reformers. The first person to test 2C-* series was Shulgin, and only after systematic titration on himself did he ever think of sharing his discoveries. Today it is a little different.

Today, someone can find a lab willing to synthesize a chemical for very cheap with the intention of selling it for a huge profit online. That person then posts on a board such as bluelight or erowid, where the first introduction of its ABUSE is documented. Users of the board are attracted to the novelty of the new substance, and are encouraged by the community to follow the behavior of 'researching and sharing' by acquiring said substance, ingesting, and then relaying back to the board about the experience. They are likely some of the first people in all of history to ingest the substance. If you don't think this is inherently dangerous behavior I don't know what to tell you. I don't think it detracts from their goal of harm reduction, but that element of the community exists and I do think it warrants more scrutiny than immediately dismissing my argument.

If you want to read a well researched book on the phenomenon, pick up Drugs 2.0 by Mike Power. It's on amazon's UK site.

Sure, but at least people are sharing information, trying to shut down sketchy drug makers in China putting out adulterated product, teaching basic purification techniques, talking about drugs to stay away from (lots of MXE addiction stories and MCAT horror stories on bluelight). I know a fair amount of people that ingest grey-market research chemicals. I don't think any of them have any illusions that what they are doing is "safe". But then again, alcohol is quite physically dangerous, has a bad addiction profile, and makes people do far more stupid and dangerous things that many more mind-altering drugs. There's lots of people doing unsafe things in the pursuit of hedonism or escape.

As long as quasi-legal analogues and new substances are going to be sold as cheap highs in head shops and adult video stores and the like, which they most certainly are now that more and more designer drugs are being produced everyday, I certainly want knowledgable people sharing their bad, and good experiences with others.

If some people enjoy beta-testing new substances knowing their long-term safety profile is completely unknown, would you rather it be done completely in the dark, or at least with ideas of dosage ranges, knowledge of warning signs of overdose,etc etc.

While it's clear that Shulgin was more responsible than a lot of budding teenage psychonauts, that's not always the case (Lilly's use of ketamine comes to mind), and it's not clear what he was doing was inherently less dangerous. He was often the first person in history to test a substance.

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