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Comment by ewzimm | Hacker News Reader

I have been prescribed opiates like hydrocodone before, and I can guarantee that they significantly affect your thinking. I'm not sure how anyone could argue otherwise. They are worse than being drunk. Is that really something that people debate? Opiates don't impair your thinking? Am I responding to a robot astroturfer?

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First off let me state this, I believe Marijuana should be legal. But I also believe that all drugs should be legalized and distributed by a doctor and not available at a pharmacy for anyone under 21. Having said that opiate users/addicts are surprisingly functional unlike those under the influence of Marijuana imo. I got shoulder surgery two days before my final exams in my senior year of college and then proceeded to get A's on every exam without any problems concentration or other side effects. I never could have done that on Marijuana. But the real problem with the recent efforts to legalize Marijuana is that it is promoting the fallacy that it is a panacea and has no side effects and can just magically cure all diseases when in reality the recent research is showing quite the opposite.

http://jn.sfn.org/press/April-16-2014-Issue/zns01614005529.p...

http://schizophreniabulletin.oxfordjournals.org/content/earl...

http://www.nature.com/npp/journal/v38/n12/full/npp2013164a.h...

Well I'm suprised to see these responses. Even studies show opiate treated patients have better cognitive performance (due to pain reduction, presumably). The head of Germany's air force was a morphine addict. Plenty of addicts are outed and go on to admit their "problem", yet they were functioning fine.

Apart from people getting nauseous or passing out from opiates, I've never heard people complaining about not being able to think. (Sample size ~30). In fact, I've heard the opposite, that opiate treatment improves their ability to think. Whereas with pot, it seems most people are seeking a mental state that doesn't encourage detailed concentration.

Try looking at people's pupils as you go about your day. Doctors, lawyers, executives... I've seen plenty of people with pinned pupils but no obvious signs of cognitive impairment.

You definitely don't seem like a robot, but your initial comment was similarly surprising to me. From personal experience, I would say that it's entirely possible to act normally under the influence of opiates while being completely affected by them. I think it's more a flaw in the way we judge people. At high doses of opiates, a person will be incapacitated, but at low doses, I still had my motor skills but felt like an entirely different person, like half my brain was blocked. I compensated, of course, but I was painfully aware that I was compensating, and I was often acting out of memory of how I would have responded rather than naturally reacting to things. For me, it was more like destruction of feelings and higher thinking while maintaining basic memories and reactions to things. I could be completely logical while emotionless and lacking any larger perspective or analysis. Maybe that kind of attitude is just considered normal now.

I think weed makes people think more abstractly but opiates destroy feeling and complex thoughts.

Opiates surely affect judgment by adding a positive spin. Similar to how one's judgment is affected when things are going well (say, a fantastic start to a relationship). But I was referring to analytical thinking, not more subjective feeling.

I can and have written a search engine/database while on opiates. I doubt I could implement cat on pot.

I believe you, but I think we are talking about two different kinds of impairment. I'm sure there are also effects of tolerance to be able to program on opiates, and different people will react differently. The positive spin is something I never experienced. I got the opposite negative perspective on everything.

So will agree that it is probably easier for most people to think analytically on low doses of opiates rather than cannabinoids, but I think there are other aspects of mental blocks that manifest strongly on opiates, at least for myself.

I'm an ex heroin addict who was considered a functional addict. I kept it hidden for 6 years. It's not like alcohol at all, in terms of impairment, in my experience. Hell, I'm working an amazing job doing innovative things while on suboxone, as I have been for the past two years.

Just one anecdote, but I felt surprisingly clear-headed when I took oxycodone. Aside from feeling more relaxed and optimistic than normal, I didn't feel any of the fuzziness I feel when drunk. Maybe an external observer would have disagreed; I wasn't really interacting with people or attempting any mentally-taxing exercises.

There are lots of other downside to opioids, of course, such as dizziness during physical activity and addiction.

I can argue otherwise. I didn't have that effect, and still don't despite being on suboxone. Depends on the person.

All I've ever felt on opiates is pleasantly tired.

Of course, marijuana doesn't really impair me much either. Or alcohol for that matter. My ability to handle intoxication is sometimes distressing.

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