Comment by MichaelGG | Hacker News Reader

Comment by MichaelGG | Hacker News Reader

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Opiates can have massively positive value and transform people's lives. Addicts include Howard Hughes, an impressive engineer, and Hermann Göring, a rather successful politician and decorated commander. Oxycontin is massively prescribed, and not all of it is going to highly-visible junkies. It's powering lawyers, doctors, engineers, and many other people that derive high value from it and make valued contributions to society.

While not as physically safe as LSD, opiates have essentially no serious long-term health effects other than constipation. The major downside is the highly visible acute respiratory depression after overdose.

Edit: Speed is used by tons of people, and Paul Erdos said it gave him inspiration (though methamphetamine might have more downsides than other amphetamines, similar to how barbiturates are rather outclassed by benzodiazepines - but that's hardly reason to outlaw it). Many artists have used cocaine to their benefit. I'm all for psychedelics, but don't pretend that other medicines don't have plenty of value.

Was Howard Hughes addicted to opiates when he was building/developing most of his things? I was under the impression that addiction only really set in once he became a recluse.

Fair enough, it seems that was after his most productive parts. (The same isn't true for Goering, even if his productivity was in the opposite direction to our preference.) Though part of my point is that it's not just broken junkies using. Opiate treatment can provide positive value to even the richest, most powerful people, and they are not persecuted.

Perhaps another example is Keith Richards, who says heroin helped him and he doesn't regret it (and then, do we measure the positive impact such music has on other people?). Although dipping into artists for drug use is perhaps too easy of examples.

Goerig and Hughes? Hughes became seriously addicted after his plane crash and spent the rest of his life a recluse, no doubt fueled by a combination of drug use and mental illness. This is an individual who wouldn't bathe for weeks (or more) at a time, peeing in bottles and other quite unusual behavior. I think it is fair to say only his enormous wealth shielded him from being a 'broken junkie' as you say.

Goering was forcibly institutionalized for six months due to his morphine addiction. During his institutionalization he was strait-jacketed due to his violent behavior to the staff. He was already a leader of the NASDP that this time, having been injured during the Beer Hall Putsch.

He gained an enormous amount of weight and his behavior was viewed as increasingly bizarre and erratic over the course of his 'career'. He didn't quit until be was forced after his arrest and imprisonment at Nuremberg, where I believe he quickly lost 80-100 pounds.

It is really unclear how either of these individuals represent an example of the positive power of opiates. At best they seem to have managed to hang on despite their addition to opiates.

No comment on Keith Richards :)

The information that I had read years ago was that the ____amphetamines essentially bundled multiple amphetamine molecules into a single molecule for more rapid transit across the blood-brain barrier, and that the non-amphetamine breakdown products were extreme vasoconstrictors and possibly had other neurotoxic effects. This information is extremely dated, but is probably still valid.

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