to wonder how good heroin must feel

[complexnumber]

I've tried lots of recreational drugs over the years, but never heroin
But what is it about the 'hit' heroin gives you that makes you want it again... and again...

The major issue i have w/ illegal drugs now is the corruption, death and abuse in the chain of supply.

Absolutely. I'm more aware of these issues now than I was 20 years ago and would never take anything illegal because of this.

plus I'm really old and boring now and no-one would dream of offering me any

Interesting reading - the experiences put me off most of them:

www.erowid.org/psychoactives/psychoactives.shtml

I've been curious about heroin too but the physical addiction and general health risks make it a complete no-no for me.

Illegal drugs are a very large part of the world economy, you might say that wanting to get high is pretty deep rooted in human nature.

I don't really see how buying drugs is that much different than having an excessively large C02 footprint, being that the effects of global warming hit the poor and vulnerable the hardest.

Unless you're living off the grid, you're probably contributing to someone's misery somewhere. Modern times we live in.

Why would anyone want to know that?

try it once and you are hooked.

I've seen the results of heroin. It becomes top priority above EVERY THING else, including food and family. Shoplifting becomes a way of life.

It takes YEARS to come off. Methadone is worse than heroin.

Find your local drug and alcohol centre and ask them or ask an emaciated, pale toothless person with a vacant look.

Heart, yes, I've found David Nutt to be quite interesting on these matters, he manages to side step all the 'moral panic' and takes a rational and pragmatic approach.

No Branleuse it's not. That statement smacks of naivety. It's actually not that easy to become physically addicted. I took it for a reasonable amount of time including injection and did no become physically addicted.

Mental addiction is a different thing though. And if you are vulnerable and in mental pain you can become psychologically addicted from the first hit. Which is why it's overwhelmingly people who have other problems who become addicted to it.

It's not like cocaine or MDMA which takes a person from a normal state to a heightened one which can be taken for fun. It takes bad feelings away and replaces them with good ones. Normal well balanced people who take drugs are extremely unlikely to become addicted to heroin because they don't have the psychological need to remove the pain.

I have personal experience of it, I have friends who have overcome addictions to it and some people who I once called friends are still on it with habits of more than a decades standing. I've also in recent years had quite some contact with addicts through my. Work in the NHS.

Overwhelmingly heroin addicts are people with a long history of problems. They've often been failed by their parents, the care system and the NHS before they get addicted.

Even recovery for many people is simply long term methadone use because their problems are simply too painful to deal with.

Believe me, children with normal in traumatic backgrounds will not one day wake up, smoke some heroin and then become hopeless addicts. There's normally years and years of problems before they come to that point.

can't believe that so many idiots are singing the praises of drugs - you know, the industry that involves people trafficking, prostitution, mass murder, addiction and all round misery, not to mention funding terrorism

Through your hugely ignorant statement you do hit on a key point. The illegality drives a corrupt market, the 'war on drugs' has done nothing to take drug revenues out of the hands of criminals. Another reason why decriminalising and controlling substances to some extent would be beneficial.

I would never advocate people take drugs. All I can say is that, in my experience, drug use can be an amazing and mind-expanding and life-enhancing experience. There's a fine line between drug use and drug ab use though, and when the line is crossed its hard to come back from that.

I know a lot of people that like taking drugs ( coke, MDMA, mushrooms mainly) and as we get older the frequency and amount is tailing off. I don't know anyone with a problem. We are all intelligent and highflying professionals with solid family backgrounds and are in normal, loving and long term relationships. We would be your poster- child of respectability, if you ignore occasional weekend or Ibiza/Glasto activities.

Ah, to be back in uni again and not have to consider required Monday morning work performance as a limiting factor to Saturday night fun.

As an aside, taking prescribed drugs eg diazipam or transform while in pain produces a very different effect from taking them 'recreationally'. The impact of drugs varies from person to person substantially based on your current state of mind and predisposition to effects.

Or transform? Bloody phone. Was trying to say morphine.

In my very non-scientific study I note a strong correlation between high IQ and enjoyment of hallucinogens.

On reflection, I have just realised that it has been over 20 years since I last had any illegal drugs.

I have not even heard of some of the stuff being mentioned on this thread!

I suppose that's a good thing

I've had morphine in hospital. It makes you feel warm calm and lovely and slightly woozy. I could so be a heroin addict if is been born into different circs.

The Stuart Walton book I linked to upthread is full of fascinating studies and information about the urge to experience life through an altered consciousness.

I would say that this is unique amongst secondary drives in that taken too far it will supercede those primary drives that are in place to keep us alive- the need to drink, eat, sleep and procreate.

Thus the secondary drive to get loaded ends up masquerading as a primary one. It falls to the bottom layer of Maslow's Hierarchy Of Needs from a purely subjective point of view.

The role of the therapist? In part it is to push it back up again so the user can attend to the life maintaining and enhancing activities of daily life.

Walton writes of an experiment designed to look at how drug intoxication affects social functioning in tiny shoal fish. What was expected was that the non intoxicated fish would reject the intoxocated ones. What actually happened was that the intoxicated fish isolated themselves en masse. I found this interesting as applied to the culture that can develop around drug use and the use of each particular drug-The fashions, tastes in music, lifestyle, philosophical and cultural viewpoints and how a user identifies as part of a 'tribe'.

The allure of drugs for some is of course the formation of a 'family group' or social group within their using circle when they may well come from a very dysfunctional and loose family structure. This can be very comforting and seductive even with the associated tensions and considerable stress factors an addiction places upon both individual and group.

"a strong correlation between high IQ and enjoyment of hallucinogens"

I've got a high IQ, DD is genius level, I've never felt the need to use drugs, not even normal cigarettes, DD didn't touch drugs at University, she thinks drug users are pathetic, as do I.
I can understand people with no hope and miserable lives using drugs, I can't understand intelligent professionals, for it to be normalised like it is on this thread is quite sickening.
You can expand your mind and enhance your life by doing useful and productive things, not by being selfish and stupid.

If you could see through your red haze, you might consider the possibility that the IQ/drug intake comment was a bit tongue in cheek.

Crowler .

Plenty of people can multi task- they can use recreationally and be high functioning professionals w/ happy well adjusted high functioning non drug using children......

I was told that you know all those little everyday aches and pains that you just live with? They all go and you feel wonderful.

Pretty terrible come downs though.

life becomes hopeless and miserable through drugs. sometimes it starts out that way but not always. it provides a wonderful buffer between self and the world, hence the desire to continue that.
I have worked with substance misusers. Imagine the variety of people you see as you walk down a street and that is the profile. no given predetermination I would also dismiss the "addictive personality" argument. some change, do change, others don't through selfishness and fear of what awaits them.
crack is just fucking nasty and sucks the life out of humans. Keith RIchards has successfully navigated a life on heroin as he was possibly having Rolls Royce quality, not the blend of baking soda, brick dust and god knows what else there is in it. I personally think he made it glamorous in a way most users don't experience him.
Haing said all that, I have codeine for ongoing back problems. some days it is worse than others and my body greets the codeine with a joy and warmth that scares me. It might be because the pains go, or just it feels lovely.
Seeing suppurating ulcers, legless users who have injected just once too often into the groin or the people reduced to filling a 10ml barrel (minus a needle) and popping it up their anal passage (as they do not have asingle vein left....heroin holds no glamour for me.....though codeine (which is converted to morphine in the liver) is a part of my life. Am I a hypocrite? OFten think it.

I do find it interesting that most people I know who have come off a very addictive drug such as heroin and alcohol tend to replace it with something which provides a similar kind of fulfilment. For example religion (I have heard a few ex-addicts credit "finding God" with their ability to let the substance abuse go) and my mum is fairly into the spiritual healing "scene" and apparently, a lot of ex-addicts find that they get a similar feeling from healing as they did from being on the drug.

This thread is so fascinating.

This thread makes me so worried about my sons. If grown women are wondering what a stupid drug makes them feel like, what are we to expect from young impressionable teenagers.

I have never tried any drug. I have no interest in trying any, never.

There's a huge difference between wondering what something is like and wanting to try it.

I have often wondered what it would feel like to die, doesn't mean I'm suicidal!

We can be interested, theoretically, in what it would feel like to take a drug, without having any interest, practically, in taking it.

Like wondering idly what it's like to be a foot taller or have a penis.

People wonder all sorts of things all the time.

If you could see through your red haze, you might consider the possibility that the IQ/drug intake comment was a bit tongue in cheek

Yes it was ;-)

It's an extremely small sample size of about 10 with massive selection bias!

Anyway BelaLugosisShed you mistake correlation with causation, tsk tsk not very clever of you. I didn't say being a genius makes you want to try drugs. Just that out of the people I know (who already take drugs) those that are the most interested in hallucinogens typically have the highest IQs.

I think it's interesting as the common myth would be that only idiot and sad people take drugs. Which isn't my experience at all.