Elisabella
Posts: 3939
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quote:
ORIGINAL: kdsub quote:
ORIGINAL: Elisabella I think our biggest disconnect is that you think that addiction and insanity/dysfunction are intertwined. That if someone is a heroin addict, they will be dysfunctional, even if the heroin they use is legal and easily acquired. I disagree. I've personally known functional methadone addicts. You really need to do some research and see the damage heroin does to the body...should I post some again? We are talking heroin here not methadone. As I've stated before methadone is for rehabilitation of addicts not a life long substitute. The two drugs are different…one deadly… the other much less so. Again we are talking free heroin not methadone. Given a choice which do you think the addict would take. If they supplied free methadone to addicts I would be all for it… So methadone does not enter into the heart of our discussion. Butch Again, doing things that damage the body doesn't necessarily mean a person can't live a functional or productive life. Cigarette smokers are probably the best example of this, though there are also many obese people who are able to get up and go to work every day. Methadone is just as lethal as heroin is if an overdose is taken. The reason that there are fewer methadone overdoses than heroin overdoses is twofold - the "purity" of the methadone is constant, and tolerance is monitored by the nurses who administer it. An opiate naive person who buys a bottle of methadone on the street could overdose, just as easily as they could overdose on heroin. Methadone Maintenance Treatment programs are often used as lifelong substitutes for heroin. Methadone detox programs use methadone in the short term to ease withdrawal symptoms and taper down to no opiate use at all. MMT programs on the other hand are designed to stabilize the addict at a set dosage so they are able to resume normal life function. The goal is stability, not detoxification. MMT programs have people who have used methadone for decades, there is no pressure to get them "clean" because that's not the goal. For the record, methadone does get you high. When I was on it, my own experience was similar to snorting a small amount of heroin. The opiate warmth was definitely there. That's why suboxone treatment is so heavily pushed now - there's a general idea that a person should not be able to enjoy their addiction. Even suboxone though can get a non addict high. That being said, I still believe that what a person puts into their body is their own business, even if it hurts their body. And for the record, most problems caused by heroin use, aren't actually caused by stable heroin use, but rather things like overdose, needle sharing, and unsafe, unregulated adulterants. The opioid itself is not the main problem. If you compare the effects of opiates (dependence, constipation, menstrual irregularity, infertility, loss of sex drive, sadness, cognitive impairment) with the effects of adulterants (collapsed veins, tetanus, abscesses, damage to the heart, lungs, liver and brain) it would seem to me that legalizing heroin and regulating what can be added to it would mean that the only long term effects are non-life-threatening. Short-term effects Apart from overdosing, the major problem of short-term use of any opiate is the way it is used. For example, injecting heroin can result in skin, heart and lung infections, and diseases such as hepatitis and HIV. Long-term effects In its pure form, heroin is relatively non-toxic to the body, causing little damage to body tissue and other organs. However, there are some long-term effects, including dependence, constipation, menstrual irregularity and infertility in women, loss of sex drive in men, intense sadness and cognitive impairment. Many of the other long-term problems may be the result of other factors, such as the person's poor general self-care, drug impurities and contaminants, and blood-borne viruses. Heroin is usually a mixture of pure heroin and other substances, such as caffeine and sugar. Additives can be highly poisonous. They can cause collapsed veins, tetanus, abscesses and damage to the heart, lungs, liver and brain.
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