Is weed consumption prevalent in PA, or what?

[DanaC]

There's always a good apple in every barrel.

very funny

[wolf]

Originally Posted by tw

Heroine is probably the most destructive recreational drug. Since heroine addicts most often are not 'cured' in their first drug therapy, then we make the victim into a criminal. Extremist conservative then say rehabilitation cannot work. One successful program for heroine addicts is heroine maintenance. They get a small daily dose which is usually enough to keep them productive and alive. But this is contrary to a political right wing agenda that says all drugs (except those who make campaign contributions) are evil. So yes, there is a major disconnect between drug laws and reality. When a mariguana user can get mandatory sentences equivalent to murder. Yes, there is a major disconnect between those making the laws and reality.

Bypassing your inability to spell "heroin" ...

First off, maintenance programs are nowhere near as successful as you seem to believe. Whether you provide maintenance doses of heroin itself or of the best-known heroin analog, methadone, you've still got an addiction. An addiction, incidentally, to a substance that requires higher and higher doses to get the same level of satisfaction from over time. The cravings are still there, and so are the withdrawal symptoms. Cramps. Sweats. Nausea. Chills.

It's like the hole in the water skin example ... you can keep pouring water into the skin with a hole in it, but by doing so, the hole becomes larger, and so you have to add the water at a faster and faster rate, until you reach the point at which the outflow is equal to the inflow.

Rehabilitation can work, but requires a strength of character that often, had the junkie had it from the get-go, would have kept them from starting use of the drug in the first place.

I see people who relapsed after 1 week, 1 month, 6 months, 1 year, 5 years of sobriety on a variety of drugs and/or alcohol. One of my repeat customers was a drug rehab counsellor, who had 10 years under his belt, and had helped a lot of other people become sober before his own relapse ... talk about a placement problem!! Try to find a rehab for a guy who can't go anywhere local because of the likelihood that he'd be hospitalized along with people that he had treated.

One of my most problematic heroin users was an adolescent girl. She'd started using when she was around 15 or 16 ... I started giving her evaluations to go to rehabs after she turned 18 (there's a different type of eval that I'm not certified in for adolescent placements). I evaluted and placed her at least five times, and I'm not the only professional she had approached. Her parents had taken her to this doctor in New Jersey who has a treatment which is generally very effective ... He places a Narcan implant into the patient's body, usually in the upper arm. Narcan is a heroin antagonist. It stops the drug from working. It's the same stuff that is given in an ER for a heroin OD. Brings you down QUICK. Anyway, the implant is surgically placed deep in the upper arm. This chick ripped the Narcan implant out of her arm.

Twice.

As far as the "most destructive drug" I'm going to have to vote for crack cocaine.

$1000/day crack habits are commonplace. $1000/day of heroin is rare, and for most people, fatal. Even the real stone heroin junkies rarely do more than a bundle a day, with most of them around the 4-5 bags a day IV level.

[xoxoxoBruce]

How many bags in a bundle?

[footfootfoot]

how many bundles in a peck?

[wolf]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

How many bags in a bundle?

Ten

[jane_says]

As someone who has gone through methadone treatment (and if this wasn't an anonymous internet message board, you can bet your ass you'd never hear me admit to it), I have mixed feelings about it. I was lucky enough to get a regualr doctor to prescribe it for me rather than going through a clinic. He had been treating me with Neurontin and extremely high doses of Librium, which did nothing but make me sleep constantly and feel even more depressed. At my next appointment I took him the huge bottle of Librium (there were over 400 capsules in it as I was taking 16 a day) and told him I was going to the methadone clinic. He became very upset, and told me I had no business in "that place" with "that kind" of people (he and my dad are buddies), and offered to prescribe it for me himself. I did 80 mg. a day for about 6 months, and weaned myself off it.
Coming off the methadone was FAR WORSE than coming off any other opiates, and my experience with them is far-reaching, long-lived and quite varied. I have never felt worse in my life than trying to quit that shit. Even though a two-week script was just $13 without using my prescription card (the doctor advised me not to use it and to go to a different pharmacy than I normally used), I found myself saving the scripts and buying the methadone for $10 a pill from a neighbor who was disabled due to a back injury who got it for pain. I knew if I had a brand-new shiny bottle of 54-142's, I'd be empty in a day or two. Buying it illegally made it easier for me to quit, even with my own prescription. My sinuses are completely shot forever from all the crap I put in them, and I'm lucky I didn't die.

As for the cop, meh. He just got caught. There are scores of others just like him who don't get caught. Smoking 5 times by breakfast sounds more like OCD than someone who likes to get high though.

[DanaC]

Thanks for sharing that with us Jane. I have a couple of friends who have had to make recourse to methadone programmes in recent years. Getting off an addictive substance is never easy, regardless of which method is used. I have a great deal of admiration for those who do it. Indeed I have admiration for those that try as well. Hell, quitting tobacco is hard enough to give me pause.

[wolf]

Replacing an addiction with another, less fun addiction, particularly one that still allows you to continue use of the addictive substance you're trying to get off of in the first place never made any real sense to me.

[jane_says]

On further reflection, this now seems like something I shouldn't have brought up even on anonymous message board. Even so, here we are.

Wolf, for me the methadone was my favorite. Even before I had my own script I would do it if I could get it. It wasn't less fun to me - it was more fun. It felt more like smack than anything else, and it kept me from getting sick for a day and a half. One of the main reasons I wanted to go on the methadone was that with my own script, it was certainly cheaper than the 300-400 mg. of pain pills I was taking.

I hear you about replacing one addiction with another. Methadone can be extremely dangerous. I know several people who have ODed on it, and several who have died. But for many people, it has been a lifesaver. It is possible to start taking it and never stop. I was scared of that happening to me. I knew if I wanted to take it indefinitely, there was no reason why I couldn't. That's what prompted me to wean myself off it. But I know that without it I'd not be where I am today.

[wolf]

You may have stopped using, but you didn't stop behaving like a junkie. You were getting meds either illegally (from friends who got them also) or from a doctor who was writing script under false pretenses ... primary/family care docs can write for methadone for pain under some circumstances, but aren't licensed for detox. In AA such folks are called "dry drunks." I don't know what the NA equivalent terminology would be.

All that being said, I hope your life is now better, and you remain stable and sober.

My hospital isn't licensed for methadone, but can get it under special circumstances from a local clinic, but the patient has to already be registered with that clinic in order to receive the doses.

[jane_says]

I resent you calling what I did to get off opiates "behaving like a junkie". It was the least junkie thing I did for years. I realize that in your line of work you are looking at the situation with a completely different perspective and indeed a completely different reality than the one I have known. Buying 20 mg. a day of methadone for $20 seemed to me a more intelligent decision than picking up a bottle of 1200 mg. for $13. It kept my price high and my quantity low, thereby decreasing my use. And there were absolutely no false pretenses involved in my receiving a prescription from the doctor - he knew the entire story. As far as doctors not being able to prescribe it, I have no idea what the law is, but I do know that he is the one who writes the methadone scripts for the inmates at two local jails. I know he didn't indicate in my records that he was treating me for pain, he indicated it was for addiction, because he had to turn over a copy of my file after we had a car accident and the insurance wanted to settle with us.

Isn't EVERYONE in AA a "dry drunk"? Why would they be there otherwise? Or do you just mean the ones who are bound to relapse because they don't have an affiliation with a "program"? I have a real problem with AA and many 12-step programs. Not everyone has the same needs. Not everyone sees themselves as "powerless" and in need of help from a Higher Power. I read some statistics the other day at my mother-in-law's house in a nursing magazine (she's an RN) about AA and other ways of dealing with addictions, like secular treatments and just going cold turkey. The numbers are all basically the same. I object to the herd mentality of AA, and the sentiment that people can't handle addiction of their own. Obviously not everyone can. Obviously 12-step programs don't work for everyone either, else we wouldn't have junkies and drunks at all. If AA or NA works for some people, that's great. Deciding to quit and taking the necessary steps FOR ME to do so is what it took for me. Your mileage may vary, naturally.

[xoxoxoBruce]

A couple I know joined AA about 4 or 5 months ago. It's working well for them because it gave them a new social circle to hang with and go places with, that don't drink. It would have been much harder, if even possible, to quit if they were hanging with the same old crowd.

[Cyber Wolf]

Originally Posted by jane_says

I have a real problem with AA and many 12-step programs. Not everyone has the same needs. Not everyone sees themselves as "powerless" and in need of help from a Higher Power. I read some statistics the other day at my mother-in-law's house in a nursing magazine (she's an RN) about AA and other ways of dealing with addictions, like secular treatments and just going cold turkey. The numbers are all basically the same. I object to the herd mentality of AA, and the sentiment that people can't handle addiction of their own. Obviously not everyone can. Obviously 12-step programs don't work for everyone either, else we wouldn't have junkies and drunks at all. If AA or NA works for some people, that's great. Deciding to quit and taking the necessary steps FOR ME to do so is what it took for me. Your mileage may vary, naturally.

Does AA actually tout themselves as The Solution for everyone with drinking problems they can't control or do they offer themselves as one solution of many?

[tw]

Originally Posted by wolf

First off, maintenance programs are nowhere near as successful as you seem to believe. Whether you provide maintenance doses of heroin itself or of the best-known heroin analog, methadone, you've still got an addiction. An addiction, incidentally, to a substance that requires higher and higher doses to get the same level of satisfaction from over time.

Therefore cigarette addicts must consume more cigarettes every year to get the same level of satisfaction?

That was the point of those successful programs in Netherlands and Swizterland. Heroine is an addiction that most will never be cured of. So heroin maintenance using a fixed, small dose, had a near 100% success rate. Another ignored point: with right wing George Jr extremists in power, we could never even perform such clinical experiments. Political rhetoric again being more important than science. Right wing rhetoric says if rehabilitation does not work the first time, then rehabilitiation does not work - which is why we spend many times more money on enforcement and punishment rather than on rehab. Your comments?

To get back on point - are you saying rehabilitation only works a first time or are you saying many must go through rehab as much as three or more times? Clearly rehab does not work because even a drug rehab counsellor fell off the wagon? Or are there real world politicans that want to deal with the fact that many will require multiple episodes of rehab?

Are you saying methadone is more successful because it replaces one addiction with another? Are you saying that crack cocaine addicts 10 out of ten and that heroin only addicts 9 out of ten?

Another fact we know even from the cigarette addiction companies - the earlier a person becomes addicted, then the more addicted they are for life. Cigarette drug pushers had a program to addict 8 year olds. How? They were test marketing nicotene laced candies when the program was uncovered by Hubert Humphrey's Jr, AG for MN. Cigarette drug companies had a program to addict more customers for life because younger addicts are the most problematic.

Yes a heroine addicted 15 year old will always be a problematic case based upon the history of addiction. The younger the addict, then the more likely that addict will 'fall off the wagon'.

[tw]

Originally Posted by wolf

First off, maintenance programs are nowhere near as successful as you seem to believe. Whether you provide maintenance doses of heroin itself or of the best-known heroin analog, methadone, you've still got an addiction. An addiction, incidentally, to a substance that requires higher and higher doses to get the same level of satisfaction from over time.

Therefore cigarette addicts must consume more cigarettes every year to get the same level of satisfaction?