• Ktanaqui@lemm.ee
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    8 months ago

    It’s way easier to kill yourself with opioids- accidentally or on purpose. That’s why it’s being treated like an epidemic.

    • dope@lemm.eeOP
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      8 months ago

      Death by opioids happens because you had to buy from a shady source. The law is to blame.

      Many more have died from alcohol than opioids.

      • Em Adespoton@lemmy.ca
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        8 months ago

        Death by opioids happens because you need an ever increasing dose to achieve the same effect. Eventually the dose required is higher than what’s needed to kill you.

        People turn to black market opioids because they’re often cheaper than prescription, and while the dose just keeps going up, so does the price, unless you can find a cheaper supplier.

        Cheaper suppliers are usually cheaper because they don’t have the same quality control, which again leads to accidental overdose or poisoning.

        Because alcohol isn’t directly addictive and the same concentration will usually have the same effect per body mass, it doesn’t carry these issues despite overdoses still being deadly.

          • CameronDev@programming.dev
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            8 months ago

            If you seperate “addiction” “addictive” into habit forming and dependancy, alcohol seems to be far safer in terms of habit forming (millions of people drink alcohol at without falling into dependancy), and far more dangerous in terms of dependancy (as you said, can kill you with withdrawal). (Edited to address typo/braindumb)

            My (and presumably the person you quoted) internal definition of addictive skews towards the habit forming side of things, so in that respect its correctish?

            • ShunkW@lemmy.world
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              8 months ago

              Habit forming and addiction are two different things entirely. Addiction is dependency.

              • CameronDev@programming.dev
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                8 months ago

                You’re right, i mis-typed, I meant addictive instead of addiction in that first sentence.

                Addiction is dependency, but addictive is used commonly to describe habit forming. That may not be medically accurate, but its how the word is commonly used. With that context, the statement “Alcohol is not directively addictive” is a reasonable statement.

                But you are correct, once you are addicted to alcohol, it is very dangerous.

                • ShunkW@lemmy.world
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                  8 months ago

                  Nope. Still not a reasonable statement. Alcohol is habit forming and addictive. I dunno why you keep trying to play semantics with nonsense arguments honestly.

        • sun_is_ra@sh.itjust.works
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          8 months ago

          am not a doctor myself but from what i know, the reason you increase the dose in first place is that your body build tolerance. if a normal person were to take same dosage as a long time drug addict they would die in minutes

          reasons for death of overdose:

          • someone went to rehab and lost their tolerance then went back to drugs with same dosage they used to take
          • someone missed a dosage and went through horrible withdrawal symptomps so when they finally got the pill they took too much
          • buying certain drug without knowing it is laced with a more powerfull one
          • Moobythegoldensock@lemm.ee
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            8 months ago

            You missed one: Chasing a bigger high.

            When people start dying of opioid overdoses, addicts tend to seek those suppliers out.

  • southsamurai@sh.itjust.works
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    8 months ago

    Well, I can’t honestly say that the question is stupid.

    The over-reaction to opiate over-use has been absurd. And it is true that with adherence to prescribed dosages and regular monitoring, opiates aren’t as bad as people think they are.

    That being said, they are among the most addictive substances out there, and without restraint and monitoring, they will het away from a significant segment of users.

    However, you’ve made the claim in comments that it’s people getting bad illegal drugs that’s the big problem. This simply isn’t the case. I’ve dealt with opiates from the outside and the inside. I took care of the disabled, injured, and dying for twenty years. That accelerated the ruin of my body, and I’m a chronic pain sufferer myself now.

    Even low dose stuff like vicodin can seriously fuck people up without any need for illegal access. People die from it. Long term use has predictable and nigh inevitable effects on the body and brain. When you’re inside that, it is far harder to monitor your own usage. As your tolerance increases, and you deal with reduced efficacy because of that, you run into an escalation that isn’t tenable.

    If they were OTC, you’d see massive jumps in hospitalizations and deaths, just from those less addictive forms. Hell, I lost patients to vicodin solely because they had a bad weekend pain wise, and lost track of what they were taking. I saw the log book one of them used to keep track, and over two days, it turned into a jumbled mess with the times becoming impossible. They were taking enough that they thought days were passing, but it was hours.

    That’s the worst case scenario, obviously, but that’s also the least dangerous version of opioids.

    You can’t just have unfettered access and expect anything else to happen. It would kill more people than it helped.

    Now, it is true that as tolerance and dependence build, those that switch to stronger versions, particularly the ones that are illegal, have worse outcomes than people that have good support with access to stronger opioids with industrial consistency. There’s folks that can go most of a lifetime on things like morphine or methadone as long as they have a good team helping them. I’ve seen those successes.

    Don’t get me wrong, I’m 100% behind decriminalization of all drugs. Even the horror show that is meth. They need regulation and a switch away from legal problems into treating it like the health issue it is. But unfettered access is not the same thing. Nor is pretending that there won’t still be a problem if it’s prescribed rather than street level. Opiates are not a fucking joke.

    • sygnius@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      Everything you said is how I assume would happen. Also after watching Painkiller on Netflix, I can see how it can get out of hand even with prescriptions back in the 80s and 90s.

    • dope@lemm.eeOP
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      8 months ago

      I prefer the term “independent thinker”.

        • dope@lemm.eeOP
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          8 months ago

          Would you prefer that anybody with an unpopular opinion keep it secret? “Stay in the closet” as it were.

  • Uncle@lemmy.ca
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    8 months ago

    ahh, OP asks the dumbest questions, then bitches at the folks who call him out on it.

    Another day, another stupid question.

    • dope@lemm.eeOP
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      8 months ago

      If it’s such a dumb question then you should have no problem answering it.

  • dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    You can look at how things went down in the opium dens in China to see how that’d probably work out.

    Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for giving up on the war on drugs immediately. Locking people up just for doing heroin or whatever is beyond stupid. But I’ve known a lot of junkies in my time, and none of them once reaching the big time addiction stage remained functioning members of society. Getting and consuming more opiates becomes priority #1 eventually, at the expense of everything else.

    Same deal with meth, just from a different angle.

    • megsmagik@feddit.it
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      8 months ago

      That is true for every addiction, like gambling, it’s not the opioid that makes you not functioning per se, I met some people that you couldn’t believe they were junkies because even if the substance was their priority it wasn’t at the expense of everything else. Alcohol abuse it’s the worst, I saw people devastated from it and it’s legal…

  • megsmagik@feddit.it
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    8 months ago

    Because the moment you don’t have any for whatever reason withdrawal is horrible, you can’t function properly without it… also you have to consider the risk of overdosing, for opioids is very high if you’re not careful

  • Vendetta9076@sh.itjust.works
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    8 months ago

    Look man, Im for hardcore legalization and access to pretty much everything. But Im for that solely on principle. Opioids are fucking dangerous and will kill the shit out of people. More dangerous than weedz alcohol and Coke all rolled into one. Maybe Meth beats em but not by much.

  • Corroded@leminal.space
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    8 months ago

    Addiction can become an issue when you build up a tolerance to something regardless of the supply. Even if someone reaches a tolerance plateau they still have a chance to overdose after breaks and there’s likely some form of health consequences.

  • Kalkaline @leminal.space
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    8 months ago

    I’m in favor of legalization only with increasing access to evidence based addiction treatment programs dramatically and funding it with tax dollars. There must be major checks in place as well, because black market sales means poor standards and contamination with undesirable products like fentanyl which is incredibly easy to overdose on.

  • 🇰 🔵 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 ℹ️@yiffit.net
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    8 months ago

    Where the fuck did you get that opioids are “arguably healthier” than marijuana or alcohol?

    I do agree all substances should be legal to obtain and consume, but opioids are definitely not healthier or less harmful to the body than marijuana or alcohol.

  • KinNectar@kbin.run
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    8 months ago

    @dope legalize all drugs, provide clean drugs to users via regulated dispensaries or pharmacies, take all money from the drug war and allocate to mental health services including inpatient rehab. It works, check Portugals record on heroin use.

    That said, cannabis has a way better afety record than any of the other substances mentioned.

    • dope@lemm.eeOP
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      8 months ago

      Yes I know that cannabis is safer. But I think that it’s also mentally less healthy.

      Don’t get me wrong. Cannabis has done wonders and I appreciate it. But it is much more muddling than opium. And of the two, it is only cannabis that has disturbed friends of mine to the point that they gave it up entirely.

      I think that cannabis is more powerful and disturbing than we give it credit for. And, safety aside, opium is deeply smooth.