You can live with a sustained opioid addiction permanently without major issues. That’s the entire basis of methadone clinics - controlled dispersement of opioids at a level that solves cravings and allows the addict to be functional. It is very sad we don’t allow pharmaceutical grade opioids to be given to addicts in a controlled way, it would eliminate the purity variance that causes overdoses, and prevent the poison mixed in to increase street profits from destroying bodies (tranq, etc)

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herbst 14 hours ago | parent | next [-]

In Switzerland they can get actual, state grown, heroin. Clean heroin is one of the least problematic substances appearantly, less problematic and more "everyday friendly" than Methadon even.

And you don't SEE any issues like in the US (or UK) around here at all.

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Aurornis 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> Clean heroin is one of the least problematic substances appearantly, less problematic and more "everyday friendly" than Methadon even.

Least problematic is too strong of wording. Consistent opioid use will take a large toll on the body and mind. A therapeutic level of dosing could possibly be better than severe chronic pain depending on the situation, but even chronic pain patients have to deal with a range of negatives and side effects that are only tolerable because they’re less bad than their severe chronic pain.

Chronic opioid use induces a lot of changes in the body and mind. The initial euphoria isn’t sustainable, as everyone knows, but long term use induces even further changes that predispose users to deeper depression and can even begin to augment pain signals.

Opioids are in a class of drugs that are unusually deceptive because users who more or less control their dosing will talk themselves into thinking they can do this forever without real negatives. They can go for years before the cumulative negatives become too obvious to ignore.

For addicts deep in cycles of rehab-relapse extremes, going to a maintenance program and achieving stability is definitely better than continuing the cycle indefinitely. However it comes with a high price relative to sobriety. I think it’s important to not downplay the effects of being on opioids for years and years.

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Tom1380 13 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I live in Zurich. I spent 5 minutes waiting at a bus stop in Langstrasse and I was offered cocaine and marijuana by a thug

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comice 12 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The comment was about heroin. Were you offered heroin?

Is cocaine and marijuana available from the government too? If not, what relevance is your comment?

Was this the first and only time you were waiting at a bus stop in Switzerland? If so, perhaps a notable story, if not then we'll need more information to conclude how bad this thug problem really is in Switzerland.

	▲	zhdc1 11 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Langstrasse is as close to a red-light district as you'll find in Zurich. It's gotten a lot better over the last couple of years, but stating that you were offered drugs there is like being offended that you walked past a casino in Vegas.
	▲	johnisgood 6 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		The problem is definitely with adultered products. Never accept anything from a random "thug".

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herbst 13 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Sounds like you have easy options for some common drugs. Not a bad thing perse and sounds like they didn't offer any opioids

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fennecbutt 11 hours ago | parent [-]

Lmao as a kiwi living in UK it's definitely a bad thing. Can't go on a night out in London without half dozen dudes trying to sell you coke. Same dudes who are waiting in alleys waiting to mug people when they get the chance.

If you ever see >1 person just standing around and not walking somewhere in London early in the morning just stay the fuck away from them. And if they start heading your way, run.

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herbst 10 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I know how annoying this can be, especially in some countries this behaviour is often directly associated with criminality. Here in Switzerland dealers are often (not always) just that, they make enough to not bother with anything else. They don't look like "dirty" junkies, they don't bother stealing from tourists, they basically don't look for any extra attention when the business is rolling anyway.

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seanmcdirmid 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Survival bias: the police would come down on them on hard if they were scene as disrupting social order. They have to not look dirty to survive, Swiss police are no joke.

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scotty79 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

When I was in Amsterdam people were offering hard drugs on the street but "no, thank you" was perfectly sufficient response

	▲	herbst an hour ago \| parent [-]
		This. Same in Switzerland. Feels different in for example Prague, Vienna, ...

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alimw 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

You've only told us that you're scared of being mugged by dealers! That doesn't even count as anecdotal evidence that it's likely.

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zhdc1 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

"waiting at a bus stop in Langstrasse" -> what were you expecting?

	▲	jacquesm 10 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Probably a bus?

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kakacik 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Is it too long, too little or what? Red light districts, official or not are the place to get drugs in european towns. Langstrasse is basically an official place for that, at least the most official Zurich has.

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Etheryte 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

If you think cocaine and marijuana are comparable/interchangeable with heroin, you might want to educate yourself on the topic a bit more before trying to make a quip.

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monero-xmr 14 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Imagine you are sitting in a room. Your child is in front of you. A scary man sits next to them. The man says:

“Your child is a drug addict. They are addicted to opioids. I am the devil, without any care in the world other than making money. The choice is yours. Would you rather they inject clean heroin made by a pharmaceutical company in your country, or banish them forever as street addicts slavishly doing what it takes to score their fix?”

When facing the devil I’m voting for my tax dollars to give them clean heroin made by my country. That is what every parent wants when faced with an addicted child

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lolive 12 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I switched from my Twitter addiction to a Bluesky addiction. Still scrolling to death, but now my opinion is mine again. #dontDoGrok

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znpy 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

That’s a fake dichotomy btw, a sadly very common logical fallacy.

You (wrongly) assume there’s no way out of an addiction, for example.

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acessoproibido 12 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Its definitely easier to beat addiction if you aren't living on the street, selling everything you have and are injecting one of the most horrible shit substances but instead you are using a clean, safe alternative that is provided by the state together with prevention programs (which is usually the model for this) - how is it a false dichotomy?

Or are you someone who assumes you just need to "use willpower" and "stop" being an addict? I assure you its not so easy with opiates.

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dostick 12 hours ago | parent [-]

[flagged]

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spacecadet 11 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Defined as addiction... You ever struggle with one, loose a loved one to it? Comment comes off stupid.

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threethirtytwo 9 hours ago | parent [-]

Interesting fact:

Hordes of American soldiers were doing heroin in the Vietnam war.

When they came back to America we were expecting a massive addiction epidemic. It never happened. Overall, all the soldiers who came back lost the addiction.

Little known phenomenon about addiction that can’t be fully explained yet. What you say is true, but the person you responded to, what he says has an aspect of the truth as well. Look into it.

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BigTTYGothGF 4 hours ago | parent [-]

> all the soldiers who came back lost the addiction

This does not seem to be born out by the historical record.

> https://department.va.gov/history/featured-stories/borne-in-...

> Despite initial fears, high substance abuse rates during the war did not entirely translate to enduring addiction issues post-war. A year after returning home, only 10% of Service members initially detected as drug positive reported using opiates after detoxification, and just 7% reported re-addiction

> VA initially found itself unprepared for the sudden increase in drug cases.

Please note the "entirely" and "7%".

Also: > https://academic.oup.com/aje/article-abstract/99/4/235/13845... > Rather than giving up drugs altogether, many had shifted from heroin to amphetamines or barbiturates.

	▲	threethirtytwo 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2012/01/02/1444317... You’re wrong, and the “historical record” you’re citing is actually the same record the NPR piece is summarizing. What that NPR piece is pointing at is the Lee Robins follow up result that became famous precisely because it violated the folk story of heroin addiction being inevitably chronic. A later review of Robins’ findings summarizes it bluntly: In Vietnam, high heroin use and dependence. After return, only about 10% tried heroin, and only about 1% became re addicted in the first year. Now compare that to the VA history page you linked as a “gotcha.” It says the same thing in slightly different numbers: One year after return, 10% reported opiate use, and 7% reported re addiction. So no, “not entirely” and “7%” are not a refutation. They are the punchline. You can argue about whether it is 1% or 7%, depending on definitions and measurement, but the qualitative point survives trivially: it was nowhere near the relapse pattern people expected for heroin addiction, which is why NPR is telling the story in the first place. Your OUP line about some vets shifting to other drugs is also not the contradiction you think it is. “Some people continued using substances” does not falsify “heroin dependence largely remitted when the environment changed.” Those are different claims. If anything, substitution strengthens the “context and cues matter” thesis, because it implies the Vietnam setting was uniquely good at sustaining heroin use, not that heroin had permanently rewired everyone’s brain. Also, “VA was unprepared” is about bureaucracy, not epidemiology. The VA being behind the curve tells you the system wasn’t ready for the volume of cases showing up at the door, not that “everyone stayed addicted forever.” If you want to be precise, the correct statement is: Most soldiers who were using heroin in Vietnam did not remain heroin addicted after returning home, and relapse was low relative to expectations, which is exactly why this became a canonical example in the first place.

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11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[deleted]

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fennecbutt 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Lmao. You are so wrong. Addiction is the human brain wanting those sweet molecules to hit binding sites.

But you know, make it poetic or something. Suppose that's how religion still manages to thrive.

	▲	Saline9515 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		There is also very often a psychological aspect, which explains why some addicts are able to stop "cold turkey" if the psychological/contextual aspect of their addiction changes.

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imtringued 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Usually the fastest and most effective way out of an addiction is medication assisted treatment, which means having a doctor control your dosage with a clean supply of the drug or a less addictive substitute that targets the same receptors.

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solumunus 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

They never made such an assumption.

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specproc 15 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Methadone is available in the UK, on the NHS. I know at least one person who has been on it for decades.

https://www.nhs.uk/medicines/methadone/

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mmooss 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> You can live with a sustained opioid addiction permanently without major issues.

To me that seems to say cause of the opiod crisis doesn't exist, which probably isn't what you mean. But what do you mean?

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monero-xmr 8 hours ago | parent [-]

The problem is not the opioids themselves as a chemical. They are tolerated well and have minimal side effects. The main issue is that street opioids are of uncertain purity, and cut with toxic chemicals. This causes overdoses when a batch is too strong, and various health issues from the harsh toxins.

A properly managed opioid addiction can be permanent. For a decade millions of Americans were addicted to opioids (OxyContin, Vicodin, etc.) prescribed by doctors. When the state cracked down they were forced to go on the street to get their medicine, which is when the opioid crisis exploded

	▲	Veliladon 7 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		And we learned zero from the change after shutting down the Purdues. The electorate just wants to see drug users punished, not treated. Even though treating cheaper, more humane, and has way better outcomes.
	▲	gruez 7 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		>When the state cracked down they were forced to go on the street to get their medicine, which is when the opioid crisis exploded. What's the data corroborating this theory?

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brewcejener 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[dead]