Prescription Pain Killers: The Real Gateway Drug

[_Markk]

Heroin. I can name 3 deceased heroin addicts, one fentanyl overdose death, and 3 currently recovering heroin addicts in my sphere of experience, if you will.

Seven people.

Every single one of these folks' hard drug use was a shock to me. They are and were all good folks. Some very well to do and others middle class. Out of the 3 deceased, 2 of those folks were athletic. Not one was what you'd think of as a bottom of the barrel "bum".

Some stories of the deceased...

One an Italian boy I went to school with. All the girls fawned over him, he was so good looking and athletic as well. Richer than god, owned part of the family business and it's enormous wealth, and very well educated. Just before C'mas one year, he decided to get clean. Went to a rapid detox facility, came home to his parent's house, used again and was found dead that evening.

Another my first bf. Middle class with a family. Went to a shore bar one evening with his wife. During the evening of drinking he went out to the parking lot, shot up in the car, and died. I always imagined that I'd run into him on one of my trips home, we'd meet up for coffee and share stories and pics of our kids. I had that conversation in a cemetery.

Another bf. Total jock. Good looking, athletic. Had a family, good job, served as a coach. Heroin overdose in New York City.

WTH.

I can't help but wonder--what if they had access to MJ to get off heroin? I can't claim that they would have opted for rehab, but what if?

The fentanyl overdose. This is the SO of a relative I sometimes mention who is struggling with PTSD. He was first responder to her death in his own home. He is trapped in that home with the memory of that night. I can't tell you how many hours I have spent with him.

What if she had known that MJ could help her out? Would they be growing old together?

These folks and their stories, not to mention the 3 living currently recovering heroin addicts that are all blood relatives, disturb me more than I care to admit.

And my understanding is that Sessions wants to curb MJ use and cuts in health care are going to make it near impossible for those in need to access rehab services.

wtf

On the other side of this is a disabled veteran who lives with chronic pain and who can no longer get opioids RX'd which he only ever used sparingly perhaps once a month.

Wtf are we doing in this country?

I'm heartsick over these people.

I grew up in a neighborhood in San Bernardino where you either made it out, or you did not. Pot sweep the neighborhood in about 1969-70, partly due to Vietnam vets coming back and "turning us on"...it was the the start of drug abuse for many of my friends..many are in prison or dead today. It went from pot to reds and whites...to either meth or heroin.

I have sat in "drug homes" and tied friend off while they shot up. I have seen them foam at the mouth and almost OD. Jersey Girl...I have taken almost every drug there is except heroin, I never shot up (any drug) mainly due to my strong LDS upbringing and a close friend who we made a pact not to put a needle in our arms...he is black from a strong Baptist family.

I had a LDS friend who was a junkie, and is to this day, and other heroin users would come over to his house and shoot up behind his garage while his wife and kids were in the house. One of my friends I grew up with never came out from behind the garage. Off the top of my head I can think of at lead 4 friend I grew up dead by heroin. I have known more people die or ruin their lives becasue of hard drugs than I can ever remember...many are dead or in prison...some by OD, some by violence, car wrecks...broken lives.

My oldest brother started shooting heroin in Vietnam, and becasue of his upbringing...turned himself in and because of help from the church, got an honorable discharge and after rehab came home...he is a TBM . He later came down with hepatitis, and was sick for a long time, but finally kicked it with some type of chemo type treatment decades after being infected .

I made it out only because my LDS upbringing and a mother that was all over me and my brothers. They finally moved us out of San Bernardine in 1972.

Then meth sweep the valley in my new town, and many of my new friends went down that road...and to tell you the truth in my opinion it is far worse the Heroin...one can work and function as a junkie, but meth just eats your brain away. You loose your teeth, pick at your face, and become a paranoid mess. Many I went to High School have ruined lives. Two friends that were in my wedding, guys I played played football with... got into speed...one is dead (at around 39, should be 60) because of a dirty needle, and the other is just a burnt out mess from what I here.

I can go on and on, but my point is that pot was the very first drug that we used...and it leads to others drugs for far too many. That is just a fact.

Pot can help people, I concede that, but to just make it legal is just stupid beyond belief. I don't know what the percentage is, but I bet 99% or so that smoke pot do not smoke for heath reasons.

People don't generally kick heroin becasue of pot...pot has always been available, especially to someone buying heroin. I wish it were that easy.

This will be jumped on by the clones...but here you go...kicking drugs is like losing weight (or other "habits")...one has got to want too. Do you need a lot more help and support...yes, but those that kick...do so becasue they dig deep, real deep. When a person is on drugs and whats to quit, the loneliest feeling is quitting for a day or two, then giving in and use, and then hating yourself for doing so becasue you hate the drug or substance and what it has done and is doing to you.

If my PM is working I will send you a something I want to share something that I am not ready to share to everyone.

[_Analytics]

...I can go on and on, but my point is that pot was the very first drug that we used...and it leads to others drugs for far too many. That is just a fact.

Pot can help people, I concede that, but to just make it legal is just stupid beyond belief. I don't know what the percentage is, but I bet 99% or so that smoke pot do not smoke for heath reasons.

People don't generally kick heroin becasue of pot...pot has always been available, especially to someone buying heroin. I wish it were that easy.

This will be jumped on by the clones...but here you go...kicking drugs is like losing weight (or other "habits")...one has got to want too. Do you need a lot more help and support...yes, but those that kick...do so becasue they dig deep, real deep. When a person is on drugs and whats to quit, the loneliest feeling is quitting for a day or two, then giving in and use, and then hating yourself for doing so becasue you hate the drug or substance and what it has done and is doing to you.

If my PM is working I will send you a something I want to share something that I am not ready to share to everyone.

Hi Markk,

Thank you for sharing your experience. I totally agree with you about how evil hard drugs are. But I still don't buy your argument that smoking pot "leads" to anything.

I agree with your point that quiting drugs is like losing weight--it is a tough, disciplined personal thing you have to conquer because you want to. Riffing off of that idea, one could argue that sugar is a drug--it gives you spikes and crashes in your biochemical experience--just like drugs. To quit sugar, you have to dig down deep. That being the case, how many people ate sugar before trying pot? If you just look at the chronology of things, you could say, "every single person I know who died from drugs first did pot, and before they did pot, every single one of them did sugar. Therefore sugar leads to pot which leads to hard drugs. Therefore sugar should be illegal."

The folks who didn't get out of San Bernardino had personal and sociological reasons that led to their drug problems. Perhaps pot use is one of the factors, but it has to be way down on the list--there simply must be other things that are the primary drivers of their bad decisions. It takes the same level of self-control for a pot-smoker to resist hard drugs as a non-pot smoker.

If you are suffering from pain and are given two options for dealing with it, opioits or marijuana, opioits is the much, much, more dangerous option--they directly cause you to become addicted. Marijuana does not. So if, as a society, we want to be in the business of making things illegal that could lead to becoming a junkie, prescription opioits should be on the very top of the list of illegal substances.

On the other hand, if we are going to treat people like grownups, let's give them some other options.

[_Jersey Girl]

Markkkk I don't see a pm from you. If you really want me to know something, I can come up with a way to do it so long as we're online at the same time.

Soooo mysterious...

[_Markk]

Markkkk I don't see a pm from you. If you really want me to know something, I can come up with a way to do it so long as we're online at the same time.

Soooo mysterious...

When I go to "compose message" it does nothing.

I asked Shades to fix it sometime ago but it didn't work.

[_Jersey Girl]

Welp. Here's the option. I will turn on my email option for you and you can try to send your message. I likely won't reply via email though. I'll do that right now and leave it on for 15 minutes.

:-)

[_Jersey Girl]

It's on.

[_Markk]

...I can go on and on, but my point is that pot was the very first drug that we used...and it leads to others drugs for far too many. That is just a fact.

Pot can help people, I concede that, but to just make it legal is just stupid beyond belief. I don't know what the percentage is, but I bet 99% or so that smoke pot do not smoke for heath reasons.

People don't generally kick heroin becasue of pot...pot has always been available, especially to someone buying heroin. I wish it were that easy.

This will be jumped on by the clones...but here you go...kicking drugs is like losing weight (or other "habits")...one has got to want too. Do you need a lot more help and support...yes, but those that kick...do so becasue they dig deep, real deep. When a person is on drugs and whats to quit, the loneliest feeling is quitting for a day or two, then giving in and use, and then hating yourself for doing so becasue you hate the drug or substance and what it has done and is doing to you.

If my PM is working I will send you a something I want to share something that I am not ready to share to everyone.

Hi Markk,

Thank you for sharing your experience. I totally agree with you about how evil hard drugs are. But I still don't buy your argument that smoking pot "leads" to anything.

I agree with your point that quiting drugs is like losing weight--it is a tough, disciplined personal thing you have to conquer because you want to. Riffing off of that idea, one could argue that sugar is a drug--it gives you spikes and crashes in your biochemical experience--just like drugs. To quit sugar, you have to dig down deep. That being the case, how many people ate sugar before trying pot? If you just look at the chronology of things, you could say, "every single person I know who died from drugs first did pot, and before they did pot, every single one of them did sugar. Therefore sugar leads to pot which leads to hard drugs. Therefore sugar should be illegal."

The folks who didn't get out of San Bernardino had personal and sociological reasons that led to their drug problems. Perhaps pot use is one of the factors, but it has to be way down on the list--there simply must be other things that are the primary drivers of their bad decisions. It takes the same level of self-control for a pot-smoker to resist hard drugs as a non-pot smoker.

If you are suffering from pain and are given two options for dealing with it, opioits or marijuana, opioits is the much, much, more dangerous option--they directly cause you to become addicted. Marijuana does not. So if, as a society, we want to be in the business of making things illegal that could lead to becoming a junkie, prescription opioits should be on the very top of the list of illegal substances.

On the other hand, if we are going to treat people like grownups, let's give them some other options.

Your not hearing me...and I am not saying that in a bad thing, it is just the way it is.

When one is 14 to say 17 years old, and you turn to pot, and if you like it and you hang with that crowd...most often you will graduate to harder drugs. In the drug culture you have different cultures, those that like meth, those like heroin, those that like prescription drugs, and those that like things like LSD and Mushrooms. There are even those that like sniffing paints or thinners, even gas...and their are those that burn out on PCP (dust).

You can't put that in a theory or a structured reason why, like your sugar analogy. It is just the way it is in the drug culture...and the one common denominator is that pot is almost always the first drug that leads to that culture, which leads to addiction.

If you want an example, wine coolers, especially in the 70's and 80's were a gateway alcohol for hard core drinkers. Those that start out and get into the drinking scene general start with sweet tasting drinks..becasue alcohol at first taste like crap....today they have the lemonade and root beer types of drinks...most that drink them , don't become alcoholic's, but those with a weakness to addiction will jump to hard alcohol...it is similar with pot.

We have students instead of reaching their potential, they become stoners or worse.

[_Jersey Girl]

If you'd like to try emailing, Markkk, now's the time to do it. I'm about to close it down again.

[_Analytics]

Your not hearing me...and I am not saying that in a bad thing, it is just the way it is.

When one is 14 to say 17 years old, and you turn to pot, and if you like it and you hang with that crowd...most often you will graduate to harder drugs. In the drug culture you have different cultures, those that like meth, those like heroin, those that like prescription drugs, and those that like things like LSD and Mushrooms. There are even those that like sniffing paints or thinners, even gas...and their are those that burn out on PCP (dust).

You can't put that in a theory or a structured reason why, like your sugar analogy. It is just the way it is in the drug culture...and the one common denominator is that pot is almost always the first drug that leads to that culture, which leads to addiction.

If you want an example, wine coolers, especially in the 70's and 80's were a gateway alcohol for hard core drinkers. Those that start out and get into the drinking scene general start with sweet tasting drinks..becasue alcohol at first taste like crap....today they have the lemonade and root beer types of drinks...most that drink them , don't become alcoholic's, but those with a weakness to addiction will jump to hard alcohol...it is similar with pot.

We have students instead of reaching their potential, they become stoners or worse.

My experience with pot has been different than yours. I haven't ever seen sombody use pot who wasn't a productive adult member of society. I rarely see homeless people. I don't associate one with the other.

But yes, the "drug culture" leads to addiction. I can see that. But the culture of getting powerful opiods from your doctor whenever your body hurts also leads to addiction. If you think marijuana should be illegal because it can lead to addiction, do you also think that opioids should be illegal because they can lead to addiction, too?

[_Res Ipsa]

I think the gateway drug issues are laid out pretty well in this article. https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/12/07/w ... heory.html

Being poor is a more effective gateway than smoking weed.