Is Heroin Addiction sweeping the Country?

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Quote:

MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) — Democratic Gov. Peter Shumlin urged the Legislature on Wednesday to pass laws to help counteract what he says is a full-blown state crisis caused by addiction to heroin and other opium-based drugs.

Shumlin, during his State of the State speech at the Montpelier Statehouse, called for increased treatment, law enforcement and education programs designed to keep people from becoming addicted to drugs. He rattled off a series of statistics showing how the drugs are working their way into the fabric of Vermont society.

Since 2000, the number of people seeking treatment for opiate addiction has greatly increased, with heroin addiction up 250 percent. The number of federal prosecutions of heroin dealers is up sharply the last few years, and last year the number of people to die of heroin overdoses was nearly double the total from the year before.

Shumlin said opiate addiction ‘‘threatens the safety that has always blessed our state.’’

‘‘It is a crisis bubbling just beneath the surface that may be invisible to many but is already highly visible to law enforcement, medical personnel, social service and addiction treatment providers and too many Vermont families,’’ he said.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/vermont/2014/01/08/gov-shumlin-outline-priorities-speech/jAuoFHyFZqIjShEmKqGj3M/story.html

It has become a major problem here in Olympia WA.

How are things were you live?

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[+4] - izzythepush - 01/09/2014It's mostly a problem because of the law. The Liverpool study showed that if you prescribe heroin to addicts, you stop overdoses, ingestion of adulterated substances and allow the addicts to leave...

It's mostly a problem because of the law. The Liverpool study showed that if you prescribe heroin to addicts, you stop overdoses, ingestion of adulterated substances and allow the addicts to leave productive lives. Petty crime also drops considerably and you take money from the criminal dealers.

Heroin, unlike alcohol does little long term damage, its main problems being its highly addictive nature and danger of overdosing.

You can argue the morality of whether or not someone should have a chemical walking stick to get through life, but current drugs policy makes a bad thing a lot worse.

2 Replies

@izzythepush,

I think the practice here is to use methadone, which has problems of its own.

Quote:

OLYMPIA, Washington — A Lacey woman has been charged with manslaughter in connection with the death of her 1-year-old grandson who died of a methadone overdose.

The Olympian reports (http://bit.ly/JaZOcs) the charges filed in Thurston County Superior Court Tuesday say 54-year-old Tami Roughton is a heroin dealer who had access to methadone.

Her grandson, Joe-Joe White, was pronounced dead in November 2012 by medics called to her Lacey home. The coroner says toxicology tests showed he had a lethal dose of methadone in his blood, but it's unknown how he ingested it.

http://www.therepublic.com/view/story/006ac359202346f2ac9eec70994b6a6e/WA--Methadone-Death

Our downtown is dying in large part because the city is broke (and short 20% of the desired police force) and has a vocal liberal activist contingent that for years has pressured to city to turn a blind eye to the increasing drug and vagrancy problems. It is so bad that the addicts were shooting up in the library for over a year, and the staff was afraid to confront them. When they did the druggies threatened them at home. At long last the city leaders are willing to admit that we have a problem, but downtown business I am told is already down over 30% from before the economy tanked.

2 Replies

@hawkeye10,

In many ways methadone addiction is as bad, if not worse, than heroin addiction. It's what's used over here too, (the Liverpool study was just that, a study.)

William Burroughs stated that the only cure he thought worked was the apomorphine cure.

Quote:

Dr. John Yerbury Dent, gone now these several years, was the one that William Burroughs says cured him of his addiction. Did it with apomorphine. Its chemical structure is very much like morphine but different enough that the nauseating effect is emphasized. But it isn't the nauseating effect that does the job, Burroughs says, but that it is a metabolic stabilizer. He doesn't understand why it hasn't been more widely used.

Old Doc Dent was great. Had some marvelous stories. He was strictly for voluntary treatment only. Burroughs liked Dent for this, but it was still the apomorphine and only the apomorphine that did the job for him. Maybe so.

http://www.erowid.org/culture/characters/burroughs_william/burroughs_william_article1.shtml

2 Replies

@izzythepush,

Hi izzy, do you know anything about ibogaine? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibogaine

I'd never heard of it

1 Reply

@hingehead,

It does ring a vague bell. I had heard of a treatment that Buddhist monks use that involves a lot of vomiting. In the last series of Homeland the CIA give Brodie a substance that shortens the withdrawal process but induces violent hallucinations. That might have been ibogaine, if so it was a fictional portrayal and not to be relied on.

0 Replies

Maybe if the legalization of pot sweeps across the nation, the heroin use will subside.

2 Replies

@PUNKEY,

Quote:

“We are hearing about heroin as a major and increasing problem from law enforcement across Washington,” Dave Rodriguez, director of the Northwest High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area group, a coordinating center for federal and local law enforcement, said in a statement.

Banta-Green said he saw no evidence that legitimate pain patients were turning to heroin as tightened state regulations in recent years have reduced the supply of prescription pain medications.

“I think when we reined in opiate prescribing, it dried up the market for diverted prescription pharmaceuticals, and the people who were abusing prescription pharmaceuticals switched over to heroin,” he said.

http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2021167682_heroinfloodxml.html

seams to be that we are better off with these addicts using big pharma products than criminal supplied street drugs, but maybe that is just me.

0 Replies

@PUNKEY,

PUNKEY wrote:

Maybe if the legalization of pot sweeps across the nation, the heroin use will subside.

Government was NEVER granted the authority
to outlaw drug ingestion or ANY ingestion,
except alcohol consumption by the 18th Amendment of the Constitution.
The War on Drugs is based upon a USURPATION of power.

I am not aware of heroin addiction in South Florida,
but I pretend to no expertise. I live in a very quiet gated community.
If there is any drug use in here, it is not visible; no violent crime here.
I feel 1OO% safe by day and by nite.

David

0 Replies

@izzythepush,

I didn't know that. I bet in this country we will still be testing for heroin for employment purposes, especially since many companies are testing for nicotine to see if they can add a 50% charge to insurance premiums. I doubt that would ever be a consideration in UK and Europe, though.

1 Reply

@roger,

I've not heard of employers demanding drug tests over here. There would be an outcry if they did. People should be employed/promoted/dismissed based on the quality of their work, not what's in their bloodstream.

1 Reply

@izzythepush,

I totally agree, but there it is

0 Replies

@izzythepush,

izzythepush wrote:

In many ways methadone addiction is as bad, if not worse, than heroin addiction. It's what's used over here too, (the Liverpool study was just that, a study.)

William Burroughs stated that the only cure he thought worked was the apomorphine cure.

Quote:
Dr. John Yerbury Dent, gone now these several years, was the one that William Burroughs says cured him of his addiction. Did it with apomorphine. Its chemical structure is very much like morphine but different enough that the nauseating effect is emphasized. But it isn't the nauseating effect that does the job, Burroughs says, but that it is a metabolic stabilizer. He doesn't understand why it hasn't been more widely used.

Old Doc Dent was great. Had some marvelous stories. He was strictly for voluntary treatment only. Burroughs liked Dent for this, but it was still the apomorphine and only the apomorphine that did the job for him. Maybe so.

http://www.erowid.org/culture/characters/burroughs_william/burroughs_william_article1.shtml

I 'm confused. I was under the impression that in England,
if an addict were approved by a board,
that he was Rx the addictive substance to which he was addicted,
e.g., heroin. True or false??

Did some Englishmen get addicted to methadone instead of heroin ?

1 Reply

@OmSigDAVID,

Most of the time methadone is used to treat heroin addiction. It has its own problems, one of the main reasons it's used is because it can't be injected. I have heard anecdotal reports that methadone withdrawal is harder to go through than heroin withdrawal.

1 Reply

@izzythepush,

izzythepush wrote:

Most of the time methadone is used to treat heroin addiction.
It has its own problems, one of the main reasons it's used is because it can't be injected.
I have heard anecdotal reports that methadone withdrawal is harder to go through than heroin withdrawal.

What if the guy WANTS heroin ?

1 Reply

@OmSigDAVID,

Unless he's lucky enough to be part of a small study he'll get methadone, but not if they think he's just going to sell it to get more heroin. In that case he'll be told to come back when he's serious about giving up.

1 Reply

@izzythepush,

On 60 Minutes, thay showed an Englishman who allegedly
had an Rx for heroin for over 20 years, until he lost interest in it
and he abandoned it, while leading a normal productive English life.

1 Reply

@OmSigDAVID,

It would help if you could provide a link to your claims. Heroin is physically addictive, follow the link for the full range.

http://addictions.about.com/od/dailylifewithaddiction/a/What-To-Expect-From-Heroin-Withdrawal.htm

It's not something you can just lose interest in. Either he went through withdrawal or he received some kind of treatment.

1 Reply

@izzythepush,

izzythepush wrote:

It would help if you could provide a link to your claims. Heroin is physically addictive, follow the link for the full range.

http://addictions.about.com/od/dailylifewithaddiction/a/What-To-Expect-From-Heroin-Withdrawal.htm

It's not something you can just lose interest in. Either he went through withdrawal or he received some kind of treatment.

It was a TV show, so I don t know how to link to that.
It was stated that he abandoned his pure heroin Rx that he had
filled at his local drug store for c.2O years, for loss of interest;
i.e. his addiction allegedly wore off. Presumably, he got less of a high from it.

Inasmuch as I have never had contact with heroin,
I have no personal interest in the subject matter.

David

1 Reply

@OmSigDAVID,

There is a cure known as the Chinese cure, when the jar of heroin solution is replaced with water each time it's taken, gradually lessening the dose until it's just water. It's not got a very good track record.

I would treat the report with a pinch of salt. An addict cannot just give up or lose interest. It's not like giving up smoking where the results are purely psychological. Either they get treatment or they go through physical and psychological withdrawal symptoms.

That's not to say people can't do it. There's the old woman in To Kill A Mockingbird who goes through opiate withdrawal when Scout goes round to read to her, just so she can kick the habit before she dies.

1 Reply

Is Heroin Addiction sweeping the Country?

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