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@olena @actuallyautistic These (ahem) professionals are there to prescribe either antidepressants or anti-anxiety meds, because that’s what makes the pharmaceutical companies the most money with the lowest probability of liability payouts. So it took 5 minutes for them to decide to put you on the anxiety track. “Diagnosis” is just what they have to call it to keep the paperwork legal.
Our corruption crisis is not limited to politics.
If a doctor ever says you have anxiety after a 5 minute interview then prescribes you benzodiazepines, you need to look into getting them quietly murdered, as well as their children if possible, to prevent their tainted seed from staining this earth.
Passing out SSRIs like candy is really sleazy too, but thought I'd mention the genuine nightmare scenario.
@cy @heartofcoyote @olena @actuallyautistic
What's your beef with benzos? I don't like them, but I'm curious about your take.
They're uh... worse than meth? I've been told you can drop dead trying to get off benzos. Horrific withdrawal, incredibly addictive, people are desperate enough to put themselves into a coma rather than endure the weaning process. Relapse is extremely common, even after going through that torture. Any drug can be used safely in the right context, but benzodiazepines are some of the most difficult, and dangerous.
Far as I know, at least.
CC: @heartofcoyote@mastodon.social @olena@mementomori.social @actuallyautistic@a.gup.pe
@cy @heartofcoyote @olena @actuallyautistic
You sound pretty misinformed about them. I've taken my share, and know about pretty much all the recreational drugs. I don't like benzos because they last too long.
Addiction-wise, they're on the low end. Nicotine is the most addictive drug people do, the three powder drugs are all significantly more addictive than benzos...hell, I'd honestly say weed is more addictive.
They're pretty harmless, health wise. Alcohol is far, far worse than benzos. Really, the only thing I know that's wrong with them is the duration. They linger about 36 hours, but you forget you're on them. This can cause problems, especially if you're drinking the next day.
Oh--it's barbiturates that have the potentially lethal withdraw, but barbiturates were supplanted by benzos a long time ago.
@Uair @cy @heartofcoyote @olena @actuallyautistic you’re wrong. My doctor had terrible trouble weaning women hooked on them when they were handed out like sweets to women in the sixties and seventies. My cousin was on huge dosage. I don’t know if she’s ever got off them. She’s like a zombie even now all these years later. Suspect she can’t be weaned off them. Doctors in my Country are very careful how they prescribe.
@CarolynStirling @Uair @cy @heartofcoyote @actuallyautistic afaik, benzos have really different consequences short-term(relatively easy to wean) and long-term(hard to wean, raised suicide rate), and are known to have more(and more serious) side effects in older people. Though, my concern with depressants is not about side effects and weaning, it’s about their direct effect. What they did with my mind is something I want to never experience again: I’d better have more anxiety than I ever had(and I had times when I couldn’t eat or sleep) than feel how I felt on depressants. No, thanks: I don’t even take alcohol because losing control of my body feels so awful - so no, I’m not giving up my consciousness voluntarily.
Benzodiazepines have potentially lethal withdrawal I'm pretty sure?
I agree nicotine is the most addictive, maybe opium after that, but was under the impression benzos hit harder than meth withdrawal. I was also told that tolerance to benzodiazepines goes up extremely quickly, making withdrawal even trickier, and making it hard to tell the already tiny amount that would cause overdose.
I haven't heard of barbituates in any context other than as a manner of assisted suicide. Could definitely be worse than benzos.
https://piped.video/watch?v=BSaUaZI9o_E
https://www.erowid.org/pharms/benzodiazepine/benzodiazepine_bits.shtml
I've taken my share, and know about pretty much all the recreational drugs. I don't like benzos because they last too long.
Could be that you managed to take low doses, short term, or it's just your personal neurobiology. I'd love to see statistics on how addictive benzos are. Like I saw a study where only 1 in 5 mice got addicted to cocaine: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/09/210909141233.htm
https://www.michiganpsychologicalassociation.org/index.php?option=com_dailyplanetblog&view=entry&category=neuroscience&id=130:why-do-only-one-in-five-become-addicted-to-cocaine-
wiki:
Barbiturates have largely been replaced by benzodiazepines and nonbenzodiazepines ("Z-drugs") in routine medical practice, particularly in the treatment of anxiety disorders and insomnia, because of the significantly lower risk of overdose.
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Opium isn't very addictive. It's a small dose of morphine and codeine. Heroin is far more addictive, and fentanyl even more so.
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I'm autistic, so my experience with drugs isn't a fair comparison. I break addictions like nothing. I can tell you a few things from personal experience:
cocaine isn't physically addictive at all, but is the most powerful psychologically addictive drug out there. It's the only drug rats will self-administer until they die.
I honestly don't know much about meth. I really didn't enjoy that drug. I spent 20 years on adderall, though.
Narcotics (the class that comes from poppies, or big pharma substitutes) change your body. I spent a summer on them and could feel that change taking place, so I quit. I imagine that once your system rejiggers itself to want narcotics, you're pretty well fucked for life. Like a dry drunk.
Hallucinogens are anti-addictive. Your tolerance shoots through the roof on one usage; the most frequently you can trip is once a week.
Extacy/ molly/ MDMA is beneficial. The republicans needed a distraction so they emergency scheduled it in 1986. The doctors said it was very helpful in therapy, the judge said it should be schedule 3, and the DEA said, "fuck you guys!" and took it off the market. The DEA are basically America's religious police, and are completely unaccountable.
Weed is addictive. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. When I go off weed, I stay awake for days.
Coffee is really good for you and tea gives people kidney stones.
A morphine addiction is easy to manage. There were still 1.5 million Civil War vets hooked on it in about 1905, when we took it away and turned them all into drunks.
Opium, morphine, heroin, codeine, fentanyl and kratom all have about the same effect, I've heard, acting on the same receptors. Heroin and fentanyl are more powerful, but an opium fiend with very high opiate tolerance might switch to those, not because of any different effect, but because they need more of the drug to get the same effect.
That's uh... the primary reason for heroin use I'd wager. Doctors prescribe codeine, then withdrawal sets in even with the drug, so people switch to something harder. I haven't asked any heroin users their feelings on that though, only heard that they started on pain pills.
I agree an opiate addiction is manageable. Sucks royally though, and easy to fuck up. But opium is one of the oldest drugs known to mankind, and our society hasn't once collapsed around our ears because of it. (Though the Silk Road came close.)
Oh, and--I've never injected anything and really haven't spent much time in the hard drug world, but I used to bring street level addicts home for the company.
Thanks for sharing your experiences! I definitely agree that a high powered opiate would be quite lethal used as a weapon. I see several informative articles about the Moscow Opera House Siege, from prestigious sources such as the BBC, CNN, The New York Times, and Encyclopedia Britannica.
...
So you shouldn't tell people to look it up without providing a link, because there are a lot of wealthy, institutional tools trying to spin some sort of story about it.
Funny. I only use wikipedia.
What narrative are they trying to push?
The relevant part of that situation, to our conversation, is that putin used carfentanil to render everyone in the opera house unconscious, but didn't tell the paramedics the plan so they didn't have enough opioid reversal shots. Lots of people died unnecessarily.
What narrative aren't they trying to push? It's fine if there's no shenanigans going on, but you have to be sure those organizations aren't trying to spin the story (even Wikipedia) before telling people to just ask Google about it. I want to hear your understanding of the situation. Really it's always a good idea to provide links yourself, if you can.
Most heroin users start on pills, but not codeine. Hydrocodone or oxycodone. Morphine is basically free to produce, and not patentable, so in America doctors prescribe pills like percocet, which is hydrocodone with acetaminophen. You may have heard of oxycodone. The Sackler family made a few bucks pushing it.
These used to be kept out of the general population, but bush2 opened the floodgates. Then, once an entire generation had been strung out, he cut them off. They had to switch to dope. In my day, this was a self-regulating drug, since the acetaminophen would kill you in a couple months at high doses. Most people wouldn't go through the effort it took to go deeper into that addiction. It's very far from safe to go to the ghetto to buy dope.
For clarity: opium is 10% morphine and 5% codeine. Heroin is morphine with a methyl(?) group attached to make it more potent. It didn't gain popularity until we banned morphine and the volume you had to smuggle mattered. Fentanyl and carfentanil are significantly stronger than heroin. Carfentanil is basically a chemical weapon. See: the Moscow Opera House siege.
I'm pretty sure Kratom is a different class of drug, but don't know much about it. It's been my experience that anything legal that actually gets you high is a poison. The only legal recreational drug I'll do is nitrous oxide, which is harmless. And weed's semi legal now. I classify ethanol as a poison, not a drug.
@cy @heartofcoyote @actuallyautistic in my youth, I was once prescribed barbiturates+piracetam combo as a treatment of headaches (which later turned to be hormonal migraines) and faints (the best I had in diagnosis was vasovagal syncope, but might have had something to do with autistic shutdowns, eating disorders and some anatomy issues as well) by a neuropathologist. Taken how it messed me up, zero chance I’d ever take any depressants voluntarily