My community is going to make national headlines

Well, this seems like a problem that will eventually eradicate itself, no? Addicted users will die. Rest of community sees how awful it is and uses common sense to not take it. Amirite?

originally posted by: andrew778

And so you know, suboxone doesn't have a high involved with it. Methadone can if you go high enough but most doctors won't put people that high. Educate yourself before spewing trash

The impression I had on the treatments is that they end up addictive on their own... Not for the "high" but because they lessen the withdrawal effects and symptoms? Meaning the "former" heroin user takes it and has to continue taking the legal treatments, else deal with the demon of withdrawal, I don't know firsthand, but this was the impression I was under about it...

originally posted by: jjkenobi
Well, this seems like a problem that will eventually eradicate itself, no? Addicted users will die. Rest of community sees how awful it is and uses common sense to not take it. Amirite?

See my reply just before yours, I think it killing makes it more desirable to addicts, the addicts want the stronger stuff even more because it can kill...basically it doesn't scare them away, it makes them want to seek it out...meanwhile new addicts keep coming because the high is intense, they are bored, the underlying socioeconomic and medical issues creating addiction are still there...

a reply to: Ranger351
We make our children chemical junkies.

If you look at the amount of chemicals the average child is fed from the day they enter this world until they leave, it should be no surprise that they experience chemical imbalances and many find themselves on a continual quest for a chemical fix.

What's Really In Your Food?

Crack and heroin came to the inner cities and nobody outside those places cared. Large swaths of our cities became ghettos. Jobs started to disappear from those areas. Out of work males turned to crime and gangs to feed their families. Those fathers were eventually put in jail. Families were destroyed. Mothers had to go on welfare to feed their kids. Children started to be born in this environment. A culture of violence and sex and immediate gratification took root. A vicious cycle was started. That continues to this day.

Entire communities suffered/still suffer from mass depression and psychosis. The drugs are an escape. Now we look down on those people. Call them thugs and animals. Which is an apt description for how a fairly large percentage of people who grow up in the ghetto behave. I am not disputing that. I am not trying to make excuses for peoples behavior. I am not trying to imply that these smaller communities had it coming because they did nothing when the inner cities went through this.

All I am saying is, this happened to our cities. That is why they are cesspools of crime and drugs. Now it is happening to the whole country. We have to stop making excuses. Its not something that can just happen to others. To the easily dismissed Them. Its now happening to everyone. We have to wake up and smell the money. Smell it, then follow it. Then realize that we are all in this together. The political divide is political theater. Scripted to make us forget, and divide ourselves into smaller and smaller groups. So we can't stop what is happening.

But when you feel powerless, it is easier to forget. To blame some boogie man put together by a marketing team, that is easy to understand. Why tackle a complex problem when you can just have a drink, or have sex, smoke a cigarette, pop a pill, do some drugs, social media, internet, tv, root for your "team", rant and rave and hate someone who is different. After all, we are just the little guys. We can't tackle a giant. We're all alone.......

But what the heck do I know. I'm just a little guy ranting and raving at the wind. Letting the sweet summer breeze carry my words further and farther away.

If I run after my words. Will I ever catch them?

a reply to: karmicecstasy
In our new society there is a pill for anything that ails you, or might ail you. Even that foot that you jiggle without knowing it, but it drives your boss crazy.

Every time big Pharma reformulates a drug it comes out with a new commercial instructing folks to badger their doctors for the new must have drug, or describes how lousy you are as a human or a parent for not protecting your child or society from obscure conditions that have affected a tiny amount of people, while coming up with no cures for the conditions and diseases that affect huge numbers of people.

Big Pharma wants to keep us a pill popping society and they will never allow any drugs to be legalized that they can't control and profit from.

They took Sudafed off the counter when Meth became popular. How many other drugs do they have filling the counters that they have convinced people are beneficial that aren't? It is always about the money with big Pharma. They don't give one hoot about the health or well being of the people.

Look at the history of the drug epidemic and it falls right in the lap of our government and big Pharma. The last two places we should ever look for a solution to this problem.

originally posted by: annoyedpharmacist
Just to show what numbers we are talking about here. One clinic has 10 doctors that rotate in, each one can take 120 patients per month, no more. Talked with one of the doctors there off the record, and was told just about all docs are at max patient threshold. So just that ONE CLINIC has 1200 patients....and there are 9 more such clinics within a short drive. The numbers are astounding.

One thing I picked up on Reddit one day, no idea how true it is, is that addicts will sign up with multiple doctors at different clinics in order to get more prescriptions. Like a smoker using extra nicotine patches.

originally posted by: toysforadults
Yes. The economic condotions are bad and in the 90's the state started building several housing projects in the area that crashed the area.

Since then there has been an influx o
of criminals from the Tri State area.. Philly, New York and Jersey.

I live in a town with the same problems. Look up the drug problem in Portsmouth, Ohio sometime. We invented the pill mill and have one of the worst opiate problems in the nation. Per capita we are #1 in the nation in just about every crime statistic other than violent crime. Where I am, the people are poor. Most live on welfare. There's only one true housing project but with rent costs in the area, almost everything is really a project. If you want a job in my town, it doesn't matter what you can do... your single biggest asset is in passing a drug test but even then, there's few places to work. In the time I've lived there (just now going into year #4) I've seen about 40 businesses close in the town, and only 2 new ones open.

We have issues with drugs of course, but there's also non drug reasons. One is education, and another is Walmart surprisingly. They hold substantial power and actually make the city council deny people opening new businesses if they sell similar products. Yet another issue is a corrupt city council. We don't actually charge or prosecute most drug cases anymore. On one hand the city is trying this approach in order to bring down our drug statistics and look better, and on the other hand the tax base is so poor in our town that there actually isn't money to jail the people or prosecute them.

It's a giant mess.

a reply to: Ranger351

That is correct. They want you to stay on it for a minimum of 6 months but it's more so to get out of the routine of getting high than to replace one addiction with another. That being said it does replace one addiction with another but it isn't meant to be a life time thing. Sure you'll go through withdrawal if you stop taking either of them but if you're willing to stop and just can't deal with the sickness due to work or whatever you can be on and off it in less than a month. The longterm users are the ones who are trying to get a legal, cheap high (methadone) or they feel they can't get off it or they'll start using again. Suboxone will actually put you into withdrawal if you use opiates while taking it. Suboxone is the way to go for someone who legitimately wants to stop as there's no high whatsoever and it completely gets rid of cravings. Methadone on the other hand can get you high so I feel it's not as effective as suboxone since people will increase the dose to chase the high and get stuck on it. I was an oxycontin, heroin and fentanyl addict for 5 years, the only reason I was able to get clean was from the clinic that some people think shouldn't exist.

a reply to: Aazadan

You just described my area but add in low wage warehouse jobs. I am actually lucky enough to have a press operator job but its a dwindling profession hence going to school for IT.

originally posted by: openyourmind1262
What we need is open season on heroin dealers ....Then when we've thinned that herd down, we start shutting down the legal drug dealers.....Methadone Clinics. What a damn useless tool this is in the attempt to stop people from using. just get them hooked on a legal drug that's more addictive than heroin.

If you think that will do anything what so ever without addressing the Pharmaceutical and Medical concerns you are sadly mistaken. I spent 5 years addicted to Prescription opiates before I spent 3 years doing Heroin. This is an issue that is so deeply entrenched that it will require a complete turn around on how we deal with these chemicals as a society not just a community.

There is so much financial incentive to continue pushing Opioids from every direction consequences be damned, it almost makes me believe that it is a deliberate attempt to weaken our entire population. A quick review of the Opium wars between Britain and China will paint a picture for this possibility.

I honestly don't believe the claims of Carfentanil being introduced at the street level, because it is not necessary at all. I don't know how specific I can get on this topic here at ATS but suffice to say that Fentanyl alone is so potent that it is extremely difficult to use it safely as a cutting agent. People with extremely high tolerances and experience with Opioids / Opiates are able to fall out on amounts of Fentanyl that are almost too small to measure. While a certain amount of collateral damage is acceptable and expected, if you literally kill every single user of your product on their first purchase you will very quickly run out of customers, because they are dying too fast to reproduce. That is precisely what would happen if someone was pushing Carfent onto the black market. That's not to say it wouldn't be available to people specifically looking for it, but it would not only be inefficient as a cutting agent I am not even sure it could be done. Even fentanyl is measured at the micro-gram level, which is crazy compared to Opiates as opposed to Opioids.

There is one account of a chemist who synthesized Carfentanil sometime in the 2000's. The only way he could even ingest it safely was through an aerosol. Life turned out very, very bad for that chemist.

originally posted by: andrew778
a reply to: openyourmind1262

You are so damn ignorant it isn't even funny. The amount of lives saved because of methadone or suboxone availability is huge. I bet you also see addicts as scum who deserve to die and have no way of safely trying to get clean. I hope you or a loved one gets addicted and can't go to a clinic for help. Then you'll see how much of an ignorant asshole you are. And so you know, suboxone doesn't have a high involved with it. Methadone can if you go high enough but most doctors won't put people that high. Educate yourself before spewing trash

Listen, you and I both know you are right about Sub and Methadone being good for addicts that actually want help. However you and I also both know that you can get higher than giraffe balls on both of those substances, and for someone with little or no tolerance it will take very little of either to produce a very text book "opiate" high.

Those are not miracle drugs by any means, and most people should not be on them for long. Any doctor prescribing Suboxone for more than a 6-8 day taper both doesn't know what they are doing, and is harming their patient. That isn't to say there aren't exceptions but as a general rule. The only practical difference between Methadone and Oxycontin is their source and intended use in most cases. There are plenty of people that are prescribed Methadone for palative long term care due to its effectiveness in treating pain for extended periods of time. I forgot to mention their Route of administration as being equally important as far as addicts go. A methadone tablet or wafer can't be insuffilated or injected, especially the liquids so they are just seen as more abuse proof.

a reply to: sputniksteve

No you can't get high from suboxone, trust me I've been on it. Methadone yes if the dose is high enough but the smart doctors won't put it that high. And the long term treatment plan is used to build a routine around not using. Going off it too quickly causes over 80-90% of people to relapse iirc. Thats based on 6 months or less i believe. And methadone is a much better alternative to long term pain management than presciptions pills as it works quite well and is very mointored. At least in Canada it is. Weekly urine tests which they watch you take, have to go to the pharmacy daily to get your dose until you've been clean for 6 months roughly and they slowly give you take home doses. I've only ever seen methadone in liquid form in Canada, the suboxone is a tablet though. There's ways around the liquid if you're desperate enough

Enough people abuse methadone or try to that people see it as a bad thing when in reality it's probably saved hundreds of thousands of lives if not millions. Suboxone is much better though if you're trying to quit. No high involved and you can be on and off it in 6-7 days like you said. It's just better over a longer period to kill cravings. If you stop after a week youll still crave opiates but if you get off it after say 4 or 5 months the cravings will be minimal or non existent at that point

a reply to: andrew778

why not Iboga?

originally posted by: toysforadults
a reply to: andrew778

why not Iboga?

Isn't that a hallucinogen? Or is it that crazy plant that cures any addiction after three days?

a reply to: andrew778

it does nothing to yoi but stop cravings if you micro dose

originally posted by: andrew778
a reply to: sputniksteve

No you can't get high from suboxone, trust me I've been on it. Methadone yes if the dose is high enough but the smart doctors won't put it that high. And the long term treatment plan is used to build a routine around not using. Going off it too quickly causes over 80-90% of people to relapse iirc. Thats based on 6 months or less i believe. And methadone is a much better alternative to long term pain management than presciptions pills as it works quite well and is very mointored. At least in Canada it is. Weekly urine tests which they watch you take, have to go to the pharmacy daily to get your dose until you've been clean for 6 months roughly and they slowly give you take home doses. I've only ever seen methadone in liquid form in Canada, the suboxone is a tablet though. There's ways around the liquid if you're desperate enough

Enough people abuse methadone or try to that people see it as a bad thing when in reality it's probably saved hundreds of thousands of lives if not millions. Suboxone is much better though if you're trying to quit. No high involved and you can be on and off it in 6-7 days like you said. It's just better over a longer period to kill cravings. If you stop after a week youll still crave opiates but if you get off it after say 4 or 5 months the cravings will be minimal or non existent at that point

I will not go into detail here, but please take my word for it that you can. Why would I lie about it?

Either way we have different perspectives and opinions obviously. I was just trying to point out that your interpretation of the situation was not the only interpretation.

They need to legalize all drugs and highly regulate their usage. Have the FDA vigorously test for quality, and have ppl in public on said drugs be arrested for dwi or public intox. Take all the $ spent fighting the war on drugs, and use it to educate and treat addicts free of charge. Because, having fewer addicts because of sufficient means of treatment mean less money spent fighting the scurge.

Ppl are unhappy. Period. When ppl are unhappy and it seems there is no future, they self medicate. The real villains are the pushers and dealers. If there was no black market for drugs, the us would make all of that money, and dealers and gangs controlling the drug trade would either go get real jobs or start selling t shirts. Crime would go down. Streets would be safer and cleaner, and consenting adults who have the personal right to put in their body what they see fit wouldn't be arrested so that more tax payer $ can be wasted feeding and clothing them while they rot in a cage. Ahmen.

originally posted by: SheepDipped
They need to legalize all drugs and highly regulate their usage. Have the FDA vigorously test for quality, and have ppl in public on said drugs be arrested for dwi or public intox. Take all the $ spent fighting the war on drugs, and use it to educate and treat addicts free of charge. Because, having fewer addicts because of sufficient means of treatment mean less money spent fighting the scurge.

Ppl are unhappy. Period. When ppl are unhappy and it seems there is no future, they self medicate. The real villains are the pushers and dealers. If there was no black market for drugs, the us would make all of that money, and dealers and gangs controlling the drug trade would either go get real jobs or start selling t shirts. Crime would go down. Streets would be safer and cleaner, and consenting adults who have the personal right to put in their body what they see fit wouldn't be arrested so that more tax payer $ can be wasted feeding and clothing them while they rot in a cage. Ahmen.

If you catch me on the right day I hold this opinion. On other days, I see how much these drugs hurt people, not because of laws but because of their effects. People can't contribute to society when they're high all day long and doing nothing other than chasing their next fix. I believe we need to strongly focus on treatment options for people, decriminalize this stuff, and grow our own domestically but at the same time, some drugs just shouldn't be on the street. I could tolerate heroin if treatment were good at the money wasn't going to the cartels. Something like fentanyl is a bit too much though.

a reply to: sputniksteve

I was on Suboxone for over a year. You cant get ab opiate high from it. Methadone can get you very high. I respect your position and am not trying to argue. Suboxone can create a fake high in a sense though but it will not give you an opiate high. I don't really know how to explain it. It's like a feeling of almost being high but you're not actually high, can't catch a nod or anything. I'm sure if you google it you can find other people who say the same thing. People shoot it for that reason but it won't produce an opiate high

Edit: The primary difference between Suboxone and Subutex is that one of these medications also contains a substance called “naloxone.” while the other one does not: Subutex contains a single active ingredient: buprenorphine. Suboxone contains two active ingredients: buprenorphine and naloxone

What we have here has naloxone in it which is why you can't get high, quite possible subutex will get you high, I can't comment on that. So yes I will admit I'm probably half wrong in my comment. I always assumed they were the same thing.