Can long-term hard drug usage improve your life?

[WhoIam]

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So obviously Heroin is probably ALWAYS -e.v.,

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What? Heroin/opiates are the only hard drug that has no harmful effects on the body other than it is highly addictive.

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Fine, but does anyone use heroin regularly without ruining their life?

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Yes. Some addicts actually have good jobs (stockbroker is a common one) and can have a habit for years without major problems. Not every junkie is f'ed-up 24/7 and someone like this wouldn't have the nutrient deficiency and major health problems that come with the street junkie lifestyle. Having ready access to money means they don't have to spend all day trying to score and can shoot up the good stuff in as sanitary a method as possible.

[pete fabrizio]

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So obviously Heroin is probably ALWAYS -e.v.,

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What? Heroin/opiates are the only hard drug that has no harmful effects on the body other than it is highly addictive.

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Fine, but does anyone use heroin regularly without ruining their life?

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Yes. Some addicts actually have good jobs (stockbroker is a common one) and can have a habit for years without major problems. Not every junkie is f'ed-up 24/7 and someone like this wouldn't have the nutrient deficiency and major health problems that come with the street junkie lifestyle. Having ready access to money means they don't have to spend all day trying to score and can shoot up the good stuff in as sanitary a method as possible.

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Are these people just lucky, or do they have a better plan/strategy than others? I would expect SOME of the many people who use heroin don't let it ruin their lives, but that doesn't necessarily mean it can be a +e.v. bet for anybody.

[nath]

I bet it's possible if you just take decent care of yourself otherwise and don't become such a junkie that you lose your job and any means of supporting yourself.

[Zarathustra]

It's all relative to what you are trying to accomplish at a given moment. As a songwriter I have found that THC facilitates the creative mechanisms of my brain, but tends to curb my overall energy and motivation, even when vaporized (though I highly recommend this consumption method over any other).

It also seems to come down to how much your valuation of a drug is deluded by addiction or dependence. A drug that you had initially begun using for a distinct and valuable purpose may eventually evolve into an onerous vice, especially if subconscious mechanisms begin controlling usage.

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No.

We have evolved to be optimally "enhanced" as is in our natural condition.


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As we begin to better understand how the brain works drugs will be synthetically tailored to the individual and without detrimental side effects. Claims that the brain has been naturally enhanced to an optimal state are scientifically baseless. Tell this to the man whose life is thrown into utter chaos by bouts of schizophrenia. Evolution produced distinctly human brain mechanisms that permit elaborate creative and dissociative cognition. When certain DNA variations produce brain mechanisms that are excessively dissociative, insanity results. Insanity is hardly optimal.

[registrar]

This depends what we mean by 'improve your life' but I think by most measures and speaking as someone who has taken a lot of drugs of different types for a long time, I would suggest that the answer is no. However, of we accept the maxim that life is the memories that we create, then I would argue that the "acquisition and use of illegal drugs" (the charge applied when I was rusticated from university) has given me more fine memories than the periods of clean living that I have sometimes indulged in.

As for the drugs themselves, I don't think there's much wrong with taking liberty caps frequently. Pot doesn't do you any favours if you smoke every day for a long period. I think coke's probably bad and it's always so impure. Smack is also impure and very few people are blessed with a lifestyle that enables them to take it without the moral consequences. Acid can really [censored] you up, but if it hasn't yet, it never will and gets kind of boring for that reason. E is really bad, IMO, if taken for a sustained period.

I can think of one really positive drug. When I'm old and in constant pain, and am more of a drag on society, friends and family than I can be a boon, then opium till death has to be the way to go.

[Tron]

I think it would probably only improve your life if you were an awesome rock star or super cool artist.

[luckyjimm]

I would say the drug which can most easily be argued to be beneficial - if taken sporadically - is MDMA. You have amazing experiences, and it really can make you a mellower, nicer person with better insight into yourself. Take it every day of course and you'll end up a paranoid cabbage, but most users know this and since it's non-addictive will control their usage.

[XXXNoahXXX]

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I think it would probably only improve your life if you were an awesome rock star or super cool artist.

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Yeah when you're 45, mother of three, hitting the crack pipe a few times a week just doesn't seem to be a move towards improving your life.

[Peter McDermott]

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Fine, but does anyone use heroin regularly without ruining their life?

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Yes, but:

- They are extremely few and far between.
- The odds of ruining your life are far higher than they are of being able to engage in long-term moderate use.

Of course, it depends what you mean by regularly. Far more people are able to use heroin on an annual basis without a problem than those who use it on a weekly basis without developing a problem.

[ScottieK]

Funny I found this thread...I went to a drug education class last night, put on by local law enforcement. Most of the class was dedicated to meth, and all the pictures of users that they showed us showed a rapid physical deterioration over time. Users get a continual nervous system stimulus that makes them scratch at their arms and legs...in some cases, to the bone. According to them, meth is ten times as addicting as crack, and crack is some scary s$^%. So I can't see anything hard like meth, crack, heroin, or LSD actually improving your life with long-term use.

A devil's advocate could claim that rock stars like Jim Morrison, Layne Staley, and a bunch of others couldn't have been as talented without LSD, heroin or coke. Even if that is true, the price some paid for harnessing that talent is too high IMO.

As for marijuana, in the class they said that today's marijuana has several times the THC that it did in the 1970's. I don't think an occasional joint by itself would really hurt anyone, but the cops said that some of the guys they've busted would smoke a dozen joints a day....and they just wouldn't care about anything in the world without being aware of anything around them.

ScottieK