[Uberphallus]

It's a myth.

My cousin is a social worker, dealing with addicts. I've done heroin myself. I know heroin addicts, though not as many as he does.

We both agree: almost all addicts have a backdrop of broken families, poverty, unemployment, some kind of trauma or just a general lack of opportunities in life. Heroin makes all that go away... for a while. How could they NOT become addicted?

The myth is about shifting blame from social inequality onto a drug. The addiction is but a symptom of a societal disease.

[watwut]

That is not mutually exclusive. Every single person living in 2020 knows dangers of heroin addiction. It is not starter drug happy person will try these days. You have to be seld destructive to even try.

[Uberphallus]

> Every single person living in 2020 knows dangers of heroin addiction.

LOL no. Some people here, most of them highly educated, are spewing myths like it's "instantly addictive", lies laid out to try to curb the epidemic from the 80s.

It takes relatively long daily use for one to become dependent, and basically you only do that if you don't have a job or anything you value waiting for you after the high, really. Sure, there are exceptions, but that's the norm. The fact that drug abuse heavily correlates with economic recessions and unemployment increases should give everyone a hint. [0]

In 2020, we know roughly 80% of the users never become dependent. [1] In the same ballpark as alcohol, unsurprisingly.

And it's normal. Because it's bliss, but then it's pretty shitty. For a few hours of high you have a few hours of nausea and general discomfort.

> You have to be seld destructive to even try.

No, you just have to be curious and know how to evaluate risks and benefits. It's not a "starter happy drug", but it's not the devil. In 2020, the people doing heroin know a good deal more what they're doing than the ones from the 80s.

Harm prevention and reduction has moved on a lot too. There are high precision scales for very cheap. There are testing kits, too. In the 80s pharmacies in most countries were told not to sell syringes to addicts, again to curb the epidemic, causing them to share needles with all the associated problems (HIV expansion, needles leaving more bruises, sepsis...). Now most countries with a sane drug policies provide free needles to addicts, when not straight up supplying heroin to them [2]. Unsurprisingly such countries have lower problematic drug use than the US, where the problem is policed rather than treated.

[0] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S095539591... [1] https://drugpolicy.org/drug-facts/can-using-heroin-once-make... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heroin-assisted_treatment