This is the scariest thing about heroin IMO. It's basically game over, you've ruined the game of life by using a cheat code and the rest of the game will feel hollow and pointless.
You don't need heroin to reveal this to you. That's in part why burnout is a thing. Just try really hard to do what you think is right, and then be shown that what you put your energy into is basically worthless. Then you start thinking about what ultimate prospects every hypothetical financial reward could result in, and it's pretty bleak out there. Then once you're ready to get back into it after being fired, because you're running out of money, you realize that it takes 4x the effort to do 1x the work for 0.25x the spiritual reward that initially drove you to get into it, and so you turn to heroin or start a farm.
I've been pondering for a while if being at certain points on the bathtub curve of learning/integrating new things (the disorientation phase, the sense of no progress) may create exponential sensitivity to emotional stress (like burnout) and make it feel 100x worse. Reading this, now I'm wondering if maybe a similar bathtub curve effect (specifically the "I can't see the light at the end of the tunnel" part) associated with the open-ended constant mental engagement of looking for work precipitates a similar sort of sensitivity to ROI outcomes (with obvious preferences toward lots of positivity).
If this is the case, then as direct as it is to say - these mechanisms are just that, mental mechanisms, and it just happens that when "low point of bathtub curve" bounces off of "really badly timed negative ROI event" bounce off of each other, it's like the result is amplified almost beyond reason. Long-term the signal value ("this will kill your spirit") is absolutely true, but in the immediate (ultra-short) term, compartmentalizing and ignoring it may be both safe and actively helpful. (Standard internet advice disclaimer applies)
TL;DR: Good luck, and may circumstances and equilibrium materially improve and solidify.
Why is it scary? Heroin isn’t unique in this aspect.
I had a friend tell me “when I had the first drink ever my first thought was ‘I want to feel like this the rest of my life’”. He was sucked in right away and struggled for years to break that hold.
Plenty of people feel that way and practically kill themselves with alcohol, opioids, cocaine and even food.
And plenty of people take opioids equivalent to heroin and say “i felt terrible, nauseous and dizzy, I don’t get it”.
I cant find the source but there was a DEA (?) report a long time ago that noted “80%+ of cocaine users use it less than 5 times per year”.
When drug use gets pushed into the shadows the only examples you see are the ones where it spirals out of control.
Say you use heroin or have used it in the past. Now you have to go in for some kind of surgery. Guess what? The opiate pain meds won't work for you! I've seen it first hand. It's awful. Hospitals are only allowed to give so much and if you're a user or were a user, the amount they give you won't touch your pain.
Guy who used heroin shattered his hand in a fall off a roof. Had pins put in. When he came around after surgery they had to call the police he was so out of control because his pain couldn't be managed.
Opioid tolerance will absolutely decline if you stop using. it's actually a significant cause of death. People will quit (or go without due to jail, etc) and then relapse with the same dose they has used before and have a fatal overdose.
Morbid but curious question: when tolerance declines, does a de-rated dose (say, 100% of the body's safe mechanical limit) produce the same mental effect as the previous, now way higher dose would? IOW, does the tolerance affect the mental response as well?
(NB. Have integrated the understanding that pushing The Button™ is a generally bad idea. The above is purely intellectual curiosity.)
Because it has such a strong effect for most people compared to food, sex, alcohol, etc.
Obviously I don't know how strong (and I really really hope I never know, unless I'm on my death bed etc) but by all accounts it is overwhelming. Everything is toxic at the right dosage, and heroin is pure toxic pleasure.
I was spiked with heroin once. It didn't impress me - it made me feel a bit ill.
I've tried coke - good stuff, in good company, for an evening. It didn't impress me much.
I guess I was just lucky. I have an "addictive personality" - I drink way too much, and I'm a heavy smoker. I could easily have fallen into one of those holes, if I'd actually enjoyed those drugs. I found psychedelics much more engaging; but they're generally not addictive - after 3 days of continuous LSD use, no amount of LSD will get you tripping again. It's anti-addictive.
A physical dependency is not a requirement nor is it necessarily that strong of a motivator for continued use. Psychological dependency is often the harder thing to break. Addiction is defined by continued, compulsive use despite negative consequences in one's life.
And sure, most people don't say "I want to drink forever" when they have their first drink. But that's my point, most people don't say that when they get opioids - remember they are very widely used in medicine. Some small fraction of users actually spiral into a deep addiction.
Now, one could argue the percent that develop a problem is larger than with alcohol - that might be true. That said, it's estimated something like 10% of drinkers have "problems" with their drinking. Again, not everyone ends up a homeless drunk - plenty of functioning alcoholics.
This is correct. You have to work on an alcohol addiction. It takes a few months to develop a dependency severe-enough that withdrawal might result in seizures. Short of that, you can just quit, if you can get time off work for a few days in bed.
You also have to work on a heroin addiction, so I have heard. It simply isn't true that "one dose and you're hooked". People become addicts because they want to be addicts, for whatever reason. Part of it is lifestyle; part of it is the desire to be dependant, so you get to not have to be responsible for yourself.
> You also have to work on a heroin addiction, so I have heard. It simply isn't true that "one dose and you're hooked".
When I looked at it, it is something like 30% of people develop dependence after first one-two usages. Then there are people who can use it casually for a long time before developing it.
I shouldn't have said "you can just quit" - that's medical advice, and I'm no kind of medic. A decent nurse will tell you if you'll be able to just sleep it off.
Sorry for commenting to self, but it's too late to edit.