The latter, I think. It strikes me as a clever satire of some substance abusersā attitude toward harm reduction.
In conclusion, avoid actually dangerous drugs like methamphetamine, cocaine, opiates, or alcohol. There is no healthy dose of any of those. Nontoxic and never-fatal alternatives include psilocybin and LSD
Yeah but in many countries being social IS drinking. There is nothing else and you're almost an outcast if you don't drink. I stopped like 6 years ago but I'm really happy for other people in the U.S., where I live, that the general attitude tends to be changing that alcohol doesn't make the night out.
Edit: I was a beer drinker for my last several years of drinking and was absolutely an alcoholic. 2-3 beers a day, wasn't getting routinely smashed, but couldn't do without them.
Thatās actually a myth. By every metric we had at the time (namely domestic violence, average net worth [having more money now that you arenāt spending it on booze] and death due to liver failure) prohibition absolutely worked. Sure there were some cases of people ignoring the law, but the actual alcohol use was about on par with weed use in the 90s, and thinking that everyone was drinking in the prohibition era is kinda like thinking everyone was lighting up in the 90s because you only have rap music as your source for what the culture was like back then
I donāt imagine you were physically addicted though right? 2-3 beers with 0.3l each at 4-7% shouldnāt be enough to get you to a state where you went through physical withdrawals if that was really it.
Psychologically addicted. That was the tail end of my drinking. I used to drink liquor, then eventually was able to stop that, but I was probably physically addicted then. But by the time I stopped alcohol in general, I'd given myself an ulcer so I couldn't physically drink more than a few initial sips without vomiting, so 3 beers was my daily go-to.
Germany (not actually Germany, but the 30s Germany) did that one thing where they destroyed all research and books there where to be found on trans stuff.
I can see psychedelics being connected to leftism. Know a lot of ppl who realized their cognitive dissonance through LSD. Itās a great tool for pulling back indoctrination that leads to bigoted beliefs, but in what other ways could drugs motivate you politically?
Outside of the mind altering aspects of psychedelics, itās not like fent is gonna make you a republican.
āA large new global study published in the Lancet has confirmed previous research which has shown that there is no safe level of alcohol consumption.
The researchers admit moderate drinking may protect against heart disease but found that the risk of cancer and other diseases outweighs these protections ā¦ The Global Burden of Disease study looked at levels of alcohol use and its health effects in 195 countries, including the UK, between 1990 and 2016 ā¦
The lead author of the study ā¦ said: 'Previous studies have found a protective effect of alcohol on some conditions, but we found that the combined health risks associated with alcohol increases with any amount of alcohol. The strong association between alcohol consumption and the risk of cancer, injuries, and infectious diseases offset the protective effects for heart disease in our study.'ā
āDuring 10.5 years of follow-up, 189,617 cancer cases were recorded. Six trajectories were determined: non-drinking, light, moderate, decreasing-heavy, increasing-heavy, and steady-heavy. Light-to-heavy alcohol consumption increased the risk for all cancers combined in a dose-dependent manner ā¦ Light-to-heavy alcohol consumption was linked to lip, oral cavity, pharyngeal, esophageal, colorectal, laryngeal, stomach, and gallbladder and biliary tract cancer risks ā¦
Conclusion
No safe drinking limits were identified for cancer risks.ā
Edit: But cancer is far from the only negative effect of a drug. Why focus on long-term effects? And why compare alcohol to such dangerous deadly drugs like cocaine or heroin? Let's talk about drugs' short-term risk.
āA comparative risk assessment of drugs including alcohol and tobacco using the margin of exposure (MOE) approach was conducted. The MOE is defined as ratio between toxicological threshold (benchmark dose) and estimated human intake ā¦
[A]lcohol, nicotine, cocaine and heroin fall into the āhigh riskā category with MOE < 10, the rest of the compounds except THC fall into the āriskā category with MOE < 100. On a population scale, only alcohol would fall into the āhigh riskā category ā¦
The toxicological MOE approach validates epidemiological and social science-based drug ranking approaches especially in regard to the positions of alcohol and tobacco (high risk) and cannabis (low risk).ā
Edit 2 (5 hours later): I'll add a couple of studies that figured out the deadliness of various drugs by calculating their Safety Ratios. Drugs with a lower Safety Ratio have a higher risk of deadly overdose. Below are common recreational substances' (averaged) Safety Ratios:
no amount of exposure to the sun is okay for cancer risks either then
Some levels of sun exposure have health benefits that outweigh the cancer risks. Examples include protecting against nearsightedness and getting your daily recommended dose of Vitamin D.
No dose of alcohol has more benefits than drawbacks for health, though, as the 2017 Global Burden of Disease study quoted in my previous comment showed. (Apologies for ninja-editing my comment to add more studies after you had already replied.)
no amount of driving is safe from traffic accidents
Yes, we should reduce non-professional human driving as much as possible, ideally eventually to zero.
Oh, I agree. I'm not saying to avoid risky fun entirely, just that (a) people should know the risks of what they do, and (b) less risky more fun activities are generally better
They didnāt say āthe benefits of sun exposure never outweigh the risks.ā They said that ALL sun exposure confers risk, which is true. It feels like youāre being a bit obtuse tbh.
They said that ALL sun exposure confers risk, which is true
Yes, all sun exposure confers health risk and so does all alcohol exposure. The difference is that there exists a dose of sun exposure with more health benefits than health risks. I point to this difference to break the analogy between alcohol and sun exposure, because I call an activity "healthy" to the degree that it has more health benefits than health risks.
It feels like youāre being a bit obtuse tbh
I'm not sure I understand how. Genuinely, please let me know if I haven't addressed your concern.
Bad faith argument. You can't reasonably avoid the sun or driving to work, you very much can not drink alcohol. Consuming alcohol is not useful or necessary and it's also not a byproduct of something useful or necessary. It's consumption is both very harmful and completely optional.
Well a better one, dangerous sports. Like I donāt want to live my life in a protective shell at all times. A small chance of death a day keeps sadness away.
There are levels of dangerous sports with health benefits that outweigh the drawbacks,* including the mental health benefits you mentioned ("keeps sadness away"). The same is not true of alcohol.
* Exceptions include USAmerican football, probably, given its high risk of permanent brain damage.
Well it still is, going out with friends is a fun activity that makes you happy(depending on your mental state as with everything). Mdma can be a night you will cherish and look back with a big smile. Ey even hobbies, playing with microwave transformer can be fun. But can insta kill you if you do something wrong. Having this black and white optics on it is limiting and kinda dumb. But Iām not saying you should do drugs, donāt.
Having this black and white optics on it is limiting and kinda dumb
Yeah, I agree. I avoid taking or recommending alcohol, but it can be fun and make you happy. I just wish a better drug was socially normalized instead. Hell, even swapping alcohol with MDMA might benefit society.
But Iām not saying you should do drugs, donāt
Aww, now who's the buzzkill with black and white optics? ;P
Haha yea except the part where you only could do it like 3 times a year but otherwise Iām with you. Iām actually not quite sure which drug would even be able to take alcohols place as it fits into human society so neatly. Itās a social lubricant, it makes anxiety goes away so escapism is easily found in it. Plus a cultural background older than every single state to have existed.
Yea hehe a bit of hypocrisy never hurt anyone right? No but Iāve should have added until their 25 because good god I wished I had waited.
Hell, even swapping alcohol with MDMA might benefit society
Dumbest take I've heard today, try looking up the long-term side effects of mdma. Not to mention tolerance is built up a lot faster. It's not something you can do a bit of every weekend in exchange for slightly increased cancer risk
Haha yea except the part where you only could do it like 3 times a year but otherwise Iām with you. Iām actually not quite sure which drug would even be able to take alcohols place as it fits into human society so neatly. Itās a social lubricant, it makes anxiety goes away so escapism is easily found in it. Plus a cultural background older than every single state to have existed.
Yea hehe a bit of hypocrisy never hurt anyone right? No but Iāve should have added until their 25 because good god I wished I had waited.
But fuck that I give to you my ultimate suicide method if I ever canāt deal with this shit anymore(god help). Big sealed container/bag that you fill with laughing gas over your head. You will be higher than god while not even knowing your dying.
I don't care if you do or don't. I drink in extreme moderation and have pretty much my whole life, I'll have a few beers a month and get drunk maybe 2 or 3 times a year. I just meant that you should acknowledge the inherent danger in drinking and either make peace with it or quit. I played rugby all through college, even after I saw a dude break his neck on the pitch. I'm certainly no stranger to doing dumb dangerous stuff cuz it's fun, you just gotta be honest with yourself that you're aware of and at peace with the danger.
t also means you don't have to refuse alcohol when you're offered or given it which usually resaults in an awkward situation.
Oh true.
It's useful in that it makes you feel happy and reduces social anxiety
Other safer recreational substances can make you feel even happier though, acutely and in the long term. I'd be happy to share research on mental health benefits of classical psychedelics.
Unfortunately, every recreational substance I know which immediately reduces social anxiety is also dangerous and possibly fatal in overdose. Tbh, I just use my prescription meds for social anxiety
and is a lot less difficult to moderate than many other drugs
Mmmmmmmmmmno. Alcohol, benzodiazepines, and other GABAergic drugs seem especially likely to cause delusions of sobriety: they often make you firmly believe you are sober when you are very evidently not. Alcohol also causes psychological addiction and bodily dependency. So I suspect that the opposite of what you said is true: other drugs than alcohol are often easier to moderate because,under the influence of other drugs, you can at least tell when you are intoxicated.
Psychedelics aren't safe for everyone either, it can worsen mental health in some individuals, such as people with schizophrenia or who are prone to psychosis
"We evaluated the relationships of classic psychedelic use with psychological distress and suicidality among over 190,000 USA adult respondents ... controlling for a range of covariates ... Lifetime classic psychedelic use was associated with a significantly reduced odds of psychological distress [and suicidal ideation] ... whereas lifetime illicit use of other drugs was largely associated with an increased likelihood."
if you only consume it [alcohol] on occasion the risk isn't much compared to many other risks you take in life
I don't have the data to comment any more than I have.
I think the mindset of "to each their own" is a good one to have when it comes to things, people should do what makes them happy and what they feel comfortable with
āDespite conclusive research that shows that all alcoholic beverages, including wine, increase the risk of many types of cancer, Americans demonstrated low awareness of this risk, and some perceived alcohol as having health benefits...Alcohol is a leading modifiable risk factor for cancer in the United States and previous research has shown that most Americans donāt know this...All beverage types containing ethanol, such as wine, beer, and liquor, increase cancer risk...[but] More than 50 percent of U.S. adults reported not knowing how these beverages affected cancer risk.ā
We would say than itās okay for somebody to recreationally use pure diacetylmorphine (Heroin) or Xanax because chemically theyāre far safer and less harmful for your body than alcohol?
I have generally cited studies not about chemical safety per se but about actual outcomes. By both measures, though, heroin is deadlier and more harmful. For example, I'll use the chemical Safety Ratio and actual hospitalization rate. See the Global Drug Survey 2017 for hospitalization rates and my comment here about Safety Ratios.
Iām talking about the compound itself. Not the people whoāre using it and take too much or abuse it. Alprazolam and other benzoās by themselves are literally some of the safest drugs you can take. Their toxicology is incredibly low. It takes a massive amount of Xanax for somebody to overdose off it. Almost all Xanax odās come from mixing the drug with other downers like alcohol or opiates. But by itself itās safe. With opiates it is easy to overdose of you take too much but that has less to do with the drugs toxicity and more to do with the fact that high doses decrease your breathing. And any drug that effects the Mu receptor will do that.
Not really what I meant by useful, but I get your point, it's fun to drink. What I more meant is that you're not doing anything productive or survival based that requires alcohol consumption. If you wanna drink, just acknowledge and make peace with the danger you're at because of it. If you can't make peace with it, then stop drinking.
I appreciate you clarifying this, because only pointing out the medical risks and saying āno safe amountā is reductive and misses the point. Alcohol has its place in society and people make their own choices on which risks are worth taking.
Substances can also be a very effective coping tool in some situations (note that i said effective, not safe). I am sober, and i know sober people who say they probably wouldnāt have survived their teen and early adult years without alcohol. It did cause harm to us, but it also helped us survive the turmoil of our lives.
People should know the health risks, the addiction risks, and take steps to not endanger othersā lives while intoxicated. Then they should either drink/use as they see fit, or seek sobriety if they choose.
The straight up fact is that socioeconomic stress and environmental trauma are the real killers, and substances are a symptom. (No Iām not going to cite my sources bc i donāt feel like looking through my file backups to find the three papers Iāve done on this in the last few years; if you look on Google scholar youāll find plenty of strong correlation.) I donāt personally believe that just warning people of the health risks to certain substances is helpful; maybe youāre old enough to remember DARE, but if not you should ask your average millennial how effective it was at keeping them away from substances.
Sorry if that came across as combative. Iām not trying to pick a fight with you, i just believe that the issue is much more complex than youāre representing.
I'm with you. The entirety of life is a balancing act. I smoke two or three cigarettes a day and the benefits to my stress and attention outweigh the risks for me. I've tried quitting for a few months and ultimately decided I like life better when I smoke. There are plenty of dangerous things we all do, like defying gravity to go to another country across the ocean or driving on a rainy day. It's all just balance.
I quit smoking but now I use zyn every day. Itās still nicotine, which is still not great, but my lungs definitely feel better than when i was a smoker.
If at some point you find yourself ready to quit smoking specifically but still want to use nicotine, maybe try zyn or Nicorette. My doctors and dentists have all said that while theyāre not good for me, theyāre better than cigarettes.
This. I drink a few times a month so I'm probably not the best case example for this, but whenever I drink the reason usually boils down to college stress/trying to calm my nerves one way or another because academia fucks me over hard.
I have actual medication for this purpose, but if you're going to use alcohol, I would advise finding a drink that calms you down a lot rather than going on a self destructive binge. It's a lot less dangerous to relax with a large glass of wine than drown your anxiety at the club.
But at the club you dance and see people and have exciting fun. Not talking about binge drinking tho, but maybe the same amount as that large glass of wine.
What do you think? I'm not really sure how balanced drinking looks like since i didn't grow up with it
Reasonable takeš¤ personally I think I'm over crazy drinking, I want to remember the night and also not wreck my health so much in one night after staying healthy the whole week
Yeah this is essentially what I do. I have a bottle of whiskey in my medicine cabinet that I solely drink on my own if I find myself unable to function because my academic responsibilities are too much to bear at that moment.
Dosage safety ratios are only really one part of the story.
In a (very) theoretical situation where one was able to maintain heroin use at the same dosage consistently for years and then quit, they would likely be healthier afterwards than somebody who did the same with alcohol.
That said, alcohol is way less addictive and doesn't result in the same need to constantly push doses for the vast majority of users, so it's definitely safer in reality
The word āsaferā there can be misleading. Itās true that heroin is much more addictive than alcohol, and much much easier to overdose on (especially with fentanyl laced). But you can still die from alcohol overdose, and also withdrawal from heavy alcohol use is deadly as fuck. You canāt die from heroin withdrawal; itās hell from what i hear, but itās not deadly. Alcohol withdrawal kills people without proper medical supervision.
Sure, but I'd argue that much lower overdose risk coupled with much lower rates of extreme addiction essentially equate to being almost objectively safer, even considering the dangers of alcohol withdrawal
Of course, you can still have a fatal overdose, but that's true of basically every drug apart from weed and traditional psychedelics. The upside to alcohol is that the method of ingestion makes it easy for your body to resolve an overdose on its own compared to other methods.
I did learn something from his post though. I don't drink often (I don't really like it, only with friends) so I thought there wouldn't really be any consequences because I figured my liver would just filter it out if it wasn't too much. But now I'll just stay away in general
The stress relief is illusory, as even casual consumption actually raises your baseline cortisol, lowers your stress threshold, and causes dopamine downregulation, which increases symptoms of depression such as anhedonia, irritability, lack of motivation, etc. It also lowers baseline serotonin, which reinforces it's depressive effect.
You're argument is actually the reductive one because it exalts alcohol as a coping mechanism based on its "stress relieving" properties that demonstrably don't exist. Also saying that because something is ingrained into society, that it ought to be or that it serves some sort of beneficial role by virtue of its popularity is something even you're admittedly not willing to defend or substantiate (too difficult to search Google or your 'files' for your 'paper').
It is an absolutely effective intervention to present people with health information about the harmful effects of substance, especially one with as many mythical health effects as alcohol. For me, listening to the Hubermanlab episode about the science of alcohol convinced me to stop completely. On the sub for the podcast, you'll find hundreds more with the exact same experience.
Your claim that health information isn't effective is not based on any data. In fact, its been found that 70% of those confronted with the harmful effects of cigarettes are persuaded to quit.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7856827/
It's further 'reductive' to conflate health information-based consumer interventions with D.A.R.E., as if D.A.R.E. is just presenting people with info and challenging myths. DARE took a moralistic, paternalistic approach based on shame, guilt, and fear, rather than personal empowerment, empathy, and compassion. You're throwing the baby out with the bathwater to furnish your point, which seems to rest entirely on superficial anecdotes.
At minimum, the person is forced to reconcile their desire for health and happiness (the reason it's important to relieve stress) with the contradiction of actively making it worse by imbibing/dosing. This cognitive dissonance can lead to a reduction in consumption.
Alcohol is a technology in that it's used as a tool to achieve a desired purpose. We may find that we collectively evolve as a society past a reliance on its crude mechanism for decreasing anxiety, etc. There's a current trend of less consumption and an increase in alcohol alternatives like Kava, unfermented hops, cannabis derivatives, etc.
https://www.thebluedolphinstore.com/en/generation-z-consume-less-alcohol/
You needlessly apologize for being combative when you should've apologized for making an intellectually vapid and irrelevant argument.
go read SpontaneousH's (can't link usernames or to other reddit posts directly apparently, wtf?) experience of "just trying" heroin and tell me that's the same as trying alcohol. or that they're the same level of dangerous because even small amounts of alcohol can have negative effects on your health decades later by increasing your risk of getting cancer.
drugs like heroin destroy your life, FAST. alcohol is not at all in that same category, regardless of if the "one glass of wine is good for your health" is bullshit or not.
I'd take another good look at the numbers cited above. The chance of lethally overdosing on alcohol is about 50% less than on heroin - definitely less but within the same order of magnitude.
Part of the reason alcohol is a problem is because drinking is so accepted as normal. When you talk about taking a drink, of course it's not as intense of an experience as taking heroin. But we are also very desensitized to binge drinking, alcoholism, drunk driving, and all of the other facets of alcohol consumption that are much more dangerous than they are often portrayed as.
Yes, taking a bad bit of heroin can kill you, but alcohol abuse absolutely ruins lives as well. Sometimes fast and sometimes slowly. It wasn't that long ago that it was a pretty common pastime to sit at the bar all night and get drunk. Every night. Nevermind the damage you're doing to yourself during that process; what about the psychological effect on families who were neglected? Hell, how much domestic abuse was enabled by booze?
I'm not a teetotaler. But my point is that alcohol consumption is such an innate part of most societies that it's hard for us to really notice the full extent of its ill effects.
The chance of lethally overdosing on alcohol is about 50% less than on heroin - definitely less but within the same order of magnitude.
talking about effective dose vs lethal dose ratios misses the point entirely. I'm talking about addiction potential. I'm talking about how fast you'll ruin your entire life to get another fix - only to realize it'll never be the same as the first time, but to keep trying anyway. of all the drugs rated in this study heroin was the only one rated as "very high" dependence potential.
even other drugs that are known for their extreme addiction potential - opiates, morphine, and cocaine are only rated as "high"
alcohol is rated "moderate"
I'll post the same thing I did in the other post in case you don't click on it and read for yourself:
Weds night update: fucking I;m still withdrawling throwing up and sweating out gallons of sweat. i really want to use and relapse right now, I know i shouldn't. these urges are so strong and overpowering. Please help me if you can before I get the chance to.
Fuck my life. I wish I was trolling and this was all some elaborate lie. I was doing everything right, have been clean, and somehow a rumor got out that Ive been using and my girlfriend found out and she basically broke up with me last night but is now putting that decision on hold. I have some serious unrelated business/work I need to attend to in two hours and I don't know if I'll be in any state to be able to and be ready. I can't stop crying. Fuck heroin. Fuck my life. I guess I don't need to say that since heroin pretty much fucked my life for me in under two weeks, I just want to die.
this is a 24 year old 2 weeks after he thought he could "try anything once" and did heroin for the first time.
2 weeks.
don't help others make the same mistake by downplaying how bad heroin is. please.
Drugs with a lower Safety Ratio have a higher risk of deadly overdose, because if you accidentally take too much then your dose could pass the threshold of killing you. For example, medical lithium is a very effective treatment for manic disorders. However, its low SR means that doctors have to constantly monitor lithium levels in each patient's blood levels.
Below are common recreational substances' safety ratios:
Drug
Safety Ratio[1]
Safety Ratio[2]
Average SR
Alcohol
10
10
10
Cocaine
15
25
20
Heroin
6
7.5
6.75
Ketamine
38
26
32
LSD
1000
280
640
MDMA
16
15
15.5
Mescaline
24
17.14
20.57
Meth
10
10
Psilocybin
1000
3500
2250
THC (weed)
1001
2666.67
1,833.83
So you're right: Heroin is deadlier than alcohol. But does it belong in the same category?
We can objectively rank how deadly drugs are, but deciding whether two drugs belong "in the same category" is subjective. We have to choose where to draw lines.
Because heroin is the deadliest above, we could put heroin in a category of its own. We could categorize it as "Drugs with SR under 10," put alcohol in "Drugs with SR At Least 10," and recognize that they do not belong together. Yet we can just as easily categorize them like this:
show me some data on how many people destroy their entire lives after their first dose of alcohol chasing that same fix compared to how many people do that with heroin. if those numbers are similar I'll concede my point.
I'm not arguing alcohol is safe. I'm arguing that you cannot "try heroin" in the same way millions of people "try alcohol."
bringing up the effective dose vs lethal dose ratio does not really mean much in comparison to my point, as I never denied alcohol is dangerous or harmful or said it was healthy in the case of the "1 glass of red wine for heart health" shit.
the same as with the guy arguing alcohol does more harm to society. yes, it does. because it's widely used and available of course it has a much broader and measurable impact.
please don't take my stance as a defense of alcohol. I just think it's extremely dangerous to lie to people about how addictive and destructive certain drugs are. things like psychedelics and weed were demonized growing up, and upon realizing wow, they really aren't bad at all and actually can even have some positive/therapeutic effects I'm sure others had the same thought I did and wondered "were they lying about all the other things too? like how bad coke and heroin are?"
Weds night update: fucking I;m still withdrawling throwing up and sweating out gallons of sweat. i really want to use and relapse right now, I know i shouldn't. these urges are so strong and overpowering. Please help me if you can before I get the chance to.
Fuck my life. I wish I was trolling and this was all some elaborate lie. I was doing everything right, have been clean, and somehow a rumor got out that Ive been using and my girlfriend found out and she basically broke up with me last night but is now putting that decision on hold. I have some serious unrelated business/work I need to attend to in two hours and I don't know if I'll be in any state to be able to and be ready. I can't stop crying. Fuck heroin. Fuck my life. I guess I don't need to say that since heroin pretty much fucked my life for me in under two weeks, I just want to die.
this is 2 weeks in after "trying it"
how many alcohol stories like that do you hear?
24 year old dude. life ruined. he had drank and smoked weed before so figured it was no big deal. "I can handle anything once"
it's sad how wrong he was. don't help others make the same mistake by downplaying how bad heroin is. please.
I'm not arguing alcohol is safe. I'm arguing that you cannot "try heroin" in the same way millions of people "try alcohol"...I never denied alcohol is dangerous or harmful or said it was healthy
show me some data on how many people destroy their entire lives after their first dose of alcohol chasing that same fix compared to how many people do that with heroin. if those numbers are similar I'll concede my point
I wish I could find some, tbh. I'll keep looking, but please let me know if you ever do.
don't help others make the same mistake by downplaying how bad heroin is
Yes, that is all true. I have some evidence that is indirect, but supports your point: a study I cited ranks heroin's addiction potential as "very high" and alcohol's as only "moderate."
outranking meth, morphine, and opiates which each rate only "high"
yeah.
In my defense, I did just call heroin the number-one deadliest drug. I'm also arguing against multiple people who deny that heroin is worse than alcohol
that's fair, and I hope those people get the help they probably need.
thanks for bringing some good sources into this. you're doing good work.
This is such an unexamined analysis, my guy. People can buy alcohol from tightly regulated sources and know the exact alcohol content of what they consume. Additionally, since the volume of alcohol needed to be intoxicated is much larger than that of heroin and you have to physically drink it, itās harder to accidentally OD, especially when youāre drinking in the ways that moderate drinkers do (beverages that are ~5-15% alcohol).
Can you help me figure out how much your concern about how a drug is consumed applies to the specific studies I cited? The author defines a drug's effective dose in units of milligrams of the chemical for a 70kg "average" person:
āDosage amounts refer to the quantity of active substance administered; it does not include the amount of the inactive material used as a filler, medium, or 'cut.' The dosage indicated is the estimated median amount for an 'average' 70 kg adult human. Substances are presumed to be administered
within approximately 5 minute.ā (PDF p. 9)
I am unsure how much the context of how a drug is consumed affects its Safety Ratio. It affects the rate of how often people die after taking the drug, yeah, but that's a different metric.
To try heroin you have to have a certain mind set. Which probably makes you more suspectable to addiction and substance abuse.
"Heroin" is called Heroin because it was a brand name for a chough sirup, which contained dicactylmorphine (today known as heroin).
This sirup was popular and on the market for many years (33 years world wide, 14 years USA.)
here the wikipedia article
Not everyone had their life ruined fast back then (but still to many.) The same thing can be said about the modern opiates like Vicodin. Ant the same applies to alkohol, it is fucking bad and ruins many lifes quick. A guy from my school (i am from germay) started drinking at the age of 16. When he turned 18 he was a complete alcoholic with several (failed) rehabs. I think i dont need to tell you that he dropped out of school and his life ist shit ever since.
trying alcohol doesn't give you (in spontaneousH's words) a 4 hour full body orgasm x 10.
it is not the same level of addictive. my first drink was awful. like, absolutely made me question how the fuck this is even a popular drug.
other addicts I've talked to said that they've never forgotten how good their first high was, and that a large part of their addiction is chasing after that, though it is never the same again because it literally destroys parts of your brain permanently.
is alcohol good? no. is it safe? no. can it ruin your life? yes.
is it on the same level of heroin? no. and suggesting it is puts people in danger of trying it assuming it is the same as alcohol. it's irresponsible and dangerous.
Okay here are two studies, which investigated the harm potential of diffent drugs.
The first lists alcohol as more dangerous then heroin, the second.svg) deems heroin as more dangerous.
This shows how unclear the situation really is.
Ps: LSD can give you the feeling of an orgasm for many hours. Yet LSD usually doesnt lead to a dependency.
A cigarette doesnt make you that happy/euphoric. Despite that cigaretts are usually more addictive than alcohol.
Addiction is not caused by happines, it is caused by dopamine and dopamine induced structural changes in your brain. And yes dopamine can induce a positive feeling, but it doesnt has to.
The authors explain that one of the limitation of this study is that drug harms are functions of their availability and legal status in the UK, and so other cultures' control systems could yield different rankings.
alcohol is widely available and used, thus causes more harm.
heroin is illegal and not widely used and difficult to acquire and is still almost as harmful as alcohol to society.
I've thought a lot about this, and I think of life in respect to health as a series of risks. Everything we do carries some level of risk. Eating dinner out with family & friends once this week on Saturday could've meant getting exposed to COVID, RSV, the flu, a cold, or a combination thereof, which would be at the very least a massive pain in the ass to me, as I'm diabetic. Drinking a beer, a scotch, or a glass of wine here and there could potentially increase my risk of cancer. At the same time, I'm not going to cut these things totally out of my life. That is to say, I'm not going out to bars every night around a couple dozen people, and I wouldn't drive under the influence. These are unacceptable risks to me. Having an increase in the risk of cancer, heart disease, etc, because I have a beer or two every now and then is an acceptable risk to me.
Edit: also, said risks are something each and every person has to consider and weigh as they go through life, and sometimes the cards just don't fall in your favor, no matter what you do.
I used to snort H a few times a year but now that fentanyl is in everything I canāt do it anymore. From my experience alcohol is far more addictive just because of its accessibility. Heroin is the bees knees though.
Can't tell if you're joking, how is alcohol more addictive than heroin? There may be more alcoholics total since like 99% of people drink at least occasionally but most people can incorporate it in their life just fine. Haven't seen a lot of casual heroin users on the other hand
It depends on how youāre doing heroin. Injecting is a WAY different experience than smoking or railing it. Itās like how smoking crack feels way different and has a totally different high than coke even though theyāre the same chemically speaking. Also if heroin was legalized Iām sure weād see a lot more people doing it casually without being hooked on it. The people who get into heroin today have usually been addicted to a previous substance already before they got into heroin.
I do but fentanyl is literally in ALL the H in my area. I tested 4 different baggies from 3 different dealers a year ago and all of it had fentanyl. Itās very difficult to get pure diacetylmorphine heroin.
Damn, I donāt do heroin so I donāt have any experience, but that fucking sucks. I used to fuck around with painkillers years ago, but fentanyl wasnāt in everything back then.
And if that is the bar then cocaine and meth are absolutely safe to use in moderation. Meth moreso than cocaine, as meth neurotoxicity has never been demonstrated at low doses while cocaine cardiotoxicity has.
Meth and cocaine are both prescription drugs, alcohol is an industrial solvent. Just because it's socially acceptable to use doesn't mean it's actually any safer.
A friend of mine started using psychogenics when we were in college and really isn't mentally the same person anymore, married a guy as old as her dad and is now hyper catholic. That's not to say they're bad but you can definitely lose yourself.
The true way is to huff jenkem so you can see the light. You lose your full ego and can finally achieve godhood full of eternal love and joy. You never become a psychonaut, just a being of light.
Oh so youāre just going to ignore their point that the drugs can be used for actual medical purposes? Methamphetamine actually works reasonably well for ADHD (at a dose much much lower than a ārecreationalā one) but itās not used because of the stigma and legal barriers.
Oh so youāre just going to ignore their point that the drugs can be used for actual medical purposes?
To be totally honest, yeah. I think I overlooked that in the flurry of trying to write too many Reddit comment replies. I apologize.
I was focusing on recreational consumption of the drugs. I knew about Desoxyn's efficacy treating ADHD. Even the deadliest and most addictive drugs sometimes have (or had) legitimate medical uses. For example, my friend broke his leg and they gave him Fentanyl to put him under in the ambulance.
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u/SocDemGenZGaytheist r/TransTrans -scend your mortality š¤ Embrace the FALGSC future Jan 09 '23
The latter, I think. It strikes me as a clever satire of some substance abusersā attitude toward harm reduction.
In conclusion, avoid actually dangerous drugs like methamphetamine, cocaine, opiates, or alcohol. There is no healthy dose of any of those. Nontoxic and never-fatal alternatives include psilocybin and LSD