I'm only thinking about this bc I just had surgery and I'm on oxy for the first time in 17 years, but, like...
Doctors really claim, like as a profession, that they just didn't know fucking opium was highly addictive and oopsie woopsie did a little fucky wucky and now like a million people are dead?
Cause I really never thought about that, but I took 1 "take 2 every four hours" pill SEVEN FUCKING HOURS AGO and I am still tripping balls and in my current altered state their cutesy little "We just forgot morphine was dangerous" shtick sounds pretty fucking ridiculous.
Oh and the DEA and FDA must have been in on this, too, right? The whole time? Because no one would actually be stupid enough to believe this shit, right?
I have severe depression, executive function problems, and a lot of other nasty mental health problems due to adhd and bipolar disorder. Anything that impairs my cognitive function in unexpected ways makes me immediately, extremely uncomfortable.i don't drink alcohol and only use legal thc to deal with pretty severe anxiety episodes. My brain is just too broken to find any additional impairment enjoyable. It's usually more towards horrifying.
All of that together means the only time's i've done recreational drugs are when there was a suggestion they could relieve depression. I think the perspective from which i experience mind altering drugs is very different from most people, which may be why we felt so differently.
I think that's probably the important thing here. It seems you perceive the sensation of an opioid high to be impairing, like alcohol is. I totally understand why many people wouldn't like that even if I do.
The way I perceive an opioid high seems to be different in a way that predisposes people like me toward opioid addiction. When I use opioids I don't feel impaired at all (even if I definitely am!). I just feel this profound sense of calm and comfort, like everything is fine and it'll all work out in the end. For a while I thought it had cured my depression and anxiety. That is what many opioid users call the honeymoon phase. Unfortunately it ends once your tolerance reaches a certain point and you become very physically dependent, then the nightmare begins. But it seems there's a large subset of people who don't go through that honeymoon phase at all, and are thus less likely to get addicted.
It is wild how differently two people can react to the same substance. I have bipolar disorder, and for one reason or another bipolar people tend to be extremely vulnerable to habit forming substances, but i've never felt pressure to use anything outside strictly functional contexts. But then right beside me is someone who has been using alcohol to treat symptoms for decades.
It's just bizarre. I think most people think of themselves as "normal" but then you start to realize how much variation their is in people and how deeply, deeply weird that feels. Like i could ruin someone's hard-earned peace just by casually offering them a beer, but me being offered a beer is no danger at all.