Krokodil

[CraigM]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

Heroin is supposed to be well nigh universally addictive, isn't it?

Absolutely not. Anyone taking opiates for an extended period will develop a degree of physical dependence, but that is a separate thing from addiction. Most folks actually don't like opiates that much (partly because strong opiates are vigorously nauseogenic until you get used to them).

[Purple Haze]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

Are there recreational users of heroin that aren't addicts? There are drinkers that aren't alcoholics, marijuana partakers that aren't stoners, users of hallucinogens that do it rarely, even occasional users of cocaine, and so on. I've never met or heard of anybody who just shot heroin once every couple of months or whatever when they were in the mood and had access.

I know several. I even know a speed user that doesn't indulge more than a couple of times a year.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by CraigM

Absolutely not. Anyone taking opiates for an extended period will develop a degree of physical dependence, but that is a separate thing from addiction. Most folks actually don't like opiates that much (partly because strong opiates are vigorously nauseogenic until you get used to them).

Or those of us that fail to get any pain killing or euphoric effects from opiates. They mess me up, but not in a fun or medically effective way.

[Bruno]

Functional drug users tend to escape attention because they aren't addicts and thus spend most of their time sober and not thinking about their next hit.

Addiction isn't an injury process; it involves a lot of different systems in the brain and in the rest of the body going off kilter enough that the result is "addiction".

Some people pull the handle on a slot machine, scratch their heads, and walk off puzzled, some find it fun but go on with their lives, some destroy themselves on it. A gambling addict is manufacturing their own reward chemicals internally, and has found a trick (or if you prefer, has a weird wiring problem) where they can basically produce a pretty good quantity of them on demand... but that's basically "Fun" in a biochemical nutshell. The normal reaction to "fun" isn't addiction, the same way the normal reaction to alcohol isn't addiction, and the normal reaction to pain killers isn't addiction.

The thing is, while the situation isn't "All humans have a fatal flaw where direct application of reward chemicals causes self-destructive behaviour to obtain more reward chemicals", it also isn't "Some humans just have a moral failing that causes them to destroy themselves with chemicals". The jury is still out about what exactly it is, but my money is on "'Addiction' is a shared symptom of many different not-related problems, not a single disease".

Dude who stands up one day while at work and says "I'm going to start using meth" (not even "go try", but "go get a habit") has a bit of an idea what he's doing. He probably is convinced he won't have his teeth fall out because a lot of people think they're plain invulnerable... But he's going out there deliberately to mess with his brain chemistry, and he thinks this is going to make his life better somehow. That's not as unusual an idea as it sounds, although his particular choice of drug shows worse judgment than usual. Some people drink and do drugs to forget their problems, and that's a pretty conscious choice.

[Flyndaran]

I sometimes think that my anxiety condition is itself a kind of addiction to fear and avoidance.

[tantric]

Originally Posted by Bruno

The thing is, while the situation isn't "All humans have a fatal flaw where direct application of reward chemicals causes self-destructive behaviour to obtain more reward chemicals", .

Really? Oreos vs cocaine
The science doesn't support your opinion. There are those less prone to it, but we all have it, and most humans are highly functional food addicts. This exactly what I was trying to discuss in my thread that got locked. It's important, people. In my country, heart disease largely related to obesity is the number one cause of death. Food addiction is eating us alive.

[The Colonel]

Originally Posted by tantric

Really? Oreos vs cocaine
The science doesn't support your opinion. There are those less prone to it, but we all have it, and most humans are highly functional food addicts. This exactly what I was trying to discuss in my thread that got locked. It's important, people. In my country, heart disease largely related to obesity is the number one cause of death. Food addiction is eating us alive.

To be fair, there are a variety of phenonmena lumped together under "addiction", from mere habit through to physiological dependency and all of them seem to be multi-factorial. "Food addiction" is a tricky one because it's technically an example of a highly adaptive evolved behaviour operating in an environment where it becomes maladaptive.

[tantric]

Clinical addiction involves dopamine. If you don't go into withdrawal, it's not addiction. You're right, though - food addiction was once prosurvival, now it's not. The mechanism for food addiction allows other addictions - drugs, porn, gambling, etc. It is possible to completely end addiction and live without it - and it's a good life. Doing this would crash our economy, as non-addicts have no interest in consumerism. Most people who are "post addicts" a la NA/AA have just switched addiction and live in misery. I've been trying to tell people this for 15 years as the research supporting it grows and grows. The only way I can describe the reaction is "Galileo-esque".

[Anders]

Originally Posted by tantric

Clinical addiction involves dopamine. If you don't go into withdrawal, it's not addiction.

That doesn't mean that everything that involves dopamine is clinical addiction, though. I know you're not necessarily saying that, but it's an important point to make so I wanted to make it. I see a danger in pathologizing non-normal behavior, such as playing RPGs or computer games.

[The Colonel]

Originally Posted by tantric

Clinical addiction involves dopamine. If you don't go into withdrawal, it's not addiction.

Granted, dopamine is behind quite a lot of behaviour but IIRC there's a bit more to addiction than that - dopamine based addiction is what we used to call psychological dependance, but there's also genuine physical dependancy: a classic example being alcohol addiction which is more than dopamine based; alcoholic withdrawl can and does kill.