I never trust the DSM for anything. It is a political document.
i.e. the "spiritual" problems of addiction. What an utter load.
Yeah. Taking pain medication for pain is a spiritual problem. Right. It is spiritual only in so far as users are reviled.
And it is progressive. Ha. No mention of receptors. The growth in the brain (of adults) of receptors. The filling and emptying of receptors.
Where is the basis in science in the DSM? Absent as far as I can tell.
Addiction Is A Brain Disease
MSimon wrote:If that is not enough to answer your question I'd say some more research on your part is in order.Diogenes wrote:I'm sorry, is that a Yes or a No?MSimon wrote: There is a lot of confusion about this term:
1. Habituation - the body incorporates the drug as part of its metabolism. We see this in opiates. If you take a lot of opiates the body builds a lot more endorphin (opiate) receptors. Then when you cut back you don't feel so good. This can last from a few days - opiates to months - barbiturates. We have regimes that can undo habituation.
2. Addiction - the use of drugs to ease some type of psychological condition - PTSD and similar. Thus chronic use. We have nothing for this.
Now tobacco is a mild anti-depressant. Schizophrenics especially seem to like it. Pot is also a mild anti-depressant which is much less habituating. It also seems to have anti-tumor properties. Thus you don't find many pot only smokers in the cancer ward. But for some reason we have laws against it.
It isn't a question of what I understand, it's a question of whether or not you will give a straight answer so it can be compared to your assertion that Drugs Do NOT Cause Addiction.
I point out nicotine (long acknowledged by everyone and their dog to cause addiction) and you obfuscate.
You perceive that you are rightfully trapped. The only direction left is sideways.
If you say "Yes," and agree that Nicotine causes addiction, you have refuted your own point. If you say "No", you are stating something which most people regard as patently absurd. As I said, the only direction lefts is sideways.
The Truth is, Yes, Nicotine causes addiction, and it is so brilliantly successful at causing addiction that it is now accepted as common wisdom, and blamed for millions of casualties since it's addictive properties were discovered. It has even been repeatedly adjudicated in court with the various courts determining that Yes, Nicotine is indeed highly addictive.
Not ever answered. Includes Tobaco point.ladajo wrote:Simon,
So to understand your argument better, you are saying that if I take 10 random folks off the street in each major city around the country, and then I start giving them all coke or heroin regularly for say 1 year, that I will only see 1or or 2 in each group develop an addiction. And this addiction will be the result of a pre-existing health related "condition" (Genetics + PTSD + etc).
I would also understand that you disagree with all the smoking bans and lawsuits regarding marketing, as well as Big Tobacco sponsered studies the determined nicotine is an addictive substance which came out during various said lawsuits, and was a basis of Big Tobacco's marketing successful marketing strategies.
On that idea, you would also seem to disagree with the entire marketing strategy of Narcotics Producers, which entails "getting people hooked".
Or would you only argue that they are trying to do this to capture the "10-20% predisposed.
I would counter argue to say that there would seem to be a much higher percentage of users given free access than restricted access when compared to total population than 10-20%. I have been in Colombia and other South/Central american states where entire community groups/areas have essentially been addicts. How does this fit into the 10-20% model?
You also did not really answer my question on how to provide health care to someone who denies there is a problem? Can I force them to treatment by using legal means? What are your thoughts on the social dimension in this regard?
That is not my argument. It is the argument of the NIDA. Since about 2003 or 2004. And here I thought you were an expert in the field.So to understand your argument better, you are saying that if I take 10 random folks off the street in each major city around the country, and then I start giving them all coke or heroin regularly for say 1 year, that I will only see 1or or 2 in each group develop an addiction. And this addiction will be the result of a pre-existing health related "condition" (Genetics + PTSD + etc).
If you don't like what they have to say take it up with them. Everything I have seen confirms the NIDA finding. Since about 2001.
BTW to get a valid statistical sample you need to get at least 100 in each major city.
And my expert friend you might want to look into why it was thought heroin was non-addictive on its introduction.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.
If only one out of ten who try heroin go on to be regular users (another stat your expertise has missed) then they have to do a LOT of marketing to find their customers. And that despite all the bad press.On that idea, you would also seem to disagree with the entire marketing strategy of Narcotics Producers, which entails "getting people hooked".
That must be the vaunted Christian Compassion I've heard so much about.In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction
From the Author:
I've written In The Realm of Hungry Ghosts because I see addiction as one of the most misunderstood phenomena in our society. People--including many people who should know better, such as doctors and policy makers--believe it to be a matter of individual choice or, at best, a medical disease. It is both simpler and more complex than that.
Addiction, or the capacity to become addicted, is very close to the core of the human experience. That is why almost anything can become addictive, from seemingly healthy activities such as eating or exercising to abusing drugs intended for healing. The issue is not the external target but our internal relationship to it. Addictions, for the most part, develop in a compulsive attempt to ease one’s pain or distress in the world. Given the amount of pain and dissatisfaction that human life engenders, many of us are driven to find solace in external things. The more we suffer, and the earlier in life we suffer, the more we are prone to become addicted.
The inner city drug addicts I work with are amongst the most abused and rejected people amongst us, but instead of compassion our society treats them with contempt. Instead of understanding and acceptance, we give them punishment and moral disapproval. In doing so, we fail to recognize our own deeply rooted problems and thereby forego an opportunity for healing not only for them, the extreme addicts, but also for ourselves as individuals and as a culture.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.
Ahh, the definitions argument again. Also, attempting to split hairs on what makes a representative sampling undermines your credibility, you are aware that my 1 in 10 comment was metaphorical based on your own previous citations.MSimon wrote:If only one out of ten who try heroin go on to be regular users (another stat your expertise has missed) then they have to do a LOT of marketing to find their customers. And that despite all the bad press.On that idea, you would also seem to disagree with the entire marketing strategy of Narcotics Producers, which entails "getting people hooked".
That must be the vaunted Christian Compassion I've heard so much about.In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction
From the Author:
I've written In The Realm of Hungry Ghosts because I see addiction as one of the most misunderstood phenomena in our society. People--including many people who should know better, such as doctors and policy makers--believe it to be a matter of individual choice or, at best, a medical disease. It is both simpler and more complex than that.
Addiction, or the capacity to become addicted, is very close to the core of the human experience. That is why almost anything can become addictive, from seemingly healthy activities such as eating or exercising to abusing drugs intended for healing. The issue is not the external target but our internal relationship to it. Addictions, for the most part, develop in a compulsive attempt to ease one’s pain or distress in the world. Given the amount of pain and dissatisfaction that human life engenders, many of us are driven to find solace in external things. The more we suffer, and the earlier in life we suffer, the more we are prone to become addicted.
The inner city drug addicts I work with are amongst the most abused and rejected people amongst us, but instead of compassion our society treats them with contempt. Instead of understanding and acceptance, we give them punishment and moral disapproval. In doing so, we fail to recognize our own deeply rooted problems and thereby forego an opportunity for healing not only for them, the extreme addicts, but also for ourselves as individuals and as a culture.
Overall I find your line of argument somewhat post hoc ergo propter hoc, with a few red herrings or distractors here and there. The representative samplings are the keys to your cited positions. And these samples appear to have targeted typically below middle class groups, where there are many competing factors.
Forming a habit is a proven marketing and control technique in many arenas. I guarantee that with repetitive exposure you can create a habit in pretty much anyone, if they don't die in the process. You are arguing social aspects, I am speaking in physiological response. These are things that dealers and cigarette manufacturers understand well. Cigarette marketing was and is extremely effective, as it relied on both the social and physiological aspects. The same is done by dealers. It is all in the hook.
The real issue lays in hooked folks that chose, were socially tricked, or driven into repetitive use that in turn drove a physiological response. For example, hospitals limit morphine for a reason, and it is not cost.
You still do not answer about someone refusing to accept that they have a problem and refusing treatment or therapy, and what should or should not be done about it in your "legal and free access" campaign.
My apologies. I thought we were discussing science.Ahh, the definitions argument again. Also, attempting to split hairs on what makes a representative sampling undermines your credibility, you are aware that my 1 in 10 comment was metaphorical based on your own previous citations.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.
No my Dear L. my position is not based on unrepresentative samples. It is currently based on the official position of the NIDA. I have posed a link to their page on the connection between genetics and addiction. It has 66 cites.
I can load you with articles I have written on the subject which links to the research.
Or heaven forfend you can start looking up stuff on the 'Net.
Reminds me of what I said about mindset (internal laws) being a limitation to new discoveries.
Which is to say I'm not convinced you have actually sampled the evidence. Google!
"A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it." - Max Planck
I write for the next generation.
I can load you with articles I have written on the subject which links to the research.
Or heaven forfend you can start looking up stuff on the 'Net.
Reminds me of what I said about mindset (internal laws) being a limitation to new discoveries.
Which is to say I'm not convinced you have actually sampled the evidence. Google!
"A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it." - Max Planck
I write for the next generation.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.
Redefine? I have been studying the literature for at least 45 years. The differentiation between habituation and addiction is standard.TDPerk wrote:"I thought we were discussing science."
Well you were discussing things in metaphors. If you thought you were discussing science, I can see you were confused.
Interesting how you are trying to re-define addiction though.
The only people not interested in that nuance are those profiting from the war.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.
I went for it back in '03. Here's what happened.
I stuffed a bowl full of the dried leaf, fired the pipe, and inhaled deeply of the pungent, gaseous smoke. It felt like I'd stuck my finger in a light socket. I never had anything hit so hard, or so fast. Every skin cell on my body is twisting in a different direction. I am euphoric, weightless, floating, drifting in impossible motions. Everything is in motion, everything turning. Somehow, in this symphony of movement I manage to tap out the pipe, stuff a second wad of leaf into the bowl, cover the carburetor, light the lighter, fire the bowl, draw deep to fill the chamber, exhale (so many things to remember!) release the carburetor and draw down a second huge hit. It knocks me back. How long have I been holding this hit? Exhale. Freefall.
It's 1954 and I'm standing in the kitchen of my grandmother's apartment. There's the sink. There's the window. Light on the table. It is so warm, so loving. There's a box on the shelf with a logo I cannot read. It is singing colors. Orange and yellow concentric rings radiate through out the room bathing everything in warmth...
My eyes open. The vision and all memory of it vanish.
Did something happen? Is everything OK? This place seems familiar. Everything's OK, isn't it? The room is folding up, and folding up, and folding up... Is a room supposed to do that- folding up, and folding up?
I see my wife's face, angelic, floating in the center of this folding, churning vortex. I reach up from a great depth. "Not yet", I whisper. My eyes close. The vision resumes. It had never been interrupted. It's 1954, and I'm standing in the kitchen of my grandmother's apartment. There's the sink. There's the window. Light on the table. It is so warm, so loving. It has always been so and always will be. I was here before time. There's a box on the shelf with a logo I cannot read. It is singing colors. Orange and yellow concentric rings radiate through out the room bathing everything, dissolving the room, dissolving me, dissolving time. I am disembodied awareness. I am pure observation. THE POLES! Two poles of light, rods of infinite length and perfect straightness orbit one another- turning, twisting, tumbling- always changing, yet always maintaining the same everchanging relation to one another. This is the Engine of Creation generating existence. This is psycloptimogiven.
It began washing out. My eyes open. HOLY COW! The room was still doing this weird folding thing, but now I had some vague idea of where I was, and what was happening to me.
The word! What was that word?
I closed my eyes, and dove back into the rapidly fading vortex. Reaching with my mind like a swimmer in murky water I seize the word, and hold onto it like a treasure.
Psycloptimogiven, psycloptimogiven, there will be more given.
I open my eyes. "HOLY COW!", I shouted, "IT WAS THE PSYCLOPTIMOGIVEN!"
The trip was washing out very fast. Only now was I fully aware of where I was and what had happened. It was the sage! Tidal waves of astonishment broke over me.
"Holy cow!", I exclaimed again, and burst out in deep convulsive laughter- the way you'd laugh if you'd fallen from an airplane and landed on your feet unhurt. Suddenly I was bathed in sweat. I stood up, a little unsteady on my feet. I had been cleansed, purged. Every negative thought and feeling that I ever had was purged, I was healed, cleansed from within by the healing smoke, and ready to begin my life anew. I walked around the room in circles saying, "Holy Cow!" over and over again...
That was, without a doubt, the most spectacular experience I ever had from ingesting anything. I still have the rest of it sitting around somewhere. It never occurs to me to try it again. As I said on the other post here- no sane person ever does it twice.
JWM
Posted by jwm at January 18, 2011 7:58 PM
No, not me. A commenter to THIS ARTICLE. Great read.
I stuffed a bowl full of the dried leaf, fired the pipe, and inhaled deeply of the pungent, gaseous smoke. It felt like I'd stuck my finger in a light socket. I never had anything hit so hard, or so fast. Every skin cell on my body is twisting in a different direction. I am euphoric, weightless, floating, drifting in impossible motions. Everything is in motion, everything turning. Somehow, in this symphony of movement I manage to tap out the pipe, stuff a second wad of leaf into the bowl, cover the carburetor, light the lighter, fire the bowl, draw deep to fill the chamber, exhale (so many things to remember!) release the carburetor and draw down a second huge hit. It knocks me back. How long have I been holding this hit? Exhale. Freefall.
It's 1954 and I'm standing in the kitchen of my grandmother's apartment. There's the sink. There's the window. Light on the table. It is so warm, so loving. There's a box on the shelf with a logo I cannot read. It is singing colors. Orange and yellow concentric rings radiate through out the room bathing everything in warmth...
My eyes open. The vision and all memory of it vanish.
Did something happen? Is everything OK? This place seems familiar. Everything's OK, isn't it? The room is folding up, and folding up, and folding up... Is a room supposed to do that- folding up, and folding up?
I see my wife's face, angelic, floating in the center of this folding, churning vortex. I reach up from a great depth. "Not yet", I whisper. My eyes close. The vision resumes. It had never been interrupted. It's 1954, and I'm standing in the kitchen of my grandmother's apartment. There's the sink. There's the window. Light on the table. It is so warm, so loving. It has always been so and always will be. I was here before time. There's a box on the shelf with a logo I cannot read. It is singing colors. Orange and yellow concentric rings radiate through out the room bathing everything, dissolving the room, dissolving me, dissolving time. I am disembodied awareness. I am pure observation. THE POLES! Two poles of light, rods of infinite length and perfect straightness orbit one another- turning, twisting, tumbling- always changing, yet always maintaining the same everchanging relation to one another. This is the Engine of Creation generating existence. This is psycloptimogiven.
It began washing out. My eyes open. HOLY COW! The room was still doing this weird folding thing, but now I had some vague idea of where I was, and what was happening to me.
The word! What was that word?
I closed my eyes, and dove back into the rapidly fading vortex. Reaching with my mind like a swimmer in murky water I seize the word, and hold onto it like a treasure.
Psycloptimogiven, psycloptimogiven, there will be more given.
I open my eyes. "HOLY COW!", I shouted, "IT WAS THE PSYCLOPTIMOGIVEN!"
The trip was washing out very fast. Only now was I fully aware of where I was and what had happened. It was the sage! Tidal waves of astonishment broke over me.
"Holy cow!", I exclaimed again, and burst out in deep convulsive laughter- the way you'd laugh if you'd fallen from an airplane and landed on your feet unhurt. Suddenly I was bathed in sweat. I stood up, a little unsteady on my feet. I had been cleansed, purged. Every negative thought and feeling that I ever had was purged, I was healed, cleansed from within by the healing smoke, and ready to begin my life anew. I walked around the room in circles saying, "Holy Cow!" over and over again...
That was, without a doubt, the most spectacular experience I ever had from ingesting anything. I still have the rest of it sitting around somewhere. It never occurs to me to try it again. As I said on the other post here- no sane person ever does it twice.
JWM
Posted by jwm at January 18, 2011 7:58 PM
No, not me. A commenter to THIS ARTICLE. Great read.
I might have know it was Vanderleun. That guy has a way with words. He once left a comment at something I wrote and it made my week.
Nothing like the Hunter S. Thompson e-mail I once got. That made my life.
===
Video for the Vanderleun:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uc9gr_-hHDQ
Nothing like the Hunter S. Thompson e-mail I once got. That made my life.
===
Video for the Vanderleun:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uc9gr_-hHDQ
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.
At least two of the three drugs mentioned were illegal. I thought making them illegal was supposed to prevent that sort of thing.
When you consider the number of drugs freely available and the number of schizophrenics, plus all the guns it is a wonder we don't see a shooting a day or more.
So it seems to be rather rare for some one to go off even with the combo described. Now compare that with the every day mayhem alcohol causes. Which goes unremarked.
When you consider the number of drugs freely available and the number of schizophrenics, plus all the guns it is a wonder we don't see a shooting a day or more.
So it seems to be rather rare for some one to go off even with the combo described. Now compare that with the every day mayhem alcohol causes. Which goes unremarked.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.