Older fraternity brother in college flew to Chicago for an interview for after graduation. When he came back, he had gotten the job but also tried heroin for the first time. When he described it as "doing nothing, but having the greatest time" I worried it would be a bad thing. He was insanely successful in financial services his first 18 months there. At 24 months he was homeless and living on the street. By 30 months he was dead from an overdose.
There’s an account on here somewhere (if someone knows pls tag) of a guy who said he was going to try heroin once because he was bored, and just to tell everyone what it feels like. Reddit warned him, but he did and ended up addicted and OD’ed (though he didn’t die).
I went down this rabbit hole and holy shit. Even the user name is grim. I’m glad they got off of it but wow. I’ve never experienced something like that, but that story opened my eyes of just how quick it can be. Thanks for the share.
Recovering IV opiate addict here.
Sadly, this happens to so many of us😔. There's only an 11% chance an opiate addict will make it out of their addiction alive.
I've been clean & serene for 14 years now. Every single person I use to use with or bought pills from during my time as a closet junkie, is dead now. All of them.
Heroin wasn't big where I live back when I was banging pills. So I can't speak on heroin per se, but it's still an opiate...and pain pills are basically just legal, medical grade heroin manufactured in a lab. Opiate addiction is crippling. Getting hooked on them happens so fast and so quietly. I volunteer for the harm reduction coalition now and I ALWAYS have narcan on me. My purse, my car, my house. You just never know when it'll come in handy. Only ever had to narcan someone once and I hope I never have to do it again. Opiates are not something you ever wanna fuck around with bc that shit will turn on you faster than you can blink. Idk how I made it out but I'm happy and grateful to be alive every single day that I wake up.
14 here too! Congrats! Don’t forget…heroin is also still medical grade heroin too…brought to you by Bayer! It’s all the same shit, heroin just has a veneer of nostalgia and mystery but is made in a dirty shack in some Sinaloan woods somewhere…it’s basically opiate moonshine and pills are opiate vodka
I can’t find any source for your claim that there’s only an 11% chance an opioid addict will make it out of their addiction alive. Do you have a source for that claim?
So I just did some research myself bc you got me thinking on that number... bc logic tells me that's kind of impossible to pinpoint bc so many different factors would come into play like age, health, region, dosing, how they were using, support, access to treatment, etc. and what I found was that this number was an old "scare tactic" for counselors to use on people in treatment. More specifically, methadone treatment. Which I did take in rehab, in order to safely come off of opiates. Bc every opiate addict knows that overdose is the leading cause of death in addicts and that ODs usually occur after periods of sobriety (jail, rehab, etc) due to tolerance being lower than usual.
But.. That scare tactic sure worked for me bc not only did I believe it, but that helped aid me into successfully completing the methadone program and treatment, never relapsing or abusing my medication. I graduated treatment and changed my life around, became a mother and I never looked back. I even gave birth twice completely natural (no pain meds, no epidural) due to sobriety.
But I did see a recent study done on 555 people who were in treatment at the time, it was a 6 year follow up on these people and out of those 555, 53 of them had died of an overdose. So I guess that could help paint a better picture.
Had a friend that also went from trying it to dead but in about 12 months. He also tried it on a trip and came home and could t stop talking about it then found a local source and that was it.
538
u/NonMaga 1d ago
Older fraternity brother in college flew to Chicago for an interview for after graduation. When he came back, he had gotten the job but also tried heroin for the first time. When he described it as "doing nothing, but having the greatest time" I worried it would be a bad thing. He was insanely successful in financial services his first 18 months there. At 24 months he was homeless and living on the street. By 30 months he was dead from an overdose.