I was an “alcoholic” for many years. It ruined my life and alienated me from many people I love.

Then I met a wonderful woman who wouldn’t give up on me. We went to the doctor over and over again until I was diagnosed with dystonia, a disease which alcohol relieves the painful symptoms of. Once I knew that I wasn’t simply cured, but I had the hope and the knowledge to see though my pain.

Many other drugs are the same way. It’s easier to get these classes of drug illegally rather than legally. People who do these drugs know there’s something wrong with them, but they remain defiant and strong in the face of a society projecting its own decadence onto them.

If you do drugs or alcohol and you know it hurts you and want to stop, there is always hope for you as long as you can accept help. I know from experience.

And to all you who need drugs, but reject a diagnosis. As Big L said “If that’s what you need to maintain, go ahead and do your thang.”

This is an important topic, because people spend time and money pushing for social policies based on their belief that all opioid users are the homeless, dysfunctional people they see living on the street. Washington state has had republicans pushing for laws that would allow CPS to remove kids from a parent based entirely on the information that the parent uses illegal opioids [0]. If you think all of those parents are living in tents and motels and begging for food while spending the day high, this might sound reasonable. Putting kids in foster care is better than letting them die, is the argument.

But it isn’t reasonable, partly because there are so many opioid addicts that don’t show up in measures of homelessness etc. These laws would involve putting 10,000 kids into foster care so that maybe 10 deaths are prevented - and this would overwhelm the foster system entirely, tripling the size in an instant, so you’d almost certainly see ten children die because they were put into the system.

[0] As an example of the level of thought and knowledge going into these attempts, one legislator wrote a bill that said any opioid use meant CPS should remove your child. Don’t know if they didn’t know it could be a prescribed medication or what.

Maybe the problem is not really the drugs but mental illness and some people are just miserable. Those folks become the stereotype drug addict, not because of the drug but other things in life

This is anecdotal but I think heroin, or any drug, addicts often seem normal to those who have never taken drugs or been addicted. I remember my step brother mentioning that my cousin, now dead from an overdose, was high once when he seemed perfectly normal to me.

Article should be titled “Heroin Addicts Who Can Afford To Support Their Habit Often Seem Normal.”

His roommate’s klepto friend sure seemed abnormal.

Also, my understanding from folk who do use is that heroin doesn’t exist in meaningful quantity in today’s market. It’s all fent. Even the stuff that claims to be h is cut with fent, and maybe xylazine if you are especially unlucky.

Between all the coffee, nicotine, CBD, pain killers, psychiatric meds, hormones, nootropics, and micro dosing who’s even normal anymore?

This is just one facet of communities that stays opaque. I mean scientific literature, statistics, and demographics only go so far. Things done privately stay secret unless something severely breaks, or someone speaks up. Slice of life bits like this are good; if only we could have them come in large sample sizes, uniformly distributed.

FWIW opiate addicts in particular (and probably others as well) often do seem normal. That’s the addiction. They need the drugs to not go into withdrawal. By the time they’re addicted they either aren’t feeling the high anymore or they’re inching closer to a deadly OD or both.

I think anecdotes about addiction by individuals rather than organizations are an important source for growing trustful understanding of addiction. Whether we like it or not we’re in a world where every org is perceived to have a self-serving agenda.

A girl I knew in high school died of a heroin OD. She was the sweetest kindest girl as I knew her, and was a teacher at the time of her death.

If they seem normal then what's the problem? (other than the stigma and associated difficulties)

Normal is totally context dependent. It’s normal when you’re a young adult to have lots of transient friendships, sleep in, live with people you aren’t close to. Our behaviors are consequences of our environment more often than not.

This idea raises many questions about the reproducibility of certain cultures outside of specific locales, Silicon Valley being an obvious example.

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Functional or not it is illegal. Both functional and non functional heroine users can be put into prison for life with no parole and it will fix both the problems of dysfunctional people roaming around and people dying from it. With real consequences people will actively avoid such substances. It will clean up society and disincentivize new people from trying as they will bot want to give up their life and family for something so petty. It needs to be overwhelmingly obvious that it will mess up your life for good if you try or distribite even a little bit.