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Carrie Fisher Had Cocaine, Heroin, Ecstasy in Her System, Autopsy Shows

FastPace said:
I have a broader concept of what is physically addictive than the medical community. So, I might include caffeine and tobacco in there or I might not. I'm addicted to caffeine through coffee and have the normal withdrawal symptom (headache) if I don't drink some small amount of coffee every morning. But I'm not sure caffeine or tobacco are physically addictive (the latter I hazard a guess more likely is). I don't smoke cigarettes for one, although, I on rare occasions will smoke a cigar.

The problem with terms like physical addiction and psychological addiction are that you have to establish a definition and criteria for each to give the terms any teeth.

If I were to take off "my hat" so-to-speak of religion and put on my hat where I attempt to think in a purely "scientific" and "analytical" way then I can not there are certain characteristics exhibited in alcoholics, heroin addicts, cocaine addicts that are not seen in say... people addicted to coffee. That principally being the craving issue in which one is observed in the ability to stop once they take "one." Something outside themselves must stop them.

For me, this is the real indicator of physical addiction, and I hypothesize that it is biologically set in. Like diabetes. For me this is the disease nature of physical addiction.

What I'm suggesting is that in psychological addictions--like drinking coffee, or even social or emotional reliance on drinking to heavy in social events--behaviors can be modified in relation to the substance consumed without giving up the substance.

With physical addictions, save a cure or some pharmacological medication that can be taken to reactivate control in the nervous system of the person, total abstinence from the substance one is *physically* addicted to must be maintained.




But the medical community seems to regard the main criteria, so far as I can tell, of physical addiction being the potential to die from withdrawal. Currently, that potential only exists in the substance known as alcohol, and not with a little irony the only substance legal (between alcohol, crack cocaine, heroin, and meth).

You are not going to die going through crack cocaine, heroin, meth, caffeine, or tobacco withdrawal.

People often yap about how tobacco is "harder" to quiet than say heroin or alcohol (for an alcoholic). But they never stop to consider smoking cigarettes is like dancing in a gay parade and being a guy going out to a bar and screwing a woman you jut met on the first night. By that I mean they don't crash your world. Crack cocaine, heroin, and alcoholism do. Devastate family relations, job lose, you can end up homeless. You don't end up homeless because you like to drink coffee to much, are over weight and hooked on junk food, or even hooked on cigarettes. So, great suffering motivates to stop.

Albeit, a single $10 rock of crack cocaine should cost less than a *single* cigarette (if it were made legal). So, if cigarettes were made illegal and droughts set in (just as the price of diamonds sky rocket by being made artificially rare on the market) because shipments had to be smuggled and criminal organizations raised prices radically, a single cigarette might cost an American cigarette addict $5 or $10 dollars. Then some of them might end up homeless. How so? You are a crack cocaine or cigarette addict earning $320 before taxes a week for $8 an hour. Your addiction is such that you can smoke up on a single Friday evening in 5 hours $200 by yourself. For crack if bought in "dime" bags ($10 bags) that is 20 rocks. Or for a cigarette addict 20 cigarettes. But imagine if cocaine were legal and could be bought at certain stores, or bought even as cooked up crack. Then I hypothesize what costs $10 now in crack would plummet to between $0.50 to $1.00.


A very thoughtful post.

If cessation of caffeine intake causes bona fide headaches, doesn't that make it physically addicting?

The 'potential' to die from cessation of use is also problematical from the definition perspective that you mention. "Addiction" must be defined, and somehow separated from random or casual use.

In fact, cocaine is legal, but of course restricted to prescription use only. Back in the 80's I used pharmaceutical cocaine several times. The interesting part for me was that the bottle (Merck 2209) was clearly labeled with the Skull & Crossbones, and labelled POISON. Where it cost wholesale about $80 an ounce, street cocaine was selling for around $1400 an ounce. Black market prices, as you allude to.
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Thoreau72 said:
If cessation of caffeine intake causes bona fide headaches, doesn't that make it physically addicting?
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I don't know, Thor.

I'm not as brilliant or deeply knowledgeable as Einstein or even professor Peter Jordan. I only have insight and knowledge at a certain level. That might be a little higher than some and much lower than others. But I want to avoid getting caught into certain traps. Such as minimizing the biological component to addiction, or for that matter anything we humans do, or going to far in the opposite extreme and denying or rejecting in component of free will playing a part. How does, and to what degree does each persons thoughts interact with or is influenced by their own biochemical reality in their unique bodies (including their physical brain)? I don't know. But I have to accept that as long as a person is alive their thoughts are in some measure, however small that might be, interconnected with their own physiology. Because we are physical creatures not non-physical entities like angels. So, our memories (thoughts, which are non-physical) are connected to our past experiences using the senses we have like smell, touch, sight. How that interacts with the brain and "scripts" on it (assuming it does) I have no idea.

I say all that to say that at some point one can classify every behavioral or psychological characteristic to an individual human to that of some biological (physical) origin. So, one could then argue every psychological addiction is really a physical addiction. But that would seem to "muddy" then ground too much. We have to have some workable classifications, even if imperfect, that allows us to frame the problem or issue with greater clarity.

But you point out that their is in fact a physical (headache) symptom to withdrawal from caffeine. I don't know what to say to that other than to say I can't deny that fact.

But I like how AA (Alcoholics Anonymous) differentiates between craving and obsession. Because in my mind it increase clarity on the issue.

The obsession they say is your frequent thoughts of using and not using even when you have gone days, weeks, months without ever the substance you are addicted to. You are psychologically "trapped" in fantasy and anxiety of using.

The craving they say is the phenomenon that occurs once an addict uses *one* of whatever he or she is addicted to. Then they are off o the races and can not stop. They only stop by money running out, someone cutting them off from the product, passing out, or something like vomiting violently. But they don't of their will cut themselves off. Thus goes the famous saying, "One is too many and a thousand are never enough." To me this is the real differentiating point between what I personally would term "physical addiction."

You know, there is a law in the social science of economics, that I can't remember the exact name of. I'm thinking it's called the "marginal diminishing utility" or something like that. Anyways, what the law I'm thinking of states or suggests, is that once a consumer buys and consumes x product like a burger or soda, the more of x product they return to get and consume that day, the less they desire another of the same x product to purchase and consume that day. The more McDonald's burgers you buy and eat the less you desire another one. But with physical addiction, most especially with crack cocaine, the phenomenon completely defies this law. At an astounding level.



 
Thoreau72 said:
The 'potential' to die from cessation of use is also problematical from the definition perspective that you mention. "Addiction" must be defined, and somehow separated from random or casual use.

In fact, cocaine is legal, but of course restricted to prescription use only. Back in the 80's I used pharmaceutical cocaine several times. The interesting part for me was that the bottle (Merck 2209) was clearly labeled with the Skull & Crossbones, and labelled POISON. Where it cost wholesale about $80 an ounce, street cocaine was selling for around $1400 an ounce. Black market prices, as you allude to.
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@ Blue highlight: :lol: Thanks for letting me know that. So, I was not too far off on my guess.

(A long time ago I saw some documentary about the De Beers of South Africa. The documentary claimed the De Beers cornered the diamond market then artificially created a shortage of sorts of diamonds on the global market so the price could dramatically hike up. So, many years later that got me to thinking about how smuggling cocaine, the costs involved in hiding and sneaking shipments, the droughts created by major busts in cities, result in the price of the street product being shot up. That and pretty smart non-addict libertarian first convinced me the illegality and Drug War actually makes the price shoot sky high.)
 
More thoughtful posts, FastPace.

As with so many subtle and complicated issues, semantics is a big part of the discussion. Semantics and definitions.

As for what we call "addiction", I think there is a genetic component to the phenomenon which leads to the individual reactions and behavior. Why can some people like me be able to drink "socially" but never be a compulsive or habitual drinker? Why can some control their drinking while others cannot?

A good friend of mine has been in AA for years, and loves to talk about it. He just turned 66 the other day, and we had lunch. He informed me that now at least 2 of his sons have manifested alcoholic behavior, and have joined AA also. Both have now reached some threshold or other, days of sobriety. I suspect a genetic component.

Happy Fourth
 
FastPace said:
the only physically addictive substance is alcohol *because* it is the only one you *can* die from while going through withdrawal. Their sources they attribute are to the US medical community.
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Jesus Christ.

NO, the potential to die from withdrawal is not what determines whether or not a substance is physically addictive. I don't care if you claim to have heard someone say it in "classes in VA Hospital rehabs", that is not true. (And you must have misunderstood whatever was being said to you, because no medical profession in their right mind is going to tell you that heroin is not physically addictive).

It's really amazing that you screwed yourself up into believing the otherwise. You even managed to note that heroin addicts may writhe in agony on the floor during withdrawal. That's because the heroin addict is experiencing physical withdrawal symptoms from a physically addictive drug that they became physically dependent on. Namely, the physically addictive drug known as heroin.

The potential to die from withdrawal is NOT a criteria for physical addictiveness, no matter how many essay-length posts you spend saying it is.










Since this is hopeless, I'll just give up. You just go on believing this nonsense if you must.
 
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