Posted on 09/22/2013 9:36:14 PM PDT by JerseyanExile
We’re told studies have proven that drugs like heroin and cocaine instantly hook a user. But it isn’t that simple – a set of little-known experiments carried out over 30 years ago tells a very different tale.
Drugs are scary. The words “heroin” and “cocaine” make people flinch. It's not just the associations with crime and harmful health effects, but also the notion that these substances can undermine the identities of those who take them. One try, we're told, is enough to get us hooked. This, it would seem, is confirmed by animal experiments.
Many studies have shown rats and monkeys will neglect food and drink in favour of pressing levers to obtain morphine (the lab form of heroin). With the right experimental set up, some rats will self-administer drugs until they die. At first glance it looks like a simple case of the laboratory animals losing control of their actions to the drugs they need. It's easy to see in this a frightening scientific fable about the power of these drugs to rob us of our free will.
But there is more to the real scientific story, even if it isn't widely talked about. The results of a set of little-known experiments carried out more than 30 years ago paint a very different picture, and illustrate how easy it is for neuroscience to be twisted to pander to popular anxieties. The vital missing evidence is a series of studies carried out in the late 1970s in what has become known as "Rat Park". Canadian psychologist Bruce Alexander, at the Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Canada, suspected that the preference of rats to morphine over water in previous experiments might be affected by their housing conditions.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...
which is why being racked and stacked into tiny apartments and rental spaces you don’t own in liberal democrat controlled cities is the exact opposite of being good for your health.
You can quit anything if you really want to. But you have to REALLY want to.
Well, it’s probably just better to never try the stuff in the first place, eh?
There is such a thing as physical dependence. You can die if you quit certain things cold turkey.
I would not let the scientific results from a “rat pack” kid ourselves. Humans are not rats (except for DemonRATS). For humans, there is no playing around with opiates.
I love cold turkey. If I cannot have any, I would die.
The planned HUD integration of ghetto dwellers into nice suburban neighborhoods should free them of drug addiction and dope dealing, and the crime that goes with it. /s
>>morphine (the lab form of heroin)
Lol. That’s an interesting definition for morphine.
It'a a minor point, but I never heard "One try... is enough to get us hooked."
“>>morphine (the lab form of heroin)”
Wikipedia says heroin is a faster acting version of morphene. In the body heroin metabolizes into morphene. Heroin is an acetylated form of morphine.
Heroin still has medical uses. The medical people call it “diamorphine”.
I have worked with drug addicts in a Christian rehabilitation ministry and it seems this article misses the point. Rat controlled studies aside, we have living laboratories in every inner city right in front of our eyes. Just because one person *may* be able to escape heroin’s addiction the first time, doesn’t mean his brother or sister will; nor will it ensure the second time he experiments the hook won’t set in. There are TONS of individuals raised in a loving family environment, with all the advantages, with supportive relationships, who get horribly hooked on drugs. In the rural Maryland county I live in, addiction is rampant because teens can run up to Philly and buy a cheap hit for the same cost as a movie ticket. They all believe that you can’t become addicted by using heroin only one time. Yeah, yeah. It’s the dream the devil sells to everyone ...
There’s a very good reason why they call it ‘dope’.
Some humans do as well.
There are only three places this road leads:
Heroin is not one of them.
I have 2 knee replacements. The right knee failed so the prosthesis needed removal and 3 months later another prosthesis was placed. Total: 3 major operations.
Re: Addiction
After the first operation I was stupid. I listened to the doctors and physical therapist about taking enough pain medication to cooperate with physical therapy. Getting off the pain medication was the worst week I have ever lived.
After the next two operations, I was much smarter and only took a half dose of pain medication if it was a level 4 or above, and then a full dose about 20 minutes before physical therapy. I had no problems getting off the pain medications.
Maybe not.
But research something called “Population density and social pathology”
Experiments with rats show that rats who are overcrowded start to have alot of behavior that is not normal rat behavior.
Female rats start to kill their children.
Male rats start to ignore the females and groom themselves constantly.
Rat homosexuality soars.
All sorts of behavior that would be considered “deviant” compared to rats living in a less stressful environment.
Population Density and Social Pathology John B. Calhoun, Scientific American 206, pps 139-148, 1962
from his studies 1947-1955
Makes the rest of the article hard to accept when they lead off with this stupid lie.
Yes, I know the chemical properties of heroin.
The fact that that little mini-definition was added just seemed funny to me, since we all know what morphine and heroin are, and if I had to define morphine, that’s probably not the exact definition I’d use.
SECOND it.
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