Methadone Rehabilitation

Question by TheCreator23: What makes risk of overdose so high among heroin addicts?
Why do addicts overdose so much?

Also, what is the “gateway effect” many believe is associated with marijuana?

Best answer:

Answer by 1stAngel*
B/c of bad heroin & they only care about getting high,not the after effects. Getting a fix is #1 priority,they believe they can’t be helped nor do they care..it’s all about the next hit. also if they get anything pills,whatever they will take that too b4 & after the heroin…most don’t over does on purpose & most do it by mistake. So many death associated w/this drud was classified as a suicide & that’s simple not true..also some was meant to commit suicide & was classified as overdose. I guess it’s true in any case so it really doesn’t matte b/c to allow ones self to feel the need to use & have it all the time…is to be suicidal.

Strong associations between marijuana use and initiation of hard drugs are cited in support of the claim that marijuana use per se increases youths’ risk of initiating hard drugs (the ‘marijuana gateway’ effect). This report examines whether these associations could instead be explained as the result of a common factor—drug use propensity—influencing the probability of both marijuana and other drug use.

Design? A model of adolescent drug use initiation in the United States is constructed using parameter estimates derived from US household surveys of drug use conducted between 1982 and 1994. Model assumptions include:

(1) individuals have a non-specific random propensity to use drugs that is normally distributed in the population; (2) this propensity is correlated with the risk of having an opportunity to use drugs and with the probability of using them given an opportunity, and (3) neither use nor opportunity to use marijuana is associated with hard drug initiation after conditioning on drug use propensity.

Findings? Each of the phenomena used to support claims of a ‘marijuana gateway effect’ are reproduced by the model, even though marijuana use has no causal influence over hard drug initiation in the model.

Conclusions? Marijuana gateway effects may exist. However, our results demonstrate that the phenomena used to motivate belief in such an effect are consistent with an alternative simple, plausible common-factor model. No gateway effect is required to explain them. The common-factor model has implications for evaluating marijuana control policies that differ significantly from those supported by the gateway model.

Answer by Scoti
My psychiatrist who deals with addicts tells me the problem with addicts is they tend to try to come off of it, withdraw then lose their tolerance. When they go back on they go back to taking the same dose they were on before which is for them now a fatal dose. If they went back on it at a lower dose they would have been safe.

The gateway effect being attributed to hash is rubbish. The connection is that people who are on drugs like heroin and crack all started with hash, which is most likely true but at the same time most also tried the killer addictive drugs nicotine and alcohol first too, probably before trying cannabis.

They were doing a study in the US to see if it’s any addictive drugs in general that can act as a gateway drug. Cannabis is only made an example of because it’s illegal but our brain chemistry doesn’t really give a toss about what’s legal and what isn’t when it comes to drugs.