Hart writes. “Like vacation, sex, and the arts, heroin is one of the tools that I use to maintain my work-life balance.”

I'll be sure to bring that up at the next meeting I have with my boss on company culture

It’s a good article and a poor match for this community, imo.

Not particularly onion-y if you've been exposed to any of the relevant research published in the last 30 years. Thank you for the article though. V refreshing to see folks talking sense on drug use.

His book is quite the interesting read, not only concerning drugs, but also about being a black professor in the USA.

We have those birthrights as long as we don’t prevent others from pursuing their rights. When you’re infringing on other people’s rights, then you no longer have those rights. But as long as you’re not disrupting other people’s ability to pursue their rights, then, cool.

I mean I kind of agree with him tbh - anyone should be able to take and do whatever they want with their body so long as it doesn't really impact anyone else

with that said - as someone who was smoking weed daily for almost a decade - your brain does kind of get used to being high and you don't see it as much of an issue - however it definitely negatively impacted my heath - now that I've been sober for over a year I do notice that overall I'm mentally and physically much more stable and healthy - not to mention the relief of not having to constantly think about needing to "top up" (I can only imagine the craving for heroin to be even higher)

idk again I think all drugs should be decriminalized/legalized but at the same time I think we should strive to build a society where people don't feel the need to habitually take drugs just to exist 🤷🏼‍♀️

(then again I'm trans so wtf do I know about not being dependant on exogenous substances for one's existence)

The public also needs to know that most people who use these drugs are not addicts.

I'm still struggling with this.

Of my friends who have used heroin, they all said they were addicted.

This guy is the second person I've read about online who claimed he uses heroin and is not an addict. But, heuristically, it feels like the heroin users that are not addicts are the minority, not the majority

He'll have one if he runs out of heroin.

Hart reports that more than 70 percent of drug users—whether they use alcohol, cocaine, prescription medications, or heroin—do not meet the health criteria for drug addiction

Yeah, that's probably because the majority of the people in that set mostly just consume alcohol and/or prescription medications.

Many users were not the first to think that. Many of them were famous musicians. Some of them survived.

Fuck that guy is cool.

The husband of a friend of mine was a successful executive in a fiercely competitive business for about 25 years while also using heroin daily. You could have described him as ultra-high-functioning. Then, some things went wrong in his life not directly related to smack, he spiralled, and ended up losing his job as well as his wife divorcing him.

It's all fine until it isn't. I've seen that with alcoholics as well. Call it addiction or not, but my definition of it is that, if you get sick when you stop, you're addicted. That's also the clinical definition. It's not behavioral. It's about what happens when you stop. This guy's using a behavioral definition instead.

with opioids, one of the things that happens is that your gut, your gastrointestinal system, slows down the receptors. Your body is trying to compensate by speeding up the gastrointestinal tract. So when the drug abruptly leaves after several weeks of constant administration of the opioid, now the body is unprepared for the drug not being there and it overcompensates. It really ramps up the motility of the gastrointestinal tract

That's the best description of explosive diarrhea I've ever read lol

Some people don’t know not to mix specific sedatives with opioids. For example, they don’t know not to mix large amounts of alcohol or large amounts of antihistamines

Antihistamines are opioids?!?

That was a fantastic read. Thanks for posting.

Excellent interview, but posting it in this community kind of reverses its message.