Opinions - Which one of these You consider as"Soft Drug" Medium Drug" Hard Drug"(alcohol,LSD...

[enquirewithin]

Heroines could be dangerous! What about heroes?

[Waffa]

I think i cot the point of bad spelling and mentioned this a bit back on post #26 but thanks anyway to re-reminding, what can i say - not an English speaker, sorry

Anyway - i added some new graphs (also yours Routemaster Flash) to post #17 and re-arrange some drugs on the list - i am not still jet sore if i should move Benzodiazepines more up or down and is Codeine now in right place & some others?

allyourbase is valium really as bad? I just wonder, it's one of the most popular drugs and WHO prays for this - then again, cfsan.fda.gov (US Food and Drug Administration) was also talking about Psilocybin / psilocin poisoning and that these are one of the "toxins" in mushrooms - so just "might" be that all these who should look after our health might not do best decisions every time.

Anyways, back to this topic - keep up the good discussions

[smeghead]

SWIM still doesn't get how Codeine is a harder drug than MDMA... you can buy it in Pharmacies ffs

[Waffa]

Originally Posted by smeghead

SWIM still doesn't get how Codeine is a harder drug than MDMA... you can buy it in Pharmacies ffs

this is no brainer, alcohol is available for almost anyone and its harder drug then most
... this if drug is available or not legally does not relate always to this if its harmful or not, most drug related laws has not much to do whit harm, it's more political decisions

[Tony Williams]

Originally Posted by smeghead

SWIM still doesn't get how Codeine is a harder drug than MDMA... you can buy it in Pharmacies ffs

Legal doesn't mean it's not dangerious. The codeine you get from a pharmacy is designed to be consumed in small amounts 8mg-12mg, when you 'abuse' it by taking alot it stops becoming a 'just a pharmacy drug'. I think codeine should be a med drug, not hard.

[enquirewithin]

^Exactly! You can buy alcohol almost anywhere but it's very harmful. (Sorry about the jokes about spelling.)

Drug companies happily market anything they can get away with-- speed and barbiturates used to be given out freely.

Since benzos became available, barbiturates have died out, thankfully. They were very addictive and very dangerous. My pig remembers experimenting with Tuinol-- what terrible drug!

[Routemaster Flash]

Originally Posted by enquirewithin

^Exactly! You can buy alcohol almost anywhere but it's very harmful. (Sorry about the jokes about spelling.)

Drug companies happily market anything they can get away with-- speed and barbiturates used to be given out freely.

Since benzos became available, barbiturates have died out, thankfully. They were very addictive and very dangerous. My pig remembers experimenting with Tuinol-- what terrible drug!

Alcohol is a POTENTIALLY harmful drug. I mean, I'm sitting here with a beer right now, and nothing terrible is happening to me. In fairness, I could (theoretically) be sitting here shooting H or doing fat rails of coke with nothing 'terrible' happening to me, but I think those two drugs are certainly more dangerous on a per-use basis than alcohol. I mean, sure, alcohol fucks up far more people than do illegal drugs, but in most societies far more people drink than take illegal drugs (and most people who use drugs drink as well, remember).

I would sum it up as: yes, alcohol can be extremely harmful if you have poor impulse control, or have awful life circumstances that 'drive you to drink', or even have a genetic predisposition to alcoholism (which I think there is good evidence for in some people). But on the other hand, for plenty of people it's probably less hazardous than most of yer stereotypically 'hard' drugs - by which I mean the stimulants, opiates and addictive downers, as opposed to psychedelics, which of course have risks of their own but generally aren't addictive.

The fact that alcohol is legal is a double-edged sword, as on the one hand it means the product is regulated and you know what you're getting, but on the other hand it's available wherever you go and fairly inexpensive (if you're not fussy about what you drink, which alcoholics tend not to be!) so there's no way to get away from it all if you feel you have a habit that's starting to become self-destructive.

SWIM treats alcohol the same way he treats stimulants, weed, opiates and psychedelics: something to be enjoyed responsibly, with the potential risks borne in mind so as to prevent undue physical and mental harm. The main difference between booze and other drugs is a) it tastes good and b) he can enjoy it with his parents.

[enquirewithin]

Originally Posted by Routemaster Flash

Alcohol is a POTENTIALLY harmful drug. I mean, I'm sitting here with a beer right now, and nothing terrible is happening to me. In fairness, I could (theoretically) be sitting here shooting H or doing fat rails of coke with nothing 'terrible' happening to me, but I think those two drugs are certainly more dangerous on a per-use basis than alcohol. I mean, sure, alcohol fucks up far more people than do illegal drugs, but in most societies far more people drink than take illegal drugs (and most people who use drugs drink as well, remember).

I would sum it up as: yes, alcohol can be extremely harmful if you have poor impulse control, or have awful life circumstances that 'drive you to drink', or even have a genetic predisposition to alcoholism (which I think there is good evidence for in some people). But on the other hand, for plenty of people it's probably less hazardous than most of yer stereotypically 'hard' drugs - by which I mean the stimulants, opiates and addictive downers, as opposed to psychedelics, which of course have risks of their own but generally aren't addictive.

The fact that alcohol is legal is a double-edged sword, as on the one hand it means the product is regulated and you know what you're getting, but on the other hand it's available wherever you go and fairly inexpensive (if you're not fussy about what you drink, which alcoholics tend not to be!) so there's no way to get away from it all if you feel you have a habit that's starting to become self-destructive.

SWIM treats alcohol the same way he treats stimulants, weed, opiates and psychedelics: something to be enjoyed responsibly, with the potential risks borne in mind so as to prevent undue physical and mental harm. The main difference between booze and other drugs is a) it tastes good and b) he can enjoy it with his parents.

True, the danger from all drugs is potential. Aspirin and Tylenol can kill.

Alcoholics and seasoned drinkers will drink anything-- as they are finding out in Russia. I wouldn't ask for it be banned. My parents, despite their ancient state, love he stuff in moderation. SWIM has no problems not drinking it-- doesn't really suit him well.

Regulation is the what most of us here would like to see with most drugs, if not all.

[dadrone]

SWIM can't believe more people don't find mushrooms dangerous. SWIM had one the worst blackouts (2 passout moves almost back to back) of his life on mushrooms. Blame the user, sure, but SWIM was no rook when he went on this journey. Don't get SWIM wrong, he still loves mushrooms but he finds it surprising that it was *just* above marijuana on the dangerous scale. SWIM can do about anything on marijuana, including driving. Yes, SWIM drives while stoned sometimes. Big deal - he actually goes the speed limit whereas he drives like a maniac sober. SWIM would never consider driving even slightly under the influence of mushrooms since his back to back pass outs occurred where he was fairly coherent and aware of his surroundings...

[Waffa]

One other thing i noticed, i have placed GHB to soft and no one has sayd anything about it - is it right?

I know numerous people who go to hospital after using GHB (yes, they did not know how much they must use it or how, usually its whit alcohol).
Erowid says:

Erowid says:
"GHB's dose/response curve is similar to that of alcohol : At higher doses, users fall unconscious and are temporarily unable to be awakened (coma). It may also dangerously depress breathing. Avoid Mixing With Alcohol."
GHB by itself can be fatal

• If you take a double dose of GHB you may FALL UNCONSCIOUS and be UNROUSEABLE for up to 4 or 5 hours.
• If you take 3 - 4 times your Personal Threshold Dose, you may find yourself Unconscious and Vomiting.
• If you take more than 3-4 times your Personal Threshold Dose, there is risk of death.

etc


what drug-forum people can say about this? I have no idea why i added it as soft but now i realize, it seemed to be wrong idea

[Moerass]

Originally Posted by Waffa

One other thing i noticed, i have placed GHB to soft and no one has sayd anything about it - is it right?

I know numerous people who go to hospital after using GHB (yes, they did not know how much they must use it or how, usually its whit alcohol).
Erowid says:

Erowid says:
"GHB's dose/response curve is similar to that of alcohol : At higher doses, users fall unconscious and are temporarily unable to be awakened (coma). It may also dangerously depress breathing. <link removed>"
GHB by itself can be fatal

• If you take a double dose of GHB you may FALL UNCONSCIOUS and be UNROUSEABLE for up to 4 or 5 hours.
• If you take 3 - 4 times your Personal Threshold Dose, you may find yourself Unconscious and Vomiting.
• If you take more than 3-4 times your Personal Threshold Dose, there is risk of dead.

etc


what drug-forum people can say about this? I have no idea why i added it as soft but now i realize, it seemed to be wrong idea

SWIM considers GBL /GHB to be one of the drugs with most lethal potential.
SWIM started using it for fun, it quickly became a means of escape, taking doses to sleep. Eventually 30 ml GBL per day.
Developed paranoid thoughts and exteme fear that once led to taking an 18 ml dose. Woke up with seizures, hitting every object in his room, mostly with his head.
Had psychoses that lasted for days, thinking he was dead but had to find the place were he would/did die before he could find peace.

This experience wasn't enough to stay away from the stuff. Two months after moving, he received a letter telling him to find another place, the seizures that resulted in a concussion were loud enough for the neighbours in his appartment building to complain .

His doctor who had always been fairly relaxed about SWIMs meth use had an "Oh No!" reaction when he heard the gbl word. Wanted swim to go straight to a rehab clinique, when swim didn't want to he gave him his private gsm nummer, to call him day or night, when he needed help.

SWIM has enough scars to never do GBL again. What seemed a nicer, better drug than meth (SWIM had stopped doing meth at the time) turned out to be the most dangerous one of all, at least for him. SWIM was lucky to survive, not only the use but also driving on the highway in the evening when al he could see was a black hole in front of him, trying to get away from immaginary dangers.

I wanted to do a more detailed write-up of SWIMs experience but didn't find the right topic/subforum.

Reputation Comments on this post:

Thanks for sharing a very personal and interesting experience. A more complete write-up would be very much appreciated, ...

[Waffa]

Originally Posted by Moerass

SWIM considers GBL /GHB to be one of the drugs with most lethal potential.

... SWIM has enough scars to never do GBL again. What seemed a nicer, better drug than meth (SWIM had stopped doing meth at the time) turned out to be the most dangerous one of all, at least for him. SWIM was lucky to survive, not only the use but also driving on the highway in the evening when al he could see was a black hole in front of him, trying to get away from immaginary dangers.

I wanted to do a more detailed write-up of SWIMs experience but didn't find the right topic/subforum.

thank you so much for this info - you totally support this what i have heard. Worst yet - people are so dumb in here that use GHB & Alcohol together. If you have time, post your full experience also to erowid faults please.

[Moerass]

Originally Posted by Waffa

thank you so much for this info - you totally support this what i have heard. Worst yet - people are so dumb in here that use GHB & Alcohol together. If you have time, post your full experience also to erowid faults please.

I'll try to make a coherent account of it, may take some time.

A few things i should add: swim tried to minimize risk of suffocating in his own vomit by only taking gbl on an empty stomach, with lots of fluids to dilute it and domperidone to make sure his stomach was emptied (and to get a high enough concentration in his blood to pass out) as soon as possible.

But more than once that wasn't enough to prevent inhaling some fluids. Walk around town, coughing, spitting constantly, tears running down his face, giving everyone the finger, walking in the middle of the road because who cares, convinced his lungs are so fucked up he won't last a week anyway.

On a lighter note: Swim noticed more than once that policemen aren't keen on picking up people who probably gonna make a big mess (with blood or other bodily fluids) in their car.

The most important thing, before anyone should get ideas: If you think gbl/ghb might be the painless suicide drug, think again. Maybe you succeed, maybe you sleep for six hours and wake up with strange ideas in your head, or maybe you wake up after three hours and have to endure 1 or 2 hours of what swim thinks is probably how electroshock therapy feels. And then you really want to die, but no method will seem sure enough.

The first times swim took to much ghb, things started flashing before his eyes, he dropped his sigarette, fell asleep on the keyboard (well, he lay in bed 18 hours a day with pc next to him an keyboard on the matrass, so that wasn't out of the ordinary.

sorry, just discovered the extra smilies

Main thing that got swim hooked in the beginning (when still doing ghb, not pure gbl) were the dreams. Normal dreams you start forgetting the moment you wake up. But swim can still remember all the dreams he had on G. ( didn't happen every time or most of the time, but the ones he woke up remembering stayed with him, not as vivid as real life but at least like a movie he watched on acid.)

that is what swim is most intrigued about. What makes the memories/ideas/dreams/psychoses so real and long lasting? This is not like meth psychosis, where swim kept looking for objective ways to check whether his paranoia was based on facts. And the logic that being paranoid about the people around you can cause them to start behaving in the way you think they are behaving makes sense. If they weren't against you before, your behaviour caused exactly what you were paranoid about.

But the G dreams were completely different. Too large a dose and swim woke up believing things so bizarre, so illogical, but which he knew and felt then were true. And still, a year later, these ideas are in the back of his head almost but not completely gone, not enough to swims liking anyway.

Could the seizures be the cause? Hardcoding these dreams like facts?

Paranoia was always part of swim, when he was 9, 10 years old he would take minutes to decide which cup/glass/plate 'they' would have considered unlikely for him to choose and was therefore most safe to eat or drink from.

Swim often thinks about Erdos and Godel.

[ConcertaXL]

Hard: alcohol, tobacco, high amounts of all strong opiates, crack cocaine, crystal meth, short acting barbiturates. (NB all these can be used in moderation but if you have an addictive personality best to avoid completely or have someone with you to stop you going overboard.)
Medium: weaker opiates/oids, amphetamines, powder cocaine, concerta/ritalin, GHB, long acting barbs, benzos, Z drugs, tryptamines, MDMA, inhalants.
Soft: marijuana, sativa, mushrooms, most psychedelics, DXM,ketamine, steroids, khat ,mild stimulants- modafinil, caffeine, ephedrine .

[aowe]

Heroine is a very addictive drug although it's illegal. Think about tobacco, its 100% legal, and 100 million people died of tobacco related causes during the 20th century.

# Tobacco currently kills 5.4 million people per year.
# Tobacco use makes six of the world's eight leading causes of death

Think about it.

[Routemaster Flash]

SWIM can't shake the feeling that psychedelics are getting off rather lightly in this thread. Sure, they're not addictive and not generally toxic, but there are other ways a drug can be harmful. For example, the most difficult time SWIM has ever had on a drug was his first experience with psilocybin mushrooms, closely followed by his first and only time on Hawai'ian Baby Woodrose seeds. (That said, at no point was he in actual physical danger as such - unlike a couple of his very worst 'nights on the piss'...)

On the other hand, SWIM has drunk alcohol on more days than not since the age of about 16, smokes tobacco occasionally (once or twice a month, say) and has also used opium, cocaine and amphetamine - all without coming close to getting addicted. SWIM has never, as far as he can remember, experienced a 'craving' for a drug in the classic sense. (DISCLAIMER: except for tea! SWIM would rather end it all if he couldn't have his cuppa. Fo' real.)

SWIM hasn't been damaged by his bad trips, in fact he thinks they helped him 'grow as a person', if you'll excuse such a clichéd phrase, and learn something about himself - certainly in terms of his own limitations. But then, it could have been a different story if SWIM had been predisposed to psychotic illness, which mercifully he appears not to be. Interestingly, SWIM has heard that William Burroughs, who knew a thing or two about drugs, considered psychedelics more dangerous than heroin. This is coming from a man who was a lifelong opiate addict and also one of the first white people to take ayahuasca...

SWIM also thinks long-term daily cannabis use is for many people not as benign as they'd like to think, though clearly the drug is far less dangerous overall than certain governments would like us to think. SWIM thinks it becomes dangerous when people don't treat it with respect, which can happen when users kid themselves that it's "not a proper drug" or that it must be harmless "because it's natural" (oi vey, is that ever a dumb argument...go eat some henbane and then tell me that... ).

Reputation Comments on this post:

Balanced and well-expressed viewpoints

[RaeF]

This poll is very good, but as Routemaster Flash pointed out, it's incomplete. Though I do not agree with Routemaster that mushrooms, mescaline and LSD should be combined into one option.

If the new poll is not created, I hope the current one gets 1000+ votes eventually.

[Routemaster Flash]

Originally Posted by RaeF

This poll is very good, but as Routemaster Flash pointed out, it's incomplete. Though I do not agree with Routemaster that mushrooms, mescaline and LSD should be combined into one option.

If the new poll is not created, I hope the current one gets 1000+ votes eventually.

Another disclaimer: SWIM is fairly familiar with mushrooms but hasn't (yet) had the chance to try LSD or mescaline. Though it goes without saying he'd like to!

Psychedelics of this type, which seem to work by acting on neurons' serotonin receptors, I grouped together both because of their pharmacology and because it struck me that maybe not many people had voted for mescaline and DMT in the original poll because not many people had tried them...they're pretty uncommon drugs, after all. Certainly compared to weed, coke, ecstasy etc. (to say nothing of alcohol and tobacco).

Perhaps the option should just be either "LSD" or "mushrooms", on the basis that these are the two most common (?) psychedelics of this type?

[Waffa]

I also missed group of psychedelic Research Chemicals (RC's) among others, i am making list off all drugs i missed & planning to make new more clean cut post/poll soon. DMX, GBL; GHB, codeine, benzos, barbitures, downers, uppers, solvents etc

If anyone can add some please be kind to post them here.

Also i was wondering what kind of enthogens/psychedelic's i should combine under one group (cactus/peyote, Ayahuasca, LSA, LSD, DMT, mushrooms, etc) & other drugs i should combine under one group ?

[Routemaster Flash]

Originally Posted by Waffa

I also missed group of psychedelic Research Chemicals (RC's) among others, i am making list off all drugs i missed & planning to make new more clean cut post/poll soon. DMX, GBL; GHB, codeine, benzos, barbitures, downers, uppers, solvents etc

If anyone can add some please be kind to post them here.

Also i was wondering what kind of enthogens/psychedelic's i should combine under one group (cactus/peyote, Ayahuasca, LSA, LSD, DMT, mushrooms, etc) & other drugs i should combine under one group ?

I've already given my input here, but I think it's worth re-iterating that emphasis should be placed on the more commonplace drugs, simply by weight of the number of people who've used them. Sure, the average DF member is more likely than most people to have taken ayahuasca, pentobarbital or 2C-T-ZX81 - but at the same time they're far, far more likely to have smoked weed, taken ecstasy or snorted coke. So perhaps try and place such rareties under a general heading of 'psychedelics'? I guess for most people this is going to mean LSD, (seeds containing) LSA or mushrooms - maybe DMT in the case of some of DF's more adventurous or well-connected members.

As far as the drugs you've listed above go, I'd group them together as they share a broadly common pharmacology (namely, acting on the brain's serotonin receptors - specifically, the 5-HT2A receptors) and would also put the 2Cs (and, I think the DOx group) in this category. Basically pharmacology and subjective effects out to be more important than what a drug looks like, where it comes from, legal status etc. - so HBWR seeds would be group with LSD (because they contain the closely-related LSA), not with salvia because they're both 'herbal' or 'ethnobotanical' or whatever.