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 The Lycaeum Forums » Psychedelics & Non Visionary Related » Other Substances (Moderator: DPP)Topic:
 opium drugs vs. cocaine/crack

[evil_goat]

I happen to be a former cocaine/crack user, was quite in love with the stuff when i first started doing it, but the more i got used to it, the less euphoria there was, and the worse the side effects got.  After having bad headaches lasting on & off a few days after using, and generally feeling like shit for a while after one of my fun weekends, i decided to just give up on the stuff, haven't done it for maybe 1 1/2 years now.  I found out that if you go a while without, you sort of forget about it after a while and don't care for it anymore.  Which is good, i guess.

Anyway, I've heard that opiates (although easy to OD on), have fewer negative long-term effects that cocaine does.  So basically, they're better stuff, as long as you avoid overdosing.  Is this true?  I'd appreciate any comments. 

Not that I thought for 5 seconds about trying crack, I was offered it once and tried it mainly out of curiousity.  But in the future maybe I should make better informed decisions, right?

[ST1R]

I guess that depends. I don't really care for snorted coke but smoking a rock is pleasant from time to time, though I wouldn't pay for it. Now opiates otoh really got me. I had a semi-decent habit for more than half a decade using any and every opiate I could get my hands on. For relevance I have used coke prolly less than 100x(or days) in my life (it sounds like more than it is) despite the fact that I was literally given grams weekly for years. Contractors used to slip me small handfuls of balloons hoping I'd send business their way, never remembering that I was the pothead, the LAST guy who had my job was the coke head. Oh well, it was fun to save up a few weeks worth and flick them like boogers at people during parties.

All in all I found opiates to be much more addictive than coke but everyone has their own kick so its hard to say what someone else might like. Cheap and available opiates can easily lead to addiction. Be careful in whatever you do.

[Mimos]

The pharmaceutical opiates will have less, if any, long-term side effects than the cocaine. However, if you're shooting/snorting them, the risk increases. Shooting pills or street-grade heroin isn't exactly healthy for you.

I'd be weary of trying them. You just might like them.

[ace_himself]

Well sure, opiates if used properly are very safe physically and wouldn't be the most commonly prescribed drugs on Earth if they weren't.

However, though it's not possible to appreciate this prior to - I guarantee you it is 100% impossible that someone can pick up an opiate habit and down the road think - "Man I'm glad I did this" - for the simple reason that you build a tolerence.  The first time you do it you will feel utterly amazing.  But as soon as that first major buzz has worn off, you've just experienced the pinnacle of your opiate habit.  Forever more you'll just be trying to recreate the first few months of your opiate habit but never will.  You either give up and end up just feeding whatever level your habit has reached, or you go all the way trying to up the ante and that ends with being a junky firing oxycodone or heroin into your veins.

No other drug grabs such a hold of you and takes over your life.  It's next to impossible to do opiates on Friday night, feel great, and then just go on with things and forget about it.  It stays great for a little while, but then as the tolerence builds you notice it just isn't that amazing anymore, but something else - now every hour that passes from your last dose, you feel worse.  Try to take a day off - you have a headache, your body aches, and you start yawning every 30 seconds though you aren't tired.  Take your dose and those things go away and you feel decent.  But you just feel decent now, not euphoric.  In another thread someone gave me a really great quote that helped me a lot - "fun is fun but habits rarely are".  Opiates can't remain fun, a hobby.  They are physically addictive like nothing else and before long you're just feeding the addiction.  Your body becomes reliant on them and you need them or you feel really bad, simple as that.

The become the priority of your existence.  I passed on wonderful things, like the opportunity to travel abroad because I wouldn't be able to take opiates if I went.  Isn't it nice to feel excited about good things that you can see coming in the future?  Well with an opiate habit you lose the ability to feel excited about anything except the next time you dose.  I was hooked for about 3 years and the thing that really spurred me to quit was the realization that I couldn't imagine fun or enjoyment seperate from a substance.  I knew that I enjoyed myself and was happy before without any kind of drug, but I couldn't understand or relate to how I did it or what it was like anymore.

There are negative physical effects that are related to the use.  I got a lot skinnier than I should have been because it was always in my mind - "hey, I'll just suck it up and skip lunch because the buzz is more intense on an empty stomach".  I was always constipated and ended up with cuts to my rectum from passing rock hard stool.  You could force yourself to maintain a good diet, you could force yourself to take lots of metamucil and eat oatmeal each morning, but you don't care enough to.

So then I gave them up.  Withdrawl wasn't that bad since I tapered slowly.  I felt really bored for months, something so essential to my existence was gone.  I started having like five or six drinks a night not because I enjoyed it really, but more just to pass the time.  But, I noticed that I started feeling like a real human again, emotions that didn't exist during the habit return and it is a very, very strange sensation, almost like being born again.  I never had a girlfriend for the whole three years and didn't have any interest in finding one.  It hugely reduces your interest in sex, love, etc. 

It does that, it allows you not to care about all the other stuff in life, but that's not really living is it. 

If I had to sum it up in one sentence - With opiates you trade all the feelings, emotions, concerns, ambitions, that make you a human being for a pleasent physical buzz and sense of euphoria that is massively subject to diminishing returns.  You get to keep the bad feelings like anxiety, fear, and sadness as soon as the buzz wears off. 

And then there's the crap that inevitably goes along with the habit that really sucks - having to do the routine of lying to doctors, spending money on it, wasting time flushing the tylenol or aspirin out of the combo pills, and - though I never went to that point thankfully - maybe ending up involved with all the horrors of the world of drug dealing and getting your high off the streets.

Go read that thread - "My last hit of heroin ever" which is a few pages back, and you can see how cool an opiate habit is.  Because you either go that far, or you just end up with a milder habit that just becomes nothing pleasure-wise but if you stop you'll feel awful so you continue.  Reading through that really, really gave me a huge emotional boost in feeling glad that I stopped, but makes you want to cry too, seeing what opiates can do to a person.  So many people just end up locked in an awful battle they certainly didn't foresee when they first started.

It's so dangerous because in the beginning the pros vs. cons are stacked so massively in your favour, but after a little while it reverses itself 1000 fold and you're stuck because you are physically addicted.

It's a huge mistake to think opiates are a safer or healthier alternative to other drug use.  The fact that they aren't inherently physically damaging doesn't matter much because after a little while you don't really care that much about your physical health anyways.

[ST1R]

^thats the truth.
   
My last shot of heroin ever...

[Mens Rea]

Wow, I had no idea I made such an impression on all you people... Somehow, I am... albeit, a little bit touched.  And ace_himself pretty much nailed it dead on. The part about seeing your entire life pass before you, and missing tremendously wonderful opportunities, couldn't be more correct. In the end after everything, everybody else will be getting on with their lives, and all you will have is a chunk of brown powder keeping you company. It's a very vacuous existence, devoid of anything remotely meaningful.

[evil_goat]

So it sounds like the 'high not as good as it used to be' problem is even worse with opium stuff than with cocaine.

And it sounds (at least for some people) like a more powerful addiction than cocaine can be.  I remember the first time I tried crack, I had never felt that level of pleasure before, and really experienced what being addicted to something could be like. Imagining something more powerful than that. . .probably not good.

My current project is to try my mushrooms for the first time, maybe this weekend or next, and see how that is.  But I don't think that'll be the kind of thing that you can do all the time to feel better.

I'm not satisfied with alcohol, though, and I get mixed results with weed.  What's a good thing to do? Xanax or something?  I guess nothing's free in life, and everything good has bad that comes along with it, but is there anything that can give me a good consistent euphoria without killing or sickening me or destroying my life?  Does such a substance exist?

[Mimos]

What's a good thing to do?

Coffee+piracetam+school

[ST1R]

Unfortunately anything that is good will be addictive especially if used often. Mushrooms are damn good but far from addictive and no that can't be taken daily with consistent effects. It sounds like you are looking for a downer. The safest thing if one is determined to go down this path is to avoid daily use of any one thing and mix it up a bit. G one day, LQ the next, 018 the day after etc.

[evil_goat]

I do like downers . . . cocaine gives you that good feeling but other than that it's a shit high, destroys your sense of humor, not very social, quiet, stare at the wall kind of thing

I guess if you switch between things that'll keep it good.  The problem is getting all of these things. 

[Papyrifera]

I'm not satisfied with alcohol, though, and I get mixed results with weed.  What's a good thing to do?

Kratom. Two to three days on, two to three days off is the most frequently one can still get a decent euphoric effect. It is kind of like smoking opium, while chewing coca leaf... and lacks most of the side effects of traditional opiates (very minimal withdrawal effects, for one).

[ace_himself]

The only way drugs can be enjoyable and not ruin you is if they are an occasional break from an otherwise healthy, happy, and productive life.  Thinking that you'll just try everything and end up finding that perfect substance that you can take everyday and live happily ever after is a losing proposition.

Benzos are probably worse than being an opiate addict because long-term use of them DOES cause permanent damage and alteration to your neuro-chemistry.  Go on youtube there are plenty of videos of people who detoxed and withdrew from benzos and still have uncontrollable shakes 9 months later.  Plus, if something ever happened and your supply is straight up interrupted you can't just suck it up and suffer like opiates, it can kill you.

Shit, when you stop using drugs on a daily basis you realize that plain old reality is fun if you do the right things.  Pursue some hobbies, get to the gym and work out, go to school, find a job you enjoy, meet a girl you like, any of those sort of things. 

Probably the main reason people get into drugs is as a cure for boredom, but it doesn't cure it for long and then you find pretty soon you're bored all the time and you have some shitty habit.

I think generally there are two different categories of drugs - the ones that give you outright euphoria - like opiates or coke, and the ones which just make things more interesting - like weed, alcohol, and all the hallucinogenic types if you're into that sort of thing.  The second category you can get away with if you set limits, the first one fucks 99% of people who mess with them.  It's impossible to set limits with an opiate habit.

So yeah, I'd just say it sounds like you're bored and you'd certainly be way better served looking at ways to shake up your life and try some new things rather than embarking on that hopeless search for the magic pill that cures all the ills of life.  It doesn't exist.

[evil_goat]

So yeah, I'd just say it sounds like you're bored and you'd certainly be way better served looking at ways to shake up your life and try some new things rather than embarking on that hopeless search for the magic pill that cures all the ills of life.  It doesn't exist

Damn it!  Fucking a, i knew it.  However, I just had a good mushroom experience last weekend, did a small ~10 g. fresh or so, or shrooms (grew them myself) and got this awesome, mellow warm relaxing body high.  Next weekend I'm going for a bigger dose to try to get some hallucinations.  I might have found a new drug of choice, at least to do once in a while.

Even if it is a hopeless search, though, it might prove to be a fun one.

But yeah, I need more money, and a decent girlfriend (perennial problem with that. . . ) etc.  How to fix that? Hell if I know.  If I knew I'd be doing it.

I also just found a connect for some ecstasy pills (some mixed with amphetamines, 2c-b, and acid, but also some plain MDA) probably going to try that for the first time.  It's so famous and popular I feel like i've got to try it at least once.  We'll see how that goes.  MDA's pretty good stuff from what I've heard, and fairly safe.

[ST1R]

I also just found a connect for some ecstasy pills (some mixed with amphetamines, 2c-b, and acid, but also some plain MDA) probably going to try that for the first time.  It's so famous and popular I feel like i've got to try it at least once.  We'll see how that goes.  MDA's pretty good stuff from what I've heard, and fairly safe.

Buy a test kit!
TBH it sounds like the guy is trying to sell you some research chems. Most people wouldn't mix the drugs before selling them.

[evil_goat]

they're rumored to come from the west coast somewhere . . . no idea who makes them, you're probably right about testing them, i'll see if I can find an inexpensive kit

[Gnome]

Drugs are for special occasions, not for every day life.

Periods of drugs taken daily can be fun, but set limits! After smoking weed almost daily for a year, it just ain't that fun anymore. Shit, I've reduced it to only weekends for months now and it still ain't as fun as it was.
Only good for avoiding a massive hangover these days.

Recently I finally got around to trying LSD, shrooms etc, after reading about them since the 8th grade, and I must say they beat the crap out of anything else.

[evil_goat]

so you agree with me, then.  Shrooms kicked the crap out of all the other stuff i'd tried.  Wished I'd tried them earlier.

I guess you shouldn't get greedy, anyway, as long as I can have a good trip every so often, you don't need to be fucked up on something all the time, do you?  The only thing I use with any regularity is alcohol, just to feel somewhat good and sleep better, mainly, or for partying and stuff.

As far as opium goes, I've decided I'll *consider* maybe smoking some natural opium or something, or that poppy pod tea, if any of it comes my way, but not to make any huge bother looking for it, and be careful not to do it very often.  My curiousity these days is more towards psychedelics, though. 

Probably most drugs lose their fun if you do them too much, the euphoria goes down, but dependance on it and side effects, and cost, go up, and the habit eventually turns pointless.

[trylobeet]

oh, but that's not true.

with opiates, the real PHUN starts once you get hooked.

[evil_goat]

they get better when you're really addicted?    Mr. Goat is probably too poor for such a habit, though.

i sort of am curious how good that shit is.  This sounds stupid, but anything with a reputation for being addictive sort of gets my curiousity going, not that trying addictive drugs is a great ides ever, but . . .i'm wondering if opium is more powerfully addictive than crack, or if I'll just think it's crap . . .depends on the person, I guess

[Papyrifera]

Honestly the more addictive drugs have been the least exciting highs for one. Cocaine... feeling hyper-aware and jumpy for 20 minutes, then shitty and wanting to do more for the next two hours. No thanks. Opium... you could honestly get more stoned from smoking pot. Cigarettes? Why bother? Amphetamines are gross anxious stimulant garbage. Psychedelics are where its at!

[Hyperspatial Ape Beausoleil]

I agree with nearly everything said here so far.

There is no magic pill to take away the suffering of life without trading it in for its own kind of suffering. And this doesn't end with drugs; the very idea that there is some ideal state of living that is the only worthwhile mode of being will always disappoint you and make you feel that you are light years away from where you need to be. Drop the expectations of how things should be and learn to take your cue from the chaos of the moment. There may be no more dangerous idea than that of things never being good enough. Acceptance is key. But it is no compromise, no second-rate way of living, because once experienced it really opens up a whole Pandora's Box of new possibilities.

This is a lesson I've had to learn the hard way. When I was 15 I became convinced that I should be a coke and meth addict so I might focus all of my problems into one narrow, manageable area. It didn't work out that way so much as I ended up dropping out of school and losing my job, friends, and girlfriend, all of which helped nothing at all. Later on in life I would become psychologically addicted to psychedelics, love, yoga, a super-healthy lifestyle, etc. I may not have been polluting my body any longer, but I was still convincing myself that things were never good enough. It's okay to bang out the beatific vision, I find, but not to suffer for it needlessly.

It can be a difficult lesson, as it has been for me, and take a lot of time. Now it seems to me that if the moment presented to you does not seem sufficient, one is not really seeing it in its naked, raw form. So you let the mind go quiet and commit your perceptions to the courage of free-fall. Then the moment is not an object any longer, but a hyperdimensional doorway out of which novelty flows continuously. I still use some drugs, including psychedelics whenever possible and occasionally an opioid, but I feel like everyday living has its own highs when you know how to keep it fresh. Anything can be a religion, a dogma, an addiction, but you must learn to destroy to be reborn, to keep the ouroboros molting as it is wont to do.

[trylobeet]

they get better when you're really addicted?

but of course.
as burroughs noted too, the greatest kick is relief.
one minute you're shaking, nose running, sneezing, eyes all pupils, your body screaming with the painful urgency of  a fucked up endo-opioid metabolism, and the next second - in just one instantaneous orgasmic wave of relief, its all gone, and you are at this warm, cozy place where... nothing really matters. you light a cigarette and nod off, making holes in your sheets, dumb and anaesthesized.



 

[delysiduous]

They all fucking suck in my opinion.  Was never a fan of opiates, except for opium itself lol.  My experience is limited to hydrocodone and oxycodone.  Taken up to 20mg oxy, didn't enjoy it at all.  Now even if I use it for legit pain, anything more than ~5mg has me feeling a little nauseous and in general not good.  Maybe I just have a low tolerance or my body just doesn't like it, it's definitely not for me though.

Coke is fun every once in a while for me, if it's really good at least, bad stuff is the worst.  I pretty much only use it in situations when I'm gonna be out dancing all night, trying to cut my usage of ecstasy or meth to almost nil. 

I recommend you consider ketamine.  Less side affects or addiction potential than any of that other stuff, and extremely safe in comparison.  You definitely get more bang for your buck also; it can be a tranquilizer, stimulant, anti-depressant, or a psychedelic depending on how you decide to use it.  I put my dad onto this stuff; he doesn't seem like he has any intentions of cutting down his drug use, and I'd much rather him do k than his usual coke or painkillers.  

[evil_goat]

one minute you're shaking, nose running, sneezing, eyes all pupils, your body screaming with the painful urgency of  a fucked up endo-opioid metabolism, and the next second - in just one instantaneous orgasmic wave of relief, its all gone, and you are at this warm, cozy place where... nothing really matters. you light a cigarette and nod off, making holes in your sheets, dumb and anaesthesized.

 

I guess that's a weird sort of good--feel really shitty and then get relieved from that shitty feeling.  Relief from pain/discomfort might be the best pleasure, I suppose.  Although that ain't really my idea of fun . . . course I remember being really high on crack one time, and me and my friend sent this other guy that we knew to go get some, and the fucker took *forever* like 2 hours, to come back, and when we *finally* got the stuff it was really good.  Of course, that's a fucked up kind of 'good'.  And an opiate-using person would probably laugh at my lame-ass 'cocaine withdrawal' (if you can really call it that) story. . .

So far, at least with shroom trip #1, psychedelics are showing the most promise out of anything, although I know they're something you can't do all the time.

Ketamine might be something to try, thanx for the suggestion.  I hear you can have quite a trip on that stuff, and it's fairly safe. And it's sort of semi-legal? Like they use it for veterinary tranquilizer, or something?  I ain't gonna snort a giant line of it like that Chinese girl, though. . .