Heroin trials show positive results when addicts given heroin ; Prohibition is the Problem.

Date:   10/24/2008 5:08:54 PM ( 16 y ago)

There was a study going on where long term heroin addicts were GIVEN heroin daily for a year, and the outcomes were recorded.

They did well!! Results were being reported in newspapers today [Oct 24th 2008]

Some quotes:
"Results Show That North America's First Heroin Therapy Study Keeps Patients in Treatment, Improves Their Health and Reduces Illegal Activity"

" significant improvements in reducing illicit heroin use and illegal activity, and improved health for participants"

"heroin assisted treatment (HAT) can attract and retain the most difficult-to-reach and the hardest-to-treat individuals who have not been well served by the existing treatment system."

"Marked improvements were also seen in participants' medical status with scores improving by 27 per cent."

- end of quotes -
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Surprise? Not really, not to me. The main problem for opiate [heroin, morphine] addicts is that they require larger doses over time; it is not much of an increase, about 10% every 6 months. Therefore, they do need slightly larger doses over time, and due to prohibition and the medical restrictions on opiate drugs, the addicts have a harder and harder time getting what they need.

Opiate withdrawals are terrible, and addicts will do almost anything to get what they need. Crime is not beyond the bounds for many such addicts. So, GIVE THEM WHAT THEY NEED. This is a human rights issue, to my way of thinking. It is purely torture to be addicted and then have the drug restricted. In my own case, I was prescribed morphine for several years [for pain] and then it was taken away, and later it was severely restriced. How can this be fair to me? I still have the pains I was first prescribed it for, and then I was forced into withdrawals too!!

Many heroin addicts are simply "self-medicating". They perhaps went to a doctor who denied them treatment, or under-treated them [with ineffective pharmaceuticals]. Also, many people are highly suspicious of pharmaceutical drugs - with good reason, since most of them are toxic.

One interesting thing about opiate drugs is that THEY ARE NOT TOXIC AT ANY LEVEL. Yes, you can "overdose" on them by taking too big a dose all at once, but as the addict's tolerance builds up, they take larger and larger doses, and AT NO TIME ARE THOSE DOSES TOXIC. This probably has something to do with the fact that humans - and all vertebrates - have special receptors for the opiate molecule. MU Opioid receptors will trigger the release of endorphines and other brain chemicals involved in the pain mechanism in our brains. We "metabolise" these drugs well [thats not quite the right word perhaps?].

I do understand that this is a lot for most people to try to accept, it is a big change. We have been trained for so long to think of heroin as nothing but BAD. The fact is that it is a simple plant-based medicine that humans have been using for millenia, and that we have evolved with and that it - the poppy plant - has probably evolved with us.


Links to the NAOMI study and results -

NAOMI site:

http://www.naomistudy.ca/



News Article [results of study]:

http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/557/naomi_research_results_heroin_dilaudid


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Trivia Files: The same man who invented Aspirin invented Heroin [the worlds two most successfull drugs?].





 

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