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>> No. 447724 Anonymous
12th November 2021
Friday 12:29 pm
447724 Heroin in the '80s
Oldfag here.

I was talking with another oldfag about the heroin epidemic in the eighties. I was just a kid back then, but I still remember seeing junkies everywhere, finding used syringes in the street, and having to take care while walking to school because the junkies stole everything they could put their hands on.
Then, approx in 1990, everything stopped. The junkies either died, moved on, or got into rehab. The pushers switched to cocaine or speed. All of a sudden, there was no more heroin in the street (thankfully). I really wonder what happened back then to have such a quick shift. Did the same thing happen here in UK?
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>> No. 447726 Anonymous
12th November 2021
Friday 12:32 pm
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Are junkies the ones with facial lesions or is that a symptom of something else?
>> No. 447728 Anonymous
12th November 2021
Friday 12:44 pm
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>I still remember seeing junkies everywhere, finding used syringes in the street

If you're feeling nostalgic you can you take a trip to your local train station on a weekday afternoon. You'll find the needles at the nearby path around the industrial estate. Alternatively Sheffield was having a big heroin outbreak at least a few years back, it was fucked up walking past a kids playground and seeing needles everywhere from the local junkies.

>>447726
You're probably thinking of meth.
>> No. 447730 Anonymous
12th November 2021
Friday 12:48 pm
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>>447728

Meth fits, I'm often accosted in train stations by very talkative homeless women with those lesions.
>> No. 447732 Anonymous
12th November 2021
Friday 1:10 pm
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Take a visit to Cardiff sometime. There are heroin addicts and junkies everywhere.
>> No. 447733 Anonymous
12th November 2021
Friday 1:16 pm
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>>447732

Swansealad, here. Plenty of places here if you want to go and see someone on a nod, as well.
>> No. 447735 Anonymous
12th November 2021
Friday 1:32 pm
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>>447728

Same thing in the old country, junkies migrated en masse to some Godforsaken corner of the country and gathered there. Before the great shift of the nineties, junkies were everywhere. Now they dwell only in some especially shitty towns. In pic, the "vele" council flats from Secondigliano, Naples.
>> No. 447737 Anonymous
12th November 2021
Friday 1:37 pm
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OP there, by the way, I remember that we were accustomed to seeing junkies sleeping in the street with the needle still in their arm. One Sunday I was playing with my friends in the park and there was that big bloke sleeping near the benches, we paid him no mind. Later the police came and carried him away, he OD'ed while we played ball just next to him. I was 12 or 13 back then. One of my cousins died because he injected some bad black tar stuff cut with strychnine.
>> No. 447748 Anonymous
12th November 2021
Friday 6:19 pm
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>>447724

Visible signs of heroin use aren't really a barometer of the number of heroin users, but the quality of service provision for vulnerable people.

If your local junkies have somewhere to live, they won't be shooting up in the street. If your local needle exchange is providing good mentoring and support, the junkies will dispose of their works safely. If your local healthcare providers are offering good substitute prescribing, you'll have much less acquisitive crime.

>>447735

Fuck me, that's a gorgeous photo.
>> No. 447749 Anonymous
12th November 2021
Friday 6:30 pm
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>The junkies either died, moved on, or got into rehab

I think I read somewhere a while ago that persistent heroin addicts, i.e. with a prolonged continuous history of addiction and failed attempts to get off the stuff, have a life expectancy of about 40 to 45 in Britain. It rings true, but I can't find a link right now to corroborate it.

The more worrying thing is perhaps that if that is an average life expectancy, then that means for all the junkies who die in their early to mid 20s, there must be a good few pentagenarians who still shoot up.
>> No. 447750 Anonymous
12th November 2021
Friday 6:44 pm
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>>447749

Why is that worrying?
>> No. 447753 Anonymous
12th November 2021
Friday 6:56 pm
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>>447749

Ageing is the main reason for the recent increase in drug deaths in Scotland. It's an odd sort of success story - they've done well enough at keeping drug addicts alive to have a cohort of older and more vulnerable addicts. HIV isn't a death sentence any more, we can reverse overdoses with naloxone, but eventually that lifestyle will catch up with you one way or another. The tipping point was in 2015, when over-55s started representing a greater proportion of drug-related deaths than under-25s.

https://www.nrscotland.gov.uk/files//statistics/drug-related-deaths/20/drug-related-deaths-20-pub.pdf
>> No. 447760 Anonymous
12th November 2021
Friday 10:10 pm
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>>447748

That is true. Lots of idiots are angry when somebody tries to help the junkies because "that just encourages them to keep shooting". I know that they are more or less unlovable, but at least providing them with some support will keep crime down and maybe help some of them. To be honest, I would offer all junkies a choice between rehab, deportation or a bullet in the head, but I know sometimes you have to choose the lesser evil.
>> No. 447761 Anonymous
12th November 2021
Friday 10:16 pm
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>>447748
There's an English photographer by the name of Sam Gregg who lives part-time in Napoli and photographs the day-to-day life there. His social media are worth a follow, it's a lot of proper hard nut looking Mafia type blokes smoking cigarettes and eating a kebab on the beach.
>> No. 447762 Anonymous
12th November 2021
Friday 10:30 pm
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>>447753

It sounds like a pretty shit life though.

I was smoking like a chimney in my wild days and would knock back up to six or seven pints without a problem on a good night out, and I did that from age 17-18 to about 32-33ish. It was only when I stopped drinking alcohol almost entirely and quit smoking completely that I realised how much better it makes you feel physically.

I'm in my 40s, and I honestly feel in better nick now than I did ten to fifteen years ago. Of course booze and fags don't have quite the same effect on your body as being a heavy heroin user, but I think you see where I am going with this. Keeping up a one- to one and a half packs a day smoking habit and drinking seven pints regularly in your 40s or 50s would seem like utter hell to me.
>> No. 447763 Anonymous
13th November 2021
Saturday 3:10 am
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>>447762

The thing is, heroin isn't actually bad for your body. It'll kill you if you take so much in one go that you stop breathing, but otherwise it's quite harmless. The chronic health hazards of heroin addiction are all secondary factors - poverty, self-neglect and poor injecting practices.

Booze and fags will inevitably kill you over time, cocaine will slowly poison your heart, but heroin users can live long and healthy lives with the right support. The deaths of heroin addicts are a preventable social policy failure.
>> No. 447764 Anonymous
13th November 2021
Saturday 5:38 am
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>>447763
Heroin needs proper dosing (and an actual junkie in the right program will know what that is) but once put down to the right dosage heroiin is bascially a (very problematic) antidepressant.

There are people who can come down with methadone, or if there's anew drug please don't crucify me. Drug usage almost inevitably implies psychiatric problems, But if someone's been in therapy, tried all other drugs, and keeps going back to heroin... well, diamorphin is cheap. We could grow and make the needed local supply quite cheaply if that's a concern.

What the popularity of heroin should tell you is that there is a deep, deep mental health issue. But to understand what that issue is (and it's not with the social workers dealing with, nor with the drug counselours) some small percent will always be fucked. But at the rate we're producing them, that's not normal.
>> No. 447765 Anonymous
13th November 2021
Saturday 9:38 am
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>>447763

>The thing is, heroin isn't actually bad for your body. It'll kill you if you take so much in one go that you stop breathing, but otherwise it's quite harmless.

That's still a dangerous point to make, given all the disastrous consequences to an addict's life.


>The chronic health hazards of heroin addiction are all secondary factors - poverty, self-neglect and poor injecting practices

One reason why celebrities OD and die from drugs is often that money is no limiting factor. There was a documentary about Whitney Houston's drug-related death, and they said that the problem with celebrities who develop an addiction is near-unlimited funds to support their addiction. At some point, most ordinary people's lives who are on drugs spiral out of control because drugs tends to be expensive, and with the self neglect often comes the loss of your job or even the ability to hold down a job, and you will gradually lose all your material possessions like your house, and your marriage will also break down, by which point you will know you've hit rock bottom, and that's actually when a lot of average-person addicts get help.

Somebody like Whitney Houston, on the other hand, would have been able to live off her music royalties alone and support a substantial drug addiction for the rest of her life, without the necessity to take up a job or even function at all as an adult. And with that kind of money at your disposal, you don't really ever hit rock bottom as such. Your money will just keep the drugs coming.
>> No. 447766 Anonymous
13th November 2021
Saturday 4:18 pm
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>>447765

Those poor celebrities with their endless money meaning their lifestyle and relationships don't have to fall apart when they get addicted to things. If only they could be like those lucky normal people who get to lose all their material possessions and their marriages so they know when to stop.
>> No. 447767 Anonymous
13th November 2021
Saturday 4:45 pm
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>>447762
Is 6 to 7 pints considered a lot? I couldn't manage 2, rarely drink, but my dad used to neck 13 odd throughout the day and he never seemed drunk. We used to live down the pub on the weekends, hotboxing tobacco and drinking pandapop. Fucking hated it.

>>447766
Is that really what you read the guy as saying or are you just being trite?
>> No. 447768 Anonymous
13th November 2021
Saturday 4:59 pm
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>>447767
Two is where you start getting drunk. Five is where you're really doing it properly. Ten is where you quite possibly might require medical attention. Of course, if you spread it out over the whole day, the effects are less noticeable, plus some people are wimpy drinkers and some people are raging alcoholics who never even get drunk any more. Those numbers I gave you are based on myself, a wimpy drinker who throws up and goes home long before I've drunk ten pints.
>> No. 447769 Anonymous
13th November 2021
Saturday 5:15 pm
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>>447767

That is what he said. He said it was a problem with celebrities doing it, so it's something that is better for normal people.
>> No. 447770 Anonymous
13th November 2021
Saturday 5:19 pm
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>>447768
I'd say this is about right from my experience. 2 and you've got a buzzy inebriation where you're starting to go into your own head, 4-5 is a standard time for me to call it a night and get food all down myself on the way home.

Does depend on what you're drinking of course. Counter-intuitively I find dark ales treat me quite nicely but lagers not only get me drunk-drunk but also gassy.
>> No. 447771 Anonymous
13th November 2021
Saturday 6:31 pm
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>>447767

>but my dad used to neck 13 odd throughout the day and he never seemed drunk

With 13, i.e. over seven litres of beer, you are approaching Pintman territory. Even if you space it out over a whole day, it's not a quantity that you should be drinking regularly. If at all.

If your dad didn't seem drunk from it, then that should have been all the more alarming, it shows that he had a real problem with alcoholism.
>> No. 447772 Anonymous
13th November 2021
Saturday 7:37 pm
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>>447771
I think it was more a case of his worklife balance; 5 days away from home, a weekend to socialise and 'relax' in the pub. Can't very well stay there all day without buying at least a pint an hour. Thinking about it, 7 was probably the average but it reached the double digits often enough. It was either that or lay about a bedsit with 2 kids all day.
Dad barely touches the alcohol these days so i doubt he ever had a problem with it specifically. gambling was more his thing.

Man, I have a lot of resentment for those days. It wasn't bad - we were around good enough people and would always get a treat when the bells rolled in, but it's just .. I don't really see how they fit into my life.
>> No. 447774 Anonymous
13th November 2021
Saturday 8:05 pm
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>>447768

Depends what I'm drinking but for me I think about 7-8 is drunk drunk territory, but I can reasonably keep going to as many as 15. And that's as a right skinny fucker too, so by all accounts I should be a total lightweight.

The thing that has always truly puzzled me is how you store over ten pints of liquid in your body, without pissing like a garden hose. That's literally as much beer as you have blood. What usually happens is I'll start off on the pints and have 3-4, but by the time the buzz has started to really kick in I'll invariably switch to a spirit and a mixer, because it's less volume. By the time shots are introduced to the equation (the marker of a truly successful night out-out) I'll be past the stage of remembering it the next day, and my mates have told me some truly dreadful tales of the things I get up to when I'm in that state, but on no occasion have I ever passed out, and I'm always (at least outwardly) reasonably with it.

Some people go all wobbly and start falling about and such, but instead, I just seem to become possessed by the Dr. Hyde version of myself who doesn't give a fuck. I've known some people who you'd never even notice were tipsy after about six pints, but they'll hit a wall and just fall asleep wherever they're sat. Weird how it affects different folk differently.

Probably has a lot to do with your upbringing. My mum and dad are committed drinkers, I wouldn't say alcoholics, but they definitely drink more than is healthy. I know some of you would say 2but that IS being an alcoholic", but like, it's not a problematic relationship with booze, for them, it's just that they very much come from that type of working class northern lifestyle where having a few beers after work and then spending the weekend down the local is basically how they've spent their entire lives, and it has no doubt rubbed off on me.
>> No. 447776 Anonymous
13th November 2021
Saturday 9:14 pm
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>>447774

>it's just that they very much come from that type of working class northern lifestyle where having a few beers after work and then spending the weekend down the local

It's not just northern. I had friends in Norf London while growing up there who were from families that were just like that.

It is a class thing though. One of my exes was proper posh, and alcohol was consumed at their house in the form of one glass of good French red wine for dinner, and maybe a bit of straight gin around the fireplace. "A few beers after work" would have seemed to them like something the unwashed masses did.
>> No. 447779 Anonymous
13th November 2021
Saturday 11:38 pm
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>>447768
Yes, 2-3 is where the fun excitable everyone is a big family bit of drunk is. 5+ is where the shit dancing and falling over happens.
>> No. 447780 Anonymous
14th November 2021
Sunday 12:40 am
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>>447776
I thought I was the only person in the world who drank neat gin. That's certainly how all bartenders react when I order some. It's lovely (usually; some gins really, massively aren't).
>> No. 447781 Anonymous
14th November 2021
Sunday 2:06 am
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>>447780

People don't really order neat anything in the UK. Even in scotland asking for neat whisky sometimes gets a puzzled look.

I don't really know why.
>> No. 447782 Anonymous
14th November 2021
Sunday 2:36 am
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>>447781

You don't go to the pub to pay £3-4 per glass for the purpose of savouring a quality drink, if you're at the pub it's to get pissed, you order something you can chuck down your neck. It's a social occasion. Drinks are just the lubricant.

It'd be a bit like asking to book a table then eat with a knife and fork at Maccies. It's a total misapprehension of why the place exists and why anyone wants to be there. Not unthinkable, but just totally illogical to 99% of the population.
>> No. 447783 Anonymous
14th November 2021
Sunday 3:46 am
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>>447782

I mean, I go to the pub to get pissed, but I prefer drinking whisk(e)y to beer. A Jameson's (which I really like and is cheap) at most pubs is equal to, if not better, in terms of cost per amount of alcohol.

I wouldn't order a 40 year Macallan at a spoons obviously, and to be honest I usually wouldn't order a straight sprit anyway, even though I want to, because people do think it's weird, and the last thing I want to do is have this conversation when I'm just trying to get hammered, so I'll just begrudgingly drink pints if we're doing rounds, or have scotch and sodas because people seem to accept that.

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