DRUGS~ or should i say, illegal drugs~

[lady cop]

well i have been thinking of this thread for a while. i know there are very diverse opinions here about the use of illegal drugs. i am the first to admit to smoking some dope in the 60's. i never tried LSD because i knew i had a good mind and was afraid to lose it, whether that was propaganda or not. my purpose in this thread is to discuss the current use of meth, the current fixation with oxycontin, and especially my feelings about crack cocaine. coke used to be an elitist $100. a gram snorting drug, but when crack came along, as usual aimed at the poor, $5 a rock and insanely addictive, everything changed. i have to say that 85% of the arrests we make have to do with crack. people rob and murder their grandmothers for it. i know a girl who beat her granny to death with a hammer for crack. i went and took her bloody footprints in plaster. and she admitted it to me. i know females who have 5 babies, all crack-sick. i serve them with removal papers all the time. i search these people, crack rocks in the seams of their jeans. and oxycontin...pharmacy robberies are up 90%. they will kill you for it. it's $30. a tab on the street. i expect a lot of conversation about let the druggies do their thing and who does it hurt, but in my experience, it hurts a lot.

[BTS]

LC:

oxycontin ?

What does do? Isn't that what Rush was hooked on?

It must be new? I got out about when Meth was taking over, but these slick new drugs I am ignorant on.



I have tried about everything once except I never put a needle in my arm.....

I'd like to add I have been clean over 15 years

[Jika]

lady cop wrote: stay off my threads . i am tired of you. and you may have noticed you kill everybody's threads.
^ LC are you serious? Wow, that's a bit harsh. I'm a Newbie here and your response to BTS is freaking me out (slightly). I'm not privy to what has transpired between you two but I would have thought that could have been said via pm. ( no offence intended, just calling it how I see it as a newcomer. )



Anyway, about the drugs issue....it's a complex one that's for sure. Oxycontin belongs in the opiate class ( similar effects to morphine ) and usually, people who become addicted to this have been mismanaged medically. People are commonly prescribed this for post operative pain management or the management of chronic pain which is unresponsive to other non-opiate analgesics. Perhaps the medical profession need to reassess prescibing criteria and follow-up management in this group of patients in general. As for the other 'street drugs' I'm pretty clueless but I'm sure you'll get a few opinions.

[capt_buzzard]

I did try smoking some hash in the 1970s. It never did anything for me. Then, I was a Guinness guy.

Attached files

[greydeadhead]

well.. in my younger wilder days I did my share of recreational pharmaceuticals.. pretty much everything but poke a needle in my arm. I still consider myself normal.. no flashbacks or withdrawals.. or addictions.. sooooo... I can see legalizing marijuana, maybe hash.. tax it sell it like booze or smokes. The harder more addictive drugs.. coke... crack.. meth... H.. nope.. they alter a personality way too much.. Oxy is the newest designer drug craze.. high power pain killer.. I guess provides a major high when crushed up and used.. meth is the new hot drug.. lots of labs popping up.. can me manufactured out of OTC drugs pretty cheaply.. course the labs are dangerous.. have a habit of blowing up..

anyway.. my 2 cents worth... legalize hemp..

[Jives]

lady cop wrote: well i have been thinking of this thread for a while. i know there are very diverse opinions here about the use of illegal drugs. i am the first to admit to smoking some dope in the 60's.


Well! That was refreshingly open! My kids ask me all the time if I ever did drugs. I always reply, "I grew up in the 60's and 70's, draw your own conclusions, but if you are asking me if I condone it, the answer is an emphatic no! I have to visit too many of my friends in the graveyard because of alcohol and drugs." That seems to satisfy them.

my purpose in this thread is to discuss the current use of meth, the current fixation with oxycontin, and especially my feelings about crack cocaine.


Meth - New Mexico is an official sponsor of the "Tweeker" olympics. We've got meth labs on the front page of our paper every day. I'd say it's in epidemic proportions now. I really son't understand this drug, it's seriously nasty stuff and I'd put it in LC's "way too dangerous to take any chances with" category. Not to mention the fact that making it virtually assures you of cancer down the line and the risk of blowing up like Wiley coyote.

Crack - What God-forsaken soul invented this crap?!!! I'll have to admit to having some knowledge of this drug. When I was living in Phoenix I saw people go down the tubes in just two months on this stuff. Insanely addictive is right. I dodged a bullet on this one, but it left a burn mark on my brain. Just being around it, as the old Vietnam vets would say, "put a zap on my head." I once saw a college football athlete for ASU do one hit of crack and fall stone dead to the floor.

These days I'm too old, too smart, and too wise to do anything with drugs. I spend my days trying to impress upon young people that life is actually more fun without drugs.

I would say the worst thing about drug use, (and alcohol use for that matter) is that after a while it gets so that you feel like you can't have any fun without being high. That's a real trap.

[Jives]

Oh and calm down you guys, you're scaring the poor Jika bunny rabbit. There, there Jika, nice bunny!

(Jives pets Jika on the ears..)

[valerie]

The one thing that really bothers me now is the few making it very difficult

for the many. I'm speaking of the Vicodin abuse "craze". I like to have a

good painkiller when I really need it and not have to jump through hoops

with a doctor to get it.



I'll give you an example: Christmas Eve 2003, sitting watching the tv

when I started feeling a pain in the butt. "Ow, that really hurts". Well,

fast healer and physically fit person that I am, I thought I'd overcome

it in a few days. Nope. So December 31st, went to a doc and told him

I thought I had a pinched sciatic nerve, he concurred and wrote me a

script for 30 Vicodin. Now, this pain was reducing me to tears and

there was no real way to get rid of it except the passage of time. I

managed to recover in about a month, only taking the Vicodin when I

really needed it usually at night. Do you know I didn't use the last of

that 30 pills until Halloween weekend 2004?!? So, don't lump me in

with the rest of the druggies.



I think something should be done, but what? I haven't got a clue.

More education? All of our locking people up doesn't seem to help

and the innocents (kids) having to suffer for what adults do really

ticks me off.



:-5

[Beth]

Interesting, Jives. Thing is, some kids who do drugs are highly depressed and they take the drugs to try to get a little while of relief. But yes, it all becomes a trap. I cannot even smoke pot because I begin to get paranoid and jittery and cannot sit still. Alcohol doesn't even lift my spirits anymore, so I stopped drinking that for the most part. Oxycontin, I've had that before before the hype and when it was still prescribed rather liberally, it made me itch.

I never tried hard drugs, never sniffed or injected, although I have been given some killer IV pain meds. I know people who have destroyed their lives to get high. We have been robbed by friends who had to go on crack binges.

I just wonder if the crime rate associated with drug use is lower in countries that drugs are legal.

[lady cop]

Jika, i apologize for offending you, and i deleted my post.

[lady cop]

sometimes i am amazed at the capacity that some drug-users have, especially in view of the fact i have zero tolerance for meds. when i had my shot-up knee repaired the surgeon gave me some percocets, said i was going to be in a lot of pain. i took a half of one and it totally kicked my butt, i was unconcious for 24 hours! so i am astounded by the amount of narcotics i see people ingest. we had a 19-year-old male recently who swallowed 45 crack rocks when we arrested him. he didn't want to be discovered to have them. well he nearly died in the ER, there was blood pouring from every orifice. later, in the jail sick cell i asked him whatever possessed him. he had absolutely no memory of the hospital. and was quite sheepish when i described how he nearly lost his young life. i hope it made an impression.

[Jives]

lady cop wrote: the surgeon gave me some percocets, i took a half of one and it totally kicked my butt, i was unconcious for 24 hours!


lol! That's pretty funny! My wife gets a lot of Demerol for her wounds, they used to give her Lortabs (which I think is the hydrocodone you speak of) I tried one once when my back was out, the darn thing consitpated me for three days! NEVER AGAIN!!

[lady cop]

so you were full of it, eh Jives? :yh_bigsmi

[Beth]

I love Lortabs. Good stuff when mixed with immitrex for a migrane. makes you so happy you could care less that you wanted to die a few minutes earlier. I have a very high tolerance to pain killers. Percocet, well that stuff barely phases me. Last time I needed some, I had to take several just to feel the effects.

[Jives]

lol! Yeah, and strangely, people tell me that all the time, even when I'm not.

Speaking of drugs, I take drugs everyday for my Rheumatoid Arthritus, which if you are not familiar with it, is a really terrifying disease. I used to think it was a joke disease, mostly because granny on "The Beverly Hillbillies' was always drinking alcohol for her "rheumatiz"

But it's pretty serious and actually "killed" me at one time. It's where the body's immune system begins to attack the body itself! It's very painful and is similar to being filled with concrete and having battery acid poured into your bloodstream. (I actually feel a sizzling sensation while typing this as my own white blood cells eat my cartilage.)

So anyway, I take a drug called "Arava" which is great and has no side effects for me, (although it killed 60 people in Europe, but my doc says that 6,000,000 people take it so that's pretty acceptabe to me.)

But I also take....get this....steroids! and I'm not even a baseball player!! I only take 5 mgs. which is barely any and my doc says my bones won't turn to powder until I'm over 90 at this rate. But, man, is that great stuff. You feel like you could lift a Volkswagon on them. Most people have little aches and pains all the time that they tend to ignore...but take some steroids and they disappear completely! You feel 20 years old again!

Scary stuff, though.

[lady cop]

stuff to make me feel 20? hmmmmmmm wonder if i can get it on the street??:wah:

[Lon]

Beth wrote: Interesting, Jives. Thing is, some kids who do drugs are highly depressed and they take the drugs to try to get a little while of relief. But yes, it all becomes a trap. I cannot even smoke pot because I begin to get paranoid and jittery and cannot sit still. Alcohol doesn't even lift my spirits anymore, so I stopped drinking that for the most part. Oxycontin, I've had that before before the hype and when it was still prescribed rather liberally, it made me itch.



I never tried hard drugs, never sniffed or injected, although I have been given some killer IV pain meds. I know people who have destroyed their lives to get high. We have been robbed by friends who had to go on crack binges.



I just wonder if the crime rate associated with drug use is lower in countries that drugs are legal.
I don't know of any countries where drugs are legal. Grass in Amsterdam is tolerated, but I don't believe hard drugs are. I can remember in 1989 near the train station in Zurich seeing some druggies in the park shooting up in full view. Made me wonder if drugs are tolerated there. I tried grass in 1953, didn't like it, and again in 1970, still didn't like it. Never considered using any hard stuff.

[CARLA]

Well have been disabled for 10 years with a broken neck I can say I have had many of the new drugs for pain. I also spent 4 years in pain management learning how the use these powerful drugs. The bottom line is if they are used properly you can't become addicted.. If your truly in pain when taking them you won't become addicted. It's when people use them when they aren't in real pain that the problem starts.



Of course you have many who just take them because they can. Frankly I grew tired of them quickly. I didn't want to take them at all. I have learned to listen to my body and adjust my activities to keep me from suffering for days with protracted pain that would bring any human to tears. I returned to work 5 years ago. I won't lie there are days I have to take a painkiller..but they are few and far between.



Now living in San Diego the METh capital of the country.. I see every day the damage it causes.. Drugs are the cause of so many of our social problems in this country. As LADYCOP stated people will kill their own family just to get money for them.. It just to avaliable to buy.. they are using at a younger age each year. Kids are shotting it, snorting it, inhaling it and smoking it.. Damn they are drinking cough medicine to get a high.. Just sad.. Kids either have to much time on their hand, or their parent aren't involved with them at all.. They get in gangs and are lead down the path to crime... :-5 Also living as close to the border as San Diego is drugs, and booze are a draw for our young people to cross the border.. A real problem here..



Kids today seem to have and endless supply of money to spend. Growing up we had little if any spending money.. If we wanted more we had to babysit or do yard work..it wasn't just handed to us.. Hell I see kids at the ATM's getting money out.. :-2 Once again it goes back to the parents and values..

[Beth]

I learned that OTC drugs and even some herbs and nutrition suppliments could do for me what a narcotic could for the pain. I still like narcotics for when I am too far gone, but they have residual emotional effects on me. My life is so shite that the pills make me so happy and feel so good that reality is just too depressing and I hit an extreme suicidal low for several days afterward. Better to avoid that. So I have not taken a narcotic painkiller for over half a year because of that. Even tossed out the pills I had.