Drugs & Relationships

[Ulic Qel-Droma]

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[candy1]

Thanks for that. He said the same thing, that it's really hard to understand what it's actually like because of the stigma that comes with cocaine use. I feel like I am exactly like that, that's why I really wanted to ask for advice on RS.. I don't have any close friends that do use. I don't want to judge anyone just because I think something should be one way or another.

Yeah I wish I had asked these questions earlier. Now looking back every time we've fought bad in any way he was on it. Very irritable and quick change of emotions. I feel like its hard to trust he can change too, being that all his friends that he hangs out with on the weekends also do. I don't want to be the girl that makes someone stop hanging out with their friends. No way. For him, I know he still doesn't think that it's a big deal- so really just doing it for me. Now how long will that last?

I feel like the degree of sharing is not THAT much though. Most of it still for himself I'm sure. Used to be an ounce a week, now that's a lot right?! I would definitely say he would drink/use weekly unless we spend that entire weekend together. He's in his 30s and I believe has been using for almost 4 years now. Always has it at his place, picks up to restock. Could that still be a phase?

I care about him a lot. At the same time I need to consider my own timeline.. seeing as I do want to settle down at a certain age. I know a year is not long at all but also don't have much time to wait around.

Originally Posted by Ulic Qel-Droma

I think the only people that have an honest and real opinion are the people that do coke, or have done coke. the rest have no idea what the fuck they're talking about, they're just basing it off some anti drug shit they've been programmed with (and perhaps you are too, take that into consideration).

to be honest, anyone that uses coke to party... 3g with friends isn't much.

20 lines of coke can easily be done in a night... like per person. you do like 1-2 lines every 30minutes, it's not much.

coke parties aren't like... other drug parties where you just do one or two and you're good for the rest of the night.

you'll sit there around a table and keep doing it till it runs out, the high is fairly short... hence the reason you keep doing it (the nature of the drug, all coke users will do this).

using it weekly though... i duno. Even partying every week and getting wasted on alcohol is already kinda fucked IMO LOL. but some people like partying and just going out...

3g per week partying with friends (sharing), in my opinion is a normal amount of coke.
if he only does it like 1-2 times a week. it's not addiction.

what i consider addiction is when a person does 1-5g PER DAY, BY THEMSELVES. I know a few people that have fallen into that pit. It's VERY obvious when you're addicted to coke. They become shitbags at work, at parties, in all aspects of life. they can't go 1-2 hours without getting all frustrated and wanting to do another bump.

addiction is habitual. you do it almost every single day. u do it before u work, during work... imagine cigarettes. people take smoke breaks. cuz they're addicted to cigarettes. they need their constant fix.

that's what coke addiction is. u need your fix all the time. u take coke breaks, u go to the washroom every hour or whatever and do a bump here and there. all day.

if he's using the 3g with friends just 1-2 times a week, it should be ok. but it's borderline. it will be hard to give up that 1-2 times a week partying with friends (but who doesn't have a hard time giving up friends? that's essentially what he's gonna have to do, ditch his friends).

u can tell when someone is on coke cuz they talk a lot more, become a lot more impulsive, they're always sniffing and act a bit jittery. and obviously don't eat a lot (reduced appetite) and they probably can't sleep very well (although people that are used to uppers or have ADHD can fall asleep on stimulants).

Why don't you wait till he's actually addicted. some people have very good self control lol. i know people that can do coke weekly for... years, and they seem like absolutely normal people with normal lives (if i didnt know about their coke use).

some people just become these weird addicts almost immediately.

chances are he might not be addicted. he could just be going through a coke phase that'll pass after 1-2 years.

I've done like maybe 5 coke sessions in my life. and even as a "newb" we consumed much more than 3 grams per session. and every session i've had was like... started at the club, and ended at noon or something ridiculous. As i recall it was almost a gram per person stretched over the whole session. mind you, i didn't do this every week. these 5 times were over the past 7 years. I personally don't find coke addictive outside of the sessions. but during... is another story. you will keep chasing it till you run out or until every dealer is asleep and wont deliver haha.

everyone has a drug of choice. most people stick with alcohol and cigs and coffee.
some people like amphetamines class of drugs. some people like coke. some people like downers.

i know enough people that do their choice of drug and lead absolutely normal lives (married with kids, their wives don't know, they have good jobs and good lives). but it isnt HABITUAL. it's like once every few months.

another thing i've noticed is newbs to drugs (younger people), always fall into phases where they fall in love with some drug of choice and do it a lot for 1-2 years, then they get bored of it and just quit partying.

like i said, he could be going through a phase.

as long as he isn't becoming this super impulsive, sick and thin looking, constantly sniffing, and can't get anything done properly type of guy, he's probably ok.

coke has been highly glorified and all that shit by the media. It isn't that crazy bad unless you're a hardcore addict.

if he can quit smoking, he can probably quit coke. smoking is harder to quit than quitting coke LOL. IMO smoking everyday is worse than doing coke once a week

oh yeah, you should probably try to talk to him like... not after he comes home from a party high on coke. never argue or have a debate with someone who is on coke. wait till the next day.

trust me, if he is a decent person, there will be one late morning where him and his friends run outta coke. and they're all tired looking and staring at each other like "what bags of shit we are" and that thought will emanate more and more till one of them goes "im not doing it again". and then the crowd will follow. and the only people that will be left doing it, are the ones that have a hard time giving it up.


remember, if it's not habitual, it's not addiction. habitual is something you need to get your day going, something you constantly think about, something you need before you do the next thing on your to do list. something you need every time it runs out on a daily basis (again think about cigarette addicts and coffee addicts. those actions are habitual/addiction). unless someone is acting like that, but with coke, they're not addicted. trust me on that one. keyword is DEPENDENCE.

[punkwax]

My advice: It's only been a year, this is the time to bounce. You'll get over him and find another guy who doesn't have habits you're concerned with.

Come back and thank me when it happens

[Godzira]

agreed! ^ If you're not comfortable with it now it's not going to get any better. Plus you seem like you're a level headed girl, you shouldn't have trouble finding someone better out there!

[nma]

unfortunately as long as he hangs out with that group of friends he wont ever be able to get rid of this "habit"... he pretty much has to choose between you or his friends.

he will naturally just stop hanging around them once he quits, because they do it together every week. It's kind of something that they keep in common.

I used to have a bunch of friends that smoked a lot of weed together. I decided to quit and stop smoking. Eventually I stopped hanging out with them because I would be drawn
to do it, or I would be super bored as they were all getting high.

[Ulic Qel-Droma]

.

[Grim]

Originally Posted by candy1

I care about him a lot. At the same time I need to consider my own timeline.. seeing as I do want to settle down at a certain age. I know a year is not long at all but also don't have much time to wait around.

one thing money cant buy is time.

[tiger_handheld]

Originally Posted by Grim

one thing money cant buy is time.

what about anti-aging creme? slow down aging? no?

[Vansterdam]

find yourself a stoner instead

[Ulic Qel-Droma]

Originally Posted by tiger_handheld

what about anti-aging creme? slow down aging? no?

just the skin bro. just the skin.

[jonwon]

He's in his 30's lol it isn't phase

[Verdasco]

as a guy who did coke a few times. I never really found it addicting at any point imo. Weed on the other hand

edit: maybe I have good will power but when partying and doing all those caps / powder, i never found them addicting one bit, even weed.

[Verdasco]

just wanted to know, the term "why all the good girls go after the bad boys" is 100% true here.

either do coke or get no girls



just kidding

[threezero]

i feel like the only one who really know what they are talking about here is ulic.

coke isn't like other commonly use drugs, its highly stigmatize and so not what the media makes it out to be. You never realize how many people around you does coke until you start doing coke.

ulic is right it is entirely possible to abuse coke and not be an addict. i know many many accomplished (career wise, life in general) coke users that isn't addict, they can go on weeks sober without having a panic attack. but when they start the partying, its HARD to stop snorting it up your nose unless you ran out of cash for dealers, ran out of coke for any reason or if you have shit coke and you nose just plugs up from all the crap you shove in it.

i wouldn't worry to much about his so call habit, everybody have their sins,IMO its better being with a recreational coke head than than someone thats addicted to online MMO.

[hchang]

Maybe he just likes the way it smells

[Godzira]

Many People Use Drugs ? But Here?s Why Most Don?t Become Addicts | IFLScience

Many People Use Drugs – But Here’s Why Most Don’t Become Addicts

Drug use is common, drug addiction is rare. About one adult in three will use an illegal drug in their lifetime and just under 3m people will do so this year in England and Wales alone. Most will suffer no long-term harm.

There are immediate risks from overdose and intoxication, and longer-term health risks associated with heavy or prolonged use; damage to lungs from smoking cannabis or the bladder from ketamine for example. However most people will either pass unscathed through a short period of experimentation or learn to accommodate their drug use into their lifestyle, adjusting patterns of use to their social and domestic circumstances, as they do with alcohol.

Compared to the 3m currently using illegal drugs there are around 300,000 heroin and/or crack addicts while around 30,000 were successfully treated for dependency on drugs in England in 2011-12, typically cannabis, or powder cocaine.

A powerful cultural narrative focusing on the power of illegal drugs to disrupt otherwise stable, happy lives dominates our media and political discourse, and shapes policy responses. Drug use is deemed to “spiral out of control”, destroying an individual’s ability to earn their living or care for their children, transforming honest productive citizens into welfare dependent, criminal “families from hell”.

This is a key component of the Broken Britain critique of welfare and social policy advanced by the Centre for Social Justice and pursued in government by the CSJ’s founder Iain Duncan Smith in his role as secretary of state for work and pensions. However, the narrative has resonance far beyond the political arena and underpins most media coverage of drug addiction and the drug storylines of popular culture.

Most drug users are ..?

In reality the likelihood of individuals without pre-existing vulnerabilities succumbing to long-term addiction is slim. Heroin and crack addicts are not a random sub set of England’s 3m current drug users.

Addiction, unlike use, is heavily concentrated in our poorest communities – and within those communities it is the individuals who struggle most with life who will succumb. Compared to the rest of the population, heroin and crack addicts are: male, working-class, offenders, have poor educational records, little or no history of employment, experience of the care system, a vulnerability to mental illness and increasingly are over 40 with declining physical health.







Problem cannabis use is less concentrated among the poor, but is closely associated with indicators of social stress and a vulnerability to developing mental health conditions.

Most drug users are intelligent resourceful people with good life skills, supportive networks and loving families. These assets enable them to manage the risks associated with their drug use, avoiding the most dangerous drugs and managing their frequency and scale of use to reduce harm and maximise pleasure. Crucially they will have access to support from family and friends should they begin to develop problems, and a realistic prospect of a job, a house and a stake in society to focus and sustain their motivation to get back on track.

In contrast the most vulnerable individuals in our poorest communities lack life skills and have networks that entrench their problems rather than offering solutions. Their decision making will tend to prioritise immediate benefit rather than long-term consequences. The multiplicity of overlapping challenges they face gives them little incentive to avoid high risk behaviours.

Together these factors make it more likely that, instead of carefully calibrating their drug use to minimise risk, they will be prepared to use the most dangerous drugs in the most dangerous ways. And once addicted, motivation to recover and the likelihood of success is weakened by an absence of family support, poor prospects of employment, insecure housing and social isolation.

In short what determines whether or not drug use escalates into addiction, and the prognosis once it has, is less to do with the power of the drug and more to do with the social, personal and economic circumstances of the user.

Heads in the sand

Unfortunately the strong relationship between social distress and addiction is ignored by politicians and media commentators in favour of an assumption that addiction is a random risk driven by the power of the drug.

It does happen. But the atypical experience of the relatively small number of drug users from stable backgrounds who stumble into addiction and can legitimately attribute the chaos of their subsequent lives to this one event drowns out the experience of the overwhelming majority of addicts for whom social isolation, economic exclusion, criminality and fragile mental health preceded their drug use rather than being caused by it.

Viewing addiction through the distorting lens of the minority causes policy makers to misunderstand the flow of causality and pushes them towards interventions focused on changing individual drug-using behaviour and away from addressing the structural inequality in which the vulnerabilities to addiction can flourish.

Until we re-frame our understanding of drug addiction as more often the consequence of social evils than their root cause, then we are doomed to misdirect our energy and resources towards blaming the outcasts and the vulnerable for their plight rather than recasting our economic and social structures to give them access to the sources of resilience that protect the rest of us.

[Mr.C]

Originally Posted by candy1

Beyond that, post break-up, I saw a side of him I had never seen before- putting me down in any way possible - saying anything he knows that could hurt me. He also admitted that he did say those things on purpose because "i love you so much but you hurt me so bad". I dont want to hold this against him because I know he was really broken but it concerns me that he can be so emotionally hurtful, on purpose.

This concerns me more than the coke use. Sounds like emotional manipulation to me.

I'd be wary.

[saucywoman]

Originally Posted by Mr.C

This concerns me more than the coke use. Sounds like emotional manipulation to me.

I'd be wary.

aside from the coke use,

Beyond that, post break-up, I saw a side of him I had never seen before- putting me down in any way possible - saying anything he knows that could hurt me. He also admitted that he did say those things on purpose because "i love you so much but you hurt me so bad". I dont want to hold this against him because I know he was really broken but it concerns me that he can be so emotionally hurtful, on purpose.

this is reason enough to not want to be with him. Like Mr. C said, be wary of emotional manipulation and the potential for physical abuse. If he really wants to be with you, then knowing your feelings on drugs he would quit.

I'm not going to comment about use in itself but one of my good friends was a functioning addict for a few years, her boyf basically told her that either she stopped cold turkey or they would no longer be together. Her bestf happened to be a dealer so she had to basically stop hanging out with her and would never go out when she knew there was a chance of people indulging. So there's no excuse for him to take part if he says he really loves you and wants you in his life

[Godzira]

My best friend had to move to High Level (10 hours away from Edmonton) to quit doing coke, she said there was too much temptation in the city she knew too many people and it was way to easy to get.

she's now engaged with a baby on the way!! (and drug free for 4 years)

[fourthavenuecafe]

The money is hard to leave. Dilemma. #ifeelyou

[Chronix]

Had he ever do a line off your ass while doggy styling you?

It's for a survey I mst knw

[punkwax]

Is it a survey on the most flexible people in the world?

[miss_crayon]

Any updates?

[Ludepower]

You were probably drawn to his party lifestyle and group of friends...its no secret when someone does coke cause they have the money to support their habit. Now you're emotional cause you cant change him?

Everyone has a dirty habit...weed, alcohol, coke... etc...
If it doesn't affect their normal monday to friday life and everything else is fine...give him another chance...he'll slowly and eventually get over it.

[Verdasco]

hmmmm can anyone tell me how doing C is addicting? i am mind boggled!